I dreamed the other night that one of my manuscripts had been turned into a blockbuster movie, and I went to the premiere but was so late I could only get seating in the back row where the big, movable seats were malfunctioning. As soon as the opening title rolled, my chair shifted violently to the side and I couldn’t see the screen. I could only hear the movie and comments and coughs of the audience as I stared at the dark wall and ceiling, shadows from the movie flickering in the periphery.
On the plus side, it seemed to be a success based on dream-comments, and the news that Mattel was putting out dolls based on the characters (probably all versions of me). That last bit was only because Z and I recently saw Barbie, though by now it is surely a truth universally acknowledged that until there are Barbies, Funko Pop figurines, T-shirts, and Happy Meal prizes based on your characters, you haven’t really succeeded.
Z and I went on a short trip to Long Beach, Washington, with Hudge. It’s the first we’ve been to the seaside since the Pandemic. We stayed in a condo right on the beach and spent our non-beach time listening to the waves, watching a family of deer who showed up daily under our balcony looking up expectantly at us like Romeo in the Capulets’ courtyard. Walking the wrack line to the south, we dodged jellyfish and piles of seaweed and some brown foam that made me wonder if mermaids had gastrointestinal disorders. And in the distance, we could see Cape Disappointment—a high cliff with a lighthouse perched atop it to alert boats that this hunk of ocean where the Columbia wends its way into the sea can be hazardous.
Isn’t that name the best? Cape Disappointment. It was given this name in 1788 by British trader and naval commander, John Meares, who was looking for the mouth of the Columbia River based on an earlier description from a Spanish explorer. He thought he’d failed when he landed on the cape and didn’t recognize the estuary. Well, I should rephrase that. He didn’t think he had failed; he assumed that the Spaniard had shared faulty information. Why blame yourself when there’s someone else at whom you can direct your frustration?
You can kind of see from the map below how Meares might not have recognized a river when he saw it. There’s no neon sign with El Columbia está aquí pointing to it.
Usually when I’m at the beach—or on any vacation—I spend a fair amount of time berating myself for not doing it better. For not walking further or reading under an umbrella picturesquely or drawing something in my sketchbook. At whatever place we stay, I imagine missing something in the tiny little downtown and think maybe I should be poking in the shops there or eating local cuisine, but if we do venture out, it seems like a waste. Who wants to shop when you’ve “bought” a view for the weekend?
Like Prince’s mother, on a beach vacation, I’m never satisfied, though instead of blaming a Spaniard or Z, I assume the problem is with myself.
This trip, however, I allowed for no self-flagellating. I read a lot. (Circe by Madeline Miller—so good.) I listened to the waves and I read some more and didn’t apologize or worry that I was missing something on a walk or at the kite competition that was happening up the beach or that I wasn’t sucking the marrow from the condo we rented because I didn’t flip through the notebook of suggested activities or all the slick coffee table books about sea glass and the Washington coast. My laptop remained in its case. I posted no pictures on social media. I worried about nothing, not even when my mother reminded me that all of the poisonous water from the Fukushima reactor had been released into the Pacific. I picked up one stray Croc someone had left behind and got it out of the water’s path so no creature would choke on it, but I otherwise chose not to worry for four days about all the ways I’ve screwed the planet personally (all those bags of minute rice and plastic candy bar wrappers; all that gasoline and sucking up of groundwater). Instead, I enjoyed the food Z and Hudge cooked and didn’t once worry that I’m a failure as a woman—as a human—because I’ve no interest in the kitchen. I just was.
Reader, it was one of the most relaxing vacations I’ve had no matter how short, not because of what I did or didn’t do, but because I just got out of my own head for 86 hours. I’d like to spend the rest of the year trying this experiment in my regular life. Making decisions. Saying what I want. Doing what I want without consulting my to-do list and feeling guilty about the things I’m not doing or did do but shouldn’t have. (Tubs of Ben & Jerry’s non-dairy Phish Food, anyone?)
What brings me here today, however, is that when Hudge mentioned my blog and Z said I hadn’t posted in over a year, I was shocked. I’ve started entries and written even more in my head, and it hasn’t seemed that long to me. So here I am, cap in hand, not out of guilt but because I have. . . missed doing it.
I have been writing regularly, it just hasn’t been a blog and most of it hasn’t yet been polished for human consumption. Still teaching writing, reading other people’s writing, critiquing writing, and, when there is time left over, reading for pleasure. Also, I got a new iPhone that came with few months of Apple+ for free, so there has been some bingeing of shows like Ted Lasso, Silo, Trying, and Encounter. And for mindless viewing, we’ve been watching (re-watching in my case) lots of Grey’s Anatomy so we can see the Seattle Z moved to in 2006 vs. the Seattle that exists now. Very different skyline. Very different vibe. Mostly, we’re pleased with the Seattle shout outs and how they use familiar-looking Native American art in the hospital. The only thing TV and movies never get right is the rain. Always it’s torrential. Always it’s with lightening and thunder. It’s meteorological Shonda Drama.
I have a Post-it on my computer that says “Past disappearing with smoke.” Anybody know what that was for? Pretty sure I had something to say about it, but now, I don’t know what it was. Maybe it had something to do with the Canadian fires this summer, but it might also have had something to do with my failed attempt to use sealing wax on a letter to my college roommate and it ending in a failure of flame and smoke and nearly burned up correspondence..
My two favorite stickers I’ve seen on the light poles and mailboxes of First Hill recently:
Do with those nuggets of wisdom what you will.
