Paranoia/Distance
So, I can retrieve happymaking images by reading about them or playing the record of them back, but I'm witnessing so very few now. I detect such dense paranoia resonating between me and anyone else in the vicinity. Whatever anyone's mouth is saying the news is bad, even if it's good news in syntax.
I feel seedy and criminal even if (by some negligence of mine, to be sure) I'm not doing anything criminal, nor in possession of anything criminal. Although, it's only a criminal dilettante who would think that way, and dilettantism is the best that I've achieved in anything.
[Greyhound bus depot - Stewart & 8th, Denny's Triangle, Seattle - Night]
Sitting in one of their little plastic pews watching Larry King interviewing a bunch of female cultists on the issue of their children being in state custody. These women wear Mormon-style dresses, aerodynamic lobed hairdos, and their skin is cinched tight around their skulls. Larry King has aged since I stopped watching TV. Another 20 minutes queued in line 3 [Northbound to Everett, Bellingham, Mount Vernon, Coquitlam, and Downtown Vancouver.] watching the only noteworthy object in the room is enough to demonstrate to me why I quit TV.
The bus station has a vietnamese restaurant mated directly to one side. Three exits from this waiting room lead to Buses, Stewart St, and Pho Thuoc noodle house.
[Earlier - Seattle - afternoon]
Wandering through the upscale suburb of Magnolia, looking at expensive houses with "Impeach Bush" signs in the windows and nice shaggy lawns, guided to our destination by Sarah's spotty memory. Her sense of direction leads us up a purgatorial set of stairs and past many identical looking houses until the correct one suddenly leaps out at her. Of course! It's the lone rundown beatniky one! This frankly comes as a relief, since I'm in my element in such places.
I'd entertained some anticipation with regards to meeting the couple that we were going to meet. I had been told that the male component of the couple was my exact doppleganger. And, lo, this was not far wrong. Even his mannerisms were similar to me, like in the way that he bobbed his head when he talked, the Bruce Willis grin that we both do, or the cookie monster eyes of incredulity that us both can perform on cue. Not to mention the luscious mane of dreadlocks.
I found them to be most righteous.
[Enroute to Vancity - Interstate 5 - Night]
Including me there was about six people on the bus north after we left Everett. Coursing past outside the windows is the moist, treejagged country dark that I find emotionally calming. I'm curled up across the same two seats that Sarah and I rode down on. Only now I've got the window seat and the driver is a spectacled cue ball guy in a hazard vest instead of a spacious character with a Tennessee drawl.
The rain seems to pulse in 3 to 4 mile frequency, as we must be driving through sheets of rain.
The border crossing was long, but uneventful, on the way down. On the way back the way into Canada is virtually derelict at 10:30pm. By the time that we parked outside the PAC CAN Duty Free the dark haired Ken doll spread over the backseat behind me finally took his chance and started talking to me.
He turned out to be an actor. He was from Ontario originally, but had spent the last six months in LA, doing a role for a small indie film and getting tanned. I wondered if I hadn't seen him before somewhere. He was very handsome, in a very conventionally "model" way. I could see why he'd be successful as an actor based solely on his looks, but his grasp on acting as a skill left little to be desired. By the time the engine on the bus rattled to life again we were discussing the best acting jobs, and the inherent flaws to method acting, and doing quick scenes behind the seat backs.
He peculiarly shushed much of what he said to me. The drug discussion I could understand, like how he was going to blaze like a madman the next day [which was 4:20] but he also kept quiet the fact that he was an actor, in fact some of the details of that he kept so down-lo that I couldn't hear what he'd said over the rumble of the engine. But I was too polite to ask that he repeat himself. I was telling him to go to library square tomorrow when our bus got flagged into the inspection area.
I had to get the customs officer that was a total ice queen who made me rewind all the details of my visit [Which were difficult to explain in the first place, harder in fact than getting enough ectoplasm across to last the day] and my job and my criminal record and so on several times before she decided to let me back into my home country. I don't blame her for being suspicious though. [Dreadlocks, camouflage, general hippie look] It was doubly ironic when I got let through, but the little old pepper pot lady with the rolling luggage and the big bouffant hairdo got busted.
Well, not busted, just held up for ages by customs over work permits. We waited back at the bus, the actor and I, and I ran a fantasy routine by in my mind wherein the old lady gets released from the "Traveler Processing" offices and makes for the door when she's immediately swarmed by six German shepherds who leap on her out of nowhere and proceed to gnaw on her anatomy. One is peeing on her to mark it's territory, another is humping her luggage as the rest go for the pancreas. "All of us back at the bus just get our digital cameras out" contributes the actor. I agree and we laugh heartily. Later that odd moment of pure incidental camaraderie strangely haunted me.
I get off the bus in Coquitlam. Next to the Ikea, which left me walking distance from home. All that I had to do was walk back up to the overpass on North Road via Lougheed and I would soon be there. I marveled at how coincidentally convenient that was.
In the depot I got two $0.25 handfuls of Reese's Pieces, a bag of Doritos, and four butts out of the ashtray outside and walked home. On the way I passed a bar that was having some kind of country/cowboy theme night. Hombres and schoolmarms huddled around the barbecue against the frigid Canadian night.
