They're calling again

It's the weekend. The day after St Patrick's Day. The more precocious of Carolyn's two cats has pawed my forehead and the sun shining through wide, shutter-free windows casts it's glare across my pillow around 11. They day begins with coffee, talk of a day trip and much non-committal faffing about before energy is mustered and we leave crack of noon for the ferry and drive to the Olympic Mountains.

The view from Hurricane Ridge is absolutely magnificant - an on top of the world kind of vista. The novelty of snow has yet to wear thin. I send a postcard of as much to my big brother with a comical little 'Steph was here' note and arrow scrawled on it. Graham writes back, "Your postcard has made its way on to the fridge. Ethan [my nephew age 4] now thinks you live at the top of a snow covered mountain and I don't see any reason to correct him."

Obscure Tangents

Seattle native Gary Lasater and Nancy McFaul opened this delecatable business in the grand year of 1976. The perfect escape for crumpet and tea...

the Crumpet Shop
1503 1st Avenue
Pike Place Market
Seattle, WA 98101

"Hey baby I hear the blues a'callin', Tossed salads and scrambled eggs (Quite stylish), And maybe I seem a bit confused, Well, maybe, but I got you pegged! Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha! But I don't know what to do with those, Tossed salads and scrambled eggs..

They're calling again.

Goodnight Seattle, we love you!" Frasier

Sleepless in Seattle

I arrive into Seattle's King St Station mid morning and I could do with a coffee.

Endearingly unaware of Seattle's reputation for coffee consumption, it is in retrospect that I ponder how apt my craving. A subtle aroma in the air? Or acute awareness I'd been sleeping in a chair for three days. ''Suffice to say", as I am wont to say, Seattle is a good place to fancy a latte.

Starbucks' first store opened in 1971 adjacent the Pike Place Market. The now household name I learn spawned from reference to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and I think is perhaps befitting it's origin as humble waterfront caff of a fish market. I'm not a great coffee drinker, and certainly no connoisseuir, although have an appreciation beyond that dulled from too many Uni midnight-til-four, 4 spoons, 2 sugars Nescafe cold sweat specials. But admit I feel out of my league here and pour over coffee menus of full milk, soy bean, fair trade and organic permutations in quiet fascination. Seattle is as if fueled by caffeine - and sponsored by Starbucks. Not to say there aren't plenty of rivals; independent baristas with competitive menus and mini chains with trademarked mugs to go. There certainly seems the demand.`Sleepless in Seattle'? Bloody hell. Seattle is wired!

Photographs

[Pike Place Market neon sign I like to think of as Seattle's centrepeice]

Obscure Tangents

"I am searching for the moment that I am so intoxicated with love that if you offered me another cup, I would not take it", Cherry Street Coffee House
www.cherrystreetcoffeehouse.com

Zeitgeist Coffee
http://zeitgeistcoffee.com/

Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs, Seattle

Seattle upholds a quiet charm. The suburbs of Craftsman houses with cream picket fences and delicate window shutters are modest and tasteful in their simplicity. Dotted across a city landscape dominated by water, she seems a makeshift city in her own glassy reflection and has a fisherman's village kind of feel I immediately like.

I met Carolyn whilst working in Sydney two years ago. We were two of three to bond over the trials of a stormwater management project that, in Elissa's spirit of acknowledging ''little wins'', drove us to consume Tim Tams and Sauvignon Blanc in equally extravagant measures. Carolyn inspired the cook-up of a seven kilogram turkey in honour of a shindig a long time ago someplace with pilgrims and Indians and, as I understand it, Libby's canned pumpkin pie (in which Carolyn held the kind of steadfast belief I'd thought usually reserved for religion).

A few weeks ago I'd sent Carolyn an email threatening to meet up just as soon as we shared a continent and took her reply, ''you stud'' to be enthusiastic. A far cry from Pymble mate, it is very cool to see you on home turf. You are a doll!

Photographs

[Nostalgic Steph, Pike Place Market at closing]

Good Night, and Good Luck

Davi, from the dining car, has joined me in the lounge where I have been talking with Caleb, an aspiring musician amongst other talents no doubt, and traveler on his way to Portland. Our lounge chairs rest easy facing the huge car windows and passing landscape and conversation flows easily across profound subjects without concern about time; from society expectations of age and responsibility to the US Constitution 2nd Amendment - the right to bear arms, "Arms because it's cool to have a gun," Caleb remarks (he's not an advocate) and we help Davi with her hand luggage at her station which feels to arrive abruptly as if to interrupt our chain of thought.

