SO: I woke up at two, wanting a coke, a fountain coke with ice, and because the question was niggling at the back of my mind: would I be able to get the Mini out of its tight squeeze.
"Don't tell me you can't teach an aging canine new tricks," I said to myself, happily dislodging the Mini from between two other cars, driving to the 7/11, listening to Vivaldi on the radio.
When Betty and I travel together, and when we run into roadblocks of various kinds, she always says, "Nothing can deter us from our mission." My mission was simple, turns out, but I was not deterred. If Betty were here, she'd have gone with me for the coke--though she would have complained that I was getting her out of bed in the middle of the night and not giving her time to put on her make up!
Sometimes things happen in threes. Yesterday I got a birthday e-mail from Amanda with a picture of myself looking out the window of the villa we stayed in when we went to Italy together. Then I got an e-mail from Nellie with a picture of the Cinque Terre, a place we'd both loved there. (Nellie and I had spent three weeks together in Italy; Promise and Amanda and Laurie had met us there for our "writing workshop" in Tuscany. I put it in quotes because it turned out to be less a writing workshop than a hybrid sort of adventure.)
#3: As it turns out, Oliver--the host here--is from Liguria, about two hours by train from the Cinque Terre!
Driving through the wine country in California, I've often thought about Italy. The vineyards, the cypress trees, and the vivid colors all remind me of what we saw there when we were "just driving around Italy" as Laurie put it one Sunday, the tiny car I was driving packed with us and our stuff.
One day, I remember lying on the rocky beach, tired from train travel, sore from lugging a broken suitcase, and wishing out loud for a massage. At exactly that time, out of nowhere, a young Chinese girl walked up carrying Tiger Balm, asking: "Massagee?" (That's the closest I can get to spelling the question.)
I was almost too shocked to respond: How had my request been answered so fast? Here she stood, a girl offering me a massage, a girl who seemed literally to have materialized out of nowhere! "Man, can you ever manifest what you want!" Nellie said before we both got Tiger Balmed right there on the beach by the Ligurian Sea.
And so, last night, drinking Oliver's hot apple cider and talking to this young couple about their plans to go to Columbia for Christmas to see Maria's large family (five generations; her healthy 93-year-old grandmother the mother of ten) and all these Italian memories cascaded back.
Here I am in Portland, asking the questions a road traveler inevitably asks: Is it time to head back?
When is the journey over?
Traveling in other countries, the end is built in when you buy your ticket, but with the freedom of car travel comes the open-endedness that is both the charm and the challenge of making up the story as you go.
Driving in countrysides, I rarely ask why.
But walking solo in a city I don't know does make me wonder: why here, why now, for how long? Just the logistics of getting around in a city takes me out of the moment and stirs some slight anxiety: Will I leave and then discover that I missed the whole point of being here?
The Buddhists talk about mindfulness: living in the moment, fully present.
When I'm in the present, singing "Off to see the Wizard" or some other melodious tune, I'm not worried about where, for how long, or why. But when I am in a place that feels too spread out to do more than a superficial look-see, I do wonder what I have just bitten off and what to do with it.
It's when I fall into the tourist mindset--thinking I can "do Portland" in a day, for example, presumptuous as that is--I realize I'm collecting again, not the open space, just seeing what's around the next bend in the road.
Barbel's Portland friend Uta by e-mail AND Maria and Oliver, now still sleeping upstairs: all have agreed that the best drive for today might be what is called The Fruit Loop: a drive through orchards that takes me through the Hood Valley.
Rone's stories of Port Townsend draw me in that direction--and, as you know, I'm already this close: might-as-well go a few more miles while I'm at it....
And so at now nearly four in the morning--after starting this blog, going for a coke, reading, then writing some more--I think I'll settle in for a few more hours of sleep, then decide. Maria washed my fish-stinky pancho and it's all good as new for a cool morning of whatever October 16th turns out to be about.
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