Seasonal

In the Land of the Blind, a one-eyed artist is King. But who wants to work in the Land of the Blind?

Eclipse/Ray Charles

Not this girl. The protesters would gather outside the gates, chanting their poems into a bullhorn. They loved the rhyming couplets, those Union poets:

“Monuments to corporate greed! That’s not the kind of art Seattle needs!”

But no “Guest” ever failed to spend their 25 dollars, nor did any iffy labor practices ever change. All it did was irritate the Gardener, and there were many other irritants there.

So, in May I quit the corporate sideshow of the One-Eyed-One and His Incompetent Do-Nothing Clown Hyenas (*new band name!*) and got myself a nice “Seasonal” job with the Seattle Parks Department, one of the nicest things I’ve done for myself in a while. It seems that I am not cut out for the corporate environment. Which is a problem, because Seattle itself has become corporate, but we’ll get back to that.

I set my work pants on fire for Marcy Merrill’s photo series, “Formal Wear Worn Inappropriately.”

When I was scheduling my interview with the Senior Gardener, we arranged to meet in the park. “I’ve got white hair and a big white truck,” she told me, and my heart began to sing. Because some things, like a lifetime’s work, cannot be faked.

Allow me to express the sheer delight of working with knowledgeable, capable, talented, experienced landscape professionals, who had things to teach me, who were respectful, helpful, and who always had my back. For all the bullshit “Team” talk over the past few years, it finally came true.  It has been a very long time since I’ve had such a privilege.

So I set about to having the best summer ever, in what would turn out to be my last summer in Seattle. My commute from my house to the lake took nine minutes. There, I worked on restoring a weedy, overgrown wetland salmon habitat.

Of course, there were still bullies and crowds.

Every day I would find clothing, especially socks. I decided the park was like the Ganges River in India, the holiest place for socks to die. I took it seriously, a steward of sacred ground. Yet I wondered how so many people made it home without pants. One time I found a lone go-go boot in the lake.

One morning someone dumped five bunnies and a chicken in the park, and Animal Control came to help rescue them. “I’ve herded cats. It’s harder,” the guy said. Catching a bunny bare-handed was one of my proudest accomplishments this summer, a true resume builder.

Be vewy quiet! I’m hunting wabbits!

On the fourth anniversary of my Mom’s death, I saw a turtle laying eggs, so Moms were present. A coworker told me that they are a sacred animal to the Sioux because the turtle is always home. Later that morning, I jump-started the vehicle of a nice young man who had moved to Seattle from Texas and was living in his car. He wanted to buy me coffee, give me money. I declined and told him, “She would want this.”

I liked the Parks Department very much, and they liked me, and tried to keep me! But the decree came down from on high: Seasonals Are Seasonal.

Eclipse moonshadows

But that turned out to be OK, because meanwhile, I was delivered a sign.

“To construct a four-story, 50-unit apartment building in an environmentally critical area. Parking for 18 vehicles to be provided in below grade garage.”

It was not a complete surprise, as I’d gotten a letter from the City addressed to “Resident” that I thought was some malfeasance with the electric bill, and was in fact about the “Urban Village” coming to my back yard, with its “high liquefaction soils” notwithstanding. The blackberry brambles had always made it very private. But the ‘liquefaction” is no joke. I made a dock out of rugs and doormats from Ross Dress For Less for the months of standing water in the rainy season. With all that concrete, how would my place not flood? Never mind the um, lack of privacy of the cranes and the Urban Village?

Sanctuary

Against all common sense, I posted in the Columbia City Facebook page, a notorious pit of vipers and trolls. “Does anyone know anything about wetland preservation?”

“That’s the perfect place for some urban infill development!”

“Yay Urban Density!”

“Oh, the poor endangered blackberries!”

“Yes in my back yard!” Which is easy to say when it is NOT ACTUALLY YOUR BACK YARD.

So Seattle is Washaway now. Seasonal. I don’t want things to change, but nothing will ever be the same. I have been here for 25 years, half my life. (You do the math!)

When I moved here from Virginia in October 1992, it was raining, and the neon, ‘”fire-red, gas-blue, ghost-green, shone smokily through the tranquil rain,” as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about the “blue hour” in Paris. Everything seemed so clean and fresh, so full of hope and promise, Mount Rainier rising over it all like a mirage. My friend Ed told me, “Move here, just move here. You can make a mark on the world because the lines are shorter.” And, for a glorious time, it was true.

As you have surely heard, Seattle has since been bought by a rich and powerful man who promised Fulfillment delivered by flying monkeys. But it turned out to be the Devil’s bargain,  The Monkey’s Paw:

” ‘Bring him back,’ cried the old woman… ‘Do you think I fear the child I nursed?’ ”

Rents skyrocketed, homelessness exploded, every piece of property became a gold mine.

The very businesses that made it quirky or funky or unique or fun in the first place got  developed into big box luxury apartments. Yay Urban Density! We have sold the soul of the city I loved, its beating heart. I am not the only one looking at all these cities humping the corporate Leg, courting to be the “HQ2” and thinking they are total dumbasses.

The only viable option is to get out now. But how, and to where? So my love sold his condo and we got a beautiful, tiny place together on the Kitsap Peninsula. Once again I moved in October, except this time it was dry, which was handy for moving velvet furniture and countless plants. It was the most beautiful Fall in recent memory.

