Conversations with Brick Walls

15 November 2015

River Falls, Wisconsin

12:47 AM

       The squeak and rumble of the laundry trolly followed me down the long hallway that led to the lobby. The voice of a young girl negotiating with a drug boss was coming from my headphones. As I approached, my eyes caught on a figure curled up along some chairs in the breakfast area. I wasn't sure if I had been so absorbed in my book that I hadn't noticed him lying there, or if he had materialised while I had been procuring a fresh load of towels.

       Pulling the headphones from my mobile and silencing my audiobook, I approached him cautiously as if he were a deer I might spook. He wore a flannel fitted shirt, skinny jeans, and a knitted hat. He was passed out, drunk.

       "Sir," I said, my voice hesitant and quiet, my hand on his shoulder.

No response.

       I tried again, this time a bit louder and giving his shoulder a small shake. I was rewarded with a noncommittal grunt, matted with the thick syrup of sleep and alcohol. 

       "Sir, you have to get up."

       "Uh-huh"

       "Do you have a room here?"

       "Uh-huh"

       "Then you need to go to it."

       "Uh-huh"

       "You can't stay here."

       "Uh-huh"

       "You really need to get up."

       "Uh-huh"

       "Which you're not doing."

       "Uh-huh"

       Damn it, I totally walked into that one. This clearly wasn't working. I contemplated leaving him there as a frustrated rush of air left my lungs. I strode to the other side of the table he was using as a pillow. Poor guy, he'd have one hell of a crick in his neck if I didn't get him up. Pursing my lips and channeling my sophomore biology teacher, I held my arms out and slammed my palms together as loudly as I could. The clap was impressive and my palms stung with the impact all the way up to my wrists.

       Unfortunately, as it would turn out, copious amounts of alcohol induces a much heavier sleep than a lecture on domain Eukarya. My efforts were not graced with the only word in his vocabulary. The asshole didn't even grunt in acknowledgment.

       It was time to reverse tactics. I began talking and cajoling this grown man as if he were a very small child, until finally a blue eye locked onto mine from beneath his knitted cap, awake but, elsewhere. 

       "Sir, I'm sorry but you can't sleep here."
       "Oh, sorry," he slurred through the haze in his head. A small part of me was dumbstruck by this stunning addition to his already extensive vocabulary and verbose oratory skills.

       I watched as he pushed against his table on limbs made of jell-o struggling with the here-to unknown force of gravity. Noting his difficulty, I lunged forward, grabbing his elbow before he crashed back down to earth. My eyes locked onto a patch of dried blood in the fabric of his shirt. I let go as if he were a hot iron. In the split second that I contemplated asking him if he was alright, he collapsed onto an adjacent table. This time, I let him regain his balance on his own terms while I hover like a protective parent watching an infant take their first steps.

       Relief washes over me as he stabilizes and chaotically stumbles towards the door, a fawn testing out unsure legs in a strange new world. I offered to call him a cab, but he doesn't respond as he made his way to the door, an erratic pinball.

Just another day at the office...

One Year Ago

One year ago today I was watching the last 75% of the Shaw Shank Redemption for the first time. There was a small part of me that was thinking of the friend who had given me a list of movies that I absolutely needed to watch. However, neither that nor the movie (which was excellent) was the reason for the stupid grin that I couldn't seem to wipe off my face. That morning had changed everything.

20 September 2014

Peedie Hostel, Kirkwall, Orkney

9:24 AM

Dr. Rader wants to go to Maes Howe. I can feel myself exhale a breath in defeat. So far as I'm concerned, it's £5 that we'll never see again. But it's one of the things you go see when in Orkney, just like you should climb the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and so they were insistent about going.

We pull into the parking lot at 10:01. Dr. Rader, who is not used to driving on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road with a manual, has a bit of trouble. He somehow manages to back into the brick wall in the visitor centre car park. 

