Saturday, June 27, 2009

Camping with the sister.

My sister, Evie, is taking a roadtrip in a nifty little circle around the States and I am joining her for the beginning of the trip. We're doing a lot of camping (Glacier National Park is FABULOUS, Lewis and Clark State Park has too many mosquitos and Theodore Roosevelt National Park is nice, but bland) and I think we're learning a lot about one another as well. The interesting thing, for me, though, is that the more I learn about my sister the less she makes sense to me. This, unfortunately, seems to be the case with everything. The more one knows, the less one knows. For some reason I thought people would be different, that eventually their behaviors would make sense, but this does not seem to be the case. Unless you consider yourself a very simple person, if someone tells you that they "get you" I would suggest not trusting that person because that person is either lying to themselves or to you. Neither of those things is acceptable (and this is coming from a person who does both.)

Well...I'm trying to decide what to do with my immediate future now. My sister is going to Bellingham in the next couple days and since I was just there I want to find something else to do. If only there was more work around. Must...find...job...in...cool...place... Evie and I actually got into a bit of an argument today because she says I am being too open minded when it comes to finding something to do next and that open mindedness is barring me from finding something. I think that if people are too set on exactly what they want to do and when they will be so stuck in what should be that they won't be able to realize what could be. Plus whenever I make plans they fall through, so the open mindedness definitely helps to assuage the disappointment.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'm wide open. I'm thinking it's probably too late to go to Alaska for cannery work. Hmm. Not knowing = excitement. I could live my life in limbo.



HELLO FROM GLACIER NATIONAL PARK TWO DAYS AGO.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

I am going to pretend someone made this for me.



Because I need to believe that someone cares that much.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

i can't see you...WHY DON'T YOU SAY HI?!?!

Most of my day today was spent running around my house singing at the top of my lungs in my not-pretty voice, of which I am becoming increasingly fond. I also went to the grocery store where, when buying eggs, a baby ruth bar and some veggies I also purchased an invisible bagel. I say this because I have no recollection of picking up or eating or even seeing any bagels – invisible or otherwise - today, but I was definitely charged $0.60 for one. Anywho, when my sister got home from nannying I realized that it was a beautiful day and I had spent none of it outside so I decided to go to one of the parks near my home to read, listen to music and absorb some golden rays.

After snagging a good-sized chunk of one of my loaves of French bread and a book of Ernest Hemingway short stories I stuck my ipod down my dress and dance-walked my way to the park. My initial plan was to sit at the end of a dock that juts into the small lake there and dangle my feet in the water as I read and listened to music that is not conducive to the focus needed for reading. When I got down the hill I saw that someone was fishing at the end of the dock and rather than get in his way I decided to amend my plan and instead sit on a bench near the dock in order to snag the dock as soon as they left it. Almost immediately after forming this plan I also realized that I knew the person on the dock and suddenly, for no good reason other than that I'm human and we're silly like this, I felt very strongly that I should not say hello. I met this person when I was working at Primo and he is just now becoming a high school freshman. But, more importantly, he was from a different part of my life, the “Primo CafĂ©, this is Holly, how may I help you?” stage of my life and it seemed right that he stay there. If that does not make sense, consider this: a child, upon seeing his teacher in a public place that is not school, often feels uncomfortable and has no desire to speak to his teacher because his teacher does not belong outside of the classroom. It is the exact same logic, just slightly messed up because I’m an adult now. Despite his being a young'un I really enjoy the conversations I have with him, as they are characterized by an exuberance unique to children. But the wrongness of interacting with a person who did not “belong” in this compartment of my life overruled my want to speak to him, so I went and sat on my bench and waited for him to leave while I read about another bitter man in another Hemingway story.

