On the Road Again
Jun. 12th, 2014 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealin
And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer, the patient is no longer here.
When the train starts, and the passengers are settled
To fruit, periodicals, and business letters
(And those who saw them off have left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left the station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you
You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future is before us'.– T.S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages III
As of last Saturday, I am unemployed and homeless.
This is a good thing. This is all part of the plan. Actually it was the plan quite a few months ago, but I've been having an adventure of a different sort in the meantime, so it's been put off till now.
PHOTOS!
The sun rose as we wound our way through lava fields. I'm familiar with the a'a formations of Idaho and southern Utah, so being on the north side of the train that's what I thought it was, but then we rounded a corner and I saw that we'd been skirting the foot of A VOLCANO (Mt Shasta). Well, that's OK, I suppose.
Over the tops of the forested hills, another volcano played peek-a-boo. (According to the map, this was probably Mt McLoughlin, which I didn't know existed before now.)
Somewhere in central Oregon is the grimmest job offer I've seen.
As we went further north and west, it got greener and greener, until you didn't think it could, and then it did. I remember this effect having a huge impact on me the first time we did a family road trip from the parched lands to the lush, and I don't think I've travelled the land route in the summer for over ten years, so it was cool to discover it was just as powerful as it had been.
Seriously though, it was so green. I mean look at that, it's just stupidly green.
Despite the delay in Emeryville, we made up time and got to Seattle early, and pulled up next to a handsome old train for people specialer than us.
The last time I was at King St Station, the plaster was in patches and there were random wires hanging down from the ceiling. I was worried they were going to renovate it into something boring and modern, but the restoration is fantatsic:
STORY TIME: When Silas and Deb left the Terra Nova in New Zealand, they crossed the Pacific and came by train through Seattle on the way to visit Silas' brother up the BC coast. They had brought two of the sledge dogs with them, and when they were uncrated from the train and hooked on to their leads to walk out of the station, they thought they were being harnessed and took off, dragging Silas across the floor behind them.
Unfortunately I don't know how much (if any) of this story is true, because I don't trust the book in which I found it, but I like it as a story and even more so for being able to picture where it took place.
Well, you kinda have to.
Something about this struck me as very amusing.
And so ended my US residency. GOODBYE, USA! We've had some pretty crazy times together! You go on being crazy, I'm just going to sidle inconspicuously off to the side, here ...
It's June, one of the loveliest months of the year, and I'm in Victoria, one of the loveliest cities this side of the planet. Everything is green, flowers spill out everywhere, it's light until 9:30 ... I know, let's spend all day in a basement!
It's the best kind of fun there is. I'll be back tomorrow!
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Date: 2014-06-14 01:03 pm (UTC)