Brian

A Valentine to a good friend I left behind in Boston:

My friend Brian can make friends with anyone, anytime. He is a self-professed Boston boy and knows the city like the back of his hand. This knowledge, gleaned from years riding in his father’s jalopy of a dump truck on their work outings, has served him well. He is prone to going off on wild adventures at random so it’s useful I suppose to always be able to find his way home. When I first met him, oh, twelve years ago, he was, at 6’4, the tallest hippie I’d ever seen. He’d thankfully outgrown that phase by our next meeting, some two years later. Bored, at a backyard party, I glanced around and saw his half-familiar face and frame emerging from some bushes. He was covered in blood and laughing as if he were having the best time ever. Something about him told me we’d be friends for a long time right at that moment. It turned out I was not wrong.

No question the defining event in Brian’s life was losing his mother at an early age to a brain aneurysm. For most people, this might have ended their childhood and it’s stubborn freedom to only follow where the day takes you. For Brian, it may have just cemented his life into a love affair with all that is ridiculously, sublimely carefree. I’ll never know for sure. He only speaks in metaphors, beautiful ones at that, when describing anything remotely painful or to do with the emotions at all. Such topics he rarely touches upon. It is, however, absolutely correct that at any given moment, he will have at least five, wild, absurd and true tales to tell. He knows every local character and is on the fast track to becoming one himself. He is one of the funniest people anyone knows.

The beer and pint bottles littered around his apartment have also been staple for as long as anyone can remember. They are a constant like the fear we all have that this party might one day come to a very sudden end. The artwork he makes on a near daily basis is always out of found objects. Just whatever was handy and struck his fancy. This makes them, like their creator, delicate, messy and likely to end up somewhere unworthy of their brilliance.

Wyoming Landscape/Thunderhawk and the Eagle Feather

American West

Short Story about a part of my 3 week Amtrak journey from Boston to Seattle in September 2009. Pictures above relate to story below:

I squeeze past the Amish taking their seats and find mine. I see a window and lean my shoulder against it, looking out at the train yard. A man turns around and looks at me. I can’t tell his age. We smile at each other and share where we are headed. He lives in Utah, I will go on to California. I want to rest, to close my eyes and tell the man so. He grants my wish and I begin to tune out my surroundings.
The announcement I hear shocks me out of my drift into sleep. I am on the wrong train. This is not what I signed up for. Wyoming? No thank you. I need to get to Salt Lake City by way of the Rocky Mountains please. Amtrak apologizes but the train has left the station. Nothing can be done. We will get to Salt Lake City but we will go through Wyoming. There will be no stops along the way. The word they used was re-route. I go back to my seat and thrash my belongings around. I make a few phone calls and berate some customer service representatives. The man I met gets up and walks toward the dining car. I wonder what he thinks of my behavior. I wonder why I think this. I breathe, unclench my fists, and shake my head. I start to laugh. You would have to. I decide to follow the man I met into the viewing car. I sit in a booth and we smile again.
The windows show me telephone poles, highway, tractor-trailers, grass, rock and sky. This is Wyoming. I wonder if we are on Mars until I see a Fed Ex truck. I start to laugh again. I can’t help myself. The man tells me his name is Gene Thunder Hawk and hands me his business card without my asking. It reads: actor comma activist. Gene tells me that he has been in the movies. He has told this story before. He speaks Sioux and grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation. I try to follow his narrative of how he met the film producers who got him work but can’t. A childhood friend was involved I do understand that. They had appeared together in such films as Dancing with Wolves, which I didn’t see and Last of the Mohicans, which I did. Thunder Hawk had roles involving tomahawks, horse riding and killing. I asked what brought him to Denver. He said he was sending his daughter off to war. She was going to Iraq. She had gone to Afghanistan with the Air Force three years ago. She wanted to retire but the military had other plans. He wanted to know what I thought of this and of the war in general. He listened as I outlined my views. I tried to make sense of them myself. He nodded his head but said nothing. Other people have been listening to our conversation. Even the Amish women are listening as well. Someone asks Thunder Hawk what his people think of his daughter being in the military. She is honored as a warrior, he said. She flies planes and has received many awards. We are proud. His voice changes as he says this. Everyone agrees with him, it is an honor. Thunder Hawk tells the group about his grandfather, who had given him his Sioux name. His name is meant to invoke power in each word. He mentions that he carries an eagle feather and goes and retrieves it when asked. He says his people often used these for shade on their eyes while walking or hunting. He places the feather on the top of his ear to show us. He tells us we are riding on an iron horse. At least that is what his people used to say about trains. A man named Ken informs us that we are following the trail of Lewis and Clarke on the tracks of the first trans-continental train route in North America.
I have been west before but not like this. I had travelled by airplane and visited cities where I stayed in hotels and met Europeans. I don’t miss the Rocky Mountains as I had even though the scenery stays the same for hours and hours. We pull into Salt Lake City at sunset. Thunder Hawk and I say our good-byes. I will leave for California in the morning.

Yesterday

Yesterday I was in the Roosevelt section of Seattle. The following things happened to me within 30 minutes. I saw a homeless man who looked like not one, but about five college professors and or high school teachers I have had over the years. I am not talking about just some facial features or other similarities. I mean a shocking likeness and total surprise to see a man of his ilk begging by the side of the road with his neatly printed "money for food and rent" sign. To me, this is the ultimate proof that in this economy, no one is immune. Not the never-been alcoholic, lifelong gainfully employed, master's degree educated type. Not anyone. I crossed the street and was patiently waiting for the cross sign (alas I have given up my jaywalking habit, damn you Seattle) when I saw a car stalled in the road. The driver, in response to the growing aggressive side of the PNW passive-aggressive personality expressed in a growing chorus of car horns, got out and started to push his car down the slight hill. He was a young guy, fairly cute. I thought he needed some cheering so I started to jump up and down and wave my arms at him. Like "Go! Go! Go!". He saw me, briefly smiled, and managed to roll his sea-green Ford into the Shell station half a block away. I thought I'd just get on the bus now and go home like a normal person. I'm not on the bus for more than 5 minutes when this guy sits down next to me. He asks me a question about the bus route. I tell him I have no answer as I have just randomly got on the first bus headed downtown and plan to figure it out as I go. He then makes a comment about how this is "just his luck" and he's having that kind of day etc. I'm like "oh yeah?", sympathetic but vague. He then makes several comments about how he is done with planet earth in a not-so-veiled I want to kill myself kind of way. Oh. Good. Lord. Why. Me??? I tease out some of the details: a long stint of unemployment, brief happiness at finding a job fading into dissatisfaction with said job, low pay necessitating a move from his current place into something cheaper. General disillusionment at the general state of his life, that type of thing. I am suddenly reminded of how unhappy I was with my old secretary jobs back in Boston. I share with my bus buddy that feeling of emptiness after a long day doing next to nothing, being treated like dirt by people I couldn't stand. How I would sit on the train on the way home and be so exhausted, so miserable. I didn't think there would ever be an end. I told him about my eventual career change into nursing, my move out here and the slow realization that things had gotten much, much better. Not in a you wake up one day and it's all roses and sunshine kind of way. Just a gradual unfolding of the layers of shittiness I thought were once with me forever. The man started to smile, nod as I was telling him this. I told him to hang in there, things can get better. My bus stop arrived suddenly and I hopped off. He smiled and thanked me for my advice. I think he believed me then, and I hope to god he believes me still.