This is where it gets terrible in a mundanely comic way. I don't think he noticed me when I first noticed him, but eventually, based on his body language, I could tell that he had recognized me and was making a duplicate effort to pretend that he neither saw nor recognized me. It was like one of those deliciously, subtly awkward moments that normally occur briefly in passing: in line at the bank, walking through the grocery store or walking across campus, but this time the moment was stretched to at least an hour and instead of being in an even remotely crowded place we were at a park of which the two of us were the only occupants. He wouldn't stop fishing and I wanted my vitamin D so we both very deliberately pretended the other was not there, while constantly checking to see if our presence was going to be acknowledged. Of course we were both very discreet and our mannerisms probably would have been entirely unnoticeable were it not for the fact that every time one of us moved significantly enough that it looked as though we were actually leaving without saying hello (HOW DARE (S)HE) the other person would start, plainly surprised, and then go dramatically back to feigning apathy.

After moving from my bench to a small field to a swingset I decided I’d had enough and that I would say hello before going home and (what do you know?) after we passed the initial awkwardness of both of our overly enthusiastic realizations that we knew one another, we had a very pleasant conversation. Although I will admit that I am a bit worried about the kid. I’m hoping that my perception of him is slightly misconstrued due to his trying to impress me with his drug and alcohol exploits (he’s a kid…it’s still cool for him to live for beer and pot?)

Ai. People. I love us so much. I know that these elaborate ignoring games are not unique to DJ or me. Who on earth possibly started such a terrible thing?

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Blogging (As Not A Teenager)

I have, more or less, had a blog since middle school and I would argue that it was somewhere between my early high school years and early college years that I thrived most as a blogger because there was so much less pressure about what and how often I had to write. Sometimes I wrote really interesting posts about religion or my feelings on my father having cancer, but more common were the posts where I actually talked about what was happening in my life, what music I liked, and simply told silly stories about car accidents, my run-ins with the communion at Catholic churches or being late.

Example: (early 2006)

"I like the person who drives my bus. But I'm out of shape. (And yes both of those sentences make sense together). So today I wore the shoes that I own that aren't possible to just slip into, and you can't do that little "my shoes aren't on, but I can technically still walk" thing. So I get upstairs, on schedule, spend about five minutes trying to tie my shoes until I realize that I should probably start running unless I want to be missing the bus. So I go out my door...walk for about ten seconds realize that if I don't run I have no chance of making the bus and then break into a sprint. Then my neighbor's dog starts chasing me and barking it's head off (that dog scares me) so I stop running (bus...going to miss it because of a dog!) until he walks away at which point I start running like a mad(wo)man towards the end of my street. I slow to a fast walk, but then I see everyone lining up in a little line, (ha! lining up in a line!) so I know that the bus is right around the corner so this time I really sprint and luckily the bus driver noticed me running like a penguin (because that's how I run) and waited. And I get on the bus and just sit there...bus not moving...gasping for air...and then I realize that some guy was running towards the bus too. So technically I didn't have to run, because bus driver lady would have waited for him too. So yeah. Holly=horrifically out of shape. But somehow I really love the whole sprinting thing. Feels good."

Now I find that blogging is more difficult because, although things of the exact same magnitude are happening I have a harder time writing about them...

Example (yesterday)

Yesterday at work, after spending two hours sifting through pallets of boxes of scantron tests all of my coworkers and I were told to go home because there was no more work to do. This was frustrating for all of us, but I felt especially bad for the people who had driven for an hour to get there that morning, because I know of at least two people who do drive that far. They probably didn't even get paid enough to cover their gas money for the day. On my way home I noticed two cop cars (no lights or sirens running) turning into a public park and, suddenly overcome by an overwhelming feeling of curiosity, I casually switched lanes and followed them to the park. The second car paused and the driver shouted out of her window to talk to what looked like a high school student who worked for the city parks and was weed whacking on the side of the road. I turned off my radio but still couldn't hear anything. They pulled into the parking lot on the left and I pulled into the parking lot on the right, striving for sneakiness. I watched them for a little while and pretended to check my messages on my phone and got out of my car. Even outside of my car I couldn't hear anything so I decided to go home and watched them open the kid's backpack as I drove out of the parking lot. SOMEONE GOT BUSTED FOR DRUGS.
(The best part of this story is when I got home, told my family this story and got yelled at by my sister for following a cop car. She thought it was illegal and could not see the humor in the story because she was so busy being upset that I had dared break a law that, to my knowledge, does not even exist. What the shmuck?)

