WATCHING THE RAIN IN GALICIA

06/10/12 UA3542 depart CMH 6:40 a.m. arrive ORD 7:06 a.m. UA477 depart ORD 9:26 a.m. arrive PDX 11:41 a.m.

09/10/12 depart portland greyhound station 12:05 p.m. arrive grants pass 5:20 p.m. old ford pickup to fort freedomland (via the kerby mart) via the oregon redwood highway (number 199).

13/10/12 depart grants pass greyhound station 9:00 a.m. arrive portland 2:20 p.m.

17/10/12 DELTA9100 depart PDX 11:30 a.m. arrive LAX 1:52 p.m. culver city bus to santa monica/sunset blvd metro rapid to silver lake.

20/10/12 red line metro to union station flyaway bus to DELTA4678 depart LAX 1:59 p.m. arrive SFO 3:20 p.m. to BART to civic center.

22/10/12 DELTA9051 depart SFO 8:35 p.m. arrive PDX 10:13 p.m. (two hour delay)...rose city taxi to terwilliger and taylors ferry.

24/10/12 amtrak cascades depart portland union station 12:45 p.m. arrive seattle king street station 4:30 p.m king county bus 255 to kirkland transit center.

25/10/12 king county 245 to 255 to amtrak bus depart seattle king street station 10:45 a.m. arrive vancouver pacific central 2:15 p.m.

28/10/12 amtrak bus depart vancouver pacific central 9:00 a.m. arrive seattle king street station 12:45 p.m. amtrak cascades depart seattle king street station 2:20 p.m. arrive portland union station 5:50 p.m.

29/10/12 UA321 depart PDX 12:19 p.m. arrive IAH 6:15 p.m. UA4341 depart IAH 7:20 p.m. arrive CMH 10:54 p.m. (no delay despite the efforts of the edge of superstorm sandy).

and on october twenty-sixth, after at least three prior visits, i finally succeeded in being talked to by a staff member at solder and sons at main and cordova on vancouver's downtown east side. nonetheless, having already eschewed a book purchase that day, i considered it unfair to consider buying the copy of granta number 10 that was on the fiction shelves of the small store. travel writing. and "in this issue," just as it had started coming down outside, márquez's essay "watching the rain in galicia." but because of more immediate commitments, i only gave myself a moment to smile at the thought of shedding a tear at the title.

on the thirty-first (which was as early as was possible for me), under the sway of the urgent tone of that article in the next morning's article globe and mail, i voted. way to go ohio. or, i guess, we'll see. then i went to the library. i had a book overdue. but the main branch also had a copy of a book that included that essay.

"i don't know where the shame of being a tourist comes from," márquez writes. ...and i don't know how i feel about that statement. but it was better, perhaps, that i hadn't read the essay in that issue of granta, because even more than the author's observations on the galician rain -- and on the wind, "that sows the lunatic seed which makes so many galicians delightfully different" -- i appreciated the poem by lorca that this other collection had included as an inset on one of the pages. "it rains in santiago, my sweet love. white camellia of the air, shadowy shines the sun/it rains in santiago in the dark night. grasses of silver and of sleep cover the empty moon/see the rain in the street, lament of stone and crystal. see in the vanishing wind shadow and ash of your sea/shadow and ash of your sea, santiago, far from the sun. water of ancient morning trembles in my heart." and in those words by the poet from the vega of granada, my own (unknown) far away lament for the delightful galician lunatic i had met in andalusia. and then for everyone i had met there. and then for everyone i had more recently left. my morriña for all of the places i was already missing, and that which was even deeper, maybe, for all the ones that i hadn't yet been able to see.     

