May 31, 2012

Bottom of the Ninth

By Gabriela Denise Frank

I choked up when a fourteen-year-old girl sang the Star Spangled Banner this afternoon. I’m not sure why; I’ve never fought in the military or had family members who died in a war. I don’t adhere U.S. flag bumper stickers to my car or own any clothing that bears the initials, “U.S.A.” In fact, you can’t trace my American roots back more than a few generations.

Yet, when she warbled, “…o’er the ramparts we watched…” tears welled in my eyes, threatening to fall for the rest of the song. Standing at the edge of the Charles River, I could picture it happening: bombs bursting in mid-air and the red glare of rockets revealing that our flag stood against all odds…

Maybe that’s just part of being an American in Boston.

The highlight of my first twenty-four hours was a Red Sox game on a perfect Sunday afternoon. Perfect for many reasons: first, the sunshine and 73 degrees, then the Italian sausage dripping with relish, ketchup and mustard. Perfect for the rituals that we Americans love about baseball: the wave, good natured trash-talking (“Hey battah, I like that ahverage!”) and singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at the seventh inning stretch.

Most especially, it was perfect because these time-honored rituals happened at Fenway Park. I don’t care what state you’re from, to Americans, Fenway is special. (Except, perhaps, for Yankee fans… but I’d hope that they, too, see Fenway as beloved in the spirit of nationalism.)

Today wasn’t just any day to see Fenway; it was a month past its 100th anniversary. Arizona, where I lived for 20 years, didn’t even become a state until 1912. In Boston, they’ve played baseball for a century, thus the fans are serious.

Seattleites are fair-weather baseball fans – we like the game well enough, but aren’t impassioned. (Remember, we ejected the Seattle Pilots after only one year of poor play and the Mariners didn’t come to town until 1977.) In keeping with our spiritual freedom, we’re not religious about sports in general – a little here and there does us well: baseball, soccer, football and occasionally, the Rat City Rollergirls who play at Key Arena, once the home of the Sonics until we ignored them and they went away in 2008. For us, a game at Safeco Field is less about tradition and more about the liberal application of garlic fries, beer and bratwurst with sprinkling glances at the game.

Approaching an intimate setting like Fenway, against which Safeco is a giant steel cathedral, the crowd’s devotion emerged in a palpable hum. I arrived early to watch batting practice, marveling at how well maintained the old brick park was. I learned that they considered demolishing Fenway a decade ago, as it was falling down – it would have been a damned shame if they had given up. In addition to renovating the existing structure, they added seating atop The Green Monster – the hallowed left field wall that inspires Sox fans to don green T-shirts in its honor.

Watching the crew ready the field was like preparation for mass. Several uniformed young men took down the portable batting cage section by section, then hauled it off on a wheeled cart, like altar boys bearing towels and chalices for service. Field hands with rakes smoothed the dirt surfaces –home plate took four men alone– the way I imagine that they shine wooden pews before mass. The field crew then carefully loosened green tarps spike by spike from the pitcher’s mound and home plate, folding them in sections the way a priest might unwrap the host before communion.

Once the game was in play, a camouflaged door opened from time to time next to the score board; a man appeared to update the scores of other games by switching out the tiles by hand. It called to mind the way a deacon or attendant appears to assist the priest in his administration of sacraments. This weaving of devotion and ritual before me conjured the sound of Susan Sarandon’s opening drawl from Bull Durham, “I believe in the church of baseball.”

Baseball is indeed our nation’s pastime, to some a religion, but brick by brick in Fenway, it felt like a sacred American birthright. As with the gravity of music in Nashville –a force woven throughout experiences large and small– a sense of patriotism is evident throughout Boston, but most especially in its beloved baseball park and its fans who proudly swath themselves in red and blue.

After a few scoreless innings, I found myself absorbing the crowd’s tense emotions as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays chalked up two runs. Sitting in last place in the American League East, the Red Sox were desperate to claw their way out of the basement.

Bases loaded, Adrian Gonzalez pulled out a three-run homer during the bottom of the seventh and I leapt into the air with the rest of the crowd, wishing that I owned a Red Sox cap. Two runs from the Rays in the next inning clinched their eventual win, but the crowd stayed to see the game through to the bottom of the ninth, even though it wasn’t pretty in the end.

That sense of loyalty isn’t lost on me – the ability to stick things out when times are hard, when it looks as if there is no hope as circumstances and relationships are inevitably challenged. Watching people support a losing cause, even if it is just a baseball game, makes me question the degrees of my own loyalty to family, work, friendships, war, politics, country and the values that I believe in. On a certain level, I wonder if there’s anything I believe in enough to stick around for – especially when times are bad.

Like the rest of Gen-X and the Millenials behind us, I am a child of the Age of Choice; we are more empowered now as a nation to leave our situations when we meet disappointment or resistance. If we’re unhappy with our lot, that is enough for us to justify a change in city, country, job, career or marriage. If our insides and outsides feel maligned, we can choose to change our gender.

Even when I’m content for five minutes, I find myself testing that happiness in the back of my mind, wondering if I’m complacent or “settling” somehow. At some point, it’s no longer about moving on from situations that don’t fit, but more about continually moving as a means of fulfillment. Part of me wonders what’s wrong with that – if staying in motion brings happiness, how can it be wrong? But I do question it, because most people don’t live like I do, and there are moments when the well-established grass looks greener.

As the next era of my life rises –the dawning sun of self-realization, searching and independence that is middle age in America– I’m testing how my lifestyle will suit me, wondering if it will bring the same fulfillment that I’ve known these past six years. Looking down at an ailing right wrist, I wonder if I’ll continue to have the freedom of good health, and for how long. Reading texts from friends and my auntie, I wonder how many relationships I’ll maintain over the years. Scrolling through my photographs of Civita, Nashville, Venice, Cannon Beach and Boston, I dream of the adventures that lay ahead in the cities and countries I haven’t visited yet.

Though planning for the future is not an exact science, I also can’t help but wonder what it might be like to sign a mental contract with my life in Seattle for a few years, just to see how it goes — no looming plans to run away to Europe or move to the East Coast, no matter how good places like Boston feel.

Changing teams for bigger career breaks is necessary and understandable to a point, but the payoff of dedicated fans and trusted teammates is something that takes years to realize, and I find myself wading deeper into that world now. While I love the freedom to roam –and appreciate that I have that freedom to begin with– lately, I am equally as excited about returning home at the end of the journey.

Maybe there are more lessons in baseball than I once thought: don’t switch out at every inning – stick with your pitcher until his arm needs a legitimate rest. If you can’t hit a homer, there’s nothing wrong with a bunt, and they probably aren’t expecting it. If you go home early, you may miss the biggest play of the game.