Here, there is a view of sparkling, shimmering Puget Sound, which I’ve always thought is much cooler than the lake. There are soaring mountains and a peekaboo view of Mount Rainier. We are on Nipsic. I like to think that’s an acronym for Nothing In Puget Sound Is Cooler. It’s very quiet. My neighbors are older, which is glorious. You can hear the seals barking, which is my kind of barking.

So there has not been much time to go to the beach. It is with great sadness that I report the loss of one of my favorite former beach neighbors, Ray Miller, whose cancer returned.

He called me Kiddo and was always helping me out. “Anything you need, Kiddo, just holler.” He had drills and ladders and could fix a cheap chain saw. He taught me about Bar Oil for the chain saw and gave me some. He got me out of plenty of messes, roaring his raucous laugh all the time. He would honk at me as he drove by, openly laughing at whatever project I was attempting. He always had a spotless car and wore a gold watch. He was utterly devoted to all the beings in his care: two good wives and several good dogs.

Ray and Chuy

So I hollered and arranged to have Ray cut my grass on his riding mower for $10 and a six-pack of Bud Lite per service. What a rewarding investment that turned out to be! One time my car broke down and I was surviving off the dubious provisions of the walkable convenience store, the Minit Mart. Ray brought me, in installments, a piece of Chinook salmon, two Yukon Gold potatoes, and two beautiful ears of Yakima corn.

“Where’s my dessert?” I asked.

Ray Miller, 2007

Ray had three properties at Washaway over the years and they all fell into the ocean. He had a sign on his last place that read, “We Hope Our Ship Comes In Before The Dock Rots.”

Next month, December, will be three years ago that Ray, all my neighbors and I lost our properties when they fell into the ocean. I still miss my sanctuary terribly. Why did Ray have to be Seasonal too? Why does everything, and everyone? I think it sucks that “nothing gold can stay.” I find it very upsetting to let the good eggs go. As always, now is the time for savoring, if you can still breathe. As my friend Regnor pointed out to me while he was going through chemo, laughing is the best oxygen.

I remember asking my beach neighbor Stanley, “Don’t you want this to last forever?”

Stanley and Ray

“It already has. Today,” he told me.

But change does bring some of the old pioneer hopefulness, and hope is currency right now. There’s an excitement to new frontiers, the unknown. Things will be different, the only certainty.

As soon as I get these boxes handled, I’m going to the beach to unpack my head.

 

Springheart

“But even inside his hermetically sealed office, he could feel the wild call of the spring night. He could hear the scratching at his heart’s door of a dog that needed to be walked.”    -Jay McInerney, Brightness Falls

You would think that, by now, I would’ve figured out that worrying does not change the outcome.

I can’t stop the carnival ride gone mad, so what I’ve been doing is limiting my exposure. I am on a strict diet with the screens. Bill Moyers tells me the eight to ten things I need to worry about every morning. That’s enough to last all day.

My new job is to be the drug dealer of my own joy, and it’s no slacker gig, believe me.

At night, instead of falling into the abyss with my phone, I read fiction and pet my cat. Exciting stuff, I know. I feel like I have all kinds of time now.

I listen to music that lifts me up: jazz, soul, funk. True American greatness. Hymns of genius, composed during times of ignorance and its resistance. Patti La Belle’s cover of Cat Stevens’ “Moonshadow”, with its five-part gospel harmonies, tore through my heart like a hurricane. “If I ever lose my eyes, I won’t have to cry no more.”

Coastal flooding

It’s 7 p.m. and I throw open the door of the Airstream after monsoon rains all day to listen. For once I am paying attention. How do I keep forgetting this? The songs of countless frogs in the swamps reveal, in their chorus, the hopefulness of Spring.

I go to the beach so I can be the Supervisor of my own joy. Unfortunately, as we’ve discovered, Supervisors can be kind of lame. And the drive back home through nasty Tacoma traffic has its own power…what is that drug that makes you forget everything you just experienced?

It is so very boring to dumb oneself down all the time. Like women, like weeds, like wildness itself, you stomp the spirit down here and it blossoms over there.

I take an illicit joy in our corporate Garden being pillaged by rats, squirrels and bunnies, while overpaid, underworked middle managers ask, “How much money does it take to smack down the natural world?”

Weed it, or let Nature do it?

“LOLOLOL,” says Nature, and Her amused Team snickers along silently, yet with a funky groove.

But you, meanwhile, are here because you are interested in Doom, and in this regard, though I hate to disappoint you, I am pleased that it has been a Slow News Day kind of year.

The one voted Most Likely To Fall Into The Ocean, my former con-man-neighbor, Tweaker Tom, is still hanging in there, while being neither here nor there.

Les Strange is hanging in there too, due, no doubt, to his elaborate Bering Sea tie-downs.

My joy broke into an unscheduled percussion solo when I saw that Les Strange had built a gangplank featuring my old wicker couch from my beloved, departed Vagabond trailer.

Yet sometimes it is worth telling the artist their work is great, and sometimes you just have to hope they know it for themselves, true as a heartbeat.

Bear hugging tiny animals

Textiles

Rumor has no place in news.

Return of Razor Clams

For Rent

Long ago, a friend told me that when he was a kid, growing up in Canada, at canoe camp they would pretend to be Indians, the First Nations, paddling silently in the darkness.

Sometimes, when I had my beautiful woodsy path to the beach, near my now-vanished property, we would drunkenly play “Indian Guide”, moving silently through the forest at dusk, striking the ground with our heels in the darkness, so as not to trip over the tree roots, or make a sound.

Now, more than ever, I am convinced that it is this very quietness that will ensure our survival.

