Paving stones carefully laid, the road leads forward to a vast broad stairway, rising up and up to a sort of citadel, white bright stone with green trees at intervals, no statuary as such, just form. And people come and go, up and down the steps, in and out through passageways, halls, rooms open to the air or enclosed, benches and tables, altars (seemingly) and the sky deep blue above. Silence. This is the city above the city. It has no obvious purpose. It is a place to find vistas or interiors. It is supercharged in its emptiness. Everyone comes here at one time or another.
Well, it's been a little while since my last entry. Havn't taken any big trips, so nothing to write about as Traveling Dan. So how about a little short story? What the heck, here goes:
Buck used to make bird noises. In fact he was well known for this ability, at least among the local birdwatchers. He was the life of the birdwatchers'
cocktail parties. That's how he met his wife, Beatrice. She could also make bird noises. They taught each other a thing or two about the finer points of bird noises.
I'm in Seattle for a few days, doing various things. I was born in Seattle and have lived in it for more years than any of the other several places I've lived. It always draws me back. I'm addicted to comparing and contrasting the cities I visit or live in. The comparison between Seattle and Portland fascinates me particularly. In simplest terms, I think of them as fraternal twin cities, or siblings separated by a few years and differing signs of the zodiac. As different as advocates of one or the other might think they are, they are far more alike than either of them is to almost any other similiarly sized American city. They are the cities of the Northwest. This is not a meaningless distinction. Even in this time of mass corporate culture, there is such a thing as regional identity and culture. If you think the Northwest and its culture are just like anywhere else, well, go someplace else and see what you think. Arizona, for example. Or Houston, or Atlanta, or Los Angeles, or Boston, or Philly, or Kansas City, or Denver. See what I mean? We aren't like any of those places, not even close.
What are we then? I don't know exactly, its like being a fish trying to describe water. A lot of things make up a regional identity. I'm not a trained cultural historian but i think climate and geography are the underpinnings of the rest of it. What this region is, in its basic natural aspect, how the original inhabitants responded to that and lived, and the subsequent patterns of Euro-American settlement, resource use, city building, and artistic insight, have all flowed directly from the cloudy dark deep forested river and salmon nature of Cascadia. I'm not being romantic about this. Go look at the region at the most real physical dirt and mud level: trees and the cutting of them, salmon and the
catching of them, and rivers and the damming of them for power (with a dollop
of stump farming and embarkation for a gold-rush) were literally the foundation of Northwest civic culture.
And it is the salmon in particular that serve as the basic symbol of the region. We all know the story (of course we know the story): the salmon hatch by the millions in clear stream gravel beds in the deep forest, swim downstream and far into the vast north Pacific, live and feed and grow (eaten in turn by sea lions and Killer Whales) then return with some miraculous sensitivity to their natal stream and swim up and up to their birthplace to spawn and die, maybe being eaten en route by an eagle or bear. And in fact this story is entirely true, however much endangered by logging, dams, cities and fishing people. The fish, the streams, the forests, the people. It's what this region is. You don't believe me? Go to Issaquah Salmon Days, first weekend every October, celebrating the return of the Chinook to Issaquah Creek and hatchery. Actually there are both wild and hatchery salmon in Issaquah Creek, and that's a whole story unto itself.
Issaquah is a small town, now more exploding small suburban city, 15 miles east of Seattle nestled beneath the forested ridges of Tiger and Squak Mountain. A hundred years ago all the trees got chopped down and Issaquah Creek turned from a clean fish filled mountain stream into a muddy slough with about 10 salmon. As time passed the trees began to grow back but the salmon runs weren't exactly what they used to be. People recognized this was not right. In 1935 the Roosevelt administration appropriated funds and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) built the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery to rebuild the population of salmon returning to the creek. There are lots of arguments pro and con about hatcheries but whatever their ultimate merit they were an attempt to restore a vital component of the region. And today you can go like I did with my friends Matt and Jenny Gould and several thousand other people and watch the salmon swim by the hundred up the creek. It is a truly amazing sight, moving actually. All those big hook-nosed fish, fighting their way up the shallow little river, impelled, compelled, flinging themselves forward to procreate and die. And around it is the biggest street fair this side of, well, anywhere. The entirety of old downtown Issaquah is closed to traffic and lined
with hundreds of booths, thousands and thousands of people, and salmon this that and everything. Sure, it's small town boosterism no different than the crowning of the Dairy Princess in some podunk midwest place. But it is all about an oceangoing fish and the forest lined stream it returns to, nothing more or less. Maybe in Florida they do something similiar with alligators. But this is Cascadia, and I'm glad I live here.
