The Furious Spinner

(Part Two is posted directly below Part One.)

Here is a long post about my travels home. One of the reasons I give so much detail is because it was an amazing journey, not so much because of what happened—because most of it was ordinary—but because it happened at all. When someone is chronically ill, ordinary things often become little miracles. Each and every step a milagro. Even a year ago, I don’t think I would have tried any of this. I would have worried about getting sick alone, worried that I might be physically incapable of so many things along the way. But I did it. The ordinary is extraordinary to me. I cherish the trivial. I bow down to the goddess Trivia (who is probably Hecate, too). I feel as though I have my hands back: or at least, I have buds. Blooming again.

“...and yes I said yes I will Yes.” —Molly Bloom (via James Joyce)

I’m on the Coast Starlight, the Amtrak train that goes from LA to Seattle and stops in-between. We just passed Mount Shasta. Blessed be. I am in the Cascades again. The train is traveling slowly through this mountainous area, and I like that. The “turbulence” on this train is worse than turbulence on airplanes. We’re passing areas of clearcut. Some of it has been replanted in neat little rows. Not very natural. I’ve got Janis Joplin on the computer. Her scratchy throat fits the scenery. I would describe what I’m seeing to you, but I’m not quite here yet. Still desert dreaming.

Saturday, January 29, 2005

Tucson, Arizona

I read my last Mesquite Tale outloud under the tree, as it was getting dark. Ordinarily I just tell the story outloud, without a script as it were. But today I wrote up the story, a kind of modern tale of “Silver Hands,” the fairy tale about the girl whose father cuts off her hands after he sells her (inadvertently) to the devil.

Something about this gruesome tale is familiar. It feels like a key to something. In the tale, Silver Hands goes into Nature and her hands start growing again. It is only then that she is reunited with her husband, the king, who is wandering the wilderness, unkempt and a little bit mad, in grief over the loss of his wife and son. Silver finds the animal-like man in the woods, recognizes him as her husband, and they are reunited and healed, as a family. Fairy Tales are transformative. Stories are transformative. Terrible things happen to people in fairy tales—just as terrible things happen in real life. If a girl without hands can find a life again—can learn to care for herself and her family—who knows what could happen.

After I finished reading my version outloud, I felt exuberant. I laughed. I did a dance. I said goodbye to the desert and thank you. I felt like I flew back to the casita. Now I was ready to go home.

Later that night the moon was bright again, filling up the world. How many nights can it be full? The caretaker said she wasn’t sure how many more days of a full moon her body could take. I laughed. I understood. Somehow time has stood still, giving us time to be fully here. In full. Just like the full moon.

The Moon. Ahhhh. Streaming silver light down on us, night after night. Women out in the desert, running with coyotes, javelinas, quails, ourselves. Secrets abound. They fly with the owls, are dropped down to the wash where the javelinas kick them around a bit until they let them loose again and the coyotes drink them up and howl them out into the night, exhaling them as songs. Hear them? We are telling you our secrets. Are you strong enough? Soft enough? Woman enough? and yes I say yes I am Yes.

Sunday, January 30, 2005

My last morning in the casita. I will miss this place. Too much to do before I leave for Phoenix. First thing is I look over “The Senorita and the Cactus Thorn,” one of the two stories I wrote last night. The printer runs out of ink as I’m trying to print a letter to the woman, who runs the retreat and who won’t be back until tomorrow. I pack. I’ve got too much stuff, and I hardly brought anything, I thought. When I was 18 and backpacking around Europe, the first thing my friend and I did once we hit the streets of London was to pack up and mail half of the contents of our backpacks back home. What is it they say? Take half the clothes you think you’ll need and twice the money.

I take one last walk through the wash. I try to memorize it all. I want to remember this place forever. Nearly twenty years ago I came to Tucson, and I hated it. I was so miserable, so angry that my expectations had not been met, that I missed the heart of the place. I should have known that under all the glitzy clothes and make-up (strip malls, traffic, etc.) a desert babe still lurked. We’ve all got layers, honey. This morning, the birds are noisy. Thrashers, woodpeckers, quail, mockingbirds, wrens. Darting from tree to tree, from hidden desert space to hidden desert space.

As I’ve said before, there is something clean about the desert, something pristine. Someday I’ll figure out how to explain what I mean.