---

 

 

Messengers

“Let’s consult the oracle,” my friend Val said, whipping out her phone to look something up. This is not the time to stop seeking. Truth, answers, kindness, love, hope. I am looking for messages, and their messengers.

So I decided to “Reach Out”, as the corporate phonies like to say, and ask the tribe: What are you doing to calm your mind?

“I need a reset.” -Samantha

“Headspace: Meditation Made Simple. ” -Brecca

“Yeah, I don’t know, man.” -Miles

Flooding by Ocean Spray, 2/9

“Sudoku distracts my brain for at least a bit. Walking, and verbally naming everything you see in detail. You may look like a crazy person, but it helped me when I was at my worst. It helps separate mind from thought.” -Harmony

Sleeping Lady mountain, Leavenworth

Icicles, Leavenworth

Leaves and ice, Washaway

“Take walks. The O2 helps reduce anxiety. Xanax works for me too.” -Heidi

“Brain science says we literally can’t process it all. Pick one thing that both feeds you and feeds a part of the movement you are about.” -Rebecca

“Today it’s comfort food: my favorite gf pesto pizza, a glass of wine, and strawberry ice cream for dessert, which I really only crave when stressed out. Other days it is deep breathing, cuddling with my cats, listening to energizing or more positive music, going to bed earlier, reading more, and talking to friends about it.” -Suzanne

Lifelines.

“Hot tub and swimming. And sitting in my car listening to the music helps me. I love the cat. I’m sure he is helpful. And a good friend always helps.” -Connie

Helpful.

“Smoke some good marijuana. Maybe some Quaaludes!” -El Topo

Cosmopolis

“Bath bombs are the bomb!” -Janet

“Don’t let the Mangled Apricot Hellbeast get to you. His spectacular implosion is inevitable and imminent.” -Sean

And from Resha, my former Washaway neighbor, until we fell into the ocean: “Don’t neglect the basics you already know. They never change in their ability to calm and center even though the pressure mounts. Increase your trust in them to to do the job. Breathe, walk, music, holding and being held.”

So, it snowed in Seattle last week. This is a rare enough event to bring an otherwise resilient city to its knees. I thought I’d take the bus, to keep my car unwrecked for beach purposes. A nine mile trip took two hours.

At work it was scenic, if messy.

I waited for a bus home for 25 minutes past its scheduled time. An older man in a brown puffy ski jacket said, “I’ve been waiting at least 40 minutes.” When he spoke, I could see that what few teeth he had appeared to be filed into points. “I’m walking,” I said.

I set off at a brisk clip. A half hour or so later, at the precise moment I arrived, on foot, at 3rd and Pine, the #3 bus pulled up and the brown-jacketed man got off. We exchanged a vampire nod in passing.

The next day, there was an old woman wandering around the Space Needle grounds. In her impeccable flowered wool coat and style-not-warmth ribboned hat, she could slay at any Queen Mum lookalike contest.

Raymond

She was pained that all of Seattle’s attractions open at eleven, having only half a day to do them all, before catching a flight back to Glasgow. “I have no problem approaching strange men,” she told me. “When you have grey hair you can do whatever you want.”

Declining fortunes of snowmen.

Dream: I’m on the light rail, and I have lost my shoes somewhere, but I am wearing, as always, a most excellent pair of Smartwool socks. A man hands me a tiny, naked baby girl and walks off into another car.

The girl is missing an eye, and one of her cute as hell, miniature tiny feet has six toes. She starts to pee on me. Naturally, my foremost concern is my beautiful socks. I hold her at arm’s length. Eventually her Dad returns and I hand her off.

“My girl has one eye,” her Dad says.

“She is going to be sassy,” I say. “Always winking.”

I have a friend who has been both a lover and enemy, and, while forgiveness is not always my jam, humor helps.

He messaged me that “Space” Ace Frehley was coming to town to perform. (I was fully smitten with KISS by the age of ten. This suggests to me that if I was not born bad, I would at the very least “like to see it taken further”, as we used to say at art school.)

I said that I thought makeup was probably a friend to Ace, that it was probably better to keep the mystery, after all these years, what with Time marching on.

“Mystery is a true cuddle-commodity against the internet’s static-cling blanket,” he replied.

Cherries

Life is just a bowl of cherries

Don’t take it serious

Life’s too mysteriousYou work

You save

You worry so

But you can’t take your dough when you go, go, go

Keep repeating, “It’s the berries.”The strongest stoke must fallThe best things in lifeTo you were just loanedSo how can you loseWhat you never owned?“Hard times call for furious dancing,” Alice Walker tells us. And, in my case, also Judy Garland. A revisit to the “Wizard of Oz” was in order. (And “A Star Is Born.” And “Cabaret.” It’s been a bit of a bender).Two years ago December I lost my friend Regnor and my beach property at the same time. Every ceramic plate I eat off, every salad bowl I use, every mug I bring to my lips, Regnor made, so he is present. But although I can vividly recall my property, the magnificence of my Alder trees, the smell of moss, the songs of frogs, the feeling of both frontier wide open-ness and privacy, the immense quiet, I cannot conjure it up.

RIP

When I first got my property, my first pictures looked like this,  Celtic knots of sea kelp. Now my place is gone and the kelp endures.Would it not seem that everywhere is Washaway now? The bank on which our comfort sits, undercut. The concrete foundation is broken and jaggedly hanging over the bank, waiting to drop into the ocean. Of course, we’re veterans, old pros to Doom and Impermanence. When does this cease to be scary?

