September 19, 2007
Brief Update
I'm supposed to be in North Dakota right now for a conference but never even made it off the ground at Seattle. Heavy weather screwed up ATC into Minneapolis and there was no way I could make my connection. So I cancelled the whole trip, got my bag and left. Thank Fox I have tomorrow free so I can go to the office and try to catch up, but it was a real drag to have to waste most of today at the airport. I need every minute I can get these days. The past few weeks have been madness, madness I tell you!
Where do I start? Right, the Bloody Mary toast with a colleague on the A340, celebrating our exit from Danish airspace and my exile from Denmark. (My permanent residency disappeared the moment I got on the plane).
It was a sad toast really. There's a lot I'll miss about Denmark, and the residency was a real pain in the ass to secure (and will be even worse if I try to go back, thanks very much Dansk Folkeparti). But it was one of those moments that needed to be marked somehow.
Driving up from Sea-Tac on I-5, there's a moment you round a bend and the hill just slides away from the right, revealing the skyline of Seattle to you all at once, like someone has pulled a curtain aside. I've seen it before but this time it took my breath away. Gorgeous sunlight blazing off the skyscrapers like some kind of modern Avalon. I have always loved skylines.
And this time, the thought that came with it... "This is my city now."
Some early impressions - Vertiginous, steep hills like San Francisco and crazy unpredictable weather. Horrible traffic across the East Side bridges. Lots of homeless, reminding me I'm in the States again. Bike traffic. High cirrus ice clouds miles above a blue grey low scud. Coastie icebreaker powering out on Puget Sound towards the Arctic.
Joy Division and Miss Kittin playing in the Whole Foods market as I'm shopping for vegetables. The cute alterna-teen checkout girl singing to herself as she lasers each of my groceries... "beer-oh... oh-leeks-oh... bok choy-oh!" Very cool looking crowd in this city, a lot of tattoos. (Thinking it's time I get another)
I'm sending a shipping container of kudos out to Deborah in Vancouver, who invited me up to sit in on a CBC round table with William Gibson, promoting his new book. The whole thing was really great - the gorgeous drive up through the hills and forests (I haven't driven cross-country in more than ten years and it was a joy). And I've always had a lot of respect for the CBC, so it was cool just to see the inside of their studio.
Gibson was awesome. I wish he was my dad. Spook Country was so good I had chills for about 15 minutes straight when I finished the book, but his writing does that to me a lot. His stuff makes me want to drop everything and just write, full time, all the time.
He said that it's a slow and frustrating process to start a book, because all the characters, setting and action take so long to slide into place with the stylistic elements you want to settle into. But after hammering away at one plot and set of characters regularly for a few months, you get into a routine like juggling seven plates at once. When it finally starts happening the process just takes control and begins to run itself, until by the end of the book you are hardly editing anything, it's just flowing out onto the page in realtime.
Killing me because I never get more than a few hours (or when I take vacations a few days) to sit and write to the exclusion of all other responsibilities. That's why this book is taking forever and needs constant re-editing, I've never been allowed to get to flying speed.
But Vancouver turned into the most synaesthetic literary experience I've ever had - I finished the book in a coffee shop in Vancouver, waiting for Deborah to get off work. Then we went to the round table, where Gibson read a few passages from the book and did a Q&A with the audience for an hour (the show will be podcasted - I'll update it on this site as soon as I get the podcast address - you'll hear me ask the last question if you wait to the end). Then Deborah took me for a drive around the Vancouver shipyards, which is where the closing action in the book takes place. We were trying to find some of the specific buildings where certain scenes happened.
So in all it was very, very happening.
I bought a car (a heavily-used little Honda Civic, cute, silver), and then had the car overheat on me the very first day, stranding me on the side of the road for an hour and a half while I waited for it to cool down. It's back at the dealer now - they installed A/C for me and somehow an air pocket got into the cooling system which gave the engine a stroke. Not an auspicious beginning for the first car I've bought since 1993. But it will work out.
Does anyone else out there name their cars? I'm thinking of calling this one "Jenny Ondioline." It just hit me when I was stuck in traffic the other day.
For now I'm still living in company temp housing. It's a weird, very large, anonymous apartment in a new gated tower, set into a disused warehouse district of the city. It's an odd neighborhood, and completely desolate at night. After sunset it reminds me of the set of a zombie movie. At least the security's so tight here we could probably hold the zombies off for a few weeks. I gotta say though that the view is spectacular. I took the picture attached to this post from my living room window. And the company has treated me really well through this move. I'm grateful to them for that.
But I found an apartment in Capitol Hill, and barring disasters will be moving in next week. It's a very cool part of town that could have been lifted straight from San Francisco during the Bubble. I love the location - real street life, cafes, bars and little offbeat shops everywhere, a lot of people on foot. It feels like a neighborhood.
Cecilie is still in Denmark waiting on a green card, and will be for some time. That's the thing that makes this feel so disassociated. It's surreal to be in this space, working past midnight in this strange and spacious apartment, and be so far away from anyone or anything familiar.
But beyond the surrealness of it all, beyond the risks, the sleeplessness, and the insanity of how much work this is (I won't even touch on what's been cooking with my day job), I can see the potential. A well-lived life is not without risks, and right now I'm feeling extremely grateful. Namu amida butsu, butsu.
If this all holds together it could really be great. I'm sorry I haven't had time to write anyone. Would love to hear from you though. I love you all.
Posted by case at September 19, 2007 06:41 AM