Other Stuff

Magical Chopsticks

A normal day eats our attention like the deer eat Lainie's tulips. We move from one thing to the next without things really changing much. Just a lot of moving. Even on holidays, there is the business of doing holiday stuff during the holidays. Sometimes it is the most sub of sub-minutiae that trips the release and sucks us back into a moment outside of ourselves. It is the subtle words or the unnoticed rituals. The minor derailments or the self-induced derailments seem to force the issue that some days are really different than the others. For instance:
 
a. The dead leaves dragged along the sidewalk and sounded like someone was coming up behind me. The steady, polite breeze skittered them along like reluctant children being pushed toward the school bus. With my eyes closed it is hard to tell the difference between footsteps and dried leaves. With a gust of wind, it sounded like it could be several people swarming around me like a stampede around a cactus. When I opened my eyes I felt a bit like an idiot standing on the sidewalk with my eyes closed. Across the street someone was in an Elvis costume walking as if at any moment he will break into, "Thank you. Thank you very much." Suddenly it struck me: why on earth should I feel like an idiot?
 
b. I was hoping Reed would be in his shop. My favorite Halloween joke was not kid-friendly and Reed and I have stretched the boundaries of good taste past the breaking point. Reed knows humor and I have to work hard to find a joke he won't figure out before I get to the punch line. I had one and he wasn't there.
 
c. I guess that wasn't a Tylenol. The first hint was the sudden energy I was feeling, which is a neon-red indicator that my system has been introduced to an opiate. Then came the good mood and the desire to chat...endlessly...with anyone...even with the ice machine. Costumes took on an exaggerated hilarity-even when they weren't costumes. The headache was still there-though it didn't concern me as much now. Besides, I was telling a joke to the ice machine.
 
d. The streets were uninhabited by anyone-so empty it seemed to suck up the silence. The next show would start soon and I wasn't sure I should let my wife drag me away to a wine bar. Once there I found a wooden puzzle under the table. Pieces were missing so I assembled and disassembled it to make different patterns. (When you hear the word "disassemble" do you, also, think of Number Nine in the movie SHORT CIRCUIT?) A couple of friends in costumes passed by the window, spotted us, and came into the wine bar. They were like a thready pulse; the night could go either way. The night was young and as it got older it would get louder.
 
e. He was drunk and didn't seem to care that I knew it-after all, he was leaving. He'd obviously been drinking while watching the show. Something about him wouldn't let my anger rise. Maybe it was because he was dressed so oddly his attire could have been a costume. Not unlike someone who has really been in a car accident or mugged, walking among a herd of people in zombie costumes. Who could tell? What are the telltale signs that someone with blood on them is not a zombie on Halloween night? He wasn't bleeding and there were no signs this guy was a troublesome drunk. Or a zombie.
 
f. The chicken wrap was calling my name. The youngster behind the counter was dressed as a hippie and the two other workers were dressed as Mario and Luigi-characters from a video game from a time before they were born. When the young hippie handed me my change, the coins filtered through my fingers into the tip jar. I almost told her that her costume made her look like a conservative Christian Republican. If she didn't get it and said something like, "No I'm a hippy" others might laugh at her-an unkindness that I would have started. More likely my comment would have been geeky/stupid enough that she would give me one of those okay-you're-weird-get-the-hell-away-from-me looks. So I just said thanks. Huddled in a booth, I ate my wrap and did the Eugene Weekly crossword, an exercise that frequently helps me feel totally out of touch with pop culture-am I, in fact, cool enough to complete their crossword? How am I supposed to know who won what on American Idol? I just learned what a Rick Roll is.
 
g. When the electric window in the car wouldn't roll up, I was not a happy man. I was in a hurry and didn't want the contents of my car exposed to the elements or the candy wrappers (and other party favors) that might get tossed into the inviting open window. The window motor made no noise in the up direction, though it went downward with gusto. Every time I tested it, it went down a little more. It had to be the switch. One should never take something apart when feeling angry and hurried. I got the window up. It would have been better if I had just rolled it down all the way and let a typhoon of empty beer bottles and candy wrappers blow through.
 
