beautiful, funny, sad & true

I’m in Yakima, walking on Browne Avenue, about a block away my old apartment. Two guys, approximately ten years older than I, are standing next to the wall of an industrial-looking building that does not really exist in that location. One guy is high. He’s got his ten-speed bicycle leaning against his hip. The other guy is waiting for someone to walk by, and this time that someone is me.

“Hey, man,” he says, walking toward me. “I want to give you something.”

“Thanks, but you don’t have to do that,” I reply.

“No, man, yeah I do.” He puts his entire wallet in my hand. It looks like the black leather one I have in real life, except his is much more beat up, and is even more stuffed full of receipts, bills, and cash. Even though the wallet is in my hand, I leave my hand flat, to show that I have no intention of taking it.

“Really, that’s okay. You need your wallet.”

“Look at this,” he says, a bit incredulously. He shows me a wad of fake-looking cash that he pulls from behind his real wad of cash. “You’re crazy.”

“You need your money, I’m doing okay.” I turn to walk away.

He pulls out a six-hundred-dollar bill, and holds it in front of my face. “Then just take this.” He puts it in my hand, but again I leave my palm open. Our hands are pressed together with the bill between them.

“Really, I don’t need it. You keep it.”

Now he thinks he’s being clever. As if to entice me to stop him from doing something bad with it, he says, “I’m just gonna go buy a piece with it.” I know he’s lying.

“Keep your money. See you around.” I walk away quickly. He becomes angry, but drops his wallet at taht moment, so he can’t do anything to chase me. High Guy tries to get onto his bike to come after me, but he isn’t capable of walking, so the bike tips over, and the guy falls on his face. When he looks up after me and tries to yell something, his face is bloody on one side.

There is a woman walking past all of us, giving us wide berth as she walks quickly to her black four-door Audi and gets in. I walk down to my apartment, but I go in the side entrance, just in case the guys are still watching me, which I don’t think they are. When I get inside, I see a large group of children filing past my window, screaming loudly. My blond wife (not someone I know in real life, and I’m not married) enters the room and starts to loudly sing a nonsensical song. She looks very strange, and her face actually changes shape and become slightly disfigured as I stand there looking at her. I try to get her to stop singing by kissing her, which works somewhat, but she still continues humming while we’re kissing.

That’s when my alarm went off and I woke up.

I never felt threatened, or out of control of the situation. I was very calm, and somehow knew just the right way to interact with this guy.

Very strange morning for dreams. I was only asleep for 45 minutes, but during that time I had an uncountable number of short dreams of all types. Some were ads, for a refrigerator, and for some sort of new Google service (?), and for a couple of other things that are eluding me at the moment. Two were extremely fast-paced cartoons, one of which was about a little Peruvian donkey named Mayaya. (It makes me laugh just to write that sentence, because I know how weird it must sound.) I don’t remember the other cartoon. Out of all those dreams, the only one that had any kind of narrative that I could write out was the one about the two guys and the humming wife.

OneYearAgo

Be advised; this will be a very long entry.

Here’s my weekend, in chronological order, with quite a few ‘visual aids’ to help out. As usual, you can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

I left Portland and turned off at the Historic Columbia River Highway. It’s in the process of being restored and gradually reopened bit by bit, so I always like to see what’s been done since the last time I’ve been through.

This cleared-out tunnel made me very happy.

I’m a big fan of abandoned places, and this road has been a fascination of mine ever since I was a little kid. I’m also fascinated by Sam Hill, who is a very influential and interesting person in his own right, and who is tangentially related to the construction of this road. More on him later.

So I continued along the old road, to the eastern section that I rarely get to, and I was rewarded with a clear day and a stunning view.

Then, on the other side of the summit, a view of the road looping back onto itself, in a similar way to that of Crown Point.

From there, I crossed over to the Washington side of the river, and stopped in for a rest on the lawn at the Maryhill Museum. Remember Sam Hill, who I mentioned earlier? He’s the turn-of-the-century multi-millionaire who built this huge ‘castle’ for his wife Mary, along with the recreation of Stonehenge, and the entire little town of Maryhill.

This place is remote now, but a hundred years ago, it was almost unthinkably remote. Sam’s wife Mary was a Seattle socialite, and she was less than thrilled with the idea of living out in this desert wasteland, so she hardly spent any time there before saying, “Thanks, hon, but let’s go back to Seattle now.” Construction of the mansion was completed after Sam’s death, and it was turned into an art museum soon after. Today it boasts one of the largest collections of Rodin sculptures in the world.

And while we’re on the subject of Maryhill Museum, I should mention the peacocks, because there are tons of them living all around the grounds, and they’re an integral part of any visit, as far as I’m concerned.

I’d never seen an albino peacock before. Its tail was particularly amazing; I couldn’t get enough of it. I was hoping it would display for me, but none of them did. They’re all completely unfazed by people walking, picnicking and driving amongst them, and the alpha male went so far as to challenge my car. He walked straight over to it while I was photographing the albino one, and made it clear who was boss, in no uncertain terms. He strutted clear around the back of it, along the passenger side, and then stopped at the front to stare down my unsuspecting Honda.

It was at this point that I started to wonder just what was going to happen next. This little tough guy could quite easily have climbed or jumped onto the hood, and I wasn’t too excited about that prospect. I also knew better than to physically mess with him (there are signs everywhere warning against doing that), but luckily he just circled around until he found what he determined to be its weak spot; just behind the door on the driver’s side quarter panel. He stalked over and started doing this display with his neck, trying to pick a fight, and then began to peck the side of the car repeatedly. He didn’t seem to be doing any damage, so I knelt down and took a bunch of pictures, trying to capture one of those moments. I was able to get close, but capturing a split-second peck is nearly impossible to do, so here’s the best one.