When you stay –even if you lose– the support of friends and many pints of beer goes far towards healing all ills.

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May 19, 2012

Before the Crash of ’12

By Gabriela Denise Frank

In a handful of subtleties, Nashville reminds me of other American cities. With my window open in the evening, I’m serenaded by the chit-chat of crickets and clicking night beetles; at daybreak, the weeping cacaphony of birds, like in Austin, Texas. The lolling whoop of one species pauses for the rhythmic chirp of another, telling mates to bring home extra bugs for dinner and warding off predators from the nest.

During the day, 80 degrees is sultry. The threat of summer swelter rests underneath the mild spring humidity. Sitting outside on a breezy porch for lunch, listening to outdated 90s rock, I recalled the press of New Orleans in the dead of August when a few steps outside of my hotel had me feeling faint—even after 20 years and 122 degrees in Arizona.

Exhausted from walking around downtown Nashville, my crashing bloodsugar insisted that I rest for a moment in the shade of my room, nature’s radio playing outside my window. I had done the same in Civita during the relentless summer heat, despite my normal inability to nap.

It wasn’t very cool, but cool enough—and warm enough—in my rented room: the right balance that enticed my eyelids to roll down like velvet curtains thudding on the stage of my face. Behind the darkness, I willed myself to get up in five minutes.

Five minutes.

Five minutes.

Like me, the house was silent. We were all asleep, as was much of Nashville after the Rock and Roll Marathon. Even the birds and bees were quiet.

Music City had become Nap City, and I dreamt of the hours before.

That morning, a red-and-cream calico had sauntered over inside Hatch Show Print on Broadway, so I petted him briefly before rifling through the colorful letterpress posters. His playfully vicious paws clawed the leg of my jeans, saying that I hadn’t properly greeted him. I stopped to kneel down, running my hands over his coat as he writhed on the floor—the second cat I had been wrangled into massaging that day. Sweet little Maude with her white rabbit-soft fur had encouraged me much more gently.

A lean 40-something woman in a faded T-shirt and blue jeans leaned over the counter in the languid way that sinewy girls do. “Woooow… Huey really likes you.”

We chatted for a moment and she invited me to walk around the store. I photographed the girl making a fresh poster amidst cans of open ink, spilling blue and red glops onto the papered table. I envied her.

In another life—where I simplify my career by taking a service-oriented job that admittedly could never satisfy me—I imagine myself working in a print shop. Every day, I would make cool posters and converse authoritatively about new local bands or my recent travels backpacking through South America. I could finally get my nose pierced. It was a nice three minutes.

On my way to a rib joint for lunch, I skirted the crowd gathered in front of Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge photographing a large freestanding guitar. I wondered if I was in Nashville, New Orleans or Las Vegas. Noting the inverse number of open liquor containers for every church, I knew I was still in the Bible Belt—that, and the live country songs rather than jazz or twangy stripper music that blared from the red brick buildings.

Good country music is well-channeled angst, neither over-wrought nor falsely suffered. At the Country Music Hall of Fame I saw a quote carved into stone: “Country music isn’t a guitar, it isn’t a banjo, it isn’t a melody, it isn’t a lyric. It’s a feeling.” Inside, I began to understand how much country music is also about family—which contributes to the complex warmth of Nashville itself.

Over two hundred years, Nashville has formed a palpabale legacy centered around family. Traditions are passed down between generations, who celebrate heartache alongside joy as equal birthrights. Like all well-established Southerners, they also know how to take care of strangers.

Later, when I asked to close my tab at The Hermitage Hotel, the bartender smiled and said, “Don’t worry, darlin’, it’s on me. Come see us again sometime.”

Admittedly, it was just a glass of sweet tea, but at that hotel, it would have been five bucks, plus tax and tip—the damned thing came with its own personal carafe of simple syrup. In Starbucks, they charge you eighty cents for an extra dollop of cream cheese.

As I sat in the cool oak-paneled bar of the Hermitage, I overheard two well-muscled young men practicing a speech for their brother’s wedding as they shotgunned beers.

“Jim, you’ve blazed a trail for this family; the two of us have always looked up to you. You’ve taught us that communication is the most important thing. We admire you and Christine for the strength of your faith and for the importance you’ve placed on family, love and commitment, even through a long distance relationship, which was hard on both of you.”

I smiled and imbibed a mouthful of tea so sweet that my teeth ached. They continued for a few more lines until one brother reminded the other that barrage wasn’t said like marriage.

“Hm. That’s kind of a hard word. Maybe I should change it,” he said, crossing it out. “What’s another word for barrage?”

“I dunno, just keep going.”

“Right. Anyway. Hey, how is this sounding so far?” the younger brother asked the bartender. She nodded.

“Okay. Jim, there have also been times where we haven’t followed your example: the frosted tips you sported in high school, your love of Snoop Dogg and your affinity for complex carbohydrates, for instance.”

The bartender and I stifled snickers; I watched the NFL draft out of the corner of my eye.

“But, like Christine, we’ve come to love all of you. Jim, we couldn’t be more proud of you and what you’ve accomplished. Now, we are happy to welcome Christine into our family as the sister we’ve always wanted. We’ll pray that the two of you live a long and happy life together in the good times and the bad. Congratulations—we love you.”

They hooted and high-fived each other, polishing off their tallboys as they ordered another round. “I can’t wait to see Aunt Lacey and Uncle John,” they declared, discussing all of the cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and friends who were flying to Nashville for the wedding. Their parents had reserved one of the nearby Baptist churches for the ceremony. The boys proudly discussed their tuxedoes and new dress shoes, looking forward to dancing with pretty girls all evening.

The ceremonies for both my marriage and its dissolution were intensely intimate. I couldn’t fathom performing a personal rite in front of a church full of hundreds of people… then again, I hadn’t grown up in a large family.

As they slapped each other on the back, practicing their speech about Jim and Christine again, I wondered what it would be like to be part of their close-knit Southern clan—the kind who gossiped and bickered about each other, who held reunions and barbecues as often as baptisms and communion ceremonies, whose brothers would say in all earnestness that they’d be praying for you—not because they were religious freaks, but because it was a loving gesture.

As the only child of a quiet Midwestern family, large Southern families have always fascinated and frightened me. The way that they barge into each other’s personal lives feels big and intrusive. Loud. Bossy. Boisterous. Overwhelming. Loving.