h. He made his own horror film and we played it twice on Halloween night. We didn't play DEPARTURES so that the auditorium could be used to play FISHHEAD. The DVD died at 44 minutes into a 55-minute show. There are six different DVD players in the projection booth so we started swapping them out one at a time until we found one that would play the flawed disc. We were off the screen for only 8 minutes to do this, thanks in part to Jeff being there to help. He knows the character of that booth as well as I do, and can swap out DVD players with the best of them. He's been working around my eccentrics for years, and yet, I was forced recently to cut his wages and hours back. In a near comical acknowledgment of that, I've put out a tip jar for the first time since I've had a theater in this town. Everyone is cutting back-especially at the movies. Everyone has to work for less until more comes in. it's no one's fault and it isn't personal. It was slow at first, but then people tipped more when I made a funny sign for the jar. Adding a little humor helps lessen the tension of everyone's hard times. It's actually a vase. A tip vase.
 
i. The moon was almost full. There wasn't much to see, mostly. The clouds were lunarly opaque. Sometimes the moon is a bright cotton ball in the fluff of clouds. Sometimes it peeks out. Mostly it hides. It seemed like this was a night when something should be howling at it.
 
j. Hell, I thought it was an animal, but it was a smashed pumpkin on the road. Almost immediately, there was another, deader Jack-O-Lantern just down the road. Do we really need two of these within a hundred feet from each other on Hwy 99? Gourdocide should be practiced only at home, where the remains can be committed to the earth and the seeds of the gourd can be roasted in the oven on a cookie sheet, with a little salt.
 
k. There are a lot of dark porches seen from the car. People who do not want to give out candy turn off their outdoor lighting. I dragged my kids around for years door-to-door on Halloween. At the same time you brought your kids to my doorstep. There is something about doing it downtown that makes it better-the concentration of creative costumes as a parade rather than a door-to-door serial performance. You'd have to be a cynic's cynic not to love seeing the littler kids and remembering how we loved this particular day-especially since the night now seems reserved for older kids and their shenanigans. These years our porch light is off because we are downtown running the shows. It might be a good thing I'm not answering the door on Halloween night. (I would be asking myself things like: how many kids would come to the door if I put up one of those signs like the kind in front of sex offenders homes? Would the neighbors ever believe it wasn't a joke? Even years later? Best not to find out.) I would give out something more creative. I would hit the dollar store and find packages of a dozen chopsticks. You know you are too old to be trick-or-treating if you cannot be convinced that dollar store chopsticks are Magical Chopsticks. Magical Chopsticks! Twice the power of a single magic wand!
 
l. The day after Halloween was a workday. When I arrived at the theater the car window rolled up flawlessly. When I stepped out and locked the car there was a swirl of neon pink feathers moving about the parking lot. They reminded me of a Halloween spent in San Francisco. The accidentally induced "Tylenol" hangover making me cranky that afternoon was a wimpy shadow compared to the hangover after my Castro Street Halloween. I walked past the feathers, trying not to disturb them.
 
These were the moments that made up my day. It was only remarkable for the fact that these moments were stolen from the sprints and stops. For many, Halloween has become nothing more than the Jack-O-Lantern Google start page. But subconsciously, we hack out pieces of our day-sometimes just seconds of it-to have a little moment.

Summer is retreating, one leaf at a time

The Wired magazines are piling up around the house. They are protected from the recycle heap by the illusion that great articles (like the one on why Craigslist shouldn't change) will never be found online. There is actually a 12-Step program for compulsive collectors. "Hi. I'm Paul and this year's Christmas tree will be a pyramid of colourful technology magazines that will never be coming down."
 
Meanwhile, the multihued leaves covering what was once a lawn seem too vibrant to be gathered into colourful pyramids in the middle of the cul-de-sac and inhaled by a giant truck. A few leaves might get pressed between the pages of a book or tacked to a bulletin board but the only real evidence that they were there will be in millions of pixels that make up the images in my computer. The sun will be missed but little pieces of it will shine from the reds and oranges that become a screen saver or wallpaper for a computer desktop. It is these celebrations of seasons that can make the impending winter a little less menacing. The leaves will turn to warm hues again next year-like a warm goodbye to the summer that promises to visit again.
 
