Roll on Columbia...

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"Roll on, Columbia, roll on
Your power is turning our darkness to dawn
So roll on, Columbia, roll on."
- Woody Guthrie

The lyrics of Washington State's official song came through my head this morning as I crossed the river on I-90, marvelling at it's scale. I'd just woken up after a long night spent curled-up in the bed of my truck at a truckers' pull-off. The sun had just reached a height where it's rays would hit the water, and the river sparkled like it might do in some great poetry.

This all made me think quite a bit of Woody Guthrie and his song, but especially about his travels around the U.S.A., figuring out just what exaclty it was and just who exactly we it's people were. I felt especially close to Guthrie this morning, having just crossed and re-crossed the entire state of Washington within three days or so. I'm not sure how well this song about hydroelectric power relates to me and my journeys, but I'm sure that the lyrics about rolling on, and the context of it's author's life and passions, stir up something powerful in me right now.

Bound for Glory

I headed out on Saturday afternoon on a whim, eager to get some adventure in and excited to visit my friend Elisabeth on the other side of the state. She's recently started school at Washington State University in Pullman--right on the border with Idaho--and she doesn't know a soul out there. I had the feeling that she was on a similar journey of self-discovery to the one I'm about to embark on--similar, at least, in how we'll be travelling our internal worlds. A couple days over there would be my last chance to see her before I go, and a timely opportunity to do some soul-searching.

So, I drove straight through on Saturday, five hours or so on the road. The way over to Vantage (roughly the middle of our state, where the Columbia clefts our terrain and climate in two) was pretty familiar to me. I'd crossed the Snoqualmie pass countless times in Summer and Winter, been through the eastern foothills on work and pleasure, spent time with friends in Ellensburg, and camped on Opium in the Columbia gorge. But the road past Vantage was new: meandering through a dry, flat, arid landscape of desert rocks, dusty fields, and isolated farmhouses every ten miles or so.

I stayed awake by blasting loud heavy metal, singing along to abrasive British punk, and stuffing myself with salty road-trip snacks. With few things to look at and even fewer places to stop, my mind wandered to other places and I got the urge to make some phone calls. Predictably, there was no cellular service for most of this half of the state. So, I let myself sink into the trance and soak-in my surroundings.

The Columbia Basin, the desert here, the rocks, the hills, the plains, all of this was formed by tremendous acts of nature over unfathomable stretches of time. And all of this has been re-formed and re-structured over the past century by overzealous civilization. The shored-up dikes beneath the highways, access roads, and train tracks forced new paths for the water and animals. Mass-agriculture changed the flora of this entire ecosystem, and irrigation systems altered it further. Many of these places still bear the names the Natives left when the displaced children of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Mexico pushed them out with their settlements, industries, and war. This place is a vision of American history, still overwhelmingly in the shadow of Gaia, but crudely marked by the presence of mankind.

Down towards the end of the road, I passed the Palouse Empire Fair and Rodeo, the rustic one-road settlement of Colfax, and finally--after a few more miles of rolling plains--the town of Pullman and the campus of Western Washington University.

Welcome to Pullman!

My sleep deprivation, hangover, belly full of road-food, and the lingering taste of hot Odwalla did not make me particular eager to hit the town. A shower was definitely in order, and after that, some conversation. We caught up over beer and worked up the motivation for a night with a lot more of the stuff. There'd been a resounding football victory today with WSU's Cougars thumping the University of Idaho Vandals (from Moscow, Idaho, a mere 8 miles away). This meant packed bars, a lot of parties, and fiery cougars wearing their school's crimson and silver everywhere we went. So, I thought it would be a good idea to wear my school colors out in the home of our passionate in-state rivals.

The first bar we went to was called "The ZZU", and my University of Washington Huskies sweatshirt got immediate ugly looks from the half-dozen patrons and complaints to the bartender. She advised us to leave the sweatshirt at home and head into the fraternity neighborhood if we really wanted to have a good time. So, we obliged, stashing the shirt in my truck and hopping a bus to campus.