Do You Hear What I Hear:

Wind. Rain spattering on the tarp, on my trailer that I still get to stay in. Consistent, repetitive outbursts from the rooster several blocks away. Dawn was several hours ago, but he’s at it all night long anyway. He may be blind.Crows.  My humming of my little fridge from Home Depot. The two dogs that live on the neighbor’s deck (aka The Deck Dogs) who bark furiously anytime someone walks down the street to the beach, which is all day long. Hugo, my cat, snoring.A song, a song, high above the trees, with a voice as big as the sea.Oh, Christmas, stop, just stop it! My Mom loved Christmas, and I miss Mom, so every song is a dagger. Until now. As I sit here writing this, an all-tuba ensemble is performing in the Armory. The low vibrations, felt as much as heard, are helping.A frog has shown up to redirect my negative thinking. The call and response between frog and crows is percussive and charming. And the rooster, what time signature is he following? I’ve been in a corporate environment too long. I want that rooster to Do Less. He is working way too hard, making everyone else look bad.I want you to know how grateful I am for your wise counsel, readers. I lean on you to make sense of the senseless. At least we have each other. Season’s greetings in uncertain times. “Courage in the dark days ahead,” as my Dad used to say.Someday, I’ll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me.

My Heart Belongs To

October 3, 2016   Dear Erika,

At the close of our telephone conversation I wondered how much you were aware of the impact of some of your earlier activities and decisions on your relations with your family.

Southeast Alaska, August 2016

If you feel alienated and sidelined it might be helpful for you to review and reconsider some of your past history and its relationship to family values and your parents and your apparent disregard for both.

Iceberg

Let us start with your high school years. Your mother and I both thought that you would receive a better education at O’Connell than at the public high school. You were apparently not happy about it but agreed to try O’Connell for a year. While you were there you became a cheerleader and evidently enjoyed some of the environment.

But you also associated with students who used drugs and and subsequently were expelled for using them. (Editor’s note: Marijuana.)

So from your parents’ viewpoint you did not give Catholic school a fair try as you promised.

You then attended the public high school and did not like your classmates or the teachers.

But instead of focusing on learning as much as you could in that environment you got involved again with students who took drugs.

Alaska State Ferry

This time such activity led to an investigation by local police and and you narrowly missed getting a jail sentence.

Anan Bear Observatory

I talked to the judge involved and convinced him to give you another chance.

If you had received a jail sentence it would have seriously affected your employment opportunities for the rest of your life.

I think that this near miss convinced you to renounce your involvement with drugs.

If I recall correctly, you then had a teacher friend who got you interested in photography. After you graduated you wanted to study photography in college. So with that in mind you went off to college.

This was a great eye-opening experience and you apparently enjoyed your time there as well as the courses you took at Brown.

In retrospect, i wonder what your life would have been like if you took English as your major and photography a minor but important subject. I think your job opportunities would have been much better. You might have ended up as an editor for some publishing house.

One sad outcome of your college years was that you gave up your Catholic religion. This is not an uncommon thing for people of all religious persuasions.

Glacier

But after they graduate and are working, the more thoughtful people explore other religions and some pursue advanced scholarship in order to better understand Christianity and its teachings.

As a result some  Catholics emerge with a better appreciation of their religion, and some Protestants become Catholics. We used to see a lot of that at St. Stephen’s and its association with students from George Washington University. Apparently you never had any desire to do any research on Catholicism.

I believe that it was during a summer vacation from college that you talked to some of the people in the photography division of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and were surprised that none or few of them did anything with photography outside of their employment.

It would have been interesting to see how widespread this attitude was among other trained photographers. It might have made you think about a fall back vocation.

Well after working for an Army newspaper and one of the suburban papers you decided to take a job with a newspaper in Seattle. But as things turned out the job was filled when you got there.

There were friends from college on the local scene and you decided to try to make your career in Seattle.

Later, apparently out of desperation, you got involved in an establishment that catered to males that wanted to view naked females behind glass.

As I recall you were also involved in some exotic paintings that were on display in a local museum. One of your mother’s friends saw this exhibit when she was in Seattle and told her about it. (Editor’s note: my Lusty Lady photographs were exhibited at Seattle Art Museum).

It was all very embarrassing for both of us. Where were the family values in such involvements?

How did we go so wrong that you did not know such activities were morally wrong?

Morally Wrong.

Of course for us the longest and most painful interlude in your life was your living with a man who was not your husband. All this came to an end because HE had a change of heart and eventually rejected you.

Meanwhile you had lost opportunities to meet and marry someone more suited to you and to lead a normal life.

Alaska State Ferry

So it has seemed to me that in rejecting family values you also devalued the things that were important to us and governed our life styles.

Seal skull, Washaway

Naturally this weakened family ties.

Your long involvement with Seattle made it difficult to visit us or to play an active role in our life. But you did respond heroically and with great dedication when your Mother needed you during her treatment at Johns Hopkins.

So there are still some family values in place, but we don’t see them reflected very much in your later life.

I hope that the above reminiscences help you to better appreciate the factors that eroded your ties with the rest of the family.

Erosion.

It is now time to try to restore them. I hope that you agree.

Love,….

Inventory

I’ve had landscaping jobs where we kept track of the stuff we used, to bill the client later. Soil, fertilizers, plants. Now I work in the same place every day and there is no one to bill, so I keep track of what’s still there, while noting what’s gone.

Lately, in my life, I’ve been doing a little of both.