See, I have a harder time devoting a blog entry to that story because for some reason I now operate under the assumption that I need to have a point, or at least write enough paragraphs and sentences that no one will notice that I don't have a point because I said so much. Of course this makes no sense whatsoever.

In the movie "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story" several characters have a conversation about what they want their movie to do for its viewers. One of them, rather simply, says that it should be funny. Another asks, "Is that all?" He responds, "Is that not enough?" That was one of my favorite quotes for the longest time because it's a stellar reminder that not everything has to be packed with meaning. Sometimes things just are and that is precisely what makes them so wonderful. They are inherently themselves and there are no pretenses or injected, phony frills on them feigning importance where there is none. Oscar Wilde claimed that it is the most elect man who can look at something beautiful and see only beauty. He says there is hope for people who see beautiful meanings in beautiful things, clearly implying that they are still lacking because of their inability to simply appreciate something for what it is.

This is me trying to become one of the elect, not in my perspectives but in my motives. Rather than looking to stuff my words and stories with morals or lessons learned I am going to try to present everything as it was or is. Of course that is what the dude in Nausea tried to do - complete removal of self in presentation of facts - and he was crazy. Y'know maybe I'll go for a happy medium. Maybe this blog will be a throwback to those days when I could write a post without thinking too hard about it. It's great when a post is long and meaningful, but it is just as great when it is silly or confused and short.

This post was me lowering that metaphorical bar I love so much. Consider it lowered and read respectively

Heya!

(Anyone notice the "it's" error in my first story? Ugh. Shudder.)

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Hitch, Hitch, Hooray!

If you had told me a month ago that I would hitchhike from Washington to Minnesota before May ended I would have laughed at you. I would have told you that hitchhiking is dangerous and illegal and I am not going to put myself in those kinds of situations and that, despite having the occasional desire to stick out my thumb on a long walk home, I am not quite the hitchhiking “type.” Turns out I am.

Before I go on I would like to dispel a certain untrue rumor regarding the legality of hitchhiking in the United States. It is not illegal. In some states pedestrians are not allowed on the highways, but hitching by an entrance ramp is 100% legal and hitching in a high visibility location on highways is usually fine as well. The only laws about hitchhiking concern the safety of drivers pulling to the side of the road: as long as there is a shoulder on the highway and the hitchhiker is not standing on a hairpin curve, all is well. So there.

Also before I go on I think you should know that I was planning on hitching in Canada because my sources said it is a bit less sketchy in Canada than in the States. When I hitched up to Canada and the great nation refused to grant me access I decided to stick it to the Canadians by proving that Americans are just as good at taking care of their fellow man, woman, hitchhiker. (This was also actually a very exciting event for me, as the Canadian border patrol literally escorted me down the sidewalk and then warned me that the cameras would “take over” when they relinquished my passport to me and let me walk all by my lonesome the rest of the way to the US border. Evidently somebody thought I was a bit more desperate to get into Canada than I actually was.)

Unless you are willing to count my hitchhiking the .1 miles up my street as a middle school student courtesy of a good humored neighbor, the first time I honest to golly hitchhiked was May 17, 2009. I was in Chemainus on Vancouver Island with the 23-year old nephew, Jesse, of the man, Steve, whom I had only a few hours before paid to take me tandem hang gliding. (It was sweet.) Jesse offered me his couch for the night and we decided to hitchhike the 17 kilometers to his home and build up my hitching resume. We stood on a street corner for a while and watched people pretend they did not see us, shrug apologetically, – sometimes condescendingly – or yell not very friendly – or overly friendly – things out of their windows. It was spectacular. My personal favorite were the few who would slow down as though they were going to give us a ride and then tear off, laughing at their own cleverness. Eventually a blond man, Kerry, picked us up. After introducing ourselves and making small talk for a while Kerry asked if we smoked marijuana (a surprisingly open and frequent practice in all the parts of Canada I visited), and then, sounding slightly panicked, offered to smoke us out. The brusqueness of his question took me off guard and I, laughing, but with just as much nervous speed coloring my voice as had colored his, said that I was fine without. Later I apologized to Jesse, as it occurred to me that maybe he had wanted some and I had denied him that by my quick refusal. Jesse simply noted, “I think he was just lonely, eh?”