The sky is blue and clear. The sun is up over your shoulders. You can feel its heat on your back. You look around and see a saguaro or two, in their yoga poses. Prickly pear grow this way and that, their flat mitten-like pads waiting for a pointed handshake. You see the chollas, taller than the prickly pear, skinny, with small sections hanging down, like fruit waiting to be plucked—only, again, the thorns are hanging on, too. And if you don’t know what any of those look like, just think cactus. Interspersed with the cactus are the mesquite, creosote, paloverde. Think relatively short trees and shrubs, more branch than leaves. At your feet is hard blond dirt, some of it covered in small kitty litter-like rocks. Or maybe you’re in a wash, and the earth is like beach sand, only dry. You listen. It is so quiet, the silence throbs. Or is that your own heart? Everything is still, silent, hot. You breathe and hear your own breath. It’s just you and Nature. And for an instant, you know you’re the same.

I go to the end of the wash, to the road, look around, then turn around and head back toward the casita. I see a thrasher on a low branch of a creosote. I reach into my pocket for the little camera I bought at Walgreen’s and put it up to my eyes. I’m just about to snap the photograph when a coyote steps into the picture, about twenty feet behind the bird. I laugh. “Thank you, Coyote.” I’d written about her last night (The Senorita and the Cactus Thorns), and now here she is. She looks at me. I look at her. She poses for three photos, and then she turns and leaves.

A nice send-off.

I stop by the mesquite tree and say good-bye. I thank the creatures, spirits, beings, everything and everyone for this place and this time. The circle is open but unbroken. Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again.

Good-bye to Colette—the horse—and the dog and caretaker. We’ve become friends, I hope, and I look forward to seeing how things work out for her. We talked about sex a lot during my stay, probably because we were two women on our own. Maybe men are right about us: all women think about is sex.

I check over the casita one last time, pack the car, and slowly drive away.

Manana!

I want to have lunch at Maya Quetzal before I leave, but they are closed. I look around Antigone, the feminist bookstore which is a couple doors down from May Quetzal, one last time, then I get into the car and leave Tucson behind. This time I am sorry to see her go. Or me go. Whichever.

During these past ten days alone, it felt good to be doing things on my own again. I liked doing ordinary things: going shopping, stopping at the library, doing dishes. I’m so happy that I am physically capable of doing them! (Although, truth to tell, I still don’t like getting gas. Can’t be good for us.)

I get to Phoenix a bit before dark. I have dinner with my sister and her sweetie. I am tired, a bit shaky, but I am glad to be here and spend some time with my sister. I haven’t eaten much today, so I go to an Indian restaurant a couple of blocks away at the art center to get take-out. Mario and I had gone there a couple of times. It is busy, but I go up to the bar and look at the menu.

“Are you ready to order?” the young man asks, in that sing-song accent Eastern Indians have when they speak English. (I love listening to people who speak English as a second language. They often make English sound like a song—with cadences, rhythms.)

“Yes, I can’t remember,” I say. “Does your dal have dairy in it?”

This is a trick I do when I go to restaurants to get take-out, whether I’ve been there before or not. By saying “I can’t remember” the person waiting on me thinks I’ve been there before—even if I haven’t been. Therefore I’m a repeat customer, not just some tourist, so they’ll treat me better. Hey, I’ve found it works.)

“Yes, yes,” he says, “But we can make it without.”

I give him my order, alu gobi and something else with garbanzos, and then I watch him wait on other people. He is the only wait person. Two or three young women bus the tables, set them, bring out naan and water to the customers. At one point, I say to him, “You’re busy tonight.”

“Yes,” he says. “We were supposed to have a party of 100 tonight.”

“Oh my goodness!”

“Yes, but last night, she called and said she would be here in two and a half hours!” he said. “She had the wrong day.”

“On a Saturday night!” I said.

“Yes, and you know how busy we get here on a Saturday night!”

I smiled. No longer a stranger.

“Yes,” I say. “What did you do.”

“We did it,” he says, “but there was great stress on us all.” He frowns and smiles, as if he is proud and annoyed all at the same time.

Later, I talk with my sister. I can’t seem to stop talking. I’m not sure if she gets a word in edgewise. It has been nice having her so close, and I’ll miss her.

Monday, January 31, 2005

Phoeniz, Arizona

I was on the go from the moment I got out of bed. I ate breakfast, then baked tofu and cooked quinoa to take on the train. Then I repacked my bag and taped up two boxes to be shipped. I drove to the UPS store and sent the heavy boxes home (gotta stop buying books), went to Whole Foods, and filled up the car with gas. (Nowhere you go in these big desert towns is easy. It’s all a dddddrrrrriiiiiivvvvveeeee. It all takes forever.) Got back to the townhouse and cleaned it up, ate lunch, packed my stuff into the car.

