Coast Starlight: Portland to San Francisco

Hour 0: Wilfs
It all starts at Wilfs Restaurant in Portland, Oregon. There I am: sitting in a booth with a friend who's come with unexpected gifts, an afternoon martini in hand, a kooky waiter, and then: “Final call for the Coast Starlight! All aboard!”

It is time I ride the rails.

Goodbyes outside, goodbyes inside, goodbyes at Gate 5. My face buried in his chest. Soon, I realize I have no map. Where, exactly, am I going?

Westward? Southward?
Both.
Yeah but what cities? Where, exactly?

My friend rushes off to find a map, comes back empty-handed, shrugging his shoulders. “Final call!” There is a train to catch. And anyway, since when have I cared where I'm going?

The conductor takes my ticket, tears it, points me to my train. My friend is not allowed on the platform, and when I walk onto it, dragging my luggage behind me, I walk alongside a double-decker metal monstrosity that looks too tall to balance on wheels. I am shrunken by the train, and I smile at the conductors at each open door, each in his conductor hat, each with a whistle, the step ladders at each door, how train-like it all is.

There is a script here, a platform scene. I paw for it. Do I turn around to look to see if my friend is still standing at Gate 5? Will he be there watching me? Will we wave at one another? Smile? Will he come onto the platform even though he is not allowed, pull me into a final embrace so as to bid a proper goodbye?

There's no such scene. I haven't the guts to turn around to see if he's there.

Hour 1: Eavesdropping
I am in seat 63 of the caboose, on the second level, in a window seat facing east. There is no one sitting next to me, not yet, and across the aisle are two guys in their early twenties who've just met one another. One guy has long hippie hair, seems the gentle sort. The other is wearing hipster eyeglasses, a kerchief round his neck. The hipster says to the hippie, “I'm from So. Cal. but I wanted to hitchhike cross-country, only my parents said it'd be too dangerous. Have you done that? Hitchhiked?”
The hippie says, “No.”
Hipster: “Yeah, I wanted to – bad – but the train's cool.”
“Yeah.”
“I thought Portland was boring. I can usually stir something up, but Portland sucked. I lived in Brooklyn, New York for a few months last year. Have you been to New York?”
“Nah.”
“Fuggin' great town. I lived there last summer – wintertime sucks.”
“How come?”
“It's cold, bro.”
“What happens in the winter?”
“Everything just sorta stops.”
“Really? New York?”
“I mean, there's stuff goin' on, but not really. Summertime's the shit – free concerts everywhere, and the chicks, man, the chicks are bangin'.”

Hour 2: Dreams of Hobo Grandeur
I am a fool with the text. I hit “send” maybe when I shouldn't, throw caution to the wind, 'cuz I'm ridin' the rails! I'm Boxcar Willie! Inside my mind moans a slide gee-tar; there's a jaw harp, a harmonica, a mangled dog, gnarled fingertips pokin' out of cut-off gloves. I think of when I was little and how once, I tied a handkerchief to the end of a stick and decided to mosey on down the road. I made it as far as the nearby crick.

Now, as then, imagination only goes so far. It's hard to pretend I'm roughin' it when there's an arcade on the bottom floor of the next compartment. Soon after we wend our way out of Portland's web of bridges, an announcement is made for dinner reservations in the dining car. Dinner reservations? I've got food packed up for the ride: leftover Dalton Ding in a yogurt container, a peanut butter sandwich, a peach. “Hello folks,” says a nice lady on the mic, “Please come to the observation deck for our wine tasting, which will begin in 15 minutes. Today we will be tasting Washington State wines.” Observation deck? Wine tasting? My Boxcar Willie bubble gets popped. Do hobos have boyfriends?

Hour 3: This place is a pick-up joint!
Careful what you wish for. If you wanna get cruised, ride the rails. I'm just sayin'.

Hour 4: People Watching
The people here are the ones you will never know. They're like those that exist within your resort vacation orb, like the lady with the fake tits who lap swims every day at 4:00, or the guy at the breakfast buffet who opts for a cottage cheese boat when he could be getting a waffle cater-made. You are confined humans here, criss-crossing paths within the same cage.

Here on the Coast Starlight I will never know the woman who works in the cafe car, the one who calls everyone “honey” and we don't mind a bit. There is the super tall guy and his overly made-up girlfriend. He'd said to her, “Not another word from you,” and you watched her fold her arms, look down at her feet, and shove her sadness down. Oh man, and the gorgeous skater kid you have to stop staring at because it's reaching the level of creepy. And that one guy who sits in the compartment before yours, the one who looks at you every time you walk back from the cafe car, how you do everything you can to avoid his eye contact, even though you are at the same time asking yourself, “Do my comfy pants look okay?”