We followed some other bus riders into a place called Valhalla. Heading down the stairs to the undergorund bar-room, we entered a sea of crimson, silver, excitement, and booze. In fact, every place we went that night had those things in common. This is a big drinking town, they get euphoric after a big football victory, are almost-universally hospitable to strangers, and they love to wear their school colors. Thanful that my change of clothes had saved us from a night of brawls--and possible jail time--we settled in and began to do as the Romans do.

We wandered the streets from house-parties to fraternities to bars, making new friends, escaping sour faces, finding the best places to people watch, singing all the words to the song, and drinking just a little too much. The highlights of the night came during a game of beer pong (or "Beirut", as Elisabeth called it), an awful 80s just-us-on-the-floor slowdance at who-knows-what-bar, and a public urination incident that almost changed my life forever.

After deciding to abandon my only other friend in town (Tyson Buchmeir, a Sedro-Woolley high school alumnus, WSU Rugby star, and old friend--I love the guy to death, but I didn't come there to see him anyway), we went back to the apartment and watched Marilyn Monroe movies until passing out.

"Notes About Tonight"

This Sunday was an epic day of recovery spent lying around, drinking water, and watching movies about witchcraft. This is the day that I learned that the East Indian Restaraunt business is not economically viable in this particular corner of the world, that The Craft is an inspiring tour-de-force, and that the new Wicker Man remake with Nicolas Cage is one of the worst movies ever made. Elisabeth learned that I have a strong--and too-often unvoiced--interest in witches, the feminine principle and female energy, goddess worship, cults of femininity, women's culture and it's connection to the earth, vonnic imagery, the vagina, etc., and that I only usually share this with dykes because they are the only ones that I feel won't be judgemental, and that most often agree.

Our lazy, care-free, and mostly-silent day culminated in an opening of the flood gates: an intense talk about life's issues and a rush to the keyboard to jot down notes on the things it made me think about.

Hard Lessons to Learn

It took me a dozen years and hundreds of fights to learn that violence was a vicious cycle, one that was harming me emotionally and physically, harming others emotionally and physically, distracting my energy, and teaching me to avoid the real issues at the core of any dilemma. Violence was teaching me the wrong ways to cope with my aggression and my angst, it was teaching me to misplace my energy, it was also harming me socially and professionally. After making the same mistake hundreds of times, I finally learned my lesson (most of it, anyway) at age twenty and I am only know able to begin to enunciate it.

Out of 33 women that I've slept with, I have only actually cared about 3 of them. Three. Three who mattered to me, who made an impact on my life, who i didn't want to lose, who I will always remember. That means that there were 30 mistakes. 30 times when I entered into emotionally meaningless and harmful relationships in order to satisfy base lust. And only now, looking back at this awful record of failure, am I able to think clearly about it and feel motivated to make a change. But, I'm only talking about it now, I haven't acted on it yet, and that's the real test of a lesson learned.

How long did it take me to learn what I now know about bullying and cliques and elitism, interacting with other people, and succeeding in work? I had at least 30 jobs before I was able to hold any kind of work for more than a few months. Not to mention my ongoing problems with alcohol. Does every lesson have to be so hard to learn? Does every victory have to come so hard fought for? I hope I can buck this trend and develop a better sense of inner knowledge, self-dialog, and equilibrium. I hope I will be able to learn important life lessons more easily in the future.

The biggest one I learned tonight has been pressing in on me all my life and has been building more and more over the past several years. I've even written about it in scripts and directed an entire film about my relationship to this emotion without ever being able to say what I feel. This lesson is about Affection.

I fight because I am ruled by my primal emotions. I fuck because I hate to masturbate and I hate to be alone. I desire contact with other people because I want to figure out who they are and I want them to figure out who I am and I want us always to treat each other like we know and appreciate these inner selves. I isolate myself and tear others down and quit jobs and lash out in a million other ways because my dream rarely every exists in my reality. I drink and smoke pot to try and forget about it.

There is a joyful, carefree person inside of me that wants to do nothing more than share happiness and spread love, but is constantly being frightened back inside by the others and by the hurt they inflict. When I see this same person inside of other men, I want to talk about it, to relate my stories and talk about my pains and to hear about theirs as well. When I see it in women, I want to share it, I want to let that affection connect us in a pure way. And it works, this happens. But it is always temporary and fleeting. All people become scared by this connection, and for some it is the most frightful thing. I have connected emotionally with men and had them later become estranged, become my enemies, or lower our relationship down to one juvenile bragging, shit talk, and insult-trading--all out of the fear of real human contact. I have connected physically with women, shared pure affection, and been burned for expressing my truest honesty. And I've been on the other side of it as well, scaring that pure, inner person back inside of them just like the many who have crushed my own spirit.