By this time it was nearly 3:00 p.m. I had to be at the thruway bus at the Phoenix Metro Center at 5:00 p.m. Since I didn’t know where that was I figured I should leave early. I had to turn in the rental and catch a cab to the bus. I grabbed the mapquest with directions to the Dollar rental car place, and I left. After about 20 minutes of following directions (reading them while I was driving. Hmmm....), I suddenly had a feeling I wasn’t going in the right direction. I glanced at the original address at the top: I had grabbed the directions to the Metro Center! Panicked that I was going to miss my bus (that would take me to the train in Flagstaff) I pulled off the road to call someone. I first called Mario. Don’t know why. Then I called Dollar. They asked where I was. I tried to explain. I had pulled into a military base of some kind. Geez. They probably were gonna shoot me for using a cell phone, so I thought it was best to get back on the road. The Dollar people were great. They told me exactly where to turn, what road to take, etc., to get to their place from where I was. Didn’t miss a beat. I was soon at the Dollar place. I gave them the car, then I waited for the cab.

I had a suitcase, my backpack, a little lunch box, and my purse. I had three things too many. And they were all way too heavy. The cab arrived, and we headed out into rush hour. He had his window open the whole way, and I kept wondering how he could stand to breath the exhaust—or more importantly, how was I gong to fare breathing all those fumes. He finally got sick of standing in traffic and took a back way. Again, I just kept talking. Talked about the differences between Arizona and Washington, politically. He didn’t say much, so I finally said, “Don’t worry. I won’t start talking about religion next.” He said, “Thank you.” I laughed, and we talked a bit about baseball.

He didn’t know where the Amtrak bus was at the Metro Center.

“It’s a big mall,” he said.

“OK. I’ll call Amtrak,” I said, expecting them to be as knowledgeable as Dollar was. (Maybe not expecting; perhaps “hoping” is a better word.) Someone from Amtrak answered, and I asked her where we should go at the Phoenix Metro Center to catch the Amtrak bus. She said she didn’t know; she wasn’t in Phoenix.

“I understand that,” I said, “but you must know where I go to wait for your bus.”

“We contract that service,” she said.

“Yes, but my tickets are with Amtrak,” I said patiently. “You must be able to tell me where to go to catch the bus.”

“Phoenix Metro Center west,” she said.

I told the cab driver and asked if the “west” part helped.

“Well, it’s just a big mall,” he said.

He took me to where the city buses came and went. He asked the security guard at this outside bus stop about Amtrak, and he pointed to the empty parking lot across from the buses. The cab driver helped me get my stuff out of the taxi. ($33.00) Then he drove away.

It was cloudy out and looked like it could rain any minute. I went over to where dozens of mostly young people waited for the bus. I felt a tinge of anxiety as I walked (and dragged my stuff) toward the music and chatter. But I breathed and let the anxiety go. So what if I was a country bumpkin in the middle of a major metropolitan city weighed down with too many bags who was ripe for the mugging. Life was good. As I sat waiting, I thought of my time back-packing through Europe. This was much the same, only I hadn’t been alone then. Much of travel is dealing with these kinds of things: getting from destination to destination, buying tickets, waiting for transportation, getting accommodations. Mundane activities.

It started raining. I stood under an overhang for a while. Then the rain stopped. It was five minutes to 5:00 and the bus wasn’t there. I called Amtrak again (thank goodness for cell phones). Was I in the right place? She (a different she) had no idea. “Can’t you ask someone?” she asked.

“I Am asking someone,” I said. “I’m asking you. Can’t you call the driver?”

“No, we contract that service...”

This was why people didn’t take the train! I have never dealt with any public service that was less public service-oriented than the Amtrak people on the phone.

I really didn’t want to miss this bus. I wanted to see Mario. I wanted to get home to my husband. I thought about going to the airport and just getting on a plane. I was rethinking my entire travel arrangements.

At some point I walked over to the parking area where the bus was supposed to pick me up because a man was waiting near his car and had been waiting for some time.

“Are you waiting for Amtrak?” I asked.

“No, no, my daughter,” he said in accented English. It sounded like a bad Russian accent from a television show. “What you doing?”

I explained what I was doing.

