Tuesday, August 28, 2007

*twitch* more receipts...

I don't think I've ever voiced how much I hate Oak Harbor. Aside from Nibble's Bakery (what a horrible name for a gourmet European sweetshop), the whole town provokes one word: grey. Although the onion-spired mosque in the distance hints of some(dare I say it) exotic element to the town, it is utterly overshadowed by the polluted-looking mud flats and the apartment-complex sailboats, neatly arranged in the harbor as if by a five-year old girl arranging her army of dollies for tea. teens with underdeveloped street speak are yelling at each other about stealing shoes for cris'sake. I'm glad my transfer here only takes an hour. Now, where to find a bathroom?
I'm writing so as not to plan out what to say to Sierra. That way the butterflies in my stomach won't get the better of me. It's like speaking Spanish--I just go as fast as I can with what I know and hope that the rest comes or that whoever I'm speaking to is too inebriated to pay attention.
I found a bathroom. You have to wonder what crackhead or lesbian designed toilet stalls with walls that are nearly one and a half feet off the ground.
I'm on the ferry now. As I lay out my lunch I feel like I'm laying out my insides. The raw, whole tomato turns to human heart; the Balsamic rice and chicken into liver and various other intestinal organs. Mango flavored yogurt sours on my tongue. Here come the butterflies.
So I got into PT at 2:00. Right away, I went to the Co-op where she worked. The woman at the deli told me that she hadn't seen Sierra in weeks. I walked about three miles to her house, all the while wondering if she'd even be there. I found it, anyway.
There was nothing sentimental about our thirty-minute visit, frankly. I gave her flowers and she told me she hadn't packed a thing and was leaving at 2AM the next morning. I told her about my day, hoping for some emotional exchange. She laughed dryly at the part about my spitting friend, thanked me for coming and mentioned something about Arlo. She liked my skirt and I showed her photos of Antigua with a rehearsed enthusiasm. She gave me a ride to the ferry and I told her to have a great life as she buckled her seatbelt and drove away.

My next big task in life is to become an expert vandal. With witty, subtle yet in-your-face pop-art, I will educate the unheeding masses. You just wait.
[A prime example of the endearingly ridiculous scheming that drives everyone I know crazy]

More receipts...

Bus #2 Island Transit.
It's surprisingly reminiscent of the Guatemalan tourist shuttles, aside from the fact that it doesn't have TURISMO stamped across the front--funny, that didn't attract thieves (unless it did and we just didn't know it...)
Now someone is sitting next to me. He's got sunglasses and distastefully ruddy hair. I'm rehearsing excuses in my head. Tight-lipped, with the slight, natural frownlike expression that I stole from my mother, I will say dismissively, painstakingly: "I'm going to help a friend move."
You wonder how many times a person can lie in a day. I'm afraid I've become a bit of an expert over the past few years, evading my inevitable expulsions of sentiment with a simple, wicked lie to a stranger, a parent, a therapist, a friend....How ironic, the bus just passed over Deception Pass State Park. A beautiful place, if you've never visited.
We also passed a mischievous-looking abandoned drive-in movie theater which had a sign that read "Circus Storage" and the near-unattainable look of a mildly classy trailer park. Perhaps it's just this gorgeous weather. In any case, I resisted the ridiculous urge to ring the bus bell and go try to join the circus, probably for the same reason I decided not to move to San Pedro with Cliffy (raging bipolar 2 case who dresses like Hunter S. Thompson).

Receipt Blogging

Today I rode the bus four hours to Port Townsend and four hours back. I forgot my notebook, but I had been quite a good little consumer and fortunately had a collection of receipts in my wallet.

So I'm sitting on a bench at 9:00 in the morning, waiting for a bus to Mt. Vernon. A canche with braces sits on the ground next to me and starts rolling a cigarette.
"You catchin' the 80X?" he drolls lazily.
"Yeah."
He lights up and starts smoking, drooling all over the place.
"Do you want to sit on the bench?" (what can I say, I'm used to dealing with a snobby clientele)
He doesn't want to. Instead, he asks me when the bus leaves and spits on the ground, after making a throaty dying-hog type utterance. Shameless.
He drags his fingernails through a matted mess of dirty blonde hair and spits again. I keep reading my book.
A few minutes later, I notice a drop of something clear on the book and realize that this man is spitting all over the place--spewing, as it were. Things get curioser as I realize that now he is spitting at me. He's standing up, facing me directly, and spitting at me.
Now that I'm covered in droplets, the man stamps out his cigarette and walks away.

Oh, and I forgot to mention why I'm catching a Skagit bus at 9AM in the first place.
Well, it's all about Sierra. She disappeared about two months ago, just about the time I headed off to Guatemala. Now I come back to find that she scrapped her massage school plans and is leaving her childhood home tomorrow to live in Denver, Colorado. Drama. So I'm going on a manic goose chase to find my months-estranged friend in Port Townsend, a four hour trip via bus and ferry. I will probably end up sleeping in a park tonight.
I feel like a suicide bomber.

Okay, I'll finish typing these up when it's not 1:38AM.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Ah, life's rhythm

I just got back from Guatemala. I'm working, dancing, climbing and teaching myself to beatbox. One might say that my life is full, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with my having just closed the records on nearly three years of psychiatric counseling. I am "diagnosed" as bipolar; as is my father and the majority of his nuclear family. We are all brilliant, and all a little on the edge......all the time.

I've a perfect life right now, one of my highest highs yet. If I were as religious as my father, I would feel guilty for "living for myself".

But I'm not.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Tranquilité

I'm sitting on a bus after a fifteen hour day of doing absolutely everything. I feel wonderful. People in their natural habitats are some fascinating creatures--you wonder what they're up to; riding a city bus at nine-thirty in the evening. Maybe that woman with the rolling suitcase is someone's Russian grandmother, coming back from a stressful day of just being in such a strange place as America. Maybe the woman next to you is worrying about her teenage son who didn't come home for dinner for the last two nights. That man is coming home from work; that one is going to a nighttime class at the community college; she's visiting an estranged lover...

So many thoughts are born on nights like these, when my breath fogs up the glass and I can see the hazy reflection of a tired, tired girl.

Bellingham, my love.

Bellingham is one of my better characteristics. Someone once said that in Bellingham things don't happen. Rather, people happen. Maybe that's why they call it the city of subdued excitement. And maybe I am just partial to my town because it's, well, my town. But I think that most of us 'hamsters would agree that there is something amazing going on in this simple little town.