The reality is that each falling leaf is like a Post-It note from the sky. Upon each note is listed a chore that needs to get done before the rains-the real rains that try men's souls. It's time for tires for the car, wiper blades, hauling in the barbecue, and many more chores as numerous as the shades of red we can see from the kitchen window.
 
There also seems to be a shift in the civility of the population. The rain and grey will be cutting off our favorite source of Vitamin D and we are not amused. Driving becomes a little more challenging as people become a little less patient about being in the car. The friendly blips of the horn to draw attention to the green traffic light have become freight train blasts of rage. The weather sucks. We wanna get home. Honk!
 
The weather grates on us like a paper cut and we will be looking for idiots to take it out on. The seasons of enjoying a drive with the sunroof open and the windows down are a distant memory and a distant promise. Perhaps the upside to driving in bad weather is the pane of glass between the car with the obnoxious subwoofers pounding out what can be generously called music, and the car driven by those less acoustically desensitized trying to listen to Fresh Air.
 
Last night a thunderstorm blew through. It rattled the windows and even the cat stirred from its coma. That natural bass note out-pitched the rumble of the most powerful "look-at-me" subwoofer or the most guttural "yes-I-have-a-small-penis" exhaust blast from a motorcycle. It's like Winter is saying, "All your summer activities are belong to us, so you better honor me with skis and movie attendance." And really, who are we to argue with an anthropomorphized season?
 
As much I embrace the coming increase in theater attendance inspired by bad weather, I will miss the summer. During the season changes I feel a tension that translates into antisocial behavior, which means I have to watch for what my shrink friends call "leakage." I am more likely to break a fitting rather than finesse it into cooperation. I assume the worst of people and the gods, and take it out on both. Being in a public job means exercising even more awareness and restraint. Recently a buddy stopped in at the theater and we were in the booth standing next to the clattering projector expressing our rather colourful outrage at the idea of Rush Limbaugh, an ardent unabashed racist, buying a sports team that's 70% black. One of the first casualties of my social graces is my language and I was more than a little vivid. The projection booth has always been like the Get Smart Cone-of-Silence. It is so loud in there that the other projectionist and I have developed a crude sign language to communicate that a movie is out of focus or there is a pile of film on the floor. So, when my buddy and I were speaking loudly, we just assumed the rest of the world was not privy to our comments.
 
Not so.
 
I had left the window to auditorium 4 slightly open. Thus our conversation was being shared with the half-full auditorium of people trying to watch DEPARTURES. One of the patrons had to come out and tell us they could hear us in there. Nothing like a quiet Japanese movie spiced up by the F-word coming through the window. Classy.
 
On the plus side, this is the time of year I get to wear my favorite old coat. It is a tattered affair that I purchased when I was about 35 pounds heavier. It fits poorly and the brown dye has faded in patches. My wife rolls her eyes every time I express my delight at being able to snuggle up with my old friend. She insists it makes me look like I should be sitting on the curb asking people for spare change. I scoff.
 
I was wearing it when I was unloading sheetrock from my truck and carrying it into the Darkside, finishing up some of the repairs before the busy season. When I woke up that day I knew I had on a bit of an edge and should keep an eye on myself. As I was wrestling the last piece of sheetrock from the back of the truck a trio of homeless men started heckling me from the sidewalk across the street. They were drunk and stupid and thought it good sport to point out that I was sure working hard. When I unloaded the last sheet of 'rock I went back out and they were still there being really stupid-hassling just about anyone walking by. I started to cross the street and paused, thinking maybe I could find a less testosterone-driven solution. In this moment of clarity I decided to call the cops and let them deal with this. As soon as I started dialing, they grabbed their stuff and moved on-still emitting obscenities. Well, there went my mood for the rest of the day.
 
I finished up my sheetrocking, and wanted to get out of the building before the shows, so I took off for a walk. As I was getting ready to pass through Central Park, I saw another homeless guy sitting on the bench next to the entrance. I started to change course when I decided that I was not going to change my life to avoid him. As if on cue when I walked by him he growled, "Hey!"
 
I ignored him. He said it again even louder. I stopped and looked back at him. "What?"
 
"Ya hungry?" he asked, lowering his voice conspiratorially.
 
"Why?"
 
"They serve a great meal at the church over there. Hot and everything."
 
