I went to the library and the bookstore and noticed there was a shortage, a paucity of literature, so I thought I’d write this travel log for you.
Touring is fun
It’s fun to drive long distances, staring at the road, watching things go by. So far, I’ve watched trees go by, cars go by, trucks go by, asphalt, cows, bridges, airplanes, people, gas stations, neighborhoods, communities, post offices, bowling alleys, dogs, deer, birds, a refinery, your life, my life, everybody’s life, flowers, flowering plants, maple trees, ships, trains. And it’s all been so exciting, so different than my life usually is.
Seattle is especially different from Oakland because the people wear jeans and jackets in stead of animal skins. And they don’t have coffee shops up here, they have cafes, so it seems more French, more exotic, specialer, more special.
And instead of having a bear for a school mascot, they have a dog. I love many dogs, so it makes me so happy to see a dog as a school mascot. I mean that says a lot about the school, having a domesticated animal as mascot instead of a wild animal that really doesn’t want to have anything to do with people other than eating their food and possibly their pets. Huskies have a lot of traits that we, as human beings admire. They are strong and like to pull sleds, and I know I like to dream of being strong and some day wearing a harness and pulling a sled.
The wildest animals we’ve encountered so far have been the employees at a music store in Portland where they guy tried to upsell me to 8 picks instead of 7.
“That’s $1.75. You want to make that an even 8 so that it’s $2.00”
“No thanks, I’m on a really tight budget”, I said as a reflex, and then I thought a bit about it for 0.7 seconds, deciding to stay firm on the 7.
“Could I get a receipt”
“I pushed the button so that it wouldn’t create a receipt”
“Oh.”, I responded. His response translated to, “No, I’m not going to give you a receipt”
It’s kind of funny, because I read the google reviews of the store before going in, and there were some pretty heavy criticisms of the store employees’ attitude.
I’d have to say that all in all, this was the most exciting part of the trip. I mean we could’ve been killed if I’d gotten smart with the guy and said, “Do you have to be an asshole to work here?”
And later that day while we were walking back from the light rail stop to our friend’s house, we thought some guy was shadowing us, hiding behind things as we looked at him, so we rushed him, tackling him and tying him to a tree with zip ties and rope. And then he stopped following us.
Shortly after that, I started to pick up messages through my fillings, but I put on a tinfoil hat, and they stopped.
In Portland, we walked to the light rail and could’ve taken it for free into the city center, because that’s what how it’s set up, but we decided to pay money for tickets in order to help support the Portland economy. The light rail went over a bridge and into Chinatown where we ate Chinese food at a Chinese food restaurant. I had tofu with vegetables and john had chicken with vegetables. It was really a fun experience to taste Chinese food for the first time in my whole life. We even saw some Chinese people. The woman who served me was some kind of Asian, so she looked different than me. At first I thought that since she looked different that she might kill me and eat me, but then, I learned to relax and trust her, and by the time we left, I felt that we were both pretty much the same as each other.
They also spoke in a different language from mine. At first, I laughed and thought their speaking sounded funny, so I made fun of it and made derisive songs about them. And when they spoke English, it had a funny accent, so I ridiculed them and told them they were stupid, but again, after I spent some time with them, I realized that they were beautiful people, not some dumb sled dogs.
I didn’t watch them make the food, but I hear they stir-fry it in a big round metal pan called a wok. It really was tasty, and I’d completely recommend my Chinese food experiences to anybody and everybody.
After Portland Tuesday, we played in a café in Seattle on Wednesday to over 10,000 people who wouldn’t stop screaming, “We love you! Take our money! Please!” over and over and over. They just didn’t stop screaming. John sold 10,000 t-shirts at $20.00 a pop, grossing $200,000.00. I had made the wrong sizes, only medium and large, so I didn’t sell any, but I sold over 5000 albums through itunes. With sales like these, it really makes me want to get back on the road soon after we finish this tour up.
Wednesday night, we drove in the dark, north to Anacortes, and we stayed overnight with a motorcycle gang that john friended on facebook. Thursday night we played at a record shop to 3 people, and this was a nice change from the hellish, cramped, crowded, sardine tin we packed so many people into the previous night in Seattle. We spent another night with the motorcycle gang, but when they got really drunk, they kept pointing handguns at us and saying, “Bang, you’re dead,” so we we’re happy to get out of there Friday morning to where we are now, Seattle, the land of the people who wear clothing.
There was an upside to the motorcycle gang because they had beautiful dogs that we played with in a big backyard filled with birds, squirrels, rain, grass, trees, and a empty plastic water jug, the gallon size. One dog was a blue healer named Barack, and the other was a terrier named michelle, and they were the loveliest, friendliest, winningest dogs you’d ever want to meet.
And we got to stay on a block with a level 2 sex offender living on it, something I’m sure I’ve done before without being aware of it, but this time, I was cognizant of it, aware of it, apprised of it, advised. I slept really well that night, and it was pretty much the most relaxing sleep I had during the trip, waking up to the sound of rain in a soft, warm, clean bed with the dogs dancing around on the hardwood floors in the other room.