I folded a couple bills to tip the bartender, counting the members of my own family who were already dead, some much earlier than expected. As I stepped back into the muggy sunshine, I thought that a life—and a family—like Jim and Christine had in Nashville might not be so bad after all.

[Inspired by a recent trip to Nashville, Tennessee, this essay is an excerpt from my work in progress, "Hidden City Diaries."]

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May 13, 2012

Silver

By Gabriela Denise Frank

The thing is, I want to like Nashville, but my time here has been hard.

I feel like I should begin by waxing romantic about my first trip to Music City, but none of my experiences—either before or since yesterday afternoon—can eclipse Rachel’s words:

“Gabriela, I just saw that you hit my car in the driveway. I want to put it out there so that we can deal with it when you get back tonight.”

I blame the silver hair.

I think it turned during the twenty-four hours prior to that intractable crunch, a once-ginger strand woven into the brown. My friends began to discover their grays long ago at premature ages. To me, the coarse, spidery strands earned in their twenties were anomalies rather than signs of aging.

Approaching forty, my first gray had yet to appear. I’ve taken it as a sign that old age remains far off and I have plenty of time ahead. It was an implicit confirmation that I might outlive my mother, who died at forty-five. After all, gray hair isn’t about vanity for me, but acknowledging irrefutable proof of my mortality.

Other signs of aging happen so gradually that they’re easy to ignore, like the crepe paper lines under my eyes, which have been there since my late teens. Each morning and night, I spackle them with avocado eye cream.

Light injuries sustained from yoga and weightlifting seem like part of being athletic, not old. My carpal tunnel aches can be explained by a poorly situated desk. Even my hands, whose veins and creases are now more prominent on my fair skin, look comfortingly like those of my favorite aunt.

But a gray hair (or, in my case, silver)—when it appears out of nowhere, it can’t be denied—not even by me.

I remember snuggling back against Aunt Ellen on her leather sofa in Redondo Beach, California, when I was a teenager. My whole life, I worshipped her. She doesn’t plays by the rules, but is always sweet about it. Her face lights up under her long brown bangs when she laughs, which is often. She smokes Marlboro Lights 100s on the hour, but the smell never clings to her.

Even today, she calls me Little Bean.

She would let me lean into her and entwine my hands through hers as we sat under a lap blanket to fight the ocean chill as we watched television. I wanted to be like her so much; I even wished my hands were like hers: long, knobby and elegant. Even today, her skin thinned by age and cigarette smoke, I think her fingers are lovely and exotic—even her thumb, which I’ve never seen whole, thanks to a treacherous boat window in her youth.

Unlike my mother, she kept her nails ultra-short and painted in daring shades of aubergine and onyx. I recall looking down at the youthful plumpness of my sixteen-year-old fingers, wondering eagerly when mine would look like hers.

Why is it that we grow up desiring the patina of age, not knowing to appreciate being unmarked for those precious few years?

The flight to Nashville—both of them—may have been my Rubicon. Before that, I basked in pool of much-needed sunshine in the Atlanta airport between flights, then found myself next to Phil, a delightful Virginian transplant to Nashville. We Seattleites are often too shy-snobby to chit-chat on planes, but Southerners can coax us out of our stoic silence.

Phil and I fell into conversation before the plane began to taxi; soft and warm, his accent comforted me, though I didn’t know yet that I needed it. Why are Southern notes are so dulcet? I wondered as he spoke. After my first day in Nashville, I suspect that sweet tea is one reason. Here, they imbibe simple syrup and release it as honeyed words.

Forty minutes into our turbulent flight, Phil and I exchanged concerned glances as the pilot began to descend. We had been circling for some time due to bad weather, and it didn’t feel as if things were improving.

“Humph,” he said, “Look at that.”

We peered out of the oval window to see a wall of dark clouds striding towards us with intention. Our plane suddenly felt tiny—a wobbling cigar tossed from an open window. My breath caught when the pilot pulled back on the throttle, my heart thudding to a pause. A moment later, a thick gulp of blood pulsed forward… then another….then another… then another, like pigs in a python as we bobbed in mid-air.

We touched down in Chattanooga twenty minutes later after a bumpy descent, relieved to be alive. I reminded myself: This is what it’s like to be in the South. They have tornadoes and devastating floods here. They have baseball-sized hail. People actually die from these storms.

When we made it safely to Nashville on our second attempt, two hours after our scheduled arrival, Phil bade me goodbye at the rental car counter. It seemed a good omen to meet a friend early in the adventure; little did I know that much of my trip would be spent obsessing over impending insurance claims, waves of guilt and a gulf of inner castigation for hastily reversing my Dodge Caliber up a grassy slope.

One choice—a single move—would have made all the difference.

When I finally arrived at Rachel and Bill’s in East Nashville, it was eleven at night and I was starving and disoriented. If not for GPS, I would never have made it. The freeways were a writhing ball of snakes: a single thoroughfare is the 1, the 41 and 70 South, all of which co-mingle to become the 24, the 65, the 155 and the 440.

It’s amazing that anyone can find their way home considering how much they drink and drive here.

Upon receiving a tour of their home, I realized that I might not be comfortable renting a room from strangers, though it was $200 too late to change my mind. After 10 years in Seattle, I’ve come to cultivate my alone time to a wicked extent, an unforeseen side-effect of living in the Pacific Northwest. There’s a reason that people like me are drawn to its introspective charm—the solitude feels familiar, comforting—but it grows out of control like ivy. We desire more light even as we create our own unquenchable inner solitude.

Like the allure of sad country songs in Nashville, when loneliness is familiar, gray skies feel good.

I contrasted shared Seattle seclusion with the boisterous scene at the Village Pub down the street on Riverside Drive. As I devoured my sausage-stuffed pretzel with sauerkraut and mustard—the first of many carb-heavy meals—I considered the differences between Nashville culture and that which has become my own:

…They drink beer with whiskey back like it’s water
…If there’s a screen nearby, they’re watching a sports show—guaranteed
…When they call you ma’am, it doesn’t mean “you’re old”
…When they call you darlin’ it doesn’t sound sexist
…When people greet you, they meet your eyes and smile like they mean it
…Men always say, “ladies first” even when we weren’t

The next afternoon, hours before my car struck Rachel’s, I entered a new world: Hatch Show Print posters set on toothy paper, the humid press of downtown Nashville, the classic red bricks of Ryman Auditorium and live music blaring onto sidewalks crowded with tourists and buskers.

Underneath it all, I was distracted by a tiny tug on my heart that would later pull me off course.

That morning, when my first silver hair appeared, it altered my perception of the future. At that moment, I knew that there was little time and no turning back.

