A Critic at the Border
Lake Union, Seattle
09.15.08 From SEATTLE, WA TO VANCOUVER, B. C.
The Canadian Border between Washington and British Columbia was approaching and with it the guilt that descends on all innocent parties when facing the authorities. I took my passport out of the briefcase and placed it in the cupholder.
I didn’t know if I would have to fill out forms or how it worked. It had been many years since I had driven across this border and then it was without incident. Another time at another crossing, I had faced a skeptical, officious, yet courteous Canadian Customs Officer who didn’t like that I was alone with my nine-year old son looking to see the Canadian sister to Montana’s Glacier Park. “Where’s Mom?” she demanded and I felt as if I was on trial. I didn’t understand it immediately, but later, I figured out she was making sure that I wasn’t either a child molester or a custody-dispute kidnapper.
I had taken this trip as a dry run for my Argentina trip. I wanted to see what gear worked and what didn’t, how I would handle the unstructured time, and reconnect with an old college friend. The first few days of the trip had been fantastic. The weather had been clear and sunny—not business in usual in Seattle—and my college friend, Henry, whom I hadn’t seen in 13 years, was still as funny, warm and, well, collegial, as he was when we had first met freshman week of 1976. He has a young family and a wife who is a committed environmentalist and a worker with an international health organization. She was a bit upset that I decided to rent a car rather than take the less polluting train, but I had planned to pick up a friend at SeaTac two days later to travel with me during the last few days. That never materialized because my friend was from Texas, which had just been devastated by Hurricane Ike. That would lead to angst and dread as the week went on, which I would later write about in AN UNEASY CROSSING.
Sam and friend Henry doing the paddle in Seattle
We drank good coffee, went to the flagship REI, and the first Costco. I went for a long hilly run with Henry’s wife Laura, a triathlete. Somehow, I didn’t keel over. The air was clean and the neighborhood was sparkling and the children were giggling. We ate good vegetables and Henry and I laughed while we tried to see who could sing the most trivial TV jingle. Monday morning, I decamped and started walking towards the rental car office. Even though I had packed everything in a rolling bag, I was sweating in the morning sun. Henry had given me simple directions and I had stopped for a cup of cappuccino. I was a bit jittery, worrying that maybe I had lost my way, and was checking the directions. I saw a large canopy in front of me and I was sure that I must have taken a wrong turn. I trudged back up the hill, cursing and shaking and at the top of the hill passed a gay health agency and a sex toy shop. I checked my GPS and found that I had been right before. I went back down the hill and turned toward the freeway. I sighed when I realized that I should have turned the corner by the Tango Restaurant. A few minutes later I was at Hertz, got my keys, went to the seventh floor, and another car was in the space where mine should have been. I used the remote key, heard the horn beep, followed the beep, crossed barricades and hopped over railings. Still, there was no car. Finally, an attendant found me struggling between two levels and wedged between two cars. She told me that the car hadn’t been in the right spot and still needed to be cleaned. I was already supposed to be in Vancouver, and I hadn’t made it out of Seattle.
* * * * *
I came to the station and was greeted by a young woman with dark eyebrows that had an interesting bare place like a pencil line through the middle of one brow.
“Where are you traveling from?” asked the agent.
“Roanoke, Virginia.”
“What is the purpose of your visit?”
“Tourism.”
“Why did you travel all the way up here?” she asked.
“I was visiting some friends in Seattle.” She obviously hadn’t been briefed by the British Columbia Tourist Commission.
“Seattle, uh huh.” Her eyes narrowed: “What is your occupation?”
Many times I would have answered “Investor” but this often sounds too vague for belief. I decided to be more confident and replied “writer.”
“What do you write?”
“Fiction and public relations?”
“Been published?”
“The public relations work.”
“The fiction some day, eh? Anyone paying you for work up here?” I shook my head and said “the only writing will be in my journal.” I didn’t mention a blog because she might have some opinions about the Internet, too. “Have any guns?” I replied no again. She studied my passport a bit longer, and sniffed “If I could get someone to pay me to write, I wouldn’t do this for a living.”
“Have you had any criminal violations, including DUIs?” I replied no again. She reluctantly let me pass, skeptical about my stated occupation and feeling that there was something a little fishy about me. As I drove away, I kind of agreed with her.