This picture wasn’t touched up with Photoshop or anything. His coloring is really that vivid and beautiful. I decided that I’d had enough of his pecking, so I walked around behind him and opened the door. He was so intent on winning the battle that he didn’t even notice me walking or opening the door (I even leaned out and took a few more pictures of him through the open window), and he watched in triumph as I drove away.

Next picture stop was just outside of Goldendale, Washington, at this abandoned house, with Mount Adams in the background. This view is different every day, and is also especially beautiful when the fog has rolled in. I was glad to have the view of the mountain, though.

Finally rolled in to Yakima in the mid-afternoon, to go to the rehearsal for Chris and Nicole’s wedding. I was the best man, and I also brought my accordion, in order to provide music for the ceremony, which was simple, but very touching and nice. One of my music teachers from high school was there – an amazing surprise – and it was great to see him. Here are some of the pics from the rehearsal night and from the actual wedding the next day.

You can take the girl out of the 80’s, but apparently you can’t take the 80’s out of the girl.

The reception finished about 7:30 or 8:00, and then I drove home for a bit, before DrummerAdam (who lives in Yakima) called to invite me to the SportsCenter to watch my drummer friend Ty play in a cover band. I hadn’t seen Ty since I moved to Portland, so he was completely blown away to see me there on his turf. Very nice. Got home around one in the morning.

Next morning, my mom’s friend came by to join us for lunch, and during that conversation I was reminded of lots of the things that have always driven me crazy about Yakima, and how empty life can be there. I also kept thinking how much more I enjoy life now, in a way I never did back then. Friends are much better, music is much better, dating is much better, natural surroundings are much better. . .in fact, the only thing I can think of that’s better in Yakima is the Mexican food. There’s some good stuff to be had here in Portland, but you can get the real thing in Yakima.

After lunch, I headed out to meet my college friend GuitaristAl at one of said excellent Mexican restaurants. Since I had eaten at my mom’s house, I stuck to chips and salsa (which were fan-friggin’-tastic, by the way) and talked while Al ate his taco salad. So much fun to see him again. He’s really a great guy.

I drove home to Portland via another scenic route, this time over the switchbacks and hills of Highway 142 – it narrows to one lane for a few miles, with a sheer drop of hundreds of feet on one side – and down along the Klickitat River, to the point where it meets up with the Columbia and I turned back downriver toward home. I stopped to take a picture of one of my favorite spots along the way, which is Cape Horn, Washington, where the road clings precariously to the edge of the high cliff wall. Here’s the view.

This view never gets boring. Not even a little bit.

Finally arrived in Portland at 8:30 p.m., unpacked my clothes and climbed right into bed, where I slept for the next ten hours.

Great weekend. Great times. Great friends. Great memories. I can’t believe it was all compressed into three days.

Trip = awesome

Wedding = awesome

PIctures = awesome

Friends I haven’t seen in at least twelve years = awesome

Way too much to write about in one entry, but the trip was. . .uh. . .awesome.

There will be more to come on this subject.

OneYearAgo

I’m in a town that is not named or known to me, but it looks like the north end of 55th Avenue in Yakima, the street and the town in which I grew up, so we’ll just say it’s that.

I’m walking with two friends around my own age. One is a guy with whom I work in real life, the other is a woman who I don’t know in real life. The two know each other in the dream, though. We’re walking up at the end of the street, where Cascade Avenue meets 55th, and there are two young hoodlum kids walking around near us, trying to associate themselves with us. We try our best to ignore them, and we turn and walk away, down the hill toward the Chestnut end of 55th.

The two kids stay up at the end of the street, which leaves the three of us. I’m a few steps ahead of them, so I stop to let them pass, and the woman asks, “What did you do that for?”

I replied, “Oh, it’s just that I hate to have people walking around behind me, so I usually just let them go around.” [This is true in real life too, actually.]

“Oh, okay.”

We’re keeping an eye on the two kids up the street, and then my companions decide it’s time for them to go home, and they turn and walk in a different direction, away from both me and the kids. I’m now walking alone down the street, and I hear the kids start to yell something to me. They’re trying to get each other fired up and talk themselves into whatever it is they’re intending to do to me. I walk deliberately slowly, to show them that I’m not afraid. I turn and walk into my house.

Inside, the house is nothing like our house on 55th was. It has windows that stretch clear to the floor, with large vertical blinds covering them. The walls are painted black, except where they are white above the windows. It’s very stark and interesting, and also decorated in a very Modern Art style, in a way that our house definitely was not.

From inside, I can hear the two kids yelling things to each other like, “Hey, I think he went into THIS house.” They run from window to window, trying to see in, and I’m quickly trying to turn off lights and close the blinds to make it appear that no one’s home. Too many blinds are open, and that worries me, but the kids don’t seem to notice me, so I go around to the back of the house, where there is a bay window that is rounded instead of angled, with a cobblestone floor. It’s sort of a room that overlooks the gardens in the back yard. I lie down on my right side against the cement wall, and one of the kids comes to the window and puts his face against it. I’m directly beneath him, so he can’t see me. I panic and my panic awakens me.

I’m lying in the same position I was in in the dream, except that I’m on my left side, so it takes me a minute to orient myself and figure out what just happened.

Been way too busy this week to write much. It’s not for lack of subject matter, simply for lack of time being free to compose. But here’s the latest.

Out of town last weekend, three gigs this week (tonight is the third), found a perfect suit, going to Yakima for a wedding this weekend.

Last night’s show was SO much fun, and my favorite group of the night was one that was absolutely jaw-dropping, and that requires me to share them with you, and to write about them at more length. But that won’t be today, unfortunately.

I’ll write more and fill you in when I get back.

OneYearAgo