More Than I Deserve

It's been a lovely weekend so far.  I'm currently sitting in a comfortable booth at the T&P, waiting for the burn to die away in my lips and tongue, so I can think about ordering something sweet to eat.  I had a few little soft tacos and the Sriracha I sprinkled on didn't affect me until after they were gone.  I'm drinking clean, crisp, sweet and orchard-y apple cider -- so delicious -- and watching people stroll by, all of them squinting in the excessively brilliant sun.  Yesterday and today were both very, very bright.

(The Pogues!  How long has it been since I've heard the Pogues, when I wasn't playing them?)

Across the street, the usual crowd is standing outside Besaw's -- a perfect example, if any were needed, of the public's bovine natures.  Probably half of them have never been there before, but they've heard the name for so long, and the cachet of being one of NW Portland's oldest restaurants has brought them driving in from Gresham and Bethany and Fariview.

And when I think back to the first time I ate at Besaw's --twenty years ago -- and the only customers were some aged, deeply wrinkled little men drinking at the bar, and the cook was a heavily tattooed, skinny, black- haired man with track marks -- makes me shake my head!

Been watching "Fringe" all over again -- just finished the third season before I came over here -- and last night I went to bed at about ten-thirty,  feeling pleased that I hadn't allowed the seduction of that show to keep me up to any ridiculous time.  Woke up at about six, and was thinking about what the plan was for today, and it suddenly hit me like an ice-cold water balloon --I had left my car in the library parking lot overnight!  It was only allowed to be there until library closing, which on Saturday night is six pm!  So it had been there for twelve unauthorized hours, and this was in NW Portland, where not only is parking at a premium, but the people are, as a generalized whole, self-righteous and much given to reporting people parked somewhere they ought not to be.  I've seen that little meter-maid car out tooling around before dawn!  I threw my coat on over my pajamas, and without even wiping my eyes or straightening my slept-on hair, I rushed over there.  As I rounded the last corner, my relief at seeing the familiar blue lines of Beauty the Buick almost made me gasp aloud.

I also made it back to my apartment without running into anybody, or seeing a single soul, except for the driver of a car.  Which is more than I deserve!  Whew!

Michael Orville Estes

I was just reminiscing about Prairie people, specifically from my freshman year – the friends I made just as a result of being in the same place they were.  Not because they were friends of some other friend, or sister, or roommate.  Not because they wanted to date me, or Ruthie, or Roseanna, or Kelly. 

That was the best year of the three years I was there – there was no pressure.   I felt protected by my older sister’s presence, even though we shared no classes and rarely ate meals at the same time.   I wonder, now, if that was the cause of my terrible, mind-losing insomnia, my junior year – pressure from others, instead of from the school itself.  I was trying to be too many things to too many people – and at the same time trying to hide the person I was to person A, from person B, since I knew they would not approve.  What a coward I was!  Afraid of everything, and resenting others for having to be their version of me, to them.

Anyway – Shannah (my very first Prairie friend) had sent me an e-mail with pictures attached – one of which was of me and Mike Estes on the beach – my skirt is wet, and Mike is half buried in sand – and I paused and gave some time to thinking about Mike.  He was a really good guy – I had no fault to find with him, save that he did not light my fire.  And yet I had no idea how to behave towards him, to let him know that I did not “like” him.  I was just as friendly as was allowed, and when he wrote me letters – awkward, staggering letters at about a fourth grade level – I responded with real letters and candy and baked goods sent to him in boot camp – he brought me a stuffed fox and I named it Foxibus and kept it on my bed for years – I’m afraid I behaved just like a conservative, small-town Christian girl who intended to marry someone would have behaved.  But I did not know how else to be.  And no one ever mentioned it to me, no one found any fault with my behavior,  no one said  anything about it to me – I’m sure my parents thought I might, in fact, marry him, but we never mentioned it to one another.

So, I was thinking that I really owed the poor guy an apology for my ignorance and my unintentional leading him on.  I mean, he made the trip from Spokane down to Cannon Beach just to see me for an afternoon.  (I wouldn’t let him put his arm around me on that occasion, so perhaps that told him I wasn’t interested…?  but probably not.)

So I began looking for him, first on Facebook, (my goodness, hundreds of Mike Esteses! But none of them that blonde, square-faced young man with the wide space between his front teeth) and then on Google.   And on the first page of my search for Mike Estes – Army -- Washington, I got this headline:  Sheriff's Deputy killed in the line of duty.

Oh, my god.  And it was him.  Michael Orville Estes.  At age 43, so only about five years ago.  Responding to a 911 call, his car was broadsided by a semi-truck.  The only Walla Walla sheriff’s deputy to be killed in the line of duty.  Merciful heavens.

Dead.

I mean, really dead.  As in dead.

Is he the first one of my Prairie friends to die?  I will have to ponder that for a bit, but I think he really might be.  Marshall got brain cancer, but he recovered.  Daniel was in a car accident, but he is more or less okay.  Dave survived malaria.    I had a brain hemorrhage, but here I still am.  Mike Estes.  First death.  Wow.

Opting for the Auto

Well, it's a lovely morning, in that good old Pacific Northwest way -- overcast sky, still a deep purply blue, fresh dampness to the air, though no rain falling, wet pavements shining gold and lavender in the reflected lights.  When I stepped out my door this morning, the familiarity of this lifted my soul with a physical lift that I could feel in my chest.  Ahh, home!

