As I've been writing these journal entries, and going through the process of raiding and sorting my memories, which by now are almost two years old, I've noticed the effect which mobility has on recollection: the more I move around, the more likely I am to remember things clearly, and in their correct linear order. The two periods during the trip in which I stayed more or less in one place for a number of days are the only ones which seem to have lost their resolution, and from which images re-appear in disassociated fragments. Perhaps because Wisconsin happened in such a rush, and involved such a lot of travel, it seems a longer visit than it really was. I had had only one full day with Dan, and today I was on the move again. I woke up in Wisconsin and would fall asleep in Santa Cruz. In between though, was the passionately anticipated second visit with Cain.
We drove back down to JES. By late morning it was up into the 90's, and the stories about Wisconsin�s dire winter temperatures seemed a bit hard to credit. I don't think I spent any time with the other animals on this second visit. We had about an hour before we had to head on for Chicago, and I intended to spend all of it with Cain.
If I'd felt a little like I was an outsider to Dan's and Sammy's special relationship, I guess Dan might have felt a little the same way with Cain and I. In any case I hope he wasn't bored while I dedicated myself to milking every moment I had with Cain for all it was worth.
There was no initial hostility or uncertainty this time. Cain remembered me, and we settled straight into playing again - even if it was horribly hot (the haunch of meat in Cain's cage was crawling with maggots. I can only assume this is difficult to avoid in such weather.) Cain must have been more relaxed than on the Thursday, because he let Dan get close enough behind us to take the shots which are up on my website (unfortunately I'd used a slow film on my first visit, and the photos are almost impenetrably murky. Dan took nearly a roll of film of Cain and I together this time, though. Five or six of the shots are up on my website, in the Poems section, along with Tornado in Wisconsin.)
We howled together again - oddly my memories of these two howling sessions have blended into a single incident: perhaps something to do with the strange cognitive shift that occurred. On one of the occasions, and I forget which, the wolf hybrids over on the other side of the farm apparently joined in. I don't remember hearing this, but someone told me Cain and I had started them.
In many ways this was a similar experience to our first time together. The mixture of joy, astonishing intimacy, and sadness were still there. What was different was that we began this visit as friends, not strangers, and at the end of it, at least one of us knew we wouldn't be seeing each other again; at least not for a long, long time. I don't think any of my human friends will feel insulted when I say that of all the partings on the trip, this was by far the hardest for me. I think perhaps I even dragged myself away a couple of minutes earlier than was absolutely necessary, because I just had to get it over with. The leaving, I mean. It was just too bloody bad I had to go. I wish I could have met him 10 years earlier, before all this happened to him, and that I could maybe have made a difference. Too late now. I consoled myself with a determination to visit him again as soon as I could come back to the US. Even that was no good in the end, though. He died only a few months after that last visit. Maybe he knew, better than I, that that second goodbye was the last one.
O'Hare (named, no doubt, after some famous Irish rabbit), was as reluctant to let us back in, as it had been to let us out in the first place. In fact this was the nearest I came to missing a flight on the whole trip*. We finally made it with about two minutes to spare, which was just enough for another goodbye, and a heartfelt thank you to Dan; for his friendship and hospitality, and for making possible that meeting which I'll never forget.
*apart from the one I actually did miss, but that was back in Sydney, and due to my travel agent having a very optimistic view of how long it takes to get off one plane and on to another.
And now I was in another of those cusps: this was the last big transition of the tour. I had been making my way westward by increments, but now I was finally saying goodbye to the old East, and winging my way straight to San Francisco; 30 years too late for Haight-Ashbury, but better than never.
It was an interesting feeling; a sort of adrenal rush that I get when I'm travelling any long distance toward anything new. A sense that, even though I'd been in the East for just two and a half weeks, nearly everyone I knew or had met on this trip were back there, and I was striking out into unfamiliar territory. The territory under the plane was unfamiliar, too. After a little bit of stuffing about with hills, the landscape gave a final shrug and decided to be flat. And whereas I'm aware that being 30,000' above the earth does tend to iron out the wrinkles, what I was cruising over looked about as flat as any land was going to get. Obviously given over to agriculture of some kind, it was divided up into an endless grid of plumb-straight roads, which receded uninterrupted towards the northern horizon. The rectangles of land enclosed by these roads were frequently occupied by strange, circular markings; areas of apparently cleared land several hundred yards across. Though often different in colour, and sometimes containing concentric markings which made them look like mosquito coils, each of these objects featured a single straight line which proceeded from the centre of the circle to its radius.