I have traded what remains of my cheese for a black and white canister of film (I cannot forgive myself for packing my film into my check-in luggage), and take one lone photograph of the famously receding glaciers of the Glacier National Park before the battery on my camera expires.

Caleb and I watch the glaciers in silence until their dusty white edges fade, first grey, and then beyond focus into the dusk of the evening.

George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck is playing in the lounge car and it's late when I bid good night to Caleb and retire to my own car and chair.

* * * * *

In the morning I walk to the back of the car and am rather bemused to find that someone has, under the stealth of night, unhitched the lounge car and remaining carriages somewhere east and just shy of Seattle. I suspect foul play and conjure images of obscure black and white silent movie material, highway robbery and a daring rooftop chase scene.

The train evidently has split in two - my half to Seattle, while Caleb and his carriages have left for Portland.

I stand a while at the rear window, watch the steady path of the tracks gently curving away and smile at the poetry of it all.

Photographs

[Glacier National Park, Montana at dusk]

Wild Horse Plains, Montana

I wake to see Brian leaning against the door between carriages. Getting in the way of the through-traffic appears his well practiced ice breaker, but it seems there's been no-one through for a while and he's loitering at my feet. The girl who slept in the chair beside me was gone; her stop-off must have been in the night.

Eventually I ask him if he is traveling for work (it's the grey suit, I'm curious). This is a mistake. I knew it was a mistake, but I asked anyway.

"No, I travel for love. For love of my mother - for my little brother."

He's lost me.

But Brian feels no need to explain and I resist the temptation to question. Fortunately he navigates the stilted ends of conversations seamlessly unto new topics, as a disc jockey might fade out Madonna's Holiday into Beethoven's Sonata in B Flat Major - the musical transition may well work, but the listener is less likely to ponder Beethoven's pianist virtuosity than question how the hell did we get here? Indeed, this is where I find myself, rendered rather speechless, and Brian digresses further and further beyond me...

"I know lots of good stories. Stories of the supernatural. There are plenty of gifted people out there. I know of shapeshifters. I know of a Polish woman from Warsaw - I speak a bit of Polish by the way - who can read minds and who can move objects with her mind..."

"I'm just a humble servant", pausing to offer me bottled water from his pocket, "from Oregon."

He continues to move quickly in tangents, and I take notes, smile courteously and avoid eye contact.

"I see angels and spirits. Do you see angels and spirits? I believe in angels", and when he laughs his laugh I recall my first impressions and find it suddenly less gentle on the ear one-on-one than it had resounding fuller in the distance.

"I've seen an Egyptian god, I've seen her. I was crying when I met her."

"I don't drink anything. I drink wine, sacred blood, I drink that."

I have said nothing for some time and, unprompted, Brian eventually walks away.

* * * * *

I get lost in ''mountain time'' and my not wearing a watch seems more of a statement here. We travel an hour and then lose it traveling west into the mountains. A train that defies time. I look out the window in the lounge car, privy to the railway side of rambling houses, tinny yards of metal, car shells and satellite dishes, and wonder if time has eluded Montana too.

Wolf Point, Montana. A 5 minute smoke break at 11:30ish. I watch a horsy woman with wiry hair and a moustache pack her pipe in readiness. To stretch my legs and breath in the cool air is a gift.

* * * * *

I perpetually think about food. When i hear the announcement ''fifteen minutes to Shelby" crackle through the intercom, I think Shelby "up state" slang for dinner.

* * * * *

Later I meet the pipe lady later in the carriage. She is plaiting horse hair in tight wrist braids sold as jewelry.

She said, "When I was younger than nine I knew that Montana was where I should be. I've been crazy about horses since before i was born."

"I came here, to the Wild Horse Plains, and I said to my family, 'we live in the wrong place.'"

Photographs

[From the top - Williston, North Dakota at dawn; the Empire Builder at Shelby; Smoko.]