I am both a logical, scientifically minded person and a daydreaming romantic and utopian. I'm also open minded enough to at least consider the validity of practically anything. And like so many of us, i spend a lot time trying to figure out who i am and what roles i am best fitted to play. So it was only natural that i would decide to take a slightly deep look into astrology and what it might say about me and my life. Heretofore I have never known anything more than that I'm a libra. I read "Free Will Astrology" with some amusement and the daily newspaper horoscopes with derision. If you asked me how astrology is possible (assuming it even works at all) I wouldn't have been able to give the vaguest
answer.
And i still can't. I have no idea how there could be any correlation (much less causation) between the positions of various celestial bodies and my personality and the events of my life. However, after having an in-depth birth chart and reading from a very bright woman in Eugene named Connie Bender, I can assert without a shadow of a doubt that astrology provides the most accurate and insightful portrait of my psychology and identity that I have ever discovered. I don't know how it works, i just know it does. In the charts and Connie's interpretation I recognize myself with vivid clarity, but in an objectively presented way. It's not so much that I didn't know who I was, but my self knowledge was (as it always is) self-reflective and unconscious, like trying to figure oneself out and plot a course in a hall of mirrors. The charts just simply show myself to myself. Things only dimly guessed are shown clearly.
Again, i don't know how. I'm not trying to convince the skeptical or get into an argument about the validity of astrology. I'm just telling you my experience of it.
If you are reflexively dismissive of it, well, maybe try a little liberal-mindedness and give it a shot. I don't mean reading the horoscope in the comics pages, I mean getting a serious chart and reading.
I won't go into any great detail about my profile except the basics. My sun sign is Libra, with Aquarius ascendent (rising) and a Pisces moon. The bulk of the planets are in either the first or 7th and 8th houses. In the coming natal year (birthday to birthday) I will have a Scorpio rising and Gemini moon.I could tell you what all this means but jeez, just because i don't want to be a mystery to myself doesn't mean i want to be an open book to the world!
One of the most striking moments in the reading was when Connie pointed to part of the chart where Sagitarrius sat alone in the mid-heavens (most everything else being crowded into houses 1, 7, and 8) and said "this tells me you're the type who goes out where others won't, out on quests into the unknown, and reports back on what you find to the people in your life." Mind you she didn't know anything about Traveling Dan before this. The rest of the chart rang just as true but like i said, i'll spare the details. Get yer own dang reading.
Oh, goodness. So what does Traveling Dan do when he's not traveling? I mean, i went and named this website travelingdan.com, and went out and made it real, and granted i've always been somewhat of a traveler, but here i am now back in town and well... should i fold up the weblog? No, but for awhile it will mainly be a place for me to spout and ramble and pontificate. Maybe some little short stories. Maybe some bad poetry.
Actually i am still in a sort of traveling mode, at this moment i am Eugene, not Portland, and may soon trek up to Seattle. It is very hard for me to stop and do the home-hearth-picket fence thing, much as i might theoretically like to. Cultural expectations would have me possess not only all that (by my age) but a nice little nookular family too. All glowing and beaming.
Fact is, probably won't happen. Not like that anyway. I mean who knows, I've been told i would make a good parent, but I might make a good assasin too (if i'm not a lone nut then who is?) but that doesn't mean i'm gonna be one.
I'd rather make my statements in paint and ink and conversation. Or not make any statements at all, just head on out and report what i see. That much i am driven to do.