* * * * *
Vancouver
The gentleman on my first flight was from Montreal. He recommended Stanley Park in Vancouver. Even though I had toured Vancouver 12 years ago in a hired prom-sized limousine with a salt-and-pepper mustached driver who spoke in the honeyed tones of Alex Trebek, I didn’t remember the park.
I checked into the Hyatt with a bargain rate thanks to Priceline.com. I felt clever for pulling off a coup and then would curse the same company two days later for installing me in a dump.
Sunshine streamed in my window, beautiful women in heels marched to spacious offices on the courteous streets below, I yawned and felt beauty and cleanliness all around me.
Fowlest site in Vancouver
I asked the concierge for directions to Stanley Park and took a delightful run to the Harbour. Seaplanes hummed above and kayaks plied the waters in front of me.
I shivered after the run and walked through busy beaches and through a district that I felt was heading the right way. While I was prepared to experience discomfort, that wouldn’t happen just yet.
The next afternoon, I made good on my promise to take some pictures. I didn’t run this time, but I waited patiently by Lions Gate Bridge for a well-composed picture of a seaplane flying above.
Lions Gate Bridge
Runners and cyclists swarmed around me and I captured them in silhouette rounding the corner of the seawall path. I completed the six-mile route and walked back through the neighborhoods, confident of my route and feeling a bit unauthentic because everything was working so well.
That evening I decided to visit a different part of town to have dinner. The guidebook mentioned several possibilities. I decided to walk toward Gastown and see what I could find.
Georgia Street became shadowy and construction-ridden as I walked down the avenue. I felt nervous because my blood sugar was dropping. There were fewer and fewer people. I knew my natural radar detectors would alert me to danger, but I was still anxious.
I didn’t know what to eat and I was less and less confident. I walked past a marijuana museum and a “sensual massage” place that I had seen advertised as “discreet.” The opaque-painted glass doors advertised the place as full of disease and criminality. I hunched my shoulder and wanted a safer neighborhood, or neighbourhood, as the Canadians would spell it.
I was growing increasingly impatient as my blood sugar swooned. I encountered more construction, dark streets with neon, and dangerous-looking gentlemen. I was set to go back to the hotel and have another overpriced room-service dinner listening to CNN. I passed a Chinese restaurant. Canada has great Asian food and Vancouver has a large population of expatriate Hong Kong Chinese. I went up the stairs of the restaurant.
Sitting down, I realized that I had come to a restaurant that I visited with my family 12 years before. I ordered a Sapporo and had a large, difficult to eat, and expensive lobster with black bean sauce, sorry that I didn’t have four or five more people so that I could try some more dishes.
The next day I drove back across the border. The American Customs Agent also asked me, “What brought you all the way up here?” He hid his resentment and failed aspirations and didn’t interrogate me about my nascent writing career.
An Uneasy Crossing
09.18.08-09.20.08 SEATTLE AND THE OLYMPIC PENINSULA
I think I’m ferry phobic.
I’m crossing the Puget Sound from Bremerton to Seattle on the Washington State Ferry.
I am anxious, shallow-breathed, paranoid.
I felt the same way going out to the Olympic Peninsula. A plethora of checking, a panic while I look for my iPhone and discover that it is in my hand. I have patted my pockets several times for my keys and I worry that I won’t be able to start my car, causing a thrashing by an angry mob of delayed drivers.
I had a problem driving on to the ferry. The attendant yelled at me to get in my lane. I slumped in my seat and thought: I’m simply trying to avoid hitting you, sir, please don’t yell.
The last three days have been a bust. After a bright and successful visit to my college friend in Seattle and an exquisite time in Vancouver, the solo visit to Seattle was dark and scary and I felt sick and achy. I couldn’t get warm. The “charming” “boutique” hotel was overpriced and it felt dark and foreboding. Fucking Priceline.com.
I walked the dark and deserted streets around the hotel, crossing the street to avoid contact with the beggars. I went to a drug store and bought Tylenol, Mylanta, and a heating pad. I got a Subway sandwich and ate in bed while I watched the third hour of news that day.
The next morning I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Dodge, and I inched my way to the ferry dock and had to take a circuitous route back when I realized that I had tried to go in an exit. I didn’t want to be stupid. I didn’t want to be yelled at.
The anxiety continued on the ferry and I still felt bad when I successfully drove off the ferry. CNBC was blasting on the satellite radio and I was listening to opinion after opinion about the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.
The market was in free-fall. I was alone. I still wasn’t sure if I was heading the right direction to the hotel. The sparkling weather of Vancouver had descended into a slate gray. The water offered no visual relief. It mirrored the sky. The trees looked dark.