Chicago to Seattle, Big Sky Country

I leave Chicago on the Amtrak Empire Builder on a Tuesday morning. I am due to arrive in Seattle on Thursday, so that's three days across the country. I've stocked up on gourmet essentials like herb peppered goats cheese and water crackers, organic cherry tomatoes, Côte D'Or Belgian dark chocolate biscuits, in part for the journey, in part for the trading potential (on sound advice from Matt).

I can hear Brian's voice carrying down the carriage; he's the first to instill what would become a growing sense of a train community on this trip. But I don't know this yet. I don't even know Brian's name is Brian.

We are rambling through the outer suburbs of what I will call Greater Chicago and I overhear Brian introducing himself as he moves his way down the carriage, "from Oregon", he is saying, "... love is all there is."

Is he preaching? He doesn't sound like he's preaching. His first impression is that of a strange ensemble. There's a huge contrast between his words and what I will describe as a disarming voice conducive to gentle laughter somewhere in a low octave.

"No I'm not a Muslim", I hear his reply to someone's ambitous question.

"I'm Christian, but I love all people." His voice now seems slippery in its confidence. I turn in my chair to see him. He has a round face, small teeth of a smile I'd be hesitant to trust and dark, wet-looking hair slicked back into a pony tail. A plastic toothbrush, still in it's plastic wrapper, sticks upright and askew from the top left pocket of his grey suit. He is standing, but rests his bulk comfortably against the side of an empty seat next to him, legs outstretched across the width of the corridor, shiny black shoes crossed at the ankes. I can see his hands held in the air. They look poised for long and ample discussion. "I have a bible myself.. here", Brian's widespread hands barely pause in his delivery and, before I learn where 'here' is, I've projected my attention outside to the passing residential shapes of Chicago suburbia.

* * * * *

It's much later when I hear another raised voice, and know that Brian is involved.

"Every country and every nation, there are good people and there are bad people. You cannot say that Muslims are bad...", and I tune out once again.

* * * * *

I've been asked if I'm from Washington D.C.

"No, I'm from Australia."

"Ahhh... Good Daaaaiii", my neighbour says, "Australians make words longer", he feels reason to explain to me.

"We shorten the Good", I say. "G'day", "as in Gudday mate." See?

He's enthusiastic, "Yes!, Gudaaaai!"

"The Australians eat the words!"

I smile at his perceptive description and scribble in my notebook.

* * * * *

I'm seated at a communal table in the dining car and introduce myself to my dining companions. I am the youngest by several tens of years, and I've entered the tail end of a political discussion.

"Bush has never been voted in," the gentleman opposite me [I have forgotten his name] is making a point.

"The first time he was appointed-," he begins.

"The second time there was lots of hanky-panky," his wife finishes for him, leaning across his table setting for the golden tabs of butter.

I smile at her indignant use of the word 'hanky-panky'.

I ask Dusty, spelt the name badge pinned on our waiter, in which carriage I would find the evening movies played in. "Is it the lounge car?, upstairs or downstairs?, where am I?," I question all in one. [I am sometimes wont to do this, fire questions in illogical unision.]

"Upstairs and downstairs," he says.

"Depending on the movie?" I ask, monotone, like a witty quipp, and the delivery of my line prompts riotous laughter from the table. I don't understand my own joke, can't bring to ask again and later must investigate the movie car for myself.

5 hours on the train and I've spent US$12 on wine.

"Have you seen that train movie with Cary Grant?", Davi, sitting next to me, proffers. I hadn't.

"It was nothing like this," Davi says.

* * * * *

It is sometime after 1am when I wake in my chair and gaze out the window at a distant full moon cast over a frozen landscape. Plains of white dissipate into a blurred horizon. I force myself to stay awake to savour stolen images whilst I imagine the train - and the world - sleeps.

Montana; they call it big sky country.

Photographs

[From the top - Dakota snow; Big sky Montana at 1am]

Obscure Tangents

Julie the Amtrak God - "This piece reminds me of my method of picking my next train destination by asking the agent where I could go with the remaining currency I have left for that country."

Matt Donath

Wind, Chicago

I fly into Chicago and take the train downtown from the airport, changing platforms at Washington Station to get to Grand Avenue. I'm humming the theme music to Due South and the opening cascading notes wash a heavy sense of nostalgia over a bleak winter day and a city I know only from the movies. Wheeling my case behind heeled boots and violently flapping International Woman of Mystery black coat, I struggle with the wind tunnel down East Ohio Avenue, one of a towering silver row of ‘Great Lakes’ avenues north of the Chicago River and west of Lake Michigan.