Hour 5: Scenery
Here, like everywhere by train, my favorite scenery is America's backyards: the broken-down cars under bedsheets, the abandoned bicycles, sheds roofed with blue tarp and brick, sprinklers on lazy rotation, burn piles. Rarely do you see people, only that which they have stowed away: the lawnmower that stopped working even though she should still be running good, a statue of the Virgin Mary given by the in-laws. Our backyards are where we toss our hare-brained ideas, the stuff we want to forget but can't bring ourselves to expunge. It is where we try to fix shit – where we are constantly evolving or devolving, depending how you look at it.

The scenery is a loop: town, backyard, backyard, backyard, fields of yellow, backyard, backyard, backyard, town – like that until Our Country 'tis of Thee cracks open and pine trees are its inner pearl. Suddenly the blue sky looks thinner somehow, as if the air were actually stretched. And the sky goes purple, goes steely gray, and you have forgotten the stories you made up for the families with those backyards, you've forgotten who and what you were texting. You are standing at the back window of the caboose, staring out at the rails that unspool like never-ending floss, glinting in an early moonlight, two walls of pine on either side of the track, threatening our human idea of domesticity.

You think of the animals that could feel the vibration of the approaching train. They scurried off, ducked into holes, shivered but didn't blink, until we in the metal bullet had passed through, had become but an aberrance of their foraging, their killing, their eating, their peeing, pooping, fucking, birthing, sleeping.

Hour 8: Lights Out
When they say lights out, they sure as shit mean it. Not even children speak. I saw only one long-bearded guy who had the gall to keep his reading light on. Cell phone use is strictly limited to the cafe car or the observation deck. This is, of course, when I get a phone call.

“Hey! How's the train?” says my friend, who's calling from a bar.
I am equidistant from the cafe car and my train compartment, so I duck behind an empty row, crouch down into a ball, put my hand over my mouth.
“I can't talk here,” I say.
“What?”

One of the conductors has heard me, walks over to me with his tiny piercing flashlight in hand. He shines it directly into my eyes.
“What are you doing here?” he asks (at regular vocal level, I might add).
“I'm on the phone.”
“When'd you get on the train?”
“Portland.”
“Where's your compartment?”
“At the end.”
“Where are you going?”
“Emeryville – San Francisco.”

I shy my eyes from his flashlight. It is at this moment I realize he might be thinking I'm a stow-away. He glares his flashlight on to what's in my hands: a bottle of water and a cup of ice. He thinks better of it.

“You can't talk here,” he says.
I get up, tell my friend to hold on, and move to the observation deck. Folks inside it are playing gin rummy, tying one on before having to sleep upright.

Hour 13: Ahem!
Even though I have a brought an airplane blanket, have put on a sweater, have put on socks, have wrapped a shawl around my shoulders, I am still cold. Even though I have brought my own food, I am still travel-gassy. Even though I brought my own pillow, I still can't get my position right. Even though I have put in earplugs, I can still hear the woman who has been sitting next to me since Salem ahem! clear her throat, and then ahem! clear her throat, and then ahem! clear her throat, until I am just about ready to stick my ahem! fist down her ahem! throat in order to ahem! clear her ahem! throat for her.

Hour 16: At First Glance
When I wake, we are stopped in Chico, California. Pine trees have been traded out for palms. I see a man wearing a cowboy hat. My back is a question mark.

Hour 17: Rise-n-Shine
Cofffeeeee.

In the cafe car, I share the only electrical outlet with another passenger. He is one of the cast of characters I've seen a few times on this ride: he's the intense-looking guy who's always staring into his laptop. I'd wondered, for a second, if he was able to get internet on his machine, if maybe he wasn't playing online poker. He had that kind of clammy zeal.

I have come this far, and the coffee is actually not so bad. There is some kinda large body of water we're passing through. I'm feeling giddy about the train again, so I strike up a conversation with one of my fellow humans on this locomotive, the intense-looking guy.

“Where are you from?” I ask.
“Russia,” he says, distracted.
“Where in Russia?”
“Georgia.”
“Huh. And you still call yourself Russian?”
“I am Russian,” he says.
“Right,” I say. Did I get my politics wrong?

I look out the window at the nameless body of water. I notice a huge boat, a ship. I overhear the cafe car lady tell a customer that the ship is some kind of anti-bomb ship. The Russian gets up from his seat, digs in his bag, comes back with his digital camera and starts taking pictures like crazy. I take a few myself, in case this is something important.

Hours 18 & 19: From this Vantage
I ride the rest of the way on the observation deck, in a swiveled cushioned chair overlooking the world. I've got my not-so-bad coffee in one hand, a book in the other – one of my unexpected gifts that was given to me at the start of this journey. There is a young man and an older man sitting behind me; they are talking about black holes, gravity and scientific theory. I take a sip from my coffee, finish reading a short story and begin reading a poem. A conductor comes over the loud mic, telling the passengers that if we look out the west window, we'll see the San Francisco Bay soon. I look down again at my book, and I read the start of a poem called “Pioneer” by Lucia Perillo:

Let's not forget The Naked Woman is still out there, etched
into her aluminum medallion
affixed to her rocket
slicing through the silk of space.

