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thehefnerThis was to be my last photo post before I hit the road again, or at least until actually take more (read: any) shots of Seattle. Dunno when that'll be, as we're currently snowed in by a freak blizzard in a town that's lucky to get snow even once a year.
There aren't even any snow plows (!), save for the major interstates for commercial vehicles. Apparently, some government official recently tried to order some (read: any) plows, and was laughed pretty much out of office. Who's laughing now? Probably no one, since everybody is stuck inside, shell-shocked and barely even able to process that such an event is even possible.
Me, I'm just wondering how a month could pass like this. I've been here since... well, not long after Thanksgiving. I'm almost at the other end of the holiday chasm between November and December, and that uncertain feeling of limbo has not faded. The glaringly obvious answer is probably that I just have the Christmas Blues, but... well, I just don't know.
Maybe because I haven't written these last two entries yet, haven't sufficiently reflected on the rest of my journey here. Part of me has justified the delay by thinking that memories, like photographs, need to develop. But the other part of me thinks that's just typical Hefner procrastination. Then the first part suggests I have a cookie and poke at the Harvey Dent novel, which the other part reluctantly accepts.
So this was to be my last photo post, as I'd said. But while I have a few more of my last two days, unfortunately, there are photos of anything from Wednesday, November 26th.
I made a stop over in San Francisco with the hopes of meeting![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kali921, but that never happened, so I'd hoped to at least take in a comic shop and then lunch at the much-beloved Sam's Grill. After an hour of trying to finding street parking, I actually felt nostalgic for Washington DC.
Giving up, I ended up backtracking through early afternoon rush hour traffic to find the Winchester Mystery House, the legendary mansion which the famous gun magnate's widow spent thirty-eight years building constantly, believing that she'd die if construction were ever to cease. But I was in such a foul mood from the drive (and still grumpy over Hearst Castle) that I decided I had no interest in spending $31.50 (!!!) for the tour. Let's face it, I'm just not a house guy. Construction and architecture hold little fascination for me, save for certain glorious exceptions (of which Winchester, I fear, might have been included). I guiltily justified it by telling myself that I had a far more important, far more personal spot to visit.
Or at least, I would have, if Magnolia's "check engine" light hadn't popped on just as I returned to a subsection of San Francisco, don't ask me where. I dropped Magnolia off at a gas station and spent three hours eating pho, loitering at Starbucks, and reading Steinbeck's TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY. This is the third time when I've had the immense fortune to read a certain book at the time in my life when it would have the most personal meaning. The first was reading THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING while in the midst of my first heartbreak. The second was Steve Martin's BORN STANDING UP while in the midst of an existential crisis at the Boulder Fringe Festival.
But this time, I was in the midst of something I didn't even know what to name, short of calling it "an adventure." I don't think I'll know for sure until I return home, and even then, maybe not without a long period of reflection, and even then, maybe not until something else comes along to throw this entire "adventure" in contrast; at which point I'll finally realize what it was, what I'd learned from it, and what idiotic yet endearingly hilarious things I can now tell my friends over beers at... well, not Bennigans, anymore. That's long gone, a part of another life. Really, if anything can be a symbol of my feeling of adriftness, of having lost touch with who I was and being unable to reclaim that even if I wanted to (and more often than I'd like to admit, I do)... it's the loss of Bennigans.
But for now, at least I had Steinbeck. Every chapter, he mentioned something that I would not have noticed, would not have recognized a week, even a day earlier. Little observations about life on the road, about humanity, about America, that never occurred to me yet remain as true today as when he wrote them. It heartened me to know that even Steinbeck himself made some of the same mistakes I did, missed some of the same opportunities, and those that he didn't miss encouraged me to take more myself. Things like this don't or shouldn't ever go as planned. One just hopes that the detours lead to interesting place, and--more importantly--that I'm receptive enough to see them at all.
By the time I returned to the road (short version: I paid a hundred bucks for them to spend three hours to tell me nothing really important was wrong), it was already well into evening. The only sight worth photographing was the Golden Gate Bridge, impossible to do while trying to handle evening rush hour traffic. I ended up on the main highway, surrounded by the glow of malls (mini, strip, and otherwise), motels, and all other other bits of modern Americana that I've been trying to avoid. Well, except In-N-Out Burger, which is the shit.
In a recurring theme of strange self-sabotage, I decided to hook back up with Route 1 by going straight to my goal anyway, even thought it would be too dark to see anything. I told myself that I really wasn't going to Bodega Bay to do or even see anything, but just to be there as testament to Jeannie Wilkins.