I feel seedy and criminal even if (by some negligence of mine, to be sure) I'm not doing anything criminal, nor in possession of anything criminal. Although, it's only a criminal dilettante who would think that way, and dilettantism is the best that I've achieved in anything.
[Greyhound bus depot - Stewart & 8th, Denny's Triangle, Seattle - Night]
Sitting in one of their little plastic pews watching Larry King interviewing a bunch of female cultists on the issue of their children being in state custody. These women wear Mormon-style dresses, aerodynamic lobed hairdos, and their skin is cinched tight around their skulls. Larry King has aged since I stopped watching TV. Another 20 minutes queued in line 3 [Northbound to Everett, Bellingham, Mount Vernon, Coquitlam, and Downtown Vancouver.] watching the only noteworthy object in the room is enough to demonstrate to me why I quit TV.
The bus station has a vietnamese restaurant mated directly to one side. Three exits from this waiting room lead to Buses, Stewart St, and Pho Thuoc noodle house.
[Earlier - Seattle - afternoon]
Wandering through the upscale suburb of Magnolia, looking at expensive houses with "Impeach Bush" signs in the windows and nice shaggy lawns, guided to our destination by Sarah's spotty memory. Her sense of direction leads us up a purgatorial set of stairs and past many identical looking houses until the correct one suddenly leaps out at her. Of course! It's the lone rundown beatniky one! This frankly comes as a relief, since I'm in my element in such places.
I'd entertained some anticipation with regards to meeting the couple that we were going to meet. I had been told that the male component of the couple was my exact doppleganger. And, lo, this was not far wrong. Even his mannerisms were similar to me, like in the way that he bobbed his head when he talked, the Bruce Willis grin that we both do, or the cookie monster eyes of incredulity that us both can perform on cue. Not to mention the luscious mane of dreadlocks.
I found them to be most righteous.
[Enroute to Vancity - Interstate 5 - Night]
Including me there was about six people on the bus north after we left Everett. Coursing past outside the windows is the moist, treejagged country dark that I find emotionally calming. I'm curled up across the same two seats that Sarah and I rode down on. Only now I've got the window seat and the driver is a spectacled cue ball guy in a hazard vest instead of a spacious character with a Tennessee drawl.
The rain seems to pulse in 3 to 4 mile frequency, as we must be driving through sheets of rain.
The border crossing was long, but uneventful, on the way down. On the way back the way into Canada is virtually derelict at 10:30pm. By the time that we parked outside the PAC CAN Duty Free the dark haired Ken doll spread over the backseat behind me finally took his chance and started talking to me.
He turned out to be an actor. He was from Ontario originally, but had spent the last six months in LA, doing a role for a small indie film and getting tanned. I wondered if I hadn't seen him before somewhere. He was very handsome, in a very conventionally "model" way. I could see why he'd be successful as an actor based solely on his looks, but his grasp on acting as a skill left little to be desired. By the time the engine on the bus rattled to life again we were discussing the best acting jobs, and the inherent flaws to method acting, and doing quick scenes behind the seat backs.
He peculiarly shushed much of what he said to me. The drug discussion I could understand, like how he was going to blaze like a madman the next day [which was 4:20] but he also kept quiet the fact that he was an actor, in fact some of the details of that he kept so down-lo that I couldn't hear what he'd said over the rumble of the engine. But I was too polite to ask that he repeat himself. I was telling him to go to library square tomorrow when our bus got flagged into the inspection area.
I had to get the customs officer that was a total ice queen who made me rewind all the details of my visit [Which were difficult to explain in the first place, harder in fact than getting enough ectoplasm across to last the day] and my job and my criminal record and so on several times before she decided to let me back into my home country. I don't blame her for being suspicious though. [Dreadlocks, camouflage, general hippie look] It was doubly ironic when I got let through, but the little old pepper pot lady with the rolling luggage and the big bouffant hairdo got busted.
Well, not busted, just held up for ages by customs over work permits. We waited back at the bus, the actor and I, and I ran a fantasy routine by in my mind wherein the old lady gets released from the "Traveler Processing" offices and makes for the door when she's immediately swarmed by six German shepherds who leap on her out of nowhere and proceed to gnaw on her anatomy. One is peeing on her to mark it's territory, another is humping her luggage as the rest go for the pancreas. "All of us back at the bus just get our digital cameras out" contributes the actor. I agree and we laugh heartily. Later that odd moment of pure incidental camaraderie strangely haunted me.
I get off the bus in Coquitlam. Next to the Ikea, which left me walking distance from home. All that I had to do was walk back up to the overpass on North Road via Lougheed and I would soon be there. I marveled at how coincidentally convenient that was.
In the depot I got two $0.25 handfuls of Reese's Pieces, a bag of Doritos, and four butts out of the ashtray outside and walked home. On the way I passed a bar that was having some kind of country/cowboy theme night. Hombres and schoolmarms huddled around the barbecue against the frigid Canadian night.