Seattle: Darkness and Light

This is Sunday, I am in a hotel room somewhere in the United States. Where am I? I ask myself, disoriented and uncertain. I've lost my bearings, veered away from something. I've gone elsewhere, beyond the boundary lines, but of what? of Monterey County that I am so used to and know like the back of my hand? I am so familiar with my own routine, it seems, that I don't even remember what I'm about, what's important, where the ground is, so to speak. I am drifting spiritually, unmoored, not too unhappy, but I am vaguely dissatisfied with the unmooring and know I need to do something about it.

After I sit up and take stock of the hotel room, my mind clearly recalls that I am in Seattle. Ah, good. A new city, a fresh start.

There are a few breaths left in the month of October; it's not gone yet. Shivering maples and poplars line the avenue outside our hotel entrance. Leaves spin and dance when gusts of cold air pull them, stem from twig, in urgent rushes. In a ballet of spinning color, the spiraling colors drift quietly to the dark streets.

Uphill from the hotel on First Avenue is Pikes Place Market, one of the most famous of all American marketplaces. Seattle is hilly, not as severely as is San Francisco, but it does pose a few challenges on certain streets. There is a steep downslope from our street to the waterline further west, indicating that this was a bluff or cliff top in the past. Every hill we see near and far is encrusted with houses, businesses and industry. Ferries and cargo ships move silently across the open bay. Humanity is moving busily, and even though there is a roar from the engines, it seems silent and remote somehow. I have not yet found a connection to it other than the simple fact that it is a city.

Creosote, fish and yeasted breads are pungent in the air as we round the corner and find ourselves face to face with the market street. Cobbles and bricks, neon and painted signs point to the interior of the buildings before us. It's The Market, the gathering point of produce, meat, fish, and prepared goods. Come in, sample, try me out, it all says, I am here before you in my weatherbeaten glory, with stories to tell.

Once inside the market, the energy and exuberance of a real place, one that has heart and soul, simmers and moves. It is labyrinthine and carnival in nature, but it is nothing if not alive. So, we begin to explore. Above my head and eyes, arrows outlined in neon point left or right. I am a sucker for color, see each one and turn to look. In this dark autumn morning, the shouting fishmongers, vivid neon and fragrant food booths tackle my senses and lead me astray. I am handed slices of d'anjou pear, dabs of marionberry jelly, drops of blueberry vinegar and a spoonful of cranberry chutney. It's dazzling, a confusion, a riot of distractions. It roots me to the ground and sends my mind in a spiral.  Why cannot all of life be like this festival? Has it always been so and I've missed it? I try to discern the ebb and flow of energy around me and pull out into quiet corners once in a while, watch the movement and listen to the sounds, the pulse at the heart of it all.

The men and women who work here seem carnie-like, remind me of the midway at the county fair. They are jaded by the shuffling mobs of tourists they see every day, need to hustle hard to make a dollar, compete with each other for the attention of the bewildered hordes.

Just when we reach overload and feel our eyes glazing over, we eject ourselves into the bright daylight outside on the cobbled street of Pike Place and stand blinking, inhaling deep breaths of air, gripping our purchases. I feel like I've just left a stream of energy, the flow too much for me to cope with. I've eddied out.

We walk north along the sidewalk and shoulder past the entrances of small artisanal bakeries, a cheese factory, indoor malls containing aromas from India, China, and Thailand. The enticements seem to be unlimited. We're well past our usual breakfast time, so the hunt begins for a suitable place to rest our feet and eat something. We have no idea. One French bistro-like restaurant up an incline from our street is jammed; no room today. We continue north on Pike Place and find Etta's. What great luck.

It is not great luck; it is fantastic luck. The food is unusually wonderful, and the place fills quickly after we arrive until there is no room left at all. I choose a corned beef hash that bears almost no resemblance to the Hormel's product I've chewed on in leaner times. It is savory and hearty, and I believe I have been cured of what ails me. But, then again, maybe I'm just not hungry anymore.