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May 5, 2012

Nashville

By Gabriela Denise Frank

From my passing car I see row houses, stone cottages and antebellum mansions
Outside, sultry breezes make waves near my chin, leave dew on my cheeks
The gusts are perfumed with humidity, barbecue smoke and
Live melodies that pour from open windows.
Nashville streets are full of dreamers… and dreams.

Under a buzzing neon Bluebird, they take the stage strumming.
Guitar frets, first sets and shaky auditions at Writers Night—
The kind that sometimes lead to contracts and gold records
Or flop sweat and careers as valets and waitresses.
Sometimes, they lead back to Minnesota or New Jersey.

In the shadow of a concrete temple, springing forth from reclining gods and goddesses,
Athena rises from Zeus’s head, Gorgons on her shield and breast,
Safeguarding Music City from her stage inside the Parthenon in the Athens of the South
Where today we worship Chet and Dolly, Reba and Garth, June Carter Cash and The Man in Black.
Guitars and crosses arise from the landscape—the Jesus and Mary chain of the Bible Belt.

Two hundred years:
Of slavery, plantations and horses, ballrooms and stagecoaches, and
Wood-paneled men’s clubs with clay tile ceilings bleached white.
They dance reels around statues and columns, drinking sweet tea and bourbon
As moonlight shines through the stained glass of an old train station, now a hotel.

And I—a child of the West—
Find my footsteps falling where men’s bodies once crumpled to the earth,
Bloody and shattered and dying on the banks of the Cumberland,
Lead bullets leaching poison into their rasping chests
As the river once leached industrial waste and sewage onshore, now …all of it… wiped clean.

The only wars I know of are spoken in songs:
Tragedy scratched from guitar strings and warbled in bars
In accents of longing, soothing me, as they tell stories of
Heroes and hearts broken and dying, entwined,
And families who always welcome them home, no matter how long they’ve been gone.

Nashville:
Where women with spiky mullets meet tanned, muscled young men in polo shirts and short pants,
Where layers of freshly inked Hatch Show posters paper over walls and windows and even each other
Where fried okra, fried green tomatoes and fried soft shell crabs make a delicious but drowsy meal
Where church bells clang and wingtips tap and generous hips sway to a 3/4 beat
Where a pool of spotlight beckons us to the stage—closer to hope than we’ve ever been.

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April 24, 2012

Feeling It

By Gabriela Denise Frank

Americans have a funny relationship with time.

We don’t necessarily honor it—we manage it. We read countless books and attend seminars, struggling to achieve an efficient management of time, as if industriousness can harness something so (pardon the pun) timeless.

We prize efficiency and effectiveness… we’re so very American.

Though our lives are a tiny speck in the continuum, we believe that we can somehow constrain it. Cultures rooted in ancient traditions—Roman, Greek, Persian—don’t apprehend time in this way. For Americans, it’s dollars per minute; we seem to want to get through time, one experience to the next, rather than inhabit it.

Civita, for instance, is all about letting time be—in Civita, time is tufa stone. In Rome, time is honey. In New York, time is a guy masturbating on the subway—over quick and on to the next dirty thing. In Seattle, time is a brisk walk to the waterfront on a sunny April day; after all, if we don’t move fast, the sun goes away. For us, time is weaving through waddling crowds of parents and children on their way to Seattle Center to celebrate the beginning of The Next 50.

Time is open windows letting in 60-degree air at Toulouse Petit, couples drinking creamy iced lattes on Adirondack chairs at Caffe Ladro, waiting for the #18 bus in shorts in front of Kidd Valley and trotting the dog out for a walk at Myrtle Edwards Park. We enjoy the moments, then they’re over.

Much of my time in Seattle is meetings, lunches, handshakes and breakfast presentations in hotel ballrooms. It consists of design crits and charrettes where ideas become converging lines on plotter paper—or nothing—and proposals with phrases like “design development” and “construction documents.”

Sitting in the dark of the now-reopened Uptown Theater last week, I struggled with time bending fast and slow. I was alternately thrilled and frustrated with “Pina” in 3D, a performance documentary about Pina Bausch’s legacy as a dancer and choreographer.

For me, as an introduction to her work, it was both a challenging and eye-opening way to spend an hour and 43 minutes. Her dancers took time to new places; in their bodies, I saw some of the yoga poses I do on Sundays brought to ethereal animation. Bones and muscles made symphonies in ways that I never knew bodies could express. It made me consider the body as a vehicle for containing time through movement.

Pina’s work requires patience, it demands so much time. A single act unfolds in twenty minutes rather than three. You have to be comfortable investing a slice of your life to absorb her slow-moving stories. The hardest parts for me were to see how richly she painted plot lines with her dancers while at the same time wishing that she had gotten us there sooner. Would her performances have impacted me in the same way if they had progressed quickly?

What is faster? Is faster better? It alleviates tension, but are we really looking for easy relief in art or in life? Aren’t we actually seeking moments of tension, exploration, and haunting desire and then—only from that process—a sense of fulfillment?

We Americans have little patience for such drawn-out cycles. We have self-service gas pumps and self-check-out at grocery stores. Part of it is a shut-up strategy: You think you’re so smart? You be the checker and see how fast you go. The other part is designed to answer our desire to control time: You want to keep your hand on the pump and inject your car with petrol at your own speed? Fine. Have at it.

The older I get, the less I believe that I can harness time—some small moments remain with me forever and larger ones only for a while. How long will I recall the couple blinking at each other across the table at Caffe Fiore, his mouth slowly making the words, “I just don’t feel it,” tinged with discomfort, perhaps fearing that she would make a scene?

She smoothed her hair behind her ears. “Okay…” she said, frozen. He had taken her off guard.

“I’m sorry,” he said lamely, his eyes darting back and forth. Her only response to was hold a small, silent smile. She waited for him to go on. As if she had accused him of something, he offered, “I’m just trying to be honest.”

“Okay,” she said. Her face continued to hold that smile. It felt brittle in my peripheral vision, but it remained in place as he continued.

He said something like, “You’re an amazing person,” this decade’s version of, It’s not you, it’s me. For those of us who have been on both the giving and receiving end of those words, we know what “amazing,” means; it means “not amazing enough.” They sat blinking at each other for a very long moment—Civita long, Pina Bausch long—then he said, “I’m gonna go.”

“Okay,” she said again, opening her laptop as he gathered his things. I wondered if he had planned to break up with her at a coffee shop in front of people. The way she greeted him when he came in, I’d say that she didn’t see it coming.

Why had he bothered to set down his things and step into the restroom before he delivered the news? That shit takes at least a moment of forethought. After all, it’s awkward to ask someone to watch your stuff while you pee after you dump them. I felt irritated on her behalf.