“Washington? I have sisters in Seattle,” he said. “They work in day care. No, how you say, health care. Lots of money. You like it? I live in Mollalla twenty years ago. It rain all the time. I live in Chicago. Detroit.” He listed all the places he had lived in the United States.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“Rumania,” he said. He leaned on his car and listened to everything I said, completely and thoroughly absorbed. “A bus to Flagstaff? A train. I don’t know about that.” As we talked, I thought that most native born Americans probably would not have talked this long with me.

He saw someone he knew get off one of the metro buses, a young man his daughter’s age. They spoke animatedly in Rumanian (is that the right word for the Rumanian language), as he tried to figure out where his daughter was.

The bus showed up 30 minutes late, only it wasn’t a bus; it was a shuttle. The Rumanian man was fascinated. He looked all around the vehicle that was about the size of an SUV.

“Never seen anything like it,” he said. “God bless you!” He waved.

I told the driver, “I’ve been waiting a while and I’ve really got to pee.” He was kind enough to stop at a burger joint, and I ran in quickly. Then we left Phoenix.

I sat next to a man about my age. Two people sat in front of us, and a man sat in the back by himself. He was on a cell phone.

“Yeah, man, someone stole our equipment, we almost got eaten by a gator, and we were attacked by the natives,” he was saying.

I wanted to laugh. He talked so loud. Were we going to have to listen to this all the way to Flagstaff? Ah well. Something to write about. It was beginning to get dark. After he said good-bye to the person on the other end of the phone, he said to us, “We were on a rafting trip in the Amazon. Didn’t want to leave you guys hanging.” His voice was raspy, and he kept coughing. Hope you didn’t bring back nuthin’ catchy from the Amazon, mister.

The shuttle bus driver drove through heavy traffic in the HOV lane. He drove fairly fast. Freaking fast. Frighteningly fast.

I quipped, “You just do this so you can drive in the HOV lane.”

“Nah. They don’t enforce it here,” he said. “I don’t know why. In California, now, they enforce it.”

“Yes, they do in Portland, too,” I said. “I heard on NPR that in some places they let people with electric cars drive in the HOV lane.” I don’t know why I said this. Just making conversation...

“In California they have lanes that you can pay to drive on,” he said.

“Really?” I wasn’t understanding. Like a toll road? No, a toll lane. So essentially the rich people could have their own lane, he was saying. I’d driven in California many, many times; I didn't remember any toll lanes.

The man next to me said that was true in Mexico, too. He said there were two roads. Essentially one for the rich gringoes and a few rich Mexicans and the other road was congested with ruts and potholes. A privatized road, essentially.

“Really?” I said. The man and I started talking. At some point he must have asked me where I was from and I told him. He said he had a Grandfather in that area. I asked him where. BZ Corners. I asked him his grandfather’s name. He told me. My mouth fell open. I knew his grandfather.

“You’re kidding?” I said. “My husband was friends with him. He wrote a story about him. We visited him a few times before he died. We’ve got a couple of his photographs hanging on our living room wall!”

“You’re kidding?” he said. “What’s your husband’s name?”

So we introduced ourselves and started going crazy gabbing. It was clear in about two sentences that we were two old liberals, progressive, pinkos, whatever name you want to give to those of us who thought we could create a better society: peace, love, save the environment, create community, etc. We talked nonstop for two hours. Two blue people in a red state. A red shuttle bus, probably. He did extreme sports and had lived in his van and on friends’ couches for the last twenty years. He was now living in a friend’s garage that he’d converted into a little apartment. Our sentences overlapped as we talked about Bush, finding a community, fire fighting (he’d been a smoke jumper), breathing difficulties (he’d been a smoke jumper), family, fears, adrenalin, dogs and dog owners, more politics.

Thirty minutes into the drive and I was extremely uncomfortable with how fast the driver was traveling. These were mountain roads with curves and he was going 80 mph. Sometimes he went on the side of the road to avoid potholes, and the sound of the wheels going over that “wake-up” strip set off all my alarm bells. If we hit gravel, that would be it. Mark encouraged me to breathe, and he kept talking and I kept talking, sometimes with my eyes closed, as we bounced toward Flagstaff. Since Mark was into extreme sports, going 80 mph hadn’t gotten his adrenalin going one iota. He just laughed. But he didn’t laugh at me, and he didn’t minimize my anxiety or withdraw from me as most people do. We talked about it being a control issue. I grabbed Mark’s arm and then hand a couple of times. I was terrified out of my mind. During one bad stretch, I just hung onto Mark’s hand as we climbed higher, the roads got curvier, and snow began showing up on the sides of the road. Finally, I was able to relax—or at least let go of my death grip.