The ground foyer to Matt's high rise apartment has a professional air to it, all expansive ceiling and revolving doors. I straighten skirt self-consciously, tame tousled hair behind ears and announce myself at reception as I'm trying in vain to picture Matt in this shiny backdrop, incongruent against the all-purpose linen world traveler I'd met in Thailand 4 years ago.

Matt opens the door on the 20th floor. Familiar eyes are laughing and he greets me, dryly, "You look like you're going to an interview".

Sitting barefoot and drinking herbal tea crosslegged on the carpet of a studio apartment devoid of furniture except for the two mattresses, a chair and boxes supporting a computer, I face the wall of glass that frames the view across Chicago sky scrapers and a teasing glimpse of Lake Michigan. There feels little need for trimmings.

* * * * *

Mar 13, 2006. I'm late to meet Matt downtown near the Sears tower during his lunch break. Consequently the architectural tour of the city I've been promised is a whirlwind one (in ''the windy city'', I mean this in more sense than one).

I know nothing of architecture; a concept Matt has some trouble grasping. As I am escorted conspiratorially into each softly lit, exquisitely ornamental or handsomely gilded Art Deco foyer, the likes of architects I have never heard of – Burnham and Root, Holabird and Roche, Frank Llyod Wright – Matt mentions as if old school friends; names I should remember if I put my mind to it. Many of the architectural greats have left their stamp on Chicago; a city to rise from the ashes of the 1871 Great Chicago Fire into one of the world's greatest displays of modern architecture. It is a city of sky scraper landmarks that, on a less windswept day, would inspire one to linger. And, beneath the demanding silhouettes of LaSalle Street and others, lavish foyers of 1920s and 30s interior decadence have stood the test of time.

Obscure Tangents

Fraser of Due South.. "member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who first came to Chicago on the trail of his father's killer and for reasons that don't require explaining at this juncture in time, he stayed on as liaison to the Canadian Consulate." [Picture left: Fraser and his wolf, Diefenbaker]

Photographs

[The Chicago window on Quincy Street - a large pane of glass flanked by narrow, moveable sash windows]

The Light in the Piazza, New York

Short of gnawing on a croissant in the windowfront of an exclusive jewelry, fine silver and glassware institution (picture pastry crumbs on hair, in clothes; only Audrey Hepburn can pull that stunt off), I hit 42nd and 69th Avenues, downtown Manhattan, and many avenues in between, with a self assured air to rival Sarah Jessica Parker in a tu-tu.

Nobody questions the girl in heels at the MET, flitting in for some kulture on the way to Broadway. Ahhhh New York, New York.

* * * * *

Mar 10, 2006. It's a sunny 13C, New York has burst into Spring literally overnight and New Yorkers seem a confident, happy people in theirs, a grand city to capture all the senses. It is all and more of what I thought it would be. And nothing like Atlanta, my first introduction to the States. The apple sauce stains on my sneakers remain testament to an incident with fried green tomatoes.

I meet New York John on Wall Street beneath the massive US flag draped across the New York Stock Exchange. He sits on a bollard, conspicuous in his suit, drinking a cup of juice through a straw and people-watching amid tourists loitering in numbers with matching grey or pink NYPD jumpers. We get to talking, he's in finance with plans to study architecture. I can see the seed for interest; the buildings in New York have stature and presence, and theme music. I strut to Ghostbusters' 'Who ya gonna call?' as I pass the New York Public Library. John lives downtown Manhattan, has actually woken to see Sex And The City filmed in front of his apartment and I'm struck with how impressionable I am.

Had Tom lost sleep in Seattle after 9-11, Meg would have done well to catch him at the top of the Empire States Building. The queues are long and security feels exhaustive. And they seem to have streamlined security with marketing; photographs taken on entry are happy group shots poised against an Empire States backdrop and available for purchase when you leave.

I time my visit poorly, behind several large groups and drag my feet consciously as it dawns that my smiling mug will be the only single portrait on display in the foyer. I meet Shawn when I drag him to have his picture taken with me.

Well, I couldn't very well watch the sunset over Manhattan alone.