Jeannie was my Dad's next door neighbor until she moved to Bodega Bay when I was about five years old. Maybe younger. If she had any reluctance in leaving to DC area, it was because she'd be leaving me behind. Not long after I was a mobile little rugrat, I would walk next door to visit Jeannie, this kindly old woman who was more grandmotherly to me than my own grandmother. I don't know if she ever gave me cookies or anything (that was Mrs. Tingle, Dad's other neighbor, a very nice but somewhat odd woman), but she was always up for whatever Disney VHS tape I'd bring over. Mom tells me that when I was two, I'd go over to Jeannie's and perform the entirety of Disney's ROBIN HOOD from heart, right down to the songs, voices, and thumb-sucking.
Man, I've gotta talk to Mom to get more Jeannie stories. I remember so little about her. I wish I'd known that she purposely had me over to her house as a refuge from my father, to give me just that much free time away from him. Like with my grandfather, she was one of those people I knew even at a young age that I'd never be able to really know and appreciate like I'd want to, like they deserved... not until they were already gone.
I kept in touch with Jeannie once or twice a year since then. Usually on Christmas and birthdays. I even visited her out in Bodega Bay, back when I was about nine. I remember I brought along DC Superheroes Super-Healthy cookbook, and we made a batch of Green Lantern's peanut butter balls (ironically, before I was ever a fan of GL! Or balls! Wait...). She moved there to watch the Humpback Whales, and I remember she used to read me a storybook about a Humpback Whale getting trapped or something in San Francisco Bay. A true story, I think.
When Jeannie passed away in 2003 (2004?), I wasn't surprised. I wasn't even really sad. In some ways, I felt like I'd already said goodbye to her, and was just grateful that I had a good ten more years to connect now and again. If I was sad about anything, it's that I never thanked her for being there, to be one of the few people to really be able to protect me from Dad, to give me that escape before I even realized that I needed to escape from anything. But I know that's just sentimentality. She never needed to hear that. By what few accounts I have, she was really happy spending the rest of her days in Bodega Bay. Damn it, I should have stayed the night there. I should have seen it myself.
Not only that, but then I wouldn't have spent the next dozen or two miles driving along twisting cliffside roads that are supposedly among the most breathtaking views along the entire route. Instead, all I had was twisty pitch black death and nothing else for miles upon miles, trying to find some place to pull over for the night while going fifteen miles per hour, much to the chagrin of occasional drivers behind me. I couldn't see a damn thing, but according to ROAD TRIP USA, said breathtaking vistas were of the Ocean "a hundred feet below." So not only could I not see anything of the awesome gorgeousness, I at least knew there was sharp screaming death far below and not far away. Super!
I finally pulled over at a campground to sleep in the minivan. It wasn't the first time I'd slept in the minivan after self-checking-in to a State Park campground, but for some reason, it just felt iffy. Maybe it was the fact that there was literally nothing for a dozen miles on either end of the twisty road of breathtaking doom. Maybe it was being in the forest alone. Maybe it was my trademark overactive imagination, going into overdrive without a drop of booze in sight to shut it up.
In either case, as I lay huddled under the sheets, I kept ticking off a list: "Okay, so the camp's not called Crystal Lake, check. And I'm not on an Elm Street or in a town called Springwood, check. Ditto Haddonfield, but fuck him anyway. I didn't find a four-leaf clover, so I'm definitely safe from the Leprechaun. Oh fuck, what if a meteor fell to earth nearby and I didn't see it? The Blob could be coming after me any second! FUCK! Where's my iPod, I need to listen to some Garrison Keillor Lake Wobegone podcasts, stat!"
And thus I relaxed after a wasted day on the road, feeling more alone than I had in awhile. Curled under blankets in a dark coastal forest, with the dulcet tones of Garrison Keillor spinning tales of pie contests, Lutheran awkwardness, and long, cold, Minnesota nights.
There aren't even any snow plows (!), save for the major interstates for commercial vehicles. Apparently, some government official recently tried to order some (read: any) plows, and was laughed pretty much out of office. Who's laughing now? Probably no one, since everybody is stuck inside, shell-shocked and barely even able to process that such an event is even possible.
Me, I'm just wondering how a month could pass like this. I've been here since... well, not long after Thanksgiving. I'm almost at the other end of the holiday chasm between November and December, and that uncertain feeling of limbo has not faded. The glaringly obvious answer is probably that I just have the Christmas Blues, but... well, I just don't know.