 

LALALANDIA; or, WHO THE HELL IS CARRIE BROWNSTEIN, part 2

it was a good thing that we didn’t run into each other during the couple of days i spent in portland between when the bus brought me back up from the lawless wilds and fire dangers of  josephine county and when i flew south a few days later. i made the decision to race that sunday in large part because it was sure to keep me out of harm’s way for the day in rainier. i did, however, flirt with potential disaster the next day in choosing the course of my ride, but lucky for the both of us -- and probably for the rest of the city -- the james john café is closed on mondays, and so i couldn’t stop to keep procrastinating there, even though i was having my flat fixed at the bike shop down the street. tuesday i either holed myself up in order to get back to work, or didn’t and did my best to get myself away from all of it and forget. needless to say i was happy to put and end to all of the panicked apprehension on wednesday morning by just switching her places. she could have the overdone (over and done) city that the aughts had essentially done for her so that all she had to do was show up and do it over. i was going to los angeles. it was sunny there. and hot, too, when i left the airport and stood in line for the parking lot c/city buses shuttle. by the time i got to silver lake where my big shot l.a. friend was waiting for me it had taken me more time to get between there and the aiport on the buses than it had to fly from portland. but i was enterprising and i’d already contacted a composer. i asked him if he could write me a song about a sweaty guy full of too much coffee on a two hour bus ride through culver city. of course, he said, so then i followed up with a question intended to confirm that he was famous, and he said seemed to be saying that he was working on it. (and i would have liked to have heard that song, too.) then he came back, with a rejoinder. and of course i was. the song was for my show, which was bound to be super popular because it was about me coming to l.a. and getting famous, so it was pretty much just an ifc serial comedy version of that new ben affleck movie, and there were already a million billboards up for that. it was also about a guy who goes to hollywood thinking that the idea of starry eyed midwestern kids moving to l.a. to make it in hollywood was just a popular myth that had been made up in hollywood. it was also about a guy who goes to hollywood and finds out that scientology was, apparently, a thing, and one of the episodes of the show centers a hilarious story that a starry eyed midwestern kid tells at a party about how he got mixed up and showed up to the church celebrity center in nothing but a pair of those mormon underwear hoping to ingratiate himself to some kind of kinky casting couch. but the thing is that it worked because that musical about the mormons was having such a great run at the pantages. also, guess what? someone had incepted me with the whole idea, and another one of the episodes would be about how the show was fake but the mission was real. meta-irony, like the bourgeois pig and the trashcan and all of the broke people faking it under the auspice of assumptions on the strip in franklin village -- only, like i said, the ifc version. could he write that song? but then i was on the strip and forgot about the soundtrack because there’s a sudden plot twist when the guy on the franklin strip selling the two principal characters a couple of last call cigarettes tells them that, yes, he will take a dollar because he’s more careful now about overdrafting his checking account. you see, his dad is a big money guy, and his brother does something with hedge funds. everyone watching will laugh when they find out that being sarcastically ironically poor is the new drunk (had been the new rich had been the new gay). in that episode, i tell the guy that the conversation is going to be in my show and he tells me that now i’m acting (which, in the show, the character playing me will be). the guy tells me that he actually has a script being looked at by someone that knows his dad, who is a big money guy, and his friend asks me in french if i can speak that. (not even on the show, i tell her.) but then everyone drops their lines because someone breaks a glass. cut. we should just shoot the episode where the jaded redhead bombshell is telling the story about when she rolled over in bed and crushed daddy’s cognac glass with her ass. then he kept drinking. there’s another episode in which i’m thinking about throwing it all in until an inopportune cloudy afternoon (another bus song) turns into an opportunity to walk across a deserted venice beach and frolic like a giddy toddler in a pacific ocean that i have entirely to myself. what? my show, i tell her. the french speaking oe. it’s kind of like that one that carrie brownstein does about portland, except that the overdoneness is exactly the point it’s making. so it’s actually eternally timely. or it can maybe ride some coattails and be the smart kid series for the people who live in portland and can’t stand that other show and won’t see the new ben affleck movie. or maybe it's just "girls" in franklin village. i don't fucking know. “but who the hell is carrie brownstein?” she asks me. um, duh. she’s a character in my show.