“I am so glad you were here,” I said, laughing. The two hours would have been excruciating without him.

As we neared Flagstaff, we exchanged cards. I reminded him that Mario worked at the library in Stevenson; if he lost the card, he could always just go to the library.

I was glad when we reached Flagstaff, although I was sorry to see Mark go. I have always enjoyed making these kinds of connections when I traveled. It was icy cold at the train station. Mark and I hugged goodbye. Then I dragged my stuff into the train station. I stepped inside. They were remodeling. Although I couldn’t smell them, I could taste the chemicals.

“I can’t stay here,” I said to the guy behind the counter. I didn’t have a hat, gloves, or scarf. I had sent them all home so I didn’t have to carry them. I figured I’d be in Flagstaff for only a short time. The guy looked at me over his glasses. “Well, leave your stuff here and I’ll figure out your ticket,” he said.

“Any place I can find something to eat?” I said, “Nonsmoking.”

“It’s all nonsmoking,” he said, “including the bars. Cross the road and you’ll find something.”

I took my purse and my lunch box and went back into the freezing cold. It was below 20 degrees. I had on my loafers, having sent my running shoes (with traction) back home in the mail. What had I been thinking? The parking lot and sidewalks were ice and snow. I crossed the old Route 66, the mother road. Boom!

It was night, and I was in a strange cold town. My breathing and ear problems get aggravated in the cold (which is why I seldom go anywhere without a hat and scarf), so I tried to breathe through my sweater and hold my hands over my ears while also trying not to fall while hanging onto my three hundred pound purse and look for a place to stay warm in for two and a half hours. I went to the first bar I found. They were smoking. I kept walking through the night and the dark. I wondered what the hell was I doing? On the other hand, what the hell was I doing! This was kind of cool. Things weren’t going well, but I was surviving. I was doing OK.

Mario and I had stopped in Flagstaff a couple of times before and had found a good place to eat, but I couldn’t seem to get my bearings to figure out where that might have been. I was too cold and disoriented.

Finally I found an open burrito place. Three young guys were running the joint. I ordered beans, rice, and chips, but I was skeptical. I wasn’t sure the young men were old enough or cognizant enough to understand hygiene. I couldn’t bring myself to eat the food (which was served to me in Styrofoam containers). Instead, I ate my tofu sandwiches. The music was so loud. Most of it was hard driving rock ‘n roll. When the station played something I recognized, I said to one of the boys, “Why are you listening to this old people’s music? This is stuff from when I was a kid.”

“Nobody doesn’t like this now,” the guy said. He wore a watch cap and sported a large tattoo on his left arm. I couldn’t quite make out the design.

“I could stand a little Led right now,” I said.

“Yeah, that would be good.”

“Or Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody,” I said.

“Oh yeah. That would be great,” he agreed.

“I just got their greatest hits and that wasn’t on it,” I said.

“No way. That’s their most famous.”

“Yeah, I think they put it on the Greatest Hits 2 or something. Just to get me to buy it.”

He shook his head at the unfairness of it all.

“I like your tat,” I said.

He held it up.

Some creature with wings.

“That one hurt?” I asked.

“Nah.” He pulled up his sleeve and showed me another. “This one did. Probably cuz it was my first and I didn’t really know what was up.”

I asked him if there was someplace else I could go in town to hangout, since they were closing at 9:00.

“You know Maloney’s? Go a couple doors down from it. There’s a coffee house. Kind of quiet.”

At 9:00, I went out into the cold again. I tried not to think of warm desert nights. Be in the moment, Kim. Be in the freaking freezin’ moment.

I wandered around again. Think: dark, cold, icy, deserted. I found the quiet “coffee house” and went inside. To me, a coffee house is a dark warm place where people sit around in chairs or on sofas and someone else plays a guitar. Not so this place. The music blared, albeit not as loud as at the burrito place. The five young people there all stopped when I came in and stared at me. I started laughing, and they quickly turned away. The young waitress asked me what she could get me. She was behind a bar. Behind the people hanging at the bar was a wall of coolers filled with beers, juices, etc. In one of the corners of the small place was a kind of cigarette stand. A cigarette bar. Now the counter that kept people out (or the cashier in) was up and people reached in to get packs of cigarettes.