I had lost some of the swagger and verve from my Vancouver mission and the visit with my friend.
I was on my way to the beautiful hotel on the Hood Canal. 100% recommended by my friends. It cost a lot. I was hoping it would be nice.
I came into the driveway. A two-story lodge lobby waited. A cheery gas log fire gave the impression of hearth and home. I tried to check in, but my room wasn’t ready.
I had an overpriced lunch and started hiccupping. I couldn’t get warm. I was reading a story by Borges about going up a labyrinth into a forbidden, eternal city with trap doors and false hallways and impossible buildings.
I paced the hallways of the resort and looked out at the afternoon’s palpable overcast. I tried to get in the pool and fitness room, but you needed a room key. I staggered down the halls, woozy from ennui and nervous energy. I imagined blood cascading out of the elevators like THE SHINING. The exterior atmosphere and location was out of TWIN PEAKS. I thought of Agent Cooper’s lines: A damn fine piece of pie…a helluva cup of Joe.
It was two o’clock. I couldn’t focus on another jewel-crafted tale of vertigo, myth, and obfuscation by Borges. I went to the desk and asked for my room. I guess it had been ready for some time. No one had called.
* * * * *
It is a foggy day in Seattle and we are a few minutes away from the ferry terminal. I want to take a picture of the skyline so that I can show the gloom and the unease. I make it down to the car deck and shoulder my way past the front cars, find my keys, and open the trunk of my rental so that I can get my camera out. I tear through my suitcase and I can’t find the camera. I look in the front pockets of my briefcase and I still can’t find it. I pat my jacket pocket: and fuck, there is it. I can’t deal with the suitcase now. I’ll have to do it when the cold wind isn’t blowing past me and the ferry isn’t powering beneath me. I slam the trunk. I feel my stomach sink below the ferry’s hull. Shit, did I leave the keys in there? I shudder and imagine the anger of scores of commuters.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, back at the Bates Motel, I checked into my room. It was a tasteful and romantic room with a view of the water. Companion plans had fallen through, or perhaps never were meant to be. My only companions for the next couple of days, were three crafty and annoying flies. I had little ability to catch them, tried shooing them out the balcony door, but they had checked in for the duration.
I looked outside, hopeful for a path by the water that I could use to take a run. There was no place to run, only to hide. Outside, there wasn’t a boat in the water and the only sign of life was a solitary reader, sitting in the courtyard, attempting to warm herself by a fire pit.
There was an orthopedic conference on the lower level, where a pleasant young woman had tried to check me in. Not a doctor, ma’am, but might as well be. There were several weathered old couples tottering around in active wear and flaunting the standard they had set in their golden years. They greeted me with forced grimaces and nodded and a squinted through wrinkles and rimless glasses.
This was going to be a long couple of days.
It’s a test, I told myself, a way to deal with solitude. I tried to read some more. I switched on the TV. Jim Cramer and Maria Bartilroma were yelling on CNBC about the end of the planet. I was in my $300 a day room in the middle of nowhere, grinding my teeth and waiting for the dinner reservation I had made earlier in the week for a table for two that was now a table for one.
The hostess sat me in the dark, facing a wall, embarrassed for me that I had no company. Laughs filtered up from the doctors’ cocktail party on the deck below. I ate something well prepared and trendy but for the life of me I can’t remember it.
I tried to go to sleep but a chubby white and brown cat kept crying outside. The front desk chuckled when I called and said it was one of the house cats.
I had come this way because of a beautiful visit I had years ago with my ex-wife and her aunt and uncle. It was misty, but the Olympic Mountains were self-confident to the point of arrogance and the peaks gracefully posed for pictures. I took a healthful breath of air and imagined trout jumping out of streams and animals of some sort eating leaves and smiling. Mr. Bluebird was on my shoulder. The relatives-in-law had a cabin they had built with their own hands out of logs and it had pleasant, tall windows overlooking mountains and water. The uncle taught math at the local college, the aunt was a spirit of the earth. Life was cheery and natural.
We were dropped off at the same ferry on which I am currently suffering a panic attack. On that past trip, I hadn’t felt well all day and shivered in the back of the avuncular well-traveled family station wagon, where I hid under a musty comforter. On the ferry going back to Seattle my teeth were chattering, I shook and felt a serious illness developing. I was at a business conference, but I spent the next three days in bed, unable to talk and suffering with a 104-degree fever. Within three months I had lost 30 pounds and went from a 42 regular to a 38 regular jacket. It was a bad case of the flu followed by a serious lack of appetite. The doctor named it post-viral syndrome. It sure as hell wasn’t disco fever.