Maybe because I haven't written these last two entries yet, haven't sufficiently reflected on the rest of my journey here. Part of me has justified the delay by thinking that memories, like photographs, need to develop. But the other part of me thinks that's just typical Hefner procrastination. Then the first part suggests I have a cookie and poke at the Harvey Dent novel, which the other part reluctantly accepts.
So this was to be my last photo post, as I'd said. But while I have a few more of my last two days, unfortunately, there are photos of anything from Wednesday, November 26th.
I made a stop over in San Francisco with the hopes of meeting
kali921, but that never happened, so I'd hoped to at least take in a comic shop and then lunch at the much-beloved Sam's Grill. After an hour of trying to finding street parking, I actually felt nostalgic for Washington DC. Giving up, I ended up backtracking through early afternoon rush hour traffic to find the Winchester Mystery House, the legendary mansion which the famous gun magnate's widow spent thirty-eight years building constantly, believing that she'd die if construction were ever to cease. But I was in such a foul mood from the drive (and still grumpy over Hearst Castle) that I decided I had no interest in spending $31.50 (!!!) for the tour. Let's face it, I'm just not a house guy. Construction and architecture hold little fascination for me, save for certain glorious exceptions (of which Winchester, I fear, might have been included). I guiltily justified it by telling myself that I had a far more important, far more personal spot to visit.
Or at least, I would have, if Magnolia's "check engine" light hadn't popped on just as I returned to a subsection of San Francisco, don't ask me where. I dropped Magnolia off at a gas station and spent three hours eating pho, loitering at Starbucks, and reading Steinbeck's TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY. This is the third time when I've had the immense fortune to read a certain book at the time in my life when it would have the most personal meaning. The first was reading THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING while in the midst of my first heartbreak. The second was Steve Martin's BORN STANDING UP while in the midst of an existential crisis at the Boulder Fringe Festival.
But this time, I was in the midst of something I didn't even know what to name, short of calling it "an adventure." I don't think I'll know for sure until I return home, and even then, maybe not without a long period of reflection, and even then, maybe not until something else comes along to throw this entire "adventure" in contrast; at which point I'll finally realize what it was, what I'd learned from it, and what idiotic yet endearingly hilarious things I can now tell my friends over beers at... well, not Bennigans, anymore. That's long gone, a part of another life. Really, if anything can be a symbol of my feeling of adriftness, of having lost touch with who I was and being unable to reclaim that even if I wanted to (and more often than I'd like to admit, I do)... it's the loss of Bennigans.
But for now, at least I had Steinbeck. Every chapter, he mentioned something that I would not have noticed, would not have recognized a week, even a day earlier. Little observations about life on the road, about humanity, about America, that never occurred to me yet remain as true today as when he wrote them. It heartened me to know that even Steinbeck himself made some of the same mistakes I did, missed some of the same opportunities, and those that he didn't miss encouraged me to take more myself. Things like this don't or shouldn't ever go as planned. One just hopes that the detours lead to interesting place, and--more importantly--that I'm receptive enough to see them at all.
By the time I returned to the road (short version: I paid a hundred bucks for them to spend three hours to tell me nothing really important was wrong), it was already well into evening. The only sight worth photographing was the Golden Gate Bridge, impossible to do while trying to handle evening rush hour traffic. I ended up on the main highway, surrounded by the glow of malls (mini, strip, and otherwise), motels, and all other other bits of modern Americana that I've been trying to avoid. Well, except In-N-Out Burger, which is the shit.
In a recurring theme of strange self-sabotage, I decided to hook back up with Route 1 by going straight to my goal anyway, even thought it would be too dark to see anything. I told myself that I really wasn't going to Bodega Bay to do or even see anything, but just to be there as testament to Jeannie Wilkins.
Jeannie was my Dad's next door neighbor until she moved to Bodega Bay when I was about five years old. Maybe younger. If she had any reluctance in leaving to DC area, it was because she'd be leaving me behind. Not long after I was a mobile little rugrat, I would walk next door to visit Jeannie, this kindly old woman who was more grandmotherly to me than my own grandmother. I don't know if she ever gave me cookies or anything (that was Mrs. Tingle, Dad's other neighbor, a very nice but somewhat odd woman), but she was always up for whatever Disney VHS tape I'd bring over. Mom tells me that when I was two, I'd go over to Jeannie's and perform the entirety of Disney's ROBIN HOOD from heart, right down to the songs, voices, and thumb-sucking.