We leave the heaven of Etta's and are drawn back to the market, enter there, turn and bend along the courses of its interior. There are many pathways in the market building, many levels, lots of doorways, alleyways, stairs and doorways. It's a blood stream, a river, a crazy place with twists and turns, dead ends and long straightaways. It pulses and flows with the buying and selling all through its innards. I had no idea. It spits me out again. I take more deep drafts of air and calm down little by little.

Uphill we walk until we reach a plaza where an indoor shopping mall faces us. We dive into it and find a more modern and planned mall environment. It is nothing in comparison to the wail and call of Pike Place Market. We are heading for the monorail ride to the space needle, which was built in 1962. The ride is approximately a mile long and feels like a Disneyland jaunt in Futureland. It costs $4 roundtrip.

Frank Geary designed the building that folds and undulates around the Electronic Music Project (EMP). The monorail's track curves through the middle of two of the sections of the building, stops, and we step off the train through doors that glide open soundlessly. A park surrounds the area, which is pleasant and quiet today. There is a building called Seattle Center where we snack and rest. Suddenly, we see a sign for La Dia De Los Muertos, a Mexican tradition honoring deceased relatives and friends. Elaborate altars, rejuvenation of grave sites and special celebrations are held in remembrance of loved ones lost. I remember my own as look at the decorations and celebrants. It is tender and loving, honest and simple, handmade, real.

The EMP is a place celebrating electronic music. Jimi Hendrix had hoped for a church of sorts where people could come together to appreciate the power of amplified sound, he said, and its ability to transport the mind and spirit to a different place. They have built a Sky Church within the space that is impressively automated. It strives to surround one with music and visual spectacle. For me, it seems complicated, one-dimensional, hollow and meaningless. I find no love in it at all. No tenderness of memories gained one precious moment at at time over years and years. It is all lost on me and leaves me cold. Odd. I love music. But I love love a lot more. What is represented in a few handmade altars and in the faces of the relatives framed on them speaks to me much more clearly.

The darkness of a soulless place, even though it is filled with strobed and pulsing extravaganzas, cannot provide nearly the uplift and depth of emotion a few silent moments in front of a dozen flickering candles give me.

Seattle is a roaring modern city within which I found a pulsing heart in its marketplace. In one day, I have recalled faces and words when I saw a few flickering candle flames. Did I need to come to a darker, colder place to provide counterpoint to the eternal warmth of love?

Seattle: Travel Day

I'm in a mood to flee as I board my flight for Seattle. The previous few months have been a grind and seem to be disjointed and themeless in my mind. I have had no sense of real focus despite my routine schedule. I have been a hamster on a wheel, stuck on fast forward without gaining any sense of accomplishment. I need a break, even if it's only four days. I'm bound for the northwest, a new corner of the country for me. A lifetime ago, my family lived in a small town near Portland, but I hardly remember it now, having left when I was only three. I'm going, I say to myself. Going to get on that plane and go. Go to breathe, live a little differently, let a new town open itself up to me.

Travel is so much more than moving from one point to another. Every journey has its unique limitations, discoveries and uncertainties, but at some point it all begins when the need to seek new ideas and horizons outweighs complacency. Off I must go every so often. With a healthy sense of irony, I am dusting off mental cobwebs at Halloween. Perfect.

The flight from San Jose is smooth as glass, the jet arcing north as the sun sets in a streak of gold and ochre beyond the western Pacific. I'm sitting on the inland side of the cabin and spot each of the snow-clad Cascade peaks one by one until the craggy and grand Mt. Rainier emerges and then quickly disappears in the twilight mists and clouds.

SeaTac Airport is very quiet this Saturday evening. We snag our luggage and hike the five-minute walk to the Link Light Rail train station. For $2.75 we get a 30-minute ride to downtown Seattle, a no-brainer alternative to taxis and rental cars.** Our hotel is about a four-block walk downhill and then three south along Pike Street. Check-in at the Alexis Hotel is just as easy, and we're here. Just like that.