I’d like to think that, if he had gone to the bathroom after he said he “didn’t feel it” rather than before, she would have walked out in his absence. Instead, she sat and he exited, taking his motorcycle jacket and helmet with him, leaving two empty seats that an Indian couple took, after which I soon departed.

How long had it taken him to figure out that he didn’t feel it? I could tell from her deep inhale after he left that it was more than a single date. My heart went out to her.

As we sat there typing away on our keyboards, the corners of her mouth remained slightly upturned, her smile a mask of composure. She would probably go home and cry later, but she kept it together as long as she worked, acting as if no one else heard the exchange. Time marched forward, but the muscles of her face held the stinging moments of surprise.

She remained on my mind for the rest of the afternoon as I walked down to the waterfront, watching happy couples canoodling on the grassy slopes at Olympic Sculpture Park. The brave expression frozen on her lips—I’ve worn it enough that I won’t soon forget seeing it on someone else.

Time brings many gifts, but it isn’t a friend. Happy moments are fleeting and hard times seem to last forever when we’re in the thick of them. Time always dumps us, lumbering on and leaving behind a trail of what we had when we came into this world: bones, muscles, brains and heart, all in search of meaning and movement.

I’m curious to see how time feels in Nashville this coming week. Visions of a concrete Parthenon and a never-ending series of concert halls humming with live music fill my mind. When I think of time in the South, I assume that it’s slower than in Seattle where moments feel crisp, even icy. Distinct.

In the days before I depart, the idea of Nashville consists of sweaty glasses of lemonade and iced tea, guitar strings and warbly voices, muddy water spilling over winding riverbanks, tree-lined streets where houses with porches face each other and the sounds of a slow, warm drawl pulling out words like overstretched taffy, which my ears ache to hear.

I’ll give time one thing: despite its fickle nature, my limbs still long to dance with it. My body unabashedly aches to embrace it in all its forms—to really feel it—to inhabit and remember the shift in my perception of the world as my body incorporates pieces of Seattle and Detroit, Las Vegas and New Orleans, Nashville and Boston… and wherever else I go.

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April 12, 2012

Dancing Shoes

By Gabriela Denise Frank

When I think of my childhood, I often want to scream.

The urge flickered in me Friday night as I stepped up to the line of broken tape on the bar room floor, four paces from the dart board. I tried to distract myself with humor and bravado, with pints of Manny’s and with the classic funk that THEmediocres played on stage.

It didn’t work.

I curled my palm around three yellow darts, strutting past my friends with a swagger that said how confident I was. “Watch this, bitches,” I said, raising an eyebrow before focusing my eyes to aim. Inside, a small voice pleaded, Please don’t watch this.

I felt the weight of the first dart leave my hand instants before a rush of thankfulness when it stuck. It wasn’t just the three of them looking at me, but most of the regulars at Poggie Tavern who watched, their eyes heavy on my shoulder blades.

I threw the second dart and Kristen let out a whoop, jumping into the air. I didn’t care what my score was, or even know how the game worked, honestly. All I cared about was getting the darts into the board. I dreaded the thought of missing.

I rolled the last dart in my fingertips and smiled. Not because I was happy, but because I wanted them to think I was at ease. I glanced around at the barflies, all of whom were much older—gray-haired and pattern-balding men with paunchy beer guts next to wizened old ladies with creases seared deep from decades of smoking. They were the reason that all the bar stools sagged.

Then there was us: four late 30-somethings with whiskered denim and form-fitting shirts that showed off our trim bodies. We ate salads; they ate Funyuns. They watched us closely, interlopers who had conscripted their banged-up dart game.

I held my breath and let the last dart fly from my hand, looking away with relief as soon as I heard it hit home. When I looked up, I couldn’t believe my luck. There it was, still wavering from the force of my throw, right in the bullseye. There was a gleam in Matt’s eye as he double high-fived me, saying “Daaaaamn girl!”

I shrugged and acted as if it was nothing, mugging for an invisible camera. I prayed that no one noticed my hand shaking as I drank from the pint glass, already apprehensive about my next turn.

In that instant, I cursed my formative years, which I had spent avoiding my father and the blistering Arizona sun. Together, they sent me running inside an air-conditioned ranch house to get lost in books rather than exploring what I could do outside. Over time, I learned to over-inhabit my mind and under-inhabit my body.

Looking back, it makes me damned angry.

This disconnect—finding more comfort in thinking, reading or writing instead of playing or doing—comes up often as an adult, especially in Seattle where people climb mountains, run trails, ski, bike and snowboard, and lob all manner of balls at each other. Underneath my sometimes forced participation in these activities lurks my fear of heights, falling and revealing my utter lack of coordination. I even cringe at small feats… like throwing darts in front of an audience.

Public speaking, which is in itself a physical sport, has always felt equally uncomfortable to me. That same deep-seated apprehension is one of the reasons that I applied for the Jack Straw writers program; it’s something that I’m struggling with as I learn to reshape what I write for performance rather than reading.

Let’s face it: writers are cowards to a degree. Most of us prefer to work behind the scenes. Sharing my thoughts in a book or my blog may seem brave (and on a certain level is), but I’m far removed from my readers’ reactions despite their ability to post comments. I’m broadcasting rather than conversing with or physically entertaining someone.

Learning to perform stories that engage a live audience… that takes coordination. It takes training and skill. It takes guts. To perform, you have to condition like an athlete. Sometimes, like at my practice reading, you have to fail a little to improve.

We gathered at Jack Straw Productions in the U-District on Saturday for our workshop with Elizabeth Austen of KUOW. As she walked us through methods for practicing and performing our readings, she addressed our fears in ways that I wasn’t sure someone else could.

She didn’t sugarcoat our anxieties. Instead, she named them and gave them validity. She acknowledged feeling naked and, at times, paralyzed with fear herself. She said that this was a common amongst writers—also known as shy people who push pages of well-crafted thoughts under other people’s doors (…or computer screens.)

She shared her own experiences and how she continues to work through fear. From the outside, she seemed perfectly at ease; no one would have guessed what she wrestled with inside. As I studied Elizabeth, her mid-calf Frye boots planted firmly on the ground, I no longer felt alone in what I’ve always considered as the stunted childhood of a quiet kid who didn’t know how to play.

After hearing me read, I wasn’t surprised when Elizabeth suggested that I practice performing my work while doing something physical: take my essays line by line and climb stairs, dance or just move. She was somehow able to pinpoint the root of my fear, though I hadn’t shared a word of it. Actually, it scared me that she could perceive it, as I usually have people fooled.