Jesse unwittingly summed up very well what seemed to be the most common kind of people who pick up hitchhikers. The people who picked me up were not sleaze balls, they were not rapists, kidnappers or even moderately unkind people. Usually they were just lonely. (The other types I noticed were the people who worried if they didn’t pick me up a creeper would, the ex-hitchhikers who were returning the favors paid to them in the past, the slightly intrigued and the overtly friendly.) Many of my drivers were divorced or experiencing relationship trouble. Others were simply on a long road trip by themselves and wanted a set of ears or a few interesting stories. Several of my drivers took me a few exits further than they were going, simply because they wanted the company or said they knew of an entrance ramp that was a little busier. Having fully expected to turn down creepy rides or jump out of cars that had suddenly become uncomfortable, I found myself pleasantly surprised by everyone who picked me up.

This is not to say that I never felt threatened (and that is not to say that I ever was threatened) as I was constantly aware of my surroundings and tensed, more than once, when my driver would reach for *gasp* a water bottle. As far as I could tell I was never even hit on. In fact, more often than not whenever I would leave a car the driver would look at me seriously and tell me to be careful, that they were worried, that they didn’t want me to get hurt. These people radiated sincerity. They implied, almost plaintively, I know I can’t stop you hitchhiking but not everyone is as good of a human being as I am. Don’t get hurt.

I was fortunate in my hitchhiking. I never spent more than a half hour on a curb (as opposed to the 4-6 hour waits I was warned about), which can be partially attributed to the fact that the few times I was dropped off at an entrance ramp out in the country with very little traffic I would start walking, sometimes illegally, on the highway (it is hitchhiking, after all). Come to think of it, I probably never spent more than an hour walking, either. Many of the rides I got were several hours long, and the ones that were short almost always brought me to a better hitching point than the last.

The range of people who I met was absolutely stunning. There was the Pakistani-Canadian woman who came to the States to fill up with gas and told me about the wedding she was planning for her son. The young couple from Alaska who brought me to the best hitching point ever and gave me what was left of a bottle of tequila when I told them I might be camping out that night. (Don’t worry, Mum, it was only a quarter of a bottle and I gave most of it to the punk rocker hitchhiker friends I made in Bozeman.) The Australian man who pointed out the supporting walls his company built on the sides of the highway in Seattle. The twenty-six year old glass blower who told me about being in the Air Force and his psychopath of an ex-girlfriend. The thirty-one year old trucker who drove me over 600 miles (in North Dakota, thank goodness, I did not want to hitchhike in the extensive nothingness that is North Dakota) and let me drive the truck for a little while. That was thousands of dollars worth of yogurt and cottage cheese under my control, friends. The fifty-year old man who gave me a tour of Wallace, Montana, which featured a manhole cover labeled “the Center of the Universe”, while choking back tears over his current lady troubles. The older woman who brought me to Heather and Chad’s house, never being able to tear herself away from the conversation subject of my personal safety – or the lack thereof – regarding my newfound love of hitchhiking. (Provided I haven’t forgotten any there were eighteen rides total, not all listed here out of consideration for your attention spans.)

Hitchhiking is my new favorite way to travel because of the connections made, the stories, opinions and information shared. The thing that I love most about hitchhiking, though, is the extreme delicacy of the process. Had I not tried to go to Canada first my trip would have been drastically different. If I had woken up at nine instead of eight on the day I met my punk rocker hitchhiking friends, chances are pretty good I would not have met them. If I hadn’t started walking instead of sitting on the curb I would not have had a place to stay my second night of hitching. Hitchhiking is one of those rare activities that forces its participants to realize exactly how much every choice, and the timing of every choice, affects every subsequent event.

See you on the road?