This guy thought I was homeless too. I hate to admit it, but it must have been the coat. This is something my wife must never know about. There was humor in that. The other bird he killed with that stone was the anger I was feeling toward his ilk. He wasn't after a hand out. He wanted to help me. Okay, even though he thought I was one of them he was trying to point me to some food. Well, what the hell. Take the positive where you can get it.
 
The trick seems to be to live in the moment. The trees are beautiful and celebrating the season.  The summer cannot be hoarded like stacks of magazines. Though, as the smell of fireplaces graces the nippy air, it is easy to think of the warmth as summer heat being released one log at a time. Years of warm weather are collected into those split pieces of wood to provide coziness when we need it most. The fire sets free the sun and light from the seasoned oak. It explodes into living rooms and pushes back the lurking gray. The crumpled magazine pages make a good accelerant under the kindling-releasing heat one article at a time.

2000 miles. 5 days.

Yosemite was a place that I'd never visited, and it was far enough away to liberate the white noise of the daily grind from my consciousness. I pointed the front wheel of the motorcycle south and rolled out of the Willamette Valley into the mountains--and out of those mountains into another valley in another state, hundreds of miles away.

The miles in California are never dull on a 900-pound motorcycle with 300 pounds of rider and luggage ski-jumping into the air from the depth and rise of one pothole after another. The traffic system--à la Marquis de Sade--blends nicely with the aggressiveness of Californian drivers. My newly acquired GPS unit was a welcome beacon shining up from the dash; the road signage was so poorly placed and obscure, it might as well have been in Braille.

A note about GPS units: They work wonderfully until they do not. Nothing spells "annoying" like being in the middle of the Sacramento highway spaghetti at night. In the midst of this, the GPS reported that the desired exit was .5 miles away, and then, of course, the screen was taken over by an error message. Rebooting something on the dashboard in rush hour traffic while dodging road craters incites immense appreciation of Corvallis traffic and roads. Note to self: when using the GPS unit to plot a course, do not shut it off mid-trip thinking you can take it from there. These units are programmed to plot counter-intuitively. Any user foolish enough to try flying solo may end up flying lost. 

Despite all this, I made my way into Sacramento.

When I travel into Sacramento, I feel like I'm wearing clown shoes while stomping through the minefield of family relations. My sister-in-law Mimi has spent the last few years dispensing with any form of co-dependence, which means I can use her house as a hub without having her tell me who else I should be visiting nearby. This trip was about The Miles, not about visiting. 

From Mimi's place it is 173 miles to Yosemite National Park. There are those who can describe the Yosemite spirit and soul far better than I. All I can do is write about how it made me feel.

I felt El Capitan before I saw it. This monolith of granite juts out of the ground with no clue telling you it should be there. Imagine paddling a raft in the fog and then having the iron hull of a freighter appear just before you hit it. I looked over my shoulder to see a curtain of rock that wasn't there a minute ago, and then damn near ran off the road when I craned my neck to see how high it went. When the bike was parked and I could really look at this thing, I uttered an inarticulate exclamation. The view was so unsettlingly astounding, it was all I had at the moment.

The Tioga Pass runs 60 miles from the center of Yosemite National Park east to Mono Lake, at around 10,000 feet altitude. The entrance to the Tioga Pass opens just before the sign promising no gas for the next 50 miles. Oddly, this was right next to a gas station unabashedly selling gas for $4.00 a gallon. After that taste of capitalism, I launched into the adventure. I began the trip over the Pass late in the afternoon. Soon enough, I discovered that the fires that had raged through Yosemite this year inundated this road in smoke. This road is so twisty it makes a seismograph needle during an 8.2 magnitude quake look like a flat line. When the sun went down, the forest revealed pockets of glowing oranges and reds between the pickets of trees. It looked like the descent into hell. It was tough enough looking for wildlife crossing in the dark without the smoke; navigating my way through this made me repent every sin. 