Even though the motorcycle gang got hairy near the end of our stay with it, we spent some fascinating, wonderful time with one of their PR people who drove us to the thrift store in Oak Harbor so that I could get some used postcards and john could get another blender after he fried the one his mom gave him from her vast store of blenders. While in the store, a woman waylaid me as I passed her, asking me, “what size is this” while she held the handwritten size and price tag up for me to see.
“It’s an extra large”
“and what’s the price?”
“Uh, looks like $3.29”
“Thank you.”
“No problem”
Apparently, there is a large nomadic population in oak harbor because of the naval base nearby, so they get a lot of “good” material possessions flowing in and out of their doors. I had fun looking at the young adult book section for some reason, opening up a copy of Charles dickens’ Great Expectations and reading about how Chuck would read his stories and become each character so fully that he could terrify his listeners. And so I started to read Lawrence Yep’s dragonwings, completely becoming each character for my impromptu audience of thrift store listeners. The employees asked me to leave, but I didn’t listen, and finally, they called law enforcement which arrived right when I was getting to the part where the kid confronts the mean, ignorant, fearful bully, beating the crap out of him for all of his minions, a.k.a. sheep, to see.
I kept saying, screaming, “No, wait, let me finish this part, this is beautiful, don’t you care about him, haven’t you faced a bully, beating the crap out of him or her, fighting for a little respect and peace. Are you all stupid sheep? Don’t you get it?! I hate you! You’re all stupid! I hate you!”
And then, the Oak Harbor police guy put his hand on my head so that I wouldn’t hit it on the door of his squad car as he put me handcuffed in the back seat.
The police guy was nice, and took me in for psychological evaluation, a test much like the one they administer on e-harmony.com, the dating website. The results of the test took a while to process, and the officer said I was mostly sane, but that I’d have to wear a bark collar if I wanted to go back to the thrift store. I agreed to go home and take a long nap. With my consent, he shared the test results with e-harmony dot com and I was paired with keith olbermann, but I can’t see what we’d have in common other than breathing and disdain for grandstanding.
As I said, we drove to Seattle from Anacortes on Friday, ending up near the University of Washington. The drive was a lot of fun as usual, mostly because we drove past cows and an oil refinery, a beautiful island oil refinery where the natives lived and worked and partied and celebrated the majestic sanctity of mother earth’s beauty.
And when we got to Seattle, we were struck by the beauty of the thousands of cars parked around us on Interstate Five, a truly breathtaking sight reminiscent of lemmings running over a cliff to their deaths. John and I were so taken by the natural beauty of the pacific northwest that we started to cry, and we kept on crying for the whole half hour we were stuck in gridlock traffic. It just hit us all of a sudden after it had been building up during our approach to Seattle.
“Was this freeway built by native Americans?” I asked john.
“I think so.”
“Is it true that it’s made completely out of fish paste and plant fiber.
“I think it’s fish paste and deer meal. That’s why the deer population is so depleted up here.”
“I thought it was because so many of them were hit by cars.”
“That’s what they want you to think, but most of them were used to build the freeway.”
We got off on one of the exits and drove to the university district, the one around the university of Washington, the university with the canine mascot I’ve already told you about.
This is what I wrote while I was inside the university bookstore café, a small city within a building on university avenue. I was really stoned and drunk off my ass at the time, so I’m not sure it makes any sense, and I’m really quite embarrassed to admit that I’d been driving drunk the whole day, but the weed took some of the edge off of the alcohol and made it easier to function around new mothers pushing their baby strollers across the streets with family dogs in tow.
“I’m looking at a girl with a rust jacket and jean shorts with tights and chartreuse boots, looking cute in the café, probably thinking about computing or doing some kind of homework. And I’m amazed at her rust colored jacket, how she got it that color, possibly by taking some steel, rusted by seattle rain, and scraping the rust off into a bucket where she somehow extracts the rust color from the rust. She’s leaving abruptly after giving me a dirty look because I’m staring at her. I’m running after her as fast as I can to ask her how on earth she got that color, but she is getting scared and sprinting, and I am running into a pole.”
And so we stayed in the café, me writing fascinatingly while john slept. We got there about 3 p.m. with four hours to relax and sit and listen to a new band called the Beatles play on the café entertainment system. I went up to the girl behind the counter.
“What band is this playing?” I asked, pointing at the speaker where the sound was coming out.
“The Beatles”
“The Beatles?” I asked, with an intense interest, a fascination even.
“Yep”
“Are they a new band?”
“No, they’re from the 60’s”
“The 1960’s?”
“Yep.” She responded, looking at me like I was crazy or kidding her.
“Are they an American band?”
“They’re from Britain”
“hmm” I uttered, pleasantly surprised.