Yesterday, Z and I were walking down Madison which has been in a constant state of various degrees of construction for the last four years as they modernize utilities and get ready for the 2024 launch of Rapid Ride bus stops here on First Hill. On any given day, we leave Oh La La and find our road blocked or a snakelike arrangement of barricades on sidewalks we were able to walk down the evening before. On this walk, we looked across the street and saw an elderly woman who’d gotten herself on the wrong side of the barricades and so was headed into the rubble of the ripped up road. Her only option was to go all the way back up the block and get on the right side of the barriers or walk into traffic.
Though I have sold myself to you as a Girl Scout, albeit a reluctant one, what I really am is an observer. I watched this lady creak along towards the rubble with some curiosity. She stopped and looked around, and my reaction was not to offer assistance but instead to stare at her, as if she were a squirrel trying to decide where to bury her nuts. What would she do when she got to the most extreme part of the torn up street? Would she turn around? Would she curse? Would she tip over?
Z, however, IS a Boy Scout. He marched right over to her, moved one of the traffic cones and ushered her from the busy street to the sidewalk and made sure she knew which way to head to get to her destination. Earlier in the summer we’d passed an older (than us) woman who looked weak and was trying to navigate the steps to her condo with a shopping bag. So Z gave her his arm and carried her bag up the steps and asked if she was okay. He’s always doing things like that and has the kind of presence that offers a certain authority: you should do what he is suggesting—take his arm, let him carry your bags, follow his lead.
Meanwhile, I’m standing on the corner with my head cocked as if I’m watching something unfold on TikTok instead of offering a helping hand. I’d berate myself, but it’s against my new policy so I’m putting it in the category of “interesting things I’ve recently discovered about myself.” If you have an accident in front of me, there’s a good chance it will take me minutes before I realize I should offer you a Band-Aid or call 911. (For the record, I am really good at intuiting when someone is lost and needs directions or offering up a Tide Stick if you stain your shirt.) But by golly, I will write about it later.
I’ve always been an observer, but it did get worse when I moved in with Z at our first apartment at The Paul Revere. Another great name, though what Paul Revere has to do with Seattle or one-bedroom rentals that were built in 1923 is anyone’s guess. It felt like it was our duty to be alert to imminent attacks by the British, but in our decade there, I didn’t have to light any lanterns or ride a horse to let neighbors know to grab their muskets.
We had a bank of windows across the front section of the building and often when I was supposed to be writing, I’d be staring down on the activity below on the street. The traffic squabbles and squealing reunions and the confused people tring to understand the complicated parking rules in front of our building, failing, and being towed were daily. It’s much harder to be an on-the-street reporter at Oh La La because we’re eight stories above the goings on.
The Paul Revere was full of quirk. A 1923 building with blooming camellias on either side of the steps that set off the “fresco” of Paul Revere on the brickwork. Inside, we had glass doorknobs and an old etched mirror, and a single teensy closet meant for clothes, linens, shoes, and anything else the modern flapper might need. It forced me to consider how much baggage modern Americans carry with them now. Because of its close proximity to the hospitals here on “Pill Hill,” I always imagined that those earliest residents were probably nurses or interns who wanted to live near work. Some from the country who must have enjoyed the excitement of an up and coming city.
It was hard to picture our lives post Paul Revere because we’d been so happy there, but the glamor Oh La La’s views and amenities made us quickly forget our first home. Or remember unkindly how much we hated doing laundry in the basement, doing dishes by hand in the teensy kitchen, and hauling garbage to a dumpster in the alley that we had to lock up as if we were depositing treasures outside. Also the exhaust from the bus that idled out front. The unhoused guy who slept in our hallway once. The person who sold drugs on the third floor and who kept the intercom right outside our bedroom window buzzing all hours of the night. The handyman who raised mice that escaped and contributed to the building’s rodent problem.
A lot can happen in a decade in a city.
The building has been empty since everyone was paid to hustle out in the middle of the Pandemic because it was structurally unsound and wouldn’t have survived the Big One —no joke. We pass it now with some nostalgia. Initially, there were lights on and it seemed work was being done to repair it. We had hopes they wouldn’t tear it down, but then it got increasingly downtrodden with a broken window here, graffiti there. Eventually the management company took down its sign as if it wanted to dissociate itself with such a squalid looking place. Squatters moved in. Over the summer, there were two fires that started there, whether intentionally or accidentally is unclear. The second fire was large, burned a hole through the roof, and we can now see that not only is the roof gone but also the back wall. There’s a security fence around it and the sidewalk is closed. It’s unlikely we’d have moved back if they’d fixed it up, but still, it’s the end of an era, or, several eras for the building itself.
The big lesson city life seems to want to teach me is that nothing is permanent. There’s no point getting attached to the way a certain building looks or the foliage of a particular tree because next week there might be a removal sign and six months after that a security fence and a bulldozer. Things change quickly. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that there was a pink elephant car wash sign over an actual car wash instead of as an artifact of yesteryear and where Oh La La sits there was a decades-old McDonald’s that might have sold those Happy Meals with my dream movie prizes inside. But they are gone and now there are other things that will seem like quintessential Seattle to whoever arrives today.
All this to say, it’s good that I had that beachside epiphany this month so I can finally make peace with our revolving door city and neighborhood. I’ve decided to make John Mellencamp’s “Your Life is Now” the theme song of the rest of the year. Let’s see where I end up. (And if I ever remember to ask the old ladies if they need help across the street or if I decide definitively that it’s my job just to observe them like a social scientist.) Tune in next time to find out.
The Reluctant Girl Scout 