You can probably guess where I went for my birthday. It’s been the same story for the last 22 years. And birthdays are a time for inventory. What’s been lost, and what remains?

Wealth.

In the past six years, there have been major losses. My Mom. My Grammy. A relationship that lasted ten years and a house full of stuff, gone. A beach property I cherished for twelve years, trailers, trees, and more stuff, gone. The best job I ever had, that raised me and taught me invaluable life lessons, closed down, gone. My friend Regnor, the most playfully disciplined artist I’ve ever met, gone. Holes blown in the world. Now all that’s left are memories and pictures. I can conjure these apparitions up until they haunt me, but they are not available for comment. Which is too bad, as I have some questions for everyone.

What terrible, hateful, stressful times, right now. The old problem of being an artist and feeling things. The horror of that nightclub, young and out dancing on a hot summer night. I try various breathing techniques. Smell the flowers, blow out the candles. I try not to click on stories about majestic gorillas and jaguars getting senselessly shot, never mind the unending stream of people. I break out in tiny, painless maroon constellations of bruises, my spots, sympathy for the big cats. I hold a smaller one close and try to breathe.

But the beach rewards, surely as it robs. I was able to spend my birthday at Washaway in the beautiful cabin of some friends.

There, I did everything I wanted. I went for walks in the enchanted forest, recharging the Wood Nymph batteries, or, if you will, “Forest Bathing” or Shinrin-Yoku. This is a Japanese movement from the ’80s that is said to “engage the senses, maximizing health benefits and being present. Mindfulness is open to all.”

‘I walked on the beach  in beautiful sunshine and enjoyed the territorial views of the Fort.

Is it wrong to rejoice? Inventory-wise, this is the best of times. I still have my magnificent Hugo, my love Todd, my sweet Dad. The dead would want us to savor things, right? To be Washaway about things? That’s what I think when I drink green tea from the rim of a perfect ceramic mug Regnor made for me on a beautiful morning. Or maybe they don’t want anything, but I like to think they’re kicking around, wishing I wouldn’t preoccupy myself with things I can’t change.

Erosion control techniques (Les)

Spruce and Whipple streets

Tamerack Tweaker House

So there I was, taking inventory on a birthday stroll, and I came upon what appeared to be some massive buzzards, which didn’t seem like a good omen, but then upon closer inspection, they looked like first-year eagles, which is lucky. Birds of prey, like art, are so subjective.The only certain thing is uncertainty. What will happen to my Seattle? As my friend Evan put it, “we lost the war.” Like Washaway, it is not if, but when. And the only thing to do is to try to create beauty in uncertain times.

 http://www.youtube.com

Like an old car, there is maintenance that must be done. So it came to pass that I found myself at the dentist getting my first crown, that I might rule as your Queen. I switched to a fabulous new woman dentist in Burien who has TVs on the ceiling. Here are the things I learned while on nitrous at the dentist, watching Cartoon Network:

“Just because you’re scared doesn’t mean you’re not brave.”

“All new Ninjas, including the feared Gardener Pirate Ninja!” (with watering can)

“It’s magical destiny practice.”

“You don’t need any special powers to be my friend.”

“No time to play with dolphins, I’ve got a race to win!”

“That’s not corn, Chicken! That’s gold.”

Frog Songs

Where do the old trailers go to die? Not the ocean, not this time. A miracle has happened.

I got to have one more nice last visit with the Vagabond. It was somewhat trashed, of course, but still retained the character of its old self. And, like the Giving Tree, some more of my stuff had miraculously returned to it.

One year, my friend Will went to the Army surplus in Fort Lewis and bought brown, scratchy but truly warm expedition weight polypropylene long underwear for me and all   our female friends who were working outside or in cold warehouses that winter. Reunited with the old Poly Pro!

There was also an orange floor mat depicting a cowboy on a bucking bronco that my friend Sue got me years ago.

And, most amazing was the return of the fabled Chicago Sweater. Many years ago, before I was born, probably, my Dad went to Chicago on a business trip. It was cold. So he bought this blue wool turtleneck sweater. Somehow, the Chicago Sweater became mine, then got relegated as beachwear. It is riddled with moth holes the size of quarters. Hugo thinks it is the cat’s pajamas.

I could not believe my good fortune in being able to retrieve such priceless artifacts! After everything is gone, all relics have sentimental value.

Next visit I was not so lucky. My old friend was getting completely destroyed. Lights smashed, siding peeled off.

They even took the Vagabond signage. I should have snagged it myself. What was I thinking? I guess I never wanted to destroy it.

So that was all rather disheartening, the inevitable, pointless destructiveness of people.

I was ready for it to go in the ocean.

Also, it must be noted that I am pretty sick of the drive here by now, after fourteen years. The night driving. The “smart” phone’s Weather setting that does not differentiate between “Rain” and “Coastal Flooding.” The demure signage of  Grayland: “Water Over Roadway”, which should read “Prepare To Hydroplane.” The inevitable Tacoma traffic.

Why do I keep coming here? I stayed away for a long while, only focusing on the drive, the arduous means, not the end. But one night I drove down, and after the record-breaking rainfall, all the drainage ditches were full of high, brown water.

From these swamps, in the darkness, rose the reverb and grooves of some truly magnificent music: the songs of frogs in Spring. That is the sound of hopefulness, of  promise. I had forgotten something critical.

Currently I’m trying to practice what I call Zen Tai Chi. Embracing my powerlessness. I can’t control what happens, only my reactions. This is the supreme lesson of Washaway!