It's a feedback loop that drives us all from the unconditional love of babyhood to a death alone. But, maybe, by thinking about this and seeing it clearly, by identifying the processes inside of me, I can do something about it now.

So, I guess i got exactly the kind of soul-searching I wanted from this little jaunt.

Denouement

I spent Monday following Elisabeth to class and trying to get a sense of what her new life in the middle of nowhere was like.

Her first teacher excited me with her discussion of Ancient Mediterranean cultures (one of my favorite subjects), especially with her lecture on the Minoans of Crete (the island from which my father's ancestors came). I was glad to be reminded of their peacefulness and egalitarianism, their marriage of a reverence for women and a confidence in men, and their influence on so much of the culture around them on into eternity.

But the next two lectures bored me unspeakably. Overjoyed to be out of the classroom after only 3 hours, we went to the student dairy shop on campus, Ferdinand's. There we watched cheese be made, enjoyed some of the best ice cream in all of known history, and picked up some top-secret souvenir gifts.

I made my own way over fences, through sports fields and construction sights, and through other secret back places of the WSU campus while Elisabeth stuck to the main roads. We met up at the student recreation center, thinking about maybe getting some exercise. When the only thing that really interested us was a swim, we headed back to the apartment and jumped in the icy cold pool.

She tells me that on really hot days this place is like MTV's Spring Break Beach House, but there were no scantily clad women and no bros to jock them today. Just me and her and some dead bees and a persistent shiver. Oh well, it was fun to swim and to try to dive write and to cool down and wash off the sweat and dust.

Running out of time and feeling kind of sad about it, we picked up a couple of greasy pizzas and sat down to watch Dirty Dancing. I'd never seen the movie before and seriously thought that it was gonna be all about dirty dancing... I liked it a lot, but I digress. I finally got out on the road around 9:30.

This night was beautiful, but in the true darkness of super-rural America, there is really nothing to see but the road. I managed to stay awake all the way to Vantage, where I pulled off into one of the long parking strips by the edge of the highway where the long-haul truck drivers sleep when they're trying not to take any speed or yellow jackets.

I've got a nice bed in the back of my truck, with a mattress, pillows, clean wool sheets and a collection of blankets my mom made me. I read about the major religions of the world and about the political history of Thailand in my Essential Desk Reference before drifting off into sleep.

The morning woke me with sunlight and the roar of 18 wheels over pavement-grooves. I drove across the bridge to Vantage, took a few pictures, and then headed back through all that familiar territory.

With the sense of exploration faded-out and the adventure at it's end, I took time to think a little bit about where I was and where I had just been. I thought a lot about the United States, about Washington, about Guthrie, about self-discovery.

And mostly I thought about rolling on...

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Photos

Poetry
How about that shimmer?

Crossing the Cascades
This is the pass in Summer.

Columbia
On the banks of the mighty river.

School Spirit
Elisabeth laughs about school spirit as the infamous Husky sweatshirt looks on.

On the Bus
On the bus to the bars and ready to party!

Beer Pong
A healthy dispute during beer pong.

Affianced
We were pretending to be engaged... andd she really didn't want anyone to see this picture.

Night
I'm ready to rest.

A Bed for a King
Doesn't it look inviting?

Wakeup Call
My view by morning.

Looking Across
Looking across her beauty and grandeur... from the bed of a truck.

Roll On
It's just too big to fit in a camera.

Vantage
Quite a sight.

Returning
I think that's a hint of Rainier in the background.

Comments

[Erik Neighbout]

Inside you head
Best entry by far. I felt like I was on a slip and slide inside your head.

[Aaron Brown]

expression
very nice appreciation for nature you express here. and of course- looking into yourself..always a good thing. Ancient eastern mediterranean culture- I'm really drawn to it also. I think going to Greece would give me some answers on some things.