I look up and yes, there is a bay that I have been told is the San Francisco Bay. The silk of space is a heavy fog. Through it, I can barely make out an outline of the Golden Gate Bridge, as if an artist's preliminary sketch.

Portland, Oregon: The City of Roses

Here in Portland, Oregon, chickens are all the rage. They roost in folks' backyards; the cocks are slaughtered while the hens plop out eggs. Those who raise chickens bike to work with their tattooed calves on display. Folks compost here, and wait for the “walk” sign before crossing.

Portland works!

And there is Sauvie Island, where kind neighbors come upon you while you sunbathe on a tattered dock. “Feel like wave-boarding?” they ask. I have no idea what wave-boarding is, but I know it involves a boat. I nudge my friend, “Yes! Yes!” but he vacillates. When he comes to his senses, off we go, wave-boarding down the Williamette. He is jumping wake, then releasing the rope, easing back into an artful, bobbing repose. I raise the orange flag. Later, there is a garden with tomatoes that are ready to go, and a tree of need-to-be-picked plums. I feel a little like Eve might've, pre-Original Sin.

Portland is full of surprises. Like my dear friend #470 who conquered his first Olympic Distance Triathlon (1.5k swim, 40k bike, 10k run), killin' it in 2:47. I sat on the sidelines, watching the wives and the husbands and the parents and the grandparents and the children cheering on their own beloved athletes. I got teary-eyed thinking of me and him, me and 470, those fucked nights in New York City, the Sahara with its ceremonial burial. I never in my life wanted so badly to yell out to someone, “I love yooooooou!” -- to shout it. So I did. “I love yoooooooooou!” I screamed as he cycled past, a blur out of earshot.

Love is like that, I guess. Sometimes difficult to detect; impossible to contain.

Des Moines: Exciting and Inviting!

Dear,

This is the postcard I would have sent, only the destination's gone awry.

A 63-year-old woman who was lost for five days on the Wapsipinicon River near Anamosa, Iowa was found today, alive. “They had cadaver dogs out looking for her. We assumed the worst,” said one of her daughters, according to today's Des Moines Register. Apparently the woman survived by floating on a raft.

Also in the news: 5th grade children in Lisbon, Iowa were taught how to cough into their their elbows on the first day of school.

And: a DART (Des Moines Area Regional Transit) bus driver was suspended after she refused to drive a bus bearing an atheist ad: “Don't believe in God? You are not alone”. The woman claimed it went against her Christian faith.

I would've gone to the Iowa State Fair today if the weather had behaved. There, I could've seen this year's buttered cow sculpture, marveled at the size of sheep's balls, pitched some horseshoes, eaten a deep-fried Twinkie, and felt downright skeletal among a throng of obese people.

Instead, my days in Des Moines have been spent running errands, celebrating my parents' wedding anniversary, boxing my recently-deceased grandmother's things, and following the news, like the story about the woman who survived.

-Sarah

Iowa City, Iowa

In this story, there are no sea turtles swimming. There are no cool nights in Capetown, or cathartic bar brawls. There is no reeling from unification.

Instead, this story is the safe story, mine.

In it are long walks from the campus library, over the foaming Iowa River, back to my temporary home, and the trees bursting-to-sexy. Oh dear, there are Black-Eyed Susans everywhere. And there are older gentlemen with walking shoes on. And women pushing strollers, their shih tzus on leashes.

Here, the days are spent resurrecting a ghost. There is searching for the ghost's name, in vain. There is the woman who knew the ghost, her slanted teeth, her cane, French Silk pie, a table of truckers. There is the ghost's gravestone three hours away, and its pull.

With me but not with me are sandalwood, feet like Dixie cups, a Roman nose. And: the remembered feel of bare shoulders, the liminal between what was then and what is now.

There are my eyeglasses I place beneath the bed. There is reaching for the light switch. In this story are no calls-to-prayer or the skid of skateboards or a cat's squeeze-induced meow. In the dark, here, it is the dehumidifier that purrs.

And then, suddenly, there is Isabella, my friend from that other place, a widow in her mid-50s. It is last year at this very time, and we are at the cafe not far from the bench where once there was a person waiting for me, he with his canvas bag. Isabella is rolling us a cigarette. She is drinking tea and I. am. speaking. English. very. slowly. The waiter's coins are jingling as he pours milk into my coffee.

Here is Isabella, here are my dry feet beneath sheets. She is saying, “Saaahra, you must take careful of alone.”