Spring also marks the third sad anniversary of donating my bone marrow to my Mom. I know, the point is that I tried. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” as she would say.

And all that Serenity business of accepting the things you cannot change. Isn’t that an Irish proverb? I should have paid better attention. It actually means “Lower your expectations.”

I have recently been told, by separate people, that I have “bad energy”, and that I’m a self-absorbed ass. Oh, yes, you’re right, I’m sorry!  Talk is cheap. Zen Tai Chi!

The only way to counteract such foolishness is to practice extreme gratitude. There is no better location than Washaway for this practice, in my view.

I have excellent pals, a wonderful man and kitty, beautiful gardens at home and at work. My health. I still have my Dad. I still get to come to Washaway!

And so, it came to pass that while out on a stroll with Marcy I noticed that the Vagabond had disappeared. An Easter miracle! Neighbors, I learned, asked Pacific County that the whole assortment of derelict trailers go away. Infinite blessings.

In the course of a few hours, I sped through all the phases of grief. Denial, sorrow, mourning, acceptance, relief, joy. It was a mini Jazz funeral, all in my head.

The old ocean keeps eating this place, but slowly, at the moment. It would sure be nice if my friend Kenny got another year.There is a nice fort on the beach right now, which contains a plastic Fisher-Price house from the ’70s. I had one just like this!

It seemed all very Washaway, its rooms filling with sand.

You know what else I’m thankful for, dear readers? You, who have let me bend your ear, all these years. You have offered me sage advice in my times of need that has really, truly helped me. The perspective of strangers has felt like family, when family has felt like strangers. You comforted me when I lost my place, and you comfort me still.

Someone recently asked me if blogging pays. Well, no, not money, but yes, it absolutely does. Your feedback is currency. It’s worth keeping this thing going, just to spend time with you. I’m a selfish ass, after all.

P.S. I’ve updated my Washaway website to reflect my own story of doom. Check it out! http://www.washawaybeach.com

The Bad Seed

“Good morning, Princess,” the Storm Trooper says. He calls all women Princess, yet it never gets old. His sidekick, Darth Vader, is a glorified hand truck.

“Morning, Stormy,” I say, and fist-bump his glove.

It’s unfortunate that one of my arts is dread. I am a master of a useless craft. As a well-intentioned but truly crazy lady I once worked for used to say, “Ooooh, that’s up in my Wheelhouse!” Dread is up in my Wheelhouse.

 

“Family is the most awesome thing ever!” Facebook is always telling me. “Share if you agree!” But the truth is closer to what my coworker Man once told me on a bad day.

“Be courageous, Erika. Only God knows.”

Indeed, I find current circumstances so bewildering that I’ve been asking myself, “What Would Grimm’s Fairy Tales Do?”

I like to imagine I’m at a banquet where karma is about to be served.

There once lived (LIVES!) a King who was both handsome and very wise. His passion was writing books about history, so the people of the future could know what transpired before them. The King was beloved by all, for he had a gentle, gracious manner, and was that rare combination of great talent and no pretense. If he had any weakness, it was that he was sensitive and felt things, and thus was dismayed by the shortcomings of the world.

The Queen took excellent care of the King. So that he might enjoy a life of the mind, she tackled more practical pursuits like running the household, while also working as a lobbyist to help families in need. But the Queen fell ill and died. She was thirteen years younger than he, and this was not what he thought would happen. In fact, he is still pretty pissed about it.

Though the King’s joy was diminished by her passing, he made every effort to adjust to the new reality, cooking for himself and all the rest. But the King is getting up in years, or “long in the tooth,” as he likes to say.

The King and Queen had two children. The eldest, a daughter, grew up near a beautiful forest and was always reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales, each experience fostering an appreciation of the other.

When she grew up, she moved to where some of the most enchanted and ancient trees can be found. Unfortunately, it is on the opposite side of the country from the King.

The youngest, a son, was an obstinate type. He had an arrogant and selfish manner, imagining that the world owed him something, while never creating anything more substantial than an excuse. He had trouble holding jobs and was always broke.

The daughter had an idea! What if the son moved into the family’s nearby 3-bedroom rental house, where he could get on his feet while being close at hand to keep an eye on the well-being of the aging King!

And it came to pass. But within a few months, it became evident that there was a Broken Agreement. The son’s one assignment was to check on the King daily, to provide aid and conversation and help in case of emergency. You know, drive 10 minutes to check on the nice guy paying all your bills. But the son could not be bothered, as he had no conscience.

Then, quite by accident, one day, the King went to the bank which contains the money of the dead Queen. To the King’s great surprise, he learned that the son had made up an ATM card in the King’s name, so that he might conveniently steal her money through the Machine.

The King, ever genteel, wrote his son a letter, criticizing this turn of events. But since the son  will not abide any criticism, now or ever, he simply stopped taking the King’s calls.

In Grimm’s Fairy Tales, loyalty and integrity are a big deal. Actions have direct consequences. Those ducks you won’t let a hunter shoot? They’ll show up to retrieve the ring of the Princess when she  tosses it in the lake for you to find.

That ant colony you won’t let the horses stomp? They’ll gather every last pearl of the necklace the Princess scattered throughout the forest for you, arranging them into a tidy pile while you sleep.

And the hive of honeybees, for whom you chased off a bear because you “will not suffer them to be harmed?”

When you have to determine which of the three identical Princesses has had honey for dessert, the Queen will come and land on her sleeping mouth. (“The Queen Bee”).