As twilight faded and the turns got tighter, I realized there are only three things that really frighten me: my wife, payroll taxes, and this damn road at night. But, there was something that made it impossible to go back. It's like a runner wanting to finish a race, or a matador, or a boxer; this thing was not going to be over until I came out the other end--even if I was pushing the bike, with a bear in hot pursuit. It was as if each turn took me closer to my demons. I couldn't see them, but like El Capitan, they lurked. As the tricks that kept panic at bay fell away behind me like the bike's exhaust note, I fought hallucinations of leaping deer and unextinguished flames. The panic couldn't win.

And it did not. Welcome to Mono Lake.

Describing Mono Lake, once again, should be left to those with a better mastery of words than I got. This is the oldest lake in North America, and coming out of it is the youngest mountain in the world. Again, the mountains surrounding all this make our Oregon topography look pretty weak. This was all at an ear-popping 7,000 feet above sea level. (A mother of twins once told me that nursing helps keep the baby's ears from popping at altitude. Since I was on the motorcycle, I stuck with chewing gum.) 

Friends camping out by the lake had invited me to come hang out. With all this topography, it was little wonder my cell phone didn't work too well. I clung to this belief until I realized my room was literally 50 feet from the cell tower. (T-Mobile strikes again!) Between text messages and smoke signals I figured out where their campsite was.

Then the altitude sickness set in. Now, I'm pretty lucky that I get it only about one out of ten times that I'm up over 7,000 feet. I know what it is, and the worst part usually lasts only an hour. I spent the rest of the day hydrating and keeping it low key, and then I was done with it. After the festivities were over, I loaded the bike and wrote the directions to my friends' campsite on my hand. Listen, those who do not do motorcycle touring may not understand how terrifying it is taking a heavy road bike down a gravel/sand road. Now add to that a touch of nausea accented by a questionable sense of balance. Boy howdy. After a couple miles of prayer, I found their spot. And yes, it was as advertised; those Cheltons know how to camp. They have done their time sleeping under tarps in the snow and have earned the right to use a camper. Thus they had the facilities to feed me well, give me coffee as good as any at sea level, and offer me a place to sleep for a couple of days. I explained that this trip was about The Miles and the road was calling. A different trip would be about camping. And so I took off.

It was time to go back over the road that had tried to drag me down the night before.

This time the Tioga Pass reached out and grabbed me by the chest. Every turnout and vista point was another peek into the soul of beauty. Being delighted by day by that which had terrified me at night made it all the more precious. 

At one particularly well-populated vista point, I mingled with others to gaze at the back of Half Dome. As I was returning to my laden bike, I heard someone call out my name. Incredible. When can I ever get away? A couple of Darkside regulars were touring the park as well. I was a little embarrassed about getting right up next to them; I hadn't been standing too close to my razor and was still sweating out some of the altitude sickness. After the pictures were taken and goodbyes were bid, I realized how really appropriate this meeting was. One of my favorite Avalon artifacts is a photo that a group of cinema fans took after climbing to the top of Half Dome. The word "Avalon" is spelled out in rocks, at the feet of the sprawled and grinning group. One of these days, I'll have to hang that photo at the Darkside.

I made my way down into the park. As the day wore on, I started looking for the road to Glacier Point, perhaps a little more frantically than I should have been. It struck me that this was not the spirit with which I'd started this trip, so I pulled the bike over in the first parking area. This was not altogether unpleasant. I walked into a meadow, balled up my jacket behind my head, and stretched out. And there I spent the next two hours, watching the sun set across the craggy contour of Half Dome. The shadows did an eerie slow-motion shimmer across the rock face, changing shapes and textures by the minute. There was nothing else or any place else I wanted to be at that moment. This is what I had come for.

When I embraced photography as a kid, I fell in love with the work of Ansel Adams--who didn't? I had a view camera and studied the Zone System. I moaned when Tri-x was replaced with T-Max, and knew anything less than medium format was an insult to the art. So when I took a picture of Half Dome with my digital Flip Camera, I felt like I was spray painting across the Mona Lisa. Sorry, Ansel: I too have replaced quality with convenience. 

As I was heading for the road back to Mimi's house, it struck me that I would be heading west into the glaring sunset. Self-preservation was the excuse I needed to not rush back into Sacramento. As I puttered along, I noticed people along the side of the road looking up. I parked and joined the fray. On the side of El Capitan hung two mountain climbers. They were so far up there it took a minute to see them. The scale of such small humans against such a big piece of rock was uncomfortable and sent me down the road of clichés: are we really that insignificant? I waited until the last shaft of sunlight skittered away from the mountain climbers, leaving these brave souls of questionable sanity in the dark to hang for the night, sleeping in the wind. It was a good note upon which to leave the park.