“Something hot,” I said.

“Tea, chai?”

“Tea,” I said. “You know, I really just want hot water. I’ll pay for the tea, but I just want the water.”

She got me a mug of hot water. I reached for a paper next to me (a USA Today paper which is conservative but what the hell) and read it while the young people came and went. They all seemed excited by the snow and cold. Several people came in and just bought cigs. Quite a few got those cigarettes without additives. (I forget what it’s called.) I’m still amazed that so many 20 and 30 somethings smoke. I can see being into extreme sports—even though it’s not my thing—but why take up a habit that can kill you slowly and gruesomely? Ah well.

When 10:00 p.m. rolled around, I was back out on the cold streets again. At the train station, I found out the train was late. The man in his booth handed me back my new tickets, and said, “Did you know you’re going to be in LA all day? Your train gets in about 8:30 a.m. and you don’t leave on the thruway bus until 3:00.”

“No, I didn’t know that. No one told me. I’m going to be in LA all day?” The train from Sacramento to Portland left at midnight.

What was I going to do in Los Angeles without a car? It wasn’t a long enough time to call anyone I knew. I called Mario and we talked about the possibility of me just driving to Sacramento from Los Angeles. It was nearly 400 miles. I wasn’t sure I was up to that much driving by myself, especially on LA freeways, but I asked him to make a tentative reservation with a car rental place.

I went in and out of the station while waiting for the train. Inside with the chemicals, then outside in the freezing. I was not dressed for either. The security man, a short wiry man in cowboy boots and a white cowboy hat (turned up on the sides; he was no pretender), with long white hair and a white beard, stood outside with me for part of the time. Three of us started talking about the recent train derailment in LA. A man started to commit suicide by leaving his SUV on the railroad tracks (he jumped out before the train came). The Metro Line train hit the SUV. Eleven people died.

“That just pisses me off,” I said, not feeling very charitable. “If you’re going to kill yourself, why take out other people.”

“He didn’t even kill himself,” the man standing with us said. “Gonna get the state to do it for him.”

“I was in Albuquerque waiting for the train on a night like this,” the security guard said. “We could see the train coming. And this woman was moving toward the train. She was as far away from me as that light is.” He pointed to one of the amber lights down the platform a bit. “We thought she was going to take a photograph. But she stepped right in front of the train.”

“You saw that?” I asked.

He nodded. I had a feeling he had seen quite a lot in his long life, not all of it pretty.

“They had to take the blood alcohol content of the engineer and the rest of the crew,” he said. “Even though they didn’t do anything. But the Federal Transportation Board had to do everything, you know, just to see.”

I thought, they should have taken her blood alcohol, but I didn’t say it outloud.

The security guard said, “See from down there at the end of the platform down to the other end?” he said, pointing and holding out his arms. “The train master who has been here for twenty years said 115 people have died during that time in that space. Hit by trains.”

“They all killed themselves?” I asked.

“A lot were accidents,” he said. “University kids drunk, trying to get to the other side.”

Geez. That’s a lot of dead kids. Seemed like they should do something about that.

Finally the train arrived. I was so cold, tired, hungry. I was ready for my spacious sleeping accommodations on the train. It would be really nice if Mario was here with me, but since he wasn’t, I’d have twice as much room. My room was on the second “floor.” I couldn’t drag my suitcase up, so the attendant said he’d bring it up. I went up the narrow stairs and down the narrow corridor. On either side of me were beds in teeny tiny rooms. In fact, the bed–which was cot-sized--took up nearly all the room in the room. I was glad I wasn’t sleeping in these rooms. Then I looked at the numbers on the doors. Wait. I was sleeping here. I stopped. A cot-sized bed in an room just bigger than a cot. I started to laugh. I was very glad Mario was not here. What the hell would a 6 foot plus man do? I dumped my backpack on the bed, then crawled onto the bed. Soon after the train started, the attendant brought me my suitcase. I only had change, so I gave him a couple of bucks. (I hate tipping. Why don’t we just pay people a fair wage and screw tipping?)

Somehow I opened up my suitcase enough to get out the air filter. I plugged that in. I called Mario on the cell and told him about my accommodations. Then after using the tiny rest room down the hall, I took off my outer clothes and got under the covers. Once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw a sky filled with stars. I saw the Big Dipper and Orion. It was all so beautiful. Off to the side, a yellow half moon rocked near the horizon, looking like it was deciding whether it should sink or soar.

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