All those years I fed the crows at the beach. Saving Baggies of all my crappy uneaten Seattle Center French fries for them, plus the occasional chicken neck. It is about time they threw down a cloak of invisibility for me, the quintessential spying tool.

 Or what about the always-beautifully dressed older woman who sits on the ground in Seattle Center, constantly rocking back and forth?

“Help me out,” she says. I give her my last three dollars, hoping to change my luck. She carefully tucks it into an elegant pocketbook.

“Go to the Machine,” she says. “It’s my birthday. I want a hot chocolate.”

The Machine is a nearby ATM which dispenses twenties. I wasn’t having it. It’s been her “birthday” since before Christmas.

But now I see my short-sightedness. If I had only followed instructions, she might’ve given me more instructions.

“Hark ye. I will make you a present because of your good heart. Go on your way and you will come to a tree on which nine birds are sitting. They will have a cloak in their claws, over which they are fighting. Take aim with your gun and shoot into the middle of them. They will drop the cloak and one of the birds will fall down dead. Take the cloak with you. It is a wishing cloak. When you throw it round your shoulders, you only have to wish yourself at a place to be there at once. Take the heart out of the dead bird and swallow it whole. Then you will find a gold coin under your pillow every single morning when you wake.” (“The Salad”).

As the real artists will tell you, sometimes you have to go through some nasty process to get to a lasting reward.

But what is the fate of those without a good heart, who would neglect AND take advantage of the old King, who provides everything? Steal money from the dead Queen? Hmm, let’s see here.

In all likelihood, you’ll have to “forfeit your life.” That’s pretty standard operating procedure. But there are worse outcomes.

“Now hear your sentence. You shall be turned into a black poodle with a gold chain round your neck, and you shall be made to eat live coals, so that flames of fire will come out of your mouth.” (“The Pink”).

“The old King put a riddle to the waiting-woman. ‘What does a person deserve who deceives his master?’

“The false bride answered, ‘No better than this: he must be put stark naked in a barrel stuck with nails, and dragged along by two white horses from street to street till he is dead.’

“‘That is your own doom!’ said the King. ‘And the judgment shall be carried out.'” (“The Goose Girl”).

I go to the beach, yet I cannot escape my mind. I am exhausted by the dread of worrying. What, and when, will something happen? I cannot bear the thought of anything happening to the King, or the sheer jackassery of neglecting him.

Yet here at Washaway, there is an unrelenting message of impermanence. Probably I should be taking trips to L.A., instead.

Alas, dear Rock Hound, there thou hangest!

“Alas, Queen’s daughter, there thou gangest. If thy mother knew thy fate, her heart would break with grief so great.” (“The Goose Girl”).

Rock Hound, you wrote me some years back. You said you’d never return to Washaway, and so I should find and avail myself of your pile of special rocks. But I went to the wrong trailer.

Last summer, local legend Les Strange tripped and fell onto the overgrown, tarped pile of geodes. He gave me two 5-gallon buckets’ worth. Some are in my garden, but my favorites are in my kitchen.  No houseplant can live in my cave, so I heaped the best rocks on the scorched earth of a dead plant.

The very best rock is on top of the pile. While it it is not colorful, it is bejeweled with tiny fossils, the exoskeletons of ancient sea creatures.

No one can tell me there is no magic.

Milestones

I’ve spent the last few weeks in a state of heart-pounding retroactive dread. It’s not especially practical, as there’s nothing left to lose. This is supposed to be freedom, right?

It was this time last year that my place washed away. Now the erosion does not impact me. But the wind howls, and the rain flies sideways, and it all still seems fresh. I remember being at work last year, spending the day pruning some  shrubs I hate, Pittosporums, while the wind roared and I knew for certain that my next-door neighbor Craig’s house was falling into the ocean. I still hate the Pittosporums for that day.

The dread, the waiting for the shoe to drop, knowing but not knowing when, was paralyzing. So I was worried about my friend Ken. He was recently on the news for their traditional “Storms Equal Doom at Washaway Beach!” story.

“Just riding out the storm, waiting for the erosion to take the house,” Ken told the reporter. “Mother Nature’s gonna take it. Just have to live with it. Hey, but look at the view!”

So I went to see Ken and I was pleased to see that he was actually Next To Next, with the abandoned trailer of the rock hound, who left a pile of geodes behind, still ahead of him, doom-wise.

Ken’s immediate problems were coming from wind damage: roof leaks and such. We went for a photo safari walk in the enchanted forest, and he spoke of hoping to go to the southwest somewhere, Arizona or Utah maybe, where it would be not raining and great for pictures.

Ken Watanabe

Strange as it sounds, going to Washaway helped soothe my dread. For one thing, things were about the same. Bruno’s place was still waterfront. Belly-Acres By The Sea was still its same sad crumble of elaborate masonry.

Bruno’s, November 2015

Belly-Acres

My poor Vagabond, I suspect, must be taking a turn for the worse, with the tarp blown sideways, and the hole in the roof where the stovepipe was open to the elements. I will not let myself look closely.

I walked on my old street, Blue Pacific Drive, at dusk with Marcy and Bob and two big dogs. The old neighborhood I find quite creepy, what with all the tweakers and ghosts, the zombie apocalypse. So I was glad to have a posse, though we didn’t see anyone.

I am determined to still find comfort here at Washaway, even though I should know better now.

P.S. to local types, check out my story and photographs about my adventures falling into the ocean last year in the winter issue of Washington Coast magazine.