Three deep breaths and then we are out the door again for dinner across the street at Boka. Halloween is here, drifting past our restaurant window in groups of three and four. A party of eight arrives, including Fred Flintstone, John MacEnroe, a cruise ship captain, a floozie, and a few others. Uncle Sam rides by outside on a tall bicycle, wearing a very tall hat. A young vampire is eating a burger with his three pretty wenches next to us.  My dinner of quail stuffed with sausage over cannellini beans is a savory treat that hits the spot, and I'm satisfied. It's too dark to tell what Seattle looks like at this hour.

Cloaked now in darkness, the street and city have not yet emerged in my consciousness. I caught a few glimpses of waterways and stadiums when the jet roared northward earlier, but when we circled down to the airport, I lost my bearings.  I have no sense of place yet. This savory meal has only served as a hint of what may come. We'll be on foot and taking public transit on this trip; details are more easily grasped that way, and I prefer it. Time to rest and let go of Monterey so that Seattle may emerge in the morning.

France: Beginning our journey

At the predawn hour of 4:30, my iPhone's harp plays a soft riff of notes and awakens me from a restless sleep at the City Garden Hotel near the San Francisco airport. This is the beginning of our two-week journey to the land where I was born as second child to a young American military couple 55 years ago. France awaits. First, though, we must begin a series of travel chores including catching an early shuttle bus to the futuristic San Francisco Airport in half an hour.

My husband and I have been planning this trip in fits and starts since last November when we first proposed the idea over a cup of cappuccino in Boise, Idaho, with dear ones there. Arduous work schedules conspired to prevent us from traveling, but when we actually determined that we must hit the road, planning fell into place. It was time, we felt, to explore land beyond the boundaries of our own country.

We found two separate retreats to attend in France, both during the same week, but in two different cities. My husband will make a retreat to the fascinating and mysteriously beautiful Chartres cathedral while I meet other writers in the heart of Paris for a week of honing writing skills and ideas. After that, a week in Provence and then home. Of course, those are the beginning points, but beginnings are only that, a place at which you step into a stream of life that then carries you where it will.

I sit up in bed and feel a familiar lack of sleep clogging my consciousness and know this will be a long day. Hydration is key at this point. I gulp a cup of water and fumble for my clothes, assemble my few belongings and in short time I am ready to depart the hotel. I spent all day yesterday imagining what I'd need for the next two weeks as well as living in the present time, an odd split of conscious mind that left me feeling disoriented for a while. I think I've got everything I need.

It seems a treat all of a sudden to listen to American English as we board the bus. A disconcerting plunge into a culture dominated by a foreign language will signal the real beginning of the journey, so for now, the familiar slang, customs and courtesies Americans extend to each other by smiling, gesturing and allowing for each other's needs on the shuttle bus and in the airport are comforting. We Americans are a shuffling lot today, stopping to read signs and orient ourselves to terminal building layouts.

The flight to Seattle is quick, smooth and easy. Seattle's surrounding snow-laden mountains look like a rim of teeth guarding the waterways and undulations of the spreading land below them. It's a beautiful day. "The mountain is out today" is the phrase that folks say in the Northwest when Mt. Rainier stands regally naked in the midday light, unclothed of clouds or mist. If that volcanic mountain ever comes back to life, havoc will surely ensue. It appears very close to a vast and complicated metropolitan area.

We await our flight to Paris now, playing with WiFi, 3G and Data Push settings on our iPhones in order to learn how to prevent massive phone bills from AT&T. The main terminal is new, airy and offers lots of fish at its food court cafes. Airports are usually focused centers of whatever the regional economy and culture offers. Some of the most interesting art exhibits I've ever seen have been at airports.

We are on our way. The world is out there and we intend to shed almost all intention and let our noses lead us. This is good travel, in this river of humanity and life. Time to begin.