I think she knew that, too. Elizabeth looked directly but softly into my eyes and said, “Wear comfortable flat-bottomed shoes—do all that you can to ground yourself, to be in your body. The nervousness you feel is your body giving you the energy you need to perform the task at hand.”

Trying to integrate my mind and body is what my life’s struggle has always been about, but I never expected that writing might be a way of doing so.

“It may bring you ease,” she said, “to remember that, while the performance requires you, it’s not about you. You are the vehicle and not the subject, even when you’re performing something personal.”

Hearing her say that reminded me of a man we couldn’t help staring at the night before at Poggie Tavern. Writhing like a charmed snake, he was drawn past us toward the live music, slithering this way and that, his long brittle hair reminiscent of Neil Young, his papery skin like Keith Richards. He was a hard-ridden late 50-something, the kind that still had a little muscle tone under his unbuttoned shirt. Maybe he fixed motorcycles or drove cranes.

He wore homemade denim leg warmers over black pants and layered several long necklaces over his bare tanned chest. When his movements pulled his shirt open, the chains and medallions jangled together, brushing over his chest hair and nipples, which stood erect. We couldn’t see his eyes at first under his mirrored sunglasses. As he whipped his head down, he removed them with a sweep of his arm, like it was all part of the act. It probably was.

Kristen and I stood transfixed, smiling not so much as to make fun of him, but because he was so wild and unfettered. He was a good dancer, or—more aptly—his body and the music danced with each other. Though there were other people swaying nearby, all eyes moved to him.

What I realized was, his body was telling a story that we couldn’t have perceived without him. The music was around all of us, but it wasn’t until we saw what he could do with it that we truly understood the energy behind it. His dance compelled us. It made people get out of their chairs and join him.

I respected that he was so overcome by the story of the music that he freed his body with it. He was a conduit for an experience that entertained us; it required him, but it wasn’t about him. It wasn’t about perfectly executing the dance, either; if he was self-conscious about making mistakes, we couldn’t tell.

Instead, his dance was about sharing something that we could all identify with and wanted to connect to ourselves. True to Elizabeth’s rule, I remembered that he wore a pair of flat cowboy boots that kept him grounded between every twist and reel.

On the way out of our session, I thanked Elizabeth and thought, I may not be at his level when I present my first reading at Jack Straw next month, but I sure as hell plan on wearing my Timberlands.

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March 25, 2012

Between Falling and Flying

By Gabriela Denise Frank


When (and if) the sun shines in Seattle in March, one needs not travel far to find a different city. It’s less of a hidden place and more of an elusive overlay that descends upon us unawares.

Though we might protest it, Seattleites are secretly in love with the pain of our winter darkness, if not for its own allure, then because it sends us fluttering to the inconsistent light—an excuse to indulge. Did you know that it was supposed to be sunny today? we ask each other breathlessly, as if good weather is a secret.

How long will it last? A few hours or a day? We take long lunches and ditch out of work early to bask with friends over pints on someone’s patio. We stand on the outside deck on the ferry ride home. We peel off our fleece and wool sweaters to reveal fish underbelly-white shoulders that redden after fifteen minutes in direct light.

That’s the thing about Seattle: the inconsistency of the weather is what we complain about, but it’s also what keeps us here. Living in the Pacific Northwest is a constant exercise in fragility and change. The perfect pool of sunlight happens for five minutes, then a vicious blast of freezing air clouds the sky. Hours later, the horizon first glows yellow and aubergine, then we’re sprinkled with a cool mist and the sky unfolds into darkness.

Knowing that each of these experiences won’t last long makes them that much more precious.

Along with the promise of lake and ocean waters, the mercurial weather is part of what drew me here from Arizona. It may sound daft—especially to my solar-starved neighbors—but 350 sunny days a year becomes depressing. Having the needle stick on unwavering sunshine may look like paradise, but over time, the weather suggests an unspoken hopelessness in its consistency.

My recent investigations into the concept of wabi-sabi have helped me put this into perspective. It is said that if an object, person or experience evokes a spiritual longing within us, it belongs to wabi-sabi, whose tenets are based on the fact that nothing lasts, nothing is ever finished and nothing is perfect.

Last week, one of the interns at work made a presentation that included a quote by Leonard Koren who writes about the incorporation of wabi-sabi in art, architecture and design:

The closer things get to non-existence, the more exquisite and evocative they become.

Greg commented that, for him, the concept of wabi-sabi was embodied in the place between falling and flying. Thinking over the meaningful events and eras of my life, I know what he means. Moments where something was lost, damaged, or forever changed—and the journeys leading up to those moments—are the most impactful.

Though we might wish for an occasional do-over, we often conclude that the gestalt of our experience is worth the bumps, bruises and even significant losses that we encounter. In wabi-sabi, we flourish like newborn saplings from scorched earth, always growing and changing, alive but flawed and destined to remain so.

That’s why organized religion as a concept has always proved troublesome for me. What feels more true to the human condition: pursuit of a flawless paradise or the desire to explore the unknown, to test boundaries? Crave stability though we might, we are none the less attracted to people and places that offer us the greatest opportunity to navigate between self-reliance, inspiration and failure—not perfection. They stimulate us but they don’t attempt to, nor are they designed to, save us.

In my opinion, there is no saving necessary, no perfect paradise that we should strive for—doing so misses the point. Instead, if we are strong enough in our sense of self to immerse within it, there is an abundance of grace in the impermanent, imperfect world around us. Each day affords opportunities to discover the exquisite beauty of not smoothing damaged edges or attempting to create or bogart perfection.

Alongside that which does not last and that which is not perfect, we can embody the elusive third element of wabi-sabi: that which is never finished. Our lives are a flawed process, a combination of fleeting experiences that each contribute a layer of patina to the original composition of our selves.

Now that I’m beginning to understand wabi-sabi, I can see that it forms the foundation of my writing practice. It’s woven intrinsically into my desire to travel the country seeking experiences that feed into and describe the making of a modern-day American.

I don’t have an expectation of the quality of these journeys (“good” or “bad”) nor am I trying to create a perfect experience of any place. The last thing I want is to come away seeing only Disney-esque veneers. When I say “hidden city,” what I hope to find is an ever-changing menagerie of facets and imperfections that make these places what they are and contribute to our identity as a nation.

With every departure I make with you in the coming year—the place between falling and flying—I predict that we’ll focus less on the smooth stretches of road and instead revel in the unpredictable twists along the way… and notion that our journey together is always far from finished.