Which is probably why I wasn't annoyed or dismayed to realize, just as I rounded the corner, that I had forgotten to get my new pack of bus tickets the previous night.  I had gotten off the bus, thinking, "Stop at the library, then at Food Front, then home,"  (isn't it lovely to live so closely with one's need-suppliers?  Both of these things between my bus stop and my door!)  and I did make the library stop.  But when I came out, I was passing St. Honore's bakery, and my eye and appetite were caught.  I went in and bought a blueberry tart (note to self: don't buy that again) and a small bag of chouquettes, which I ate with great satisfaction -- and passed merrily by Food Front, without it tickling the smallest response in me.

But, as I say, I wasn't even remotely distressed by this, merely pondering whether I should ride the bus and pay cash, and then try to get some more cash somewhere to make the trip home, or simply drive.  And I opted for the auto.

!@#$% Facebook! ARG!!

Oh, I'm privately giggling --!  One of the agents here in the office has an overwhelming temper, which causes him to behave in very unacceptable ways.  We have had two serious talks about this, and he has been behaving pretty well for the past year or so.  No kicking the walls, no punching the doors, no shouting cursewords -- he's been behaving pretty normally.

However, he grew frustrated with his Facebook page -- he was trying to set himself up with one, and doesn't really know much about how things like this work, and suddenly lost it.  Pounding with both fists on the desk, he began to roar, and then shout furious denunciations of Facebook, and the computer he was using, and every person involved in either or both.  Lots of loud cursing, and the more he yelled, the angrier it made him, and so the louder and more violent his rage became.  Much repetitive obscenity, roaring and repeated pounding of fists.

Well.  What he did not know, was that there was another agent in one of the front offices.  She was very distressed by this, and even though I tried to calm her, she insisted on hurrying back to his office and asking him if he was all right, and did he need help, and goodness, she was just so upset!  And what on earth was the matter?  Could she call someone?

He was very embarrassed.  And shamed.  And apologized, saying that if he had known she was there, he wouldn't have done it.  Which sort of clued me in to the degree to which he can certainly "help it."

Other countries, other ways

I feel sure that I have mentioned this before.  There are two people in the conference room, an agent and his client, and they are speaking Romanian (I believe).  They have been here several times before, and each time this amazes me.  It is apparently a convention, in Romania, for everyone to speak at once.  They don't work their conversation so that Person One speaks, and then stops and Person Two responds.  They both just talk steadily, with pauses and giggles and expression, as though the other one was listening intently, (which, apparently, they are, I guess) and the other one talks just as steadily.  It is amazing.  Even when one of them is giving the other one information that they did not know, the other one does not stop talking in order to listen.

Tangerine Dream

On my way in to work, the morning sky was a deep true blue with shadings into purple.  The weather is very cold, and there were no clouds anywhere, but along the eastern sky there were four layers of con trail, all pretty much straight, and evenly spaced, one above the other.  They were touched by the still invisible sun, from below, and were vivid shades of pink and tangerine.  But as I approached them, I realized that the colors alternated.  The bottom stripe was tangerine, the next one up was pink, the next one tangerine and the top one pink.

Now, what the hell?  How is that possible?  Was it a matter of depth, of distance from the earth, and it just happened that the stripes were arranged in that way?  It looked very familiar, so it wasn't until I started trying to figure it out that I boggled.  They looked all to be roughly the same size, and they all came from the same airport -- so what is the answer here?  Anybody?

Scary Chickens and Their Frightening Eggs

In what could be a result of my brain injury, seven or eight years ago, or possibly just a result of getting older, I have pretty much stopped remembering my dreams.  I mean, I still remember the frightening dreams that made me so afraid of the dark as a child -- one or two of them quite vividly -- but any dreams that I have now,  are gone within moments of waking.  I can try to hold onto them, and the feeling they gave me may last for half an hour or so, but none of the details.  Even while feeling the feeling, I often cannot identify it in words.  This makes me think it is a result of my brain injury, since I think I have always had words for what I wanted to convey, in my previous life.

However, last night I had a dream that I still recall quite clearly.  And last week I had a dream that I also recall pretty well.  So -- is this me, stepping out of the mists of Brain-Injury-Land, and back into the clear sunlit hill country of Dream Land?  Or is it merely an aberration? 

Last night's dream involved me driving repeatedly over the same terrain, in the first half  of the dream, just to get from place to place, but in the last half, to escape from someone who wanted to take a small child away, and was prepared to kill me to get to him.  I can't remember what relation to me this little boy, named Kenny, was -- but he was small and thin, and white-faced, and very obedient and quiet, which led me to believe he had already had a pretty hard life.  I remember getting out of the car and running into a house that I knew was empty at the moment and hurrying him upstairs into the wife's dressing room, which had a weird little offset closet space behind it, that you couldn't really see unless you knew it was there, and squeezed yourself into this corner to look. I bundled him into it and pushed boxes around him, and put an afghan over his head and told him to sit silently unless he heard my voice tell him to come out.  Then I squeezed out of the closet hidey-hole and got into the dressing room door, as the people who were chasing me for his mother, who wanted him for some evil purpose, burst into the room.  They were going to search that room very carefully, since they had found me in it, and I felt so bad for the tiny boy, hiding and then being found, then I wrenched myself awake.  My heart was pounding very hard.  So hard that for a moment or two I couldn't breathe, and had to throw off the covers or suffocate (I thought).  It took awhile to settle down and beat properly.

Now, on thinking it over, I wonder which came first?  Was I having a frightening dream, which caused my heart to pound, or was I having a heart problem which showed itself by pounding, which caused me to attach a dream to it, as subconcious explanation?  Like dreaming that the police are coming, when it's actually your alarm going off?  It's sort of a which came first, the chicken or the egg.  Only it's the scary chicken or the frightening egg.