Man, I've gotta talk to Mom to get more Jeannie stories. I remember so little about her. I wish I'd known that she purposely had me over to her house as a refuge from my father, to give me just that much free time away from him. Like with my grandfather, she was one of those people I knew even at a young age that I'd never be able to really know and appreciate like I'd want to, like they deserved... not until they were already gone.
I kept in touch with Jeannie once or twice a year since then. Usually on Christmas and birthdays. I even visited her out in Bodega Bay, back when I was about nine. I remember I brought along DC Superheroes Super-Healthy cookbook, and we made a batch of Green Lantern's peanut butter balls (ironically, before I was ever a fan of GL! Or balls! Wait...). She moved there to watch the Humpback Whales, and I remember she used to read me a storybook about a Humpback Whale getting trapped or something in San Francisco Bay. A true story, I think.
When Jeannie passed away in 2003 (2004?), I wasn't surprised. I wasn't even really sad. In some ways, I felt like I'd already said goodbye to her, and was just grateful that I had a good ten more years to connect now and again. If I was sad about anything, it's that I never thanked her for being there, to be one of the few people to really be able to protect me from Dad, to give me that escape before I even realized that I needed to escape from anything. But I know that's just sentimentality. She never needed to hear that. By what few accounts I have, she was really happy spending the rest of her days in Bodega Bay. Damn it, I should have stayed the night there. I should have seen it myself.
Not only that, but then I wouldn't have spent the next dozen or two miles driving along twisting cliffside roads that are supposedly among the most breathtaking views along the entire route. Instead, all I had was twisty pitch black death and nothing else for miles upon miles, trying to find some place to pull over for the night while going fifteen miles per hour, much to the chagrin of occasional drivers behind me. I couldn't see a damn thing, but according to ROAD TRIP USA, said breathtaking vistas were of the Ocean "a hundred feet below." So not only could I not see anything of the awesome gorgeousness, I at least knew there was sharp screaming death far below and not far away. Super!
I finally pulled over at a campground to sleep in the minivan. It wasn't the first time I'd slept in the minivan after self-checking-in to a State Park campground, but for some reason, it just felt iffy. Maybe it was the fact that there was literally nothing for a dozen miles on either end of the twisty road of breathtaking doom. Maybe it was being in the forest alone. Maybe it was my trademark overactive imagination, going into overdrive without a drop of booze in sight to shut it up.
In either case, as I lay huddled under the sheets, I kept ticking off a list: "Okay, so the camp's not called Crystal Lake, check. And I'm not on an Elm Street or in a town called Springwood, check. Ditto Haddonfield, but fuck him anyway. I didn't find a four-leaf clover, so I'm definitely safe from the Leprechaun. Oh fuck, what if a meteor fell to earth nearby and I didn't see it? The Blob could be coming after me any second! FUCK! Where's my iPod, I need to listen to some Garrison Keillor Lake Wobegone podcasts, stat!"
And thus I relaxed after a wasted day on the road, feeling more alone than I had in awhile. Curled under blankets in a dark coastal forest, with the dulcet tones of Garrison Keillor spinning tales of pie contests, Lutheran awkwardness, and long, cold, Minnesota nights.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-12-24 08:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-24 03:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-24 02:38 pm (UTC)Nonetheless, I'm sorry for the various...setbacks? I hope you ditch the blues and I'm looking forward to seeing you when you get home.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-24 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-24 03:32 pm (UTC)Good people in the world are wonderful and rare- thanking them is always worthwhile, but being thankful for it is valuable to you, even if she can't hear it.
And that last little litany of slashers makes me happy that I only began to cultivate my taste in horror in college, when I could pretend that I know better than to think they're real
Editing is plugging along..... nothing tonight, but soonish.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-25 08:32 am (UTC)And thank you for that.
Eh, I can't speak for you, but I'm just a wimp with an overactive imagination that runs crazy when alone and in pitch darkness in the middle of nowhere. As long as no one goes "ki ki ki ki, ma ma ma ma," I usually end up all right. :)
No, no, I certainly don't expect anything from you in the next few days, or even the week. Have a Merry Christmas (or a Happy Tuesday), and a grand New Year's Day if I don't hear from you before then!
no subject
Date: 2008-12-24 11:16 pm (UTC)I used to live in Seattle (and Olympia) and have many friends there and in the surrounding areas. We've been facebook-chatting about the crazy amount of snow they've had there. Fiend that I am, I've been razzing them about not having plows or road salt.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-25 08:34 am (UTC)