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March 17, 2012

Stepping Outside the Circle

By Gabriela Denise Frank


Cannon Beach, Oregon
10 March 2012 / 7:35 am PST

In spite of wise words by John Steinbeck, I originally came to Cannon Beach to write the prologue of this book rather than the opening chapter.

Though I’ve not embarked on or chronicled my first journey, I needed to produce an essay for the Jack Straw anthology. My brain quickly wrapped the conundrum in a tidy bow: take a weekend to write the prologue.

What nagged at me was the truth in John’s quote:

“A prologue is written last but placed first to explain the book’s shortcomings and to ask the reader to be kind. But a prologue is also a note of farewell from the writer to his book. For years the writer and his book have been together—friends or bitter enemies but very close as only love and fighting can accomplish.

Then suddenly the book is done. It is a kind of death. This is the requiem.”

I experienced that feeling when writing the prologue to my first book in 2010. Summoning a faint memory of yolky Italian sunlight, I said goodbye to my two-month residency in Civita di Bagnoregio on a chilly night in Seattle. It was relentlessly rainy—a dark, bitter farewell to what had been the warmest, most productive time in my life.

Today, tucked away in a toasty cottage on an equally dank night on the northern coast of Oregon, I’m standing at the edge of a new journey—not the end. There’s no sense to be made and nothing to make sense of. In fact, it’s the first time in months that I have left sense-making behind; no grocery lists, no work (it’s waiting in piles at the office), and no companions.

This is a season of beginnings, not conclusions, though there is stage-setting to be done. While I’ve sequestered myself for functional reasons, there are also philosophical ones: understanding where the coming months will take me—where they will take us—is why I’ve come. It’s time to dream up questions, not answers.

This book began as a wisp of an idea two years ago as I prepared for my Italian sojourn… something about investigating the great cities of my home country. Then, I left the United States behind and fell in love with a tiny hill town founded 2,500 years ago by ancient Etruscans. Each day, as I carried groceries on my back up and down a steep footbridge, pausing to greet my neighbors in Italian, my desire to return home disappeared completely.

Eventually, the fellowship ended and I did return. For the first time, I hated being home.

American food tasted flavorless, like ash. I dreaded speaking English and I even loathed Seattle. A month later, at the end of November, I exited the bus on First Avenue near the Lusty Lady during its final days of operation. I was daydreaming about an Albanian man I met in Venice when I turned the corner of Harbor Steps, headed down to my office on Pier 56.

As I began my descent, I was pelted by a brutal gust of rain, a slap of reality so brisk that I gasped. It wasn’t only the dismal weather. That was when I admitted that I was really, truly no longer in Italy; pretending could no longer make it so. By the time I made it to work, drenched and forlorn, I couldn’t tell the difference between tears and raindrops dripping from my eyelashes. I knew I was ready to write my prologue.

Thankfully, the brutality of my feelings faded with time and America worked its way back into my heart. In March 2011, I traveled to Detroit to spend time with my uncle, who was dying of liver and lung cancer; I returned in April for his funeral. The assembly line of his life made me feel raw: his 40-year career at the Chrysler plant, the physical pain of his demise, the bleakness of the Midwest and its endless bingo halls and urban blight…but I was intrigued at the kind of place that wears its strife so well. After all, this is where I came from.

While visiting friends, I was romanced by the honeyed warmth of Austin: salsa and chips, barbecue, the dulcet notes of Texas drawl, Zilker Springs Park, being called darlin’ and sugar, sipping hoppy beer and tapping my toe to Slaid Cleaves at the Saxon Pub, and hearing phrases like, “Aunt Stephani is upstairs takin’ her beauty pill.”

My greatest surprise came during a rendezvous with a college friend in Las Vegas—a city that I had written off after a series of regrets, too many cigarettes and blistering hangovers. This time, old vices looked new; the ugliness of Sin City was as captivating as its pimped-out beauty. After a long walk, I dined al fresco on crepes with fresh fruit on Las Vegas Boulevard, watching passersby waddle from casino to casino. My thoughts were poised on America.

Last summer, I returned to Italy, too. I fought the August swelter to reunite with friends in Civita and brushed elbows with the paparazzi at the Venice Film Festival. In moments conjured from a dream, I found myself walking arm-in-arm with Denis, the man who I had daydreamed of while descending Harbor Steps into reality. We wandered together through that floating labyrinth, pausing on bridges and falling in love. As I boarded the vaporetto at the end of my stay, I turned back to find Denis standing on the dock; he leaned against the rail, smiling. He waved and I waved back.

I was finally ready to come home.

Like my trip to Cannon Beach, I had returned to Italy for reasons both logical and esoteric; I needed to close that chapter of my life. On the flight back, I transferred through JFK and my heart surged at hearing the TSA agents bark orders at us with accents from Brooklyn, Queens, and New Jersey. Something in those harsh vowels felt like home.

They were, like me, American.

Europe and I have had a good run for a decade. I know that I’ll be back, but now it’s time to explore that which is both domestic and foreign: the country of my birth.

——————-
11:58 am PST
For a while, the driving concept behind Hidden City Diaries had a patriotic bent (can I love America as much as I love Europe?) with a hint of Jane Jacobs (what elements makes a great city great?) It was influenced by my time in Civita (find a local patron with connections) and my experience as a blogger (use personal storytelling and social media to inspire dialogue.)

Over many months, I’ve refined this idea to a personal investigation of the space where people and place unite—the hidden cities inside each of us. How does place make us who we are? Why are we drawn to certain cities, and what do they say about us? Where does our psychological landscape end and the sidewalk begin?

As a member of Gen-X, I’m part of a so-called Lost Generation that author John Ulrich describes as one “without identity who face an uncertain, ill-defined and perhaps hostile future.” I’ve come to see that exploring these questions, finding out what lies beneath, studying how we’re all lost to a degree, and discovering the threads that connect us as a people is the kind of searching I was born to do.

Hidden City Diaries isn’t a tell-all in the sense of travel writing or traditional memoir, but it is an investigation into who we are and how we are made within the context of modern-day America. I hope that my discoveries reveal something true to readers, no matter where they’re from or what generation they belong to.

We are detectives peering into the mysteries of our own origins. Ours are but a handful of stories amongst billions.

——————-
3:12 pm PST

Hidden City Diaries. I debated the name for some time (Is “Diaries” too dramatic?) but if this shit ain’t confessional, then I don’t know what is.

Yesterday afternoon, upon buckling my seat belt back in Seattle, I breathed deeply and whispered the name out loud. It seemed fitting that a collection of essays based on my travels should begin with a journey itself, even if this trip isn’t about exploring Cannon Beach, but about invoking a pause.