Was this the reason I had become so phobic?
* * * * *
The next day I was determined to find some beautiful scenery. I drove 50 miles or so up the coast looking for a decent mountain, but all I saw was the same slate grey canal. I did get one picture of a rotting boat with old pilings.
I decided to reverse course and drove towards Olympia, the state capital. The guidebook had a few good words about it. I arrived in time for lunch and saw nice little streets, a pretty granite Capitol, and the place felt pretty good. I walked by the waterfront and found an oyster house and went in. It was one of those paneled seafood restaurants on the water, with pictures of the legacy fishermen and of the place from the 40s. In some of the pictures, proud, strong men were wearing white aprons.
A beautiful young waitress came and took my drink order. She was a little shy and hovered right behind my seat. With my arthritic neck I could barely turn to talk to her. She was a beautiful blonde with fine features and a thin veneer of make-up that showed a little more sophistication than the other waitresses. We made a little eye contact and I could tell she liked me a bit, too. She noticed me gazing at her left hand under the tray. I spied a ring and told myself to stop the flirting. When I mentioned my choice of the oyster stew, she swooned a bit. I knew that I had hit on her favorite. I congratulated myself for scoring points.
She waited on another table and I saw that she had a ring on her middle finger, not her ring finger. I started to fantasize about how we would meet after her work and we would have a nice weekend. Completely incompetent in these matters, I thought of a line that could work. Coffee shop! Ask her about a coffee shop!
She brought the check and I asked her where I could find a good coffee place. She smiled and looked into my eyes (still over my shoulder…I was glad that I had booked a massage later) and she said that she had only been in town a couple of months, but she liked a place two blocks that way and two blocks over. I said that I had been there two hours and she blushed and said welcome.
She was half my age. I was only in town for an hour. I decided to let it go and left her an oversized tip.
I left the restaurant still buzzing from the high of a love affair without danger or commitment. I floated to the place I had parked my car, realized that I had parked a block down, got in the car and started to drive the way she had directed. I saw her on the corner. I guess she must have been working a split shift. I waved and she nodded with a smile of recognition and a little embarrassment. I had tipped my hand by over-tipping.
Then it hit me. She looked like my ex-wife did twenty-five years ago. I felt like a middle-aged fool. I never did find the coffee shop. In my vanity, I would like to think she looked there for me, in vain.
* * * * *
Now I am on the ferry deck, camera in hand, keys found in my jacket pocket, and shaking a little too hard to hold the camera steady. I steady my hand, take a couple of pictures, and shuffle back to my car, sighing and shaking as I slip into the car and behind the wheel.
The ferry docks in the station. The cars in front of me start out. I follow slowly and I find myself on the drive. I am grateful to know my land legs will come back and soon I will be stumbling down the streets of Seattle, that purple-hazed over-caffeinated city of fog, drizzle, Jimi Hendrix, and Kurt Cobain.
A Postscript:
I am flying home September 21, the day after visiting Seattle. The Sunday NEW YORK TIMES has a special Fall Travel section. On the cover is a beautiful young model in an earth-inspired dress standing in front of a moss-covered tree in a shaded forest. The cover’s headline: OUT ON A LIMB. The location: Olympic National Forest, Washington.
Inside there is an entire photo spread, one in which the model wears a $13,500 Fendi dress and shows off other dresses in various environments of fog, mist, and moss.
The front page of the section has an introductory line:
MOSS-DRAPED RAINFORESTS, SHIMMERING LAKES, MIST-SHROUDED BEACHES, SNOWY PEAKS—WASHINGTON STATE’S OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK IS A WORLD APART.
And the title:
GETTING PRIMEVAL
The writer, Darcy Frey, tells us that “I moved easily here from remote high-country wilderness to temperate coastal rain forest to miles of wild and rugged coastline—a topological trifecta found elsewhere on the planet only in a few other places, like New Zealand, the coast of Chile and Tasmania.”
This was the atmosphere I long remembered and what I had expected to see. Somehow I got sidetracked and skirted along the edges, only traveling on the road to disappointment.
It is time for me to stop traveling in the past and to start dancing towards the future.
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Writer Photographer Man of Mystery
Sam Krisch
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