Mar 11, 2006. On Saturday afternoon at 3 I join the masses queuing for last minute discount tickets in Times Square. I was thinking The Producers; it seemed apt to find something big and glitzy, the sort of blockbuster of Broadway. While in the queue I'm eavesdropping a conversation ahead of me, drawn in by the interesting tid bits of insider knowledge. A man advises his friends through the play list with a distinctly flamboyant air apparently earned from the number of productions he's failed auditions for. He sums up his disappointment of The Producers with a musical account of the opening scene, singing the opening lines of the ushers in a half-hearted yet not unmelodic voice.. "Opening night! Opening night!"... At the same time he is mimicking his usher's torch with the loose-wristed gesture of a disgruntled diner waitress and a pot of coffee. And not before pausing for effect, he drops the performance and whinges to the attentive queue, "And I was thinking, god!, I'm trying to pay my rent here!".

And so I took the subway to the Lincoln Theatre Centre on 65th and Broadway to see the intimate, classy and immensely romantic production of The Light in the Piazza instead. The premise is in Italy. An American girl, Clara, on her first day vacation in Florence, loses her hat in a breeze across the square where a young Italian, Fabrizio, would catch it and return it to her. They inevitably fall in love. There is a gorgeous scene when, not finding the right words in English to express his feelings, he sings to her in Italian,

"Clara, mia luce, mio cor
L'essenza che mi mancava, sei tu
La tua luce m'inonda"

What's a girl to do?

Obscure Tangents

Sweet Melissa Patisserie

Photographs

[From the top - Barbie display, fur shop in Soho; World Trade Centre Subway Station; Empire States Building ground floor foyer; view from Empire States Building south over Manhattan at sunset...]

Smoked Meat and Tiramisu

Poutine, Restaurant Madrid Big Foot

Feb 27, 2006. I try my first poutine (french fries topped with a fresh squeaky sort of cheese curd and coated with hot gravy) at the Restaurant Madrid Big Foot, a landmark roadhouse on a culturally devoid stretch of highway between Québec and Montreal. The restuarant has a half way to nowhere kind of look and I reckon Juls' has been hankering for an excuse to stop here. We park the car in a large grey carpark circled by Monster Trucks and dinosaurs under a grimacing layer of disrepair and ice. There's a life size cowboy manikin sitting on a chair behind me, moving his head and eyes mechanically from side to side. The food rises above any expectation. It's quite good actually.

Homemade Tiramisu... what's a girl to do?

Mar 1, 2006. Francesco is having a do for his birthday and Juls and I are invited for tiramisu and sangria. He's a fellow transient in Montreal and we share a certain affinity for pastel light, late afternoon shadows and people-watching, amongst other things, and I know the significance of a birthday a long way from home. I warm immediately to the small, eclectic gathering of Italian, Québecois and English-speaking friends that make for much animated, although no less enriched, conversation.

Juls and I represent Australia and after a few plastic cups of sangria, I hear myself adapting a sort of patriotic ocker accent around golden phrases like "that's not a knife ya flamin' gallah" with gusto.

Indeed my idea of a perfect night.

Food in Bulk, Costcos

Mar 2006. I'm being taken grocery shopping, North American style, at the Costco Warehouse in a light industrial precinct in Montreal. This is a members only bulk discount store that appears to sell everything, only bigger and cheaper. Check out the size of the trolleys!

Juls and I stock up on red wine, smoked salmon, cheeses and the utterly delectable organic whole grain bagels that I've taken to eating warm from the oven and lacquered with pure maple butter...

Smoked Meats at Ben Delicatessen

Mar 5, 2006. Ben's on boulevard de Maisonneuve ouest is a Montreal institution famous for its smoked meat sandwiches and steadfast loyalty to maintaining the original retro cafeteria-style decor. The sandwiches are good, as they should be - Ben's family has been smoking meats since 1908. We're eyeing the mix of framed faces on the wall as the waiter quipps, "Our wall of fame. Those who left without paying".

Camellia Sinensis for Tea

Mar 3, 2006. There's a tea shop near Berri UQAM metro station, with unique tea blends from around the world. It's run by tea people, a subdued atmosphere conducive to reading a novel on a cushioned seat in the far corner, or talking away a very cold afternoon... http://www.camellia-sinensis.com/

"Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things."

Okakura Kakuzo