Once exhaled, I pulled out of the parking lot in Pioneer Square and hit gridlock as I eased onto the interstate with only the voices of Madonna, the Eagles and Lucinda Williams to guide me. I felt excited. Apprehensive. Frustrated at the slow and go… then calm, like I had all the time in the world. I brought only a few belongings and, with every minute, a growing sense of lightness.

Rain coated the road and my windshield, then it let up. It sprinkled again; then ceased. This went on for a hundred miles. I began the journey at Exit 164 on I-5, and headed south towards Exit 40 to Kelso/Longview. Those were a long two-and-a-half hours filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic and never-ending neon signs announcing off-ramp strip mall retail and fast food.

It wasn’t until I approached the Lewis and Clark Bridge, with its elegant latticed trusses of gray, cream and white, that my trip began to feel epic. As we ascended, I could smell the massive piles of cut timber on the shores of the river below. All became gray: water, landscape and sky.

In a single lane, hundreds of us traveled upwards, leaving our worries behind in Washington as we passed a small green sign that read, “Now entering Oregon.” No passports or security checkpoints, only a humble welcome. The road twisted and turned, becoming Highway 30W; my heart raced when I took the curves at 60 miles per hour, thinking, This is the farthest I’ve ever driven alone.

Surrounded by evergreen thickets, each branching road seemed to lead to rustic campsites without running water. After ten years in downtown Seattle, I felt out of my element; yet, what is a journey if not relinquishing the familiar for the unknown?

Beyond the Oregon border, temperatures dropped and the expanse of freeways on-ramps and gas stations fell away. There were two lines of cars—one in, one out—and an occasional passing lane for speed demons who took the snaking roads at 80 miles an hour. Mists fell low and the road was ensconced in alternating marshes and forest. I pictured how the Oregon coast might have looked thousands of years ago, still under water, muddy and fertile with prehistoric fish poking at the muck with their giant barbels.

I remembered The Goonies as I drove through Astoria with its New England-style homes nestled into the cliffs. The heady charm of inns and fishermen called for me to linger, but the night was falling quickly, and I was miles from Cannon Beach.

South of Astoria on Highway 101, the road turned away from city lights towards obscurity, accompanied only by yellow and white lines and a series of green signs that didn’t provide guidance, only suggested that there were other paths. There was no hint as to their outcome or what travelers might find along the way.

The sky turned ultramarine, then fell to pitch, making it impossible to discern trees from sky from ground. The mists rose again, splattering my windshield with millions of pin-prick drops. Fog billowed in from the forest as if propelled by a giant breath, sweeping blindness across the road. There was nothing but me and my headlights, feeble lamps against the claustrophobia of a heavy velvet curtain hurtling towards me, a lone actor on stage.

I was on board a ferry to the underworld.

Half an hour later, the sign for Sunset Boulevard stood as a dim beacon of relief. When I finally reached the Hidden Villa Cottages on Van Buren, my stomach growled but my head was clear. After leaving my belongings inside Unit 2, the Seashell Cottage, I found a small fire-lit bistro. A glass of cabernet in hand, I leaned back in my chair, exhausted, listening to the waitstaff speculate who might have knocked up a local girl.

While I sipped my wine, dreaming of crawling into bed, I doodled in my notebook. First, I drew a small circle with an arrow pointing to the words, “This is your comfort zone.” Then I drew a larger circle with an arrow pointing to the words, “This is where the magic happens.”

I glanced at the facing page. A few days before, I had written a note about my impending trip: “Stepping outside the circle this weekend in Cannon Beach… Who am I and where do I come at this story from?”

All journeys require that we step outside a place of familiarity to discover something. We realize that, the more we leave our creature comforts and predictability behind, the more open we are to understanding ourselves and the world around us. It’s a dichotomy: outside the bubble, we find perspective, yet inside the bubble is where we’re rooted, where our families, friends and careers thrive.

How many journeys are necessary to keep life fresh without becoming disruptive? Is there a point when all that contemplation and travel prevents us from establishing relationships or developing who we are?

I wondered how someone like Odysseus, the ultimate seeker, spent his days after returning home. Once the euphoria of resting in bed, embracing his wife, and eating his favorite meals had passed, was he content to remain—or did he tempt fate with sailing trips, hoping that winds might overcome his vessel again?

——————-
10:49 pm PST

Like Odysseus, perhaps, I’ve been in port too long. I can feel it that it’s time to get back out on the road, which leads back to my original question: what is it about places like Seattle or Cannon Beach—or Nashville or Boston—that makes us who we are?

Why do some people choose to live in small towns, suburbs or large cities? What do we learn from downtown streets, local cafes, skyscapers, victory gardens, working waterfronts and farms, urban cemeteries, sports fields, and homemade pie? How does this all fit into being “American” even if we haven’t visited most of the cities that make up our country?

Maybe it’s a ferry, a car or an Alaska Airlines flight, a divorce or a graduation, a marriage or a death… a childhood memory or a movie we’ve watched that takes us there. Somehow, each place that we see, touch, taste and smell becomes a part of who we are. As places pass into us, so we leave parts of ourselves behind like landmarks. We refine—and redefine—who we are by where we live and visit.

For me—a woman traveling alone in this chilly town, laying next to a roaring fire and a windy beach, down the street from Haystack Rock and a warm restaurant with a local band—I’m glad to have stepped outside the circle of my comfort zone. I’m grateful for the magic that happens when I least expect it, often far from home. Tomorrow, I’ll be back on the highway to Seattle. I’ll revel in the knowledge that it won’t be the last stop—that we’ll explore many cities together.

We’ll head to Nashville and Boston first, then Highway 101 in California and eventually, Santa Fe, Charleston, New York, Chicago, and Miami. We’ll even explore Seattle. It may be home, but there’s a hidden city underneath it… several, actually.

After all, home is what we make it. The barrier falls away quickly when we step out the front door; the world is our home, street by street and city by city. That’s why we find pieces of ourselves in every place that we go.

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March 11, 2012

Monoliths

By Gabriela Denise Frank

Ancient foundations
Monoliths and mankind stand
Defiant in the wind

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March 10, 2012

Cannon Beach

By Gabriela Denise Frank

The sound of water is everywhere here… in the mist as it sprinkles my face, the tinkling scale of a xylophone tapping on large and small puddles, sprayed in sheets of raindrops against the cottage, thrust against Haystack Rock by 50-mile-an-hour gusts, and in the gentle gurgling of a small fountain just outside my door.

With all this water, how is it possible that I feel thirsty?

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