Meanwhile some rough weather came up, and we were diverted south. Just when I thought this odd panorama was never going to end, mountains reared up out of the West without much in the way of preamble, and suddenly I was somewhere altogether different. We may have flown 2000 kilometres, but it was in that few miles, over what I presume was Colorado, that I made the conceptual transition from East coast to West coast.
The flight from there on was scenically as exciting as previously it had been dull. What can I say? I like mountains, and there were lots of them. When we finally got to the coast, we flew over a long, low bridge that I thought wasn't going to end, and without much further ado we were on the ground in San Francisco. I remember looking out the window at the terminal and the planes, and already trying to assimilate that unique and exotic ambience which I expected would emanate from California. In fact, I probably should have realised in advance that California would be more like Australia than anywhere else in America. You have gum trees. We are the only other place in the world to have popularised the California bungalow style of architecture, so I'm told. Nevertheless California is very much unlike Australia, and even more unlike Tasmania, in many ways. For one thing, it feels _newer._ This came as something of a shock, because I'm accustomed to thinking that I live in a very New-worldish part of the New World, but Hobart was settled by Europeans in 1803, which gives it a few years on most of Anglo-westcoast USA. Although I didn't really register it at the time, I think that the relative newness of nearly everything in California speaks much about its character. Even the landscape seems new, in a way which I can't really explain. I'm aware, of course, driving through a Redwood forest, that we are dealing with some seriously old things, and that any difference in geological age is academic from a human perspective. Nevertheless in wild places in Tasmania you get a sensation of absolute _ancientness,_ and the Pacific Coast of America just seems invigoratingly young to me.
I was in a great mood, according to Rainshadow. I was pleased to hear about this, and when I reflected on it for a minute, I realised it must have been true. We got to the ticket booth at the airport carpark, and I had one of the plushes with me. The girl at the window seemed delighted. "Chicks dig them", Rain observed, clearly impressed.
My accent was apparently as much a source of pleasure and fascination for Rain', as other people's had been for me, and he claimed to be unintentionally slipping into Australian speech patterns, in accidental imitation of me. I was of the opinion that I had been slipping into American stress patterns, so what either of us were actually speaking I'm not very sure.
Rainshadow took me into San Francisco proper before we headed back to his place down the coast. We spent a couple of hours strolling around the Fisherman's Wharf area, but it was enough to give me a thing for San Francisco - such that I've organised that my first night in the US this year, nine days from now, will be spent in a hotel about four blocks from the wharf.
San Francisco is more reminiscent of Hobart than any other American city I've visited. I wouldn�t want to make too much of that comparison though, because SF is certainly very _unlike_ Hobart in various ways. It's about 20 times bigger (though I still don�t think it _feels_ like a big city), it's perhaps a little less hilly overall, and there isn't a place in Hobart, so far as I know, where you can stand beside a life-sized plaster Gerry Garcia.
It was late afternoon, and we wandered 'round Pier 39 for a while. I located Puppets on the Pier, and marvelled at how tiny it was (Imagine how many of these you could fit into South Coast Plaza.) At a shop selling authorised sporting merchandise, I fulfilled one of my obligations from back home, and bought my Greek opera-writer friend a New York Yankees cap. I think the local arts community were fairly appalled by his permanently attaching it to his head thereafter. I don't think they've yet managed to deconstruct the binary opposition between High and mass culture.
We went into the local branch of The Nature Company, or whatever it's called. They have a large statue of a Gorilla outside the shop. Apparently it's on wheels, because one morning the next December, I was strolling along the footpath just before opening time, and about three shops down from me, someone pushed this thing out of the front doors of the store. It was very strange to see this life-sized, hunched-over Gorilla emerging onto the sidewalk, apparently of its own volition.
Eventually we went and rescued Dan's almost new truck from the carpark, before the parking fee exceeded the value of the vehicle, and headed down the coast for his place, stopping for some Mexican on the way. We arrived in Santa Cruz sometime that night (At least I think it was Santa Cruz. It might be confusing back east, with all the Woodstocks and Rockdales and Salems, but it's just as difficult out west with all the San's and Santa's and Los's and Las's and El's.) As we were going in, I noticed Satan riding a Goat around in circles on the front lawn. Rain' didn't seem to see him, so I didn't say anything.
So after a short while I fell asleep on the couch, which Rain said would be comfortable, and it was. There's only one first time for everything; this was the only time I'd get to fall asleep in California for the first time, so I tried to savour it. The pit bull terrier might find me in the morning before anyone else noticed me. That was reassuring. I hoped I'd be in one piece for the Plush-crawl which the Bay Area plush furries had organised for me on Sunday...