“wow, I really like them. I’m gonna look them up at the record store. Thank you.”
And we sat there at the café table with the hanging lamps and studious people studying around us, filling their heads with extremely important problems and information. It was exciting to be in a university book store filled with t-shirts, mugs, keychains, binders, hoodies, socks, hats, condoms, toilet seat covers, toilet paper, toothbrushes, and rectal thermometers all emblazoned with the husky mascot dog. It was exciting to feel that much husky energy, to see so much love for a dog, so much love for one of Earth’s most beautiful, perfect, graceful creatures.
I felt so at home, so connected to all these other dog lovers. I really felt like I was having the peakest of all peak experiences I’d ever had in my life, that everything after this husky experience would be less than, not as good as, inferior to being in the dog lovers’ mecca.
So, time rolled around like a rolling wheel, and we drove to the venue which housed the “Official Bad Art Museum of Art”, and when we got there, we parked right in front and celebrated our fantastic parking space. I was really happy to be so close to the front door because I was getting tired of loading and unloading all of our equipment, a.k.a. shit, in and out of the car.
I think people were genuinely surprised to hear me sing “Shut the Fuck Up” where I tell people to shut up because I’m singing, but they laughed and got it. There was a table of loud girls who didn’t come to see the show but who were determined to talk loudly, so that was about the second song I played, and they seemed to understand that they weren’t the only people in the room. People responded during the shout chorus of “The Cow”, so that was fun, and it was fun. I ended with the Transgendered song, to kill the air of levity and frivolity, to signify that the fun was over and we’d all have to go back to our grinding lives.
A girl offered us a place to stay after the show but kept inviting people to her house to party, so we drove to a motel near the sea-tac airport and spent the night for $71.00 which included breakfast the next morning. I made the oatmeal with warm water and nothing to really flavor it.
At 1:30 a.m., before we went to the motel, we stopped by the chain that never closes and sat in a booth next to a group of 20 year olds, one of whom was passed out drunk. It was fun to watch him dry out in front of our very eyes.
Which reminds me of Saturday night, after our public access show performance when a group of five of us went to a food-serving bar called “The Asshole”, and I ordered a hamburger and tater tots and finished them and put my head down on the table because I was tired, and John was blathering on and on about his life to our new friends, and the barkeep comes over and says, “I’m sorry, you can’t put your head down on the table because if the alcohol board comes in, it looks like we overserved you.” And I looked at him in disbelief, and he looked at me like I’d better listen to him or else, and I felt like I was in the company of an idiot. So just remember, it’s not how things are, but how they look that matters.
The public access tv performance was fun because two friends called in to the showand told me they loved me on air, in front of the audience, so that’s something that doesn’t happen every day.
After we left “The Asshole” when it was dark and rainy, we stayed at a beautiful princess’ apartment, me on the sofa, John on the floor, and the next morning, we left for the open road after eating breakfast at a breakfast restaurant in Portland, OR on a corner where the traffic goes by.
In a celebration of good service we tipped the waiter 20% and told him we loved him and that he made our meal so happy and warm and loving and that we felt like we were eating at a close friend’s house. He kissed me and John on the cheek and gave us long hugs and told us we were welcome any time and that we’d get free water the next time we visited.
And then we got on interstate 5 and drove from 10 a.m. to about 10 p.m. stopping for gas and food and stretches. In Yreka, we got gas at a shell. I parked the car and walked into the store.
“Hi, How’s it going?” I asked.
The attendant looked at me, saying nothing as I walked to the bathroom.
I finished my important bathroom business and walked to the candy aisle to get some gum with phenylalanine in it, or whatever it is that affects people with phenylketonuria, giving them ketonuria. I chose the watermelon fruity burst flavor and went to the cashier’s counter where I waited for the cashier guy to come in so that I could pay. I stretched my back while holding on to the counter and then rested my head on my arms, stretching my back some more, and he came in saying, “Don’t sleep on my counter,” so I replied, “Yes ma’am, right away ma’am. You sure look pretty. Are you seeing anyone? Would you like to go for a drink after you get off? You have the prettiest eyes. I bet guys tell you that all the time.”
And then I woke up face down in pine needles, bleeding from my nose and mouth with bruises on my ribs and neck. John picked me up and brushed me off, washing my face with dirty, gas-station squeegee water, and I was as good as new. We got back on the road and laughed it all off. Ha ha ha ha.
We had a lot of fun counting the dead deer alongside the road and watching the drunk drivers weaving to and fro on a Sunday night like a weaver weaving with a thing that weavers use, some shuttle kind of thing.
Then we got to Oakland where I dumped John and soon after dumped myself into bed where I fell asleep and slept after watering my near dead coffea Arabica and basil plants which kind of came back life today.
All in all, I learned a lot about driving and people who live in foreign countries like Oregon and Washington. They really are just like you and me, with the same concerns and needs and joys and sorrows and the same everything. They are all clones, exactly like you and me.
Love,
Paulette