 

Dreamtime

The tweakers have been fighting over my sneakers.

As well they might. They are a sweet old pair of vintage Adidas that I used to wear to cut the grass. When my property fell into the ocean, there was no more lawn to mow, hence I would no longer need my mowing shoes, was my thinking. See what the mind does in a time of grief?

You will recall my solemn oath never to return to the Vagabond, but I’ve been twice since. On this particular day, the rusted-shut door was pried wide open, so I decided to pop in.

I had barely begun to trespass when a young woman named Shawna totally busted me, asking what I was doing.

She is staying in the trailer next to the Vagabond, formerly owned by Stanley and Resha and then occupied by Tweaker Leah. Now that Shawna’s here, neighborhood watch is back. “This is mine, or used to be, until I fell into the ocean,” I explained.

Shawna said that the Vagabond’s broken window had incited a lot of curiosity. She broke out the broken glass and cleaned it all up, because she didn’t want any passing-by dogs cutting up their feet. The window’s absence left my remaining belongings clearly visible.

“There has been a lot of interest in the shoes,” she told me.

There were several different tweakers who were jockeying for my Adidas.“I feel spirits, though I haven’t felt yours,” Shawna told me. Just the same, she had rounded up my remaining stuff and bagged it. She handed me the bag. There were a couple old bedsheets, my orange project towel, chunky with concrete, my rusty Fred Meyer chaise lounge chair, circa 1997, and, of course, the sneakers. “Blessings upon you!” I shouted and hugged her, shocking myself with this surge of unscheduled woo-woo.

But she had other concerns. Staying in Stanley and Resha’s trailer, she had come across some “Hindu stuff.” (I am guessing more likely Buddhist). She did not know how to dispose of it, not wanting to piss off any Hindu gods. I told her Stanley and Resha were talking about moving to New Mexico, Land of Enchantment, where there would be plenty of spirits already, and using her best judgment would probably be fine.

Shawna said she was hoping to stay for awhile, in that trailer on the edge, despite having no power or water. She is keeping warm with a nice cat named Spooky that likes to walk on the beach and layers of clothing, trying to get by with less in uncertain times.

Things in Seattle are uncertain too. I’ve lived here for 23 years and things have always changed, but this particular change seems to be happening really fast: cranes everywhere building high-rises; horror stories of “skyrocketing” rents, cool old buildings and legendary restaurants and affordable housing disappearing in a pile of rubble.

 I rent a tiny house where I’ve built a big garden. With my beach property gone, this sanctuary is especially dear to me. But my place recently sold, and it is a large property in an urban location. The future is uncertain. All I could do is make the very best garden ever this year. Every day, I nurture it, savor it. I am paying extra attention now.

In a recent Gawker article entitled “How Amazon Swallowed Seattle,” the author blames the incoming legions of “brogrammers” and their lavish incomes on driving out the funky, the artists, the Wild-West character of the city.

“It was too nice here,” he mourns. “It couldn’t last.”

And it is very nice. In the beating heart of Seattle, I am lucky to have a great gardening job at Chihuly Garden and Glass, where magnificent plants and monumental glass sculptures coexist.

We have the best in-ground irrigation systems for the plants, but it has never been this hot and dry for this long here, and it’s been scary to try to keep everything watered. As I imagine they used to say in the Dust Bowl, “Drought Sucks.” The sturdy old war horses of the Northwest landscape, Rhododendrons and Hydrangeas, brown and burn. Elsewhere, the state is on fire. This, and the lack of A/C that was never needed before, has lent this summer a feeling of suffocating ominousness. I’m pretty sick of doom. It seems everywhere is Washaway now.

And then, in the midst of all this, are wonders more fragile than glass. There was a hummingbird nest in a highly exposed location at work. It was such a moving thing to witness at close range: to fear for the vulnerability of them, to feel the urge to protect them and worry about them, to not be able to help them, and see them still make it just fine and fly away.

Seeing that last bird getting ready to leave the nest, stretching and flexing and practice-flapping, is something I hope I never forget. The bravery and hopefulness of it. There is no choice but to jump.

The native people of Australia, the Aborigines, believe in Dreamtime. This is a place where ancestral beings, who resembled animals and plants, created the world, then turned themselves back into rocks and trees to sleep. The natural world has to be respected, for you never know who you might be waking up. This “Time out of time” or “Everywhen” is an active place, where the past and present coexist.

The food in my Dreamtime will be unparallelled, with all the Italian women. My Grammy will be serving chicken and polenta; my great-aunt Alvera will have spent all day making her signature Gnocchi; my Mom will have single-handedly come up with a Thanksgiving  dinner, a pot roast, and a Buche de Noel all at the same time. In case you think I’ll be kicking back, eating and slacking, note that I’ll be grilling salmon in my fire pit, smoked with leaves from my Alder trees, with some sweet white summer corn. For dessert, I’ll grill some peak-season peaches with chocolate, also on my fire, because my fire pit will still be accessible, not in the  Pacific.

You would think some piece of its substantial masonry would still exist on the beach somewhere. But what remains of my legacy are flip-flops. They are definitely mine. They have drill holes in them. Marcy and Bob have been attaching them outside the Airstream.

Much of my Dreamtime will look just like here, now.

When I go about wishing, and I do, pretty often, really, I don’t wish for more or different stuff. I just want things to stay like this. If, as they say, the Dreamtime is what’s real, and the rest is a dream, then this won’t be too good to last. It’ll last.