The next morning, leaving Sacramento, the forecast for I-5 was hot. Damned hot. Figuring the coast would be cooler, I headed west. That didn't go quite the way I'd hoped. Off highway 16 toward 101 the temp hit about 105 degrees. I went through two liters of water in an hour; 105-degree heat moving over you at 70 mph is desiccating. At these times I think of the mantra, "Be in the moment." But, what about when the moment sucks? My mind fled to the surf, about 100 miles away. 

When I finally dropped over the ocean side of the mountains, the temp dropped like a stone to forty-five degrees with fog. Any touring biker worth the salt of his/her sweat will tell you that no matter how hot it is where you are, bring all the cold weather gear you can pack. In the fog my GPS unit was my best friend, since my sense of direction is so bad, even in broad daylight I can't find my ass with both hands. In the fog my sense of direction was dangerous, but the GPS got me to my room in Eureka, where I peeled off soaked layers of cold weather clothing. 

I have a strange and unnatural pull toward The Trees of Mystery where Paul Bunyan stands about 50 feet tall, next to his blue ox, Babe. I felt an obligatory visit was due to that shrine of Americana before I took the Redwood Highway 199 north out of California. 

In the redwoods, the ancientness of the trees put life's little worries in perspective. If you have never traveled The Avenue of the Giants, put it on your list of Things to Do Before You Die.

After the ride the day before, the 100 degree weather on I-5 out of Medford was downright chilly. I lumbered on. Fifty miles before the Corvallis exit I stopped at a rest stop to get rid of all that water that wasn't being turned into sweat. When I came out, someone was praying over my bike. Literally, with his hand touching the handlebar. Not something you see every day. Not only do most people know to never touch someone's motorcycle, it would seem that unsanctioned praying over someone's bike must violate some rule of biker etiquette. When I approached he looked up and said it seemed to him like I had a bike that was well traveled. (The bug guts gave it away.) He then asked if it was okay if he blessed my bike. I told him I'd take all the positive energy I can get--however, I could have used it about 1,950 miles ago. He smiled and said it works retroactively, a concept that kept my mind busy for the last fifty miles before rumbling into my neighborhood.

In "Travels with Charley," John Steinbeck had this to say about the truck in which he and his dog Charley toured the United States: "I believe that American-made automobiles are made to wear out so that they must be replaced. This is not so with the trucks. A trucker requires many more thousands of miles of good service than a passenger-car owner. He is not dazzled with trimming or fins or doodads and he is not required by his status to buy a new model every year or so to maintain social face. Everything about my truck was made to last. Its frame was heavy, the metal rigid, the engine big and sturdy. Of course I treated it well in matters of oil changes and greasing and did not drive it to its limit or force it to do acrobatics required of sports cars."

I think of myself as riding a motorcycle with the same parameters. It is the most standard of models, built strong and bulky with aesthetics born of function, not décor. It has run dependably, long after most people would have traded her in on a newer model. I have not always treated her well. On this trip alone, I almost burned up all the brake pads on the hills, and in an effort to save what was left of them, stretched the primary chain using the engine compression when the brakes started grinding. Still, she has never let me down.

Lainie expects me to take these journeys without her. She prefers shorter rides. I go with her blessing and return to her relief and affection. My usual riding partner, Monty, couldn't come with me this year; our schedules didn't mesh. With a silent nod, he and I would have agreed how special it is to tour Yosemite on a motorcycle. If my cell had worked there (again, a special shout out to T-Mobile), I would have called him from the meadow to brag about where I was--the same way he called me from the top of the Continental Divide on his ride this summer, when I was stuck at the theater.

With the season changing and bringing with it slick roads and seam-seeping rain, it is the summer miles that comfort my winter-bound traveling heart. In these looming dark months, stories of the road shared take my mind into the kinder weather. Alone or otherwise, people who ride know it is about The Miles, since every single one is like a warm ember in the night of winter.

Two minute video of the trip. Click here.