Tours of Maeshowe start every hour on the hour... and we've missed the 10:00 but all the same I go into the visitor centre to see when we can get a tour while the group lags behind and assesses the damage‏. Two nights ago we nearly lost the passenger side rear view mirror to a stone wall and so I hear muttering towards the benefits of insurance, as I make my way into the old mill house that doubles as a visitor centre.

I walk in and there are two women by the counter, a taller brunette and a shorter blonde. The instant I see the blonde woman something tingles in the back of my brain, just a small flicker of recognition and then she talks and I don't need to look at her name tag to know it's Rachael, the Rachael, a person that as far as I'm concerned existed in my mythology, the female protagonist in the story of the best day of my life.

So what do I say? "Hi Rachael, you probably don't remember me but I went on a tour with you in Skara Brae about a year and a half ago and you totally changed my life." No, that would be creepy. She’s probably given thousands of tours. Why would she remember me? So I don't say anything about that, and instead I put on a mask of cool charisma and pleasantly discuss what I came into discuss... taking a tour of Maes Howe‏. My companions have arrived in the visitor centre now and so I’m really not going to say anything in front of them. I’d never hear the end of it.

We've more or less agreed on a tour time, when Rachael's expression becomes a tad bit hesitant...

“Have you ever… been to Skara Brae?”

“Yes,” I say, surprised at how level my voice sounds.

“I remember you. You’re the Archaeoastronomer,” she says and I’m stunned. No one has ever remembered my obscure occupation, at least not by name. Hell, my own mother can’t remember what I do, but she did a year and a half later.

I nod my stunned agreement as she asks, “And didn’t you find a message in a bottle?”

“I swear I’m not stalking you…” she hastens to add.

“Of course,” I say but I’m smiling now. “Yeah that was me.”

“Can I get your surname?” She asks turning down to her calendar, reminding me that she is working. This is just small talk. I’m a customer.

I tell her. She hesitates and I begin to spell it. After 21 years with a last name like mine, you get used to it. She writes:

TUMBERELLO (x5) 1 CAR

She’s spelt it wrong, but I’m not about to correct her. Even though I’m the youngest in my party, I feel strangely grown up to have my name on the reservation. Unfortunately, we collectively don't have a good reason to stick around. My group is starting to eye me suspiciously.

“Will you be here later?” I ask, my voice nervous. I don’t know if I’m crossing a line, but she’s the Rachael. If March 15^th 2013 is going to get an epilogue, I want it to be longer than this.

She stutters a: “Yes, I’ll be here all day.”

“Good. See ya later!” I say as I walk out the door.

“That was a bit creepy,” Dr. Rader says to me as we’re walking to the car. Thankfully, it seems to have sustained only minimal damage from its encounter with the wall.

“No it wasn’t,” I say, but I can see how it looks from his perspective. He doesn’t know my Skara Brae story… I can’t believe I hadn’t told them. Well, we’re headed there now. There never would be a better time to tell the story. It occurs to me that I would have told them the tale anyway, but seeing her again changes everything. So I tell them about the amazing girl who gave me a private tour of the Neolithic village on my first day in Orkney.

“You should ask her out to coffee,” Ashley says after I’ve concluded my story.

It takes the whole group insisting I ask her out to coffee at a minimum, before I’m convinced it’s a good idea. It’s not that I don’t want to; trust me, I do. I just can’t believe that Rachael would want to go out to coffee with me. I’ve spent the past year and a half building her into this goddess, a goddess with a boyfriend. But I rationalise: if I just ask her to coffee then it’s not necessarily a date. I’m probably worth a chat, even if no amount of peer pressure in the world could convince me to ask her out for a drink.

We arrive at Skara Brae. It strikes me that I’ve only been here twice before: the first time with Rachael and the second with my friends from the hostel. Now that I’m slightly removed from the situation, my brain is reeling at the sheer implausibility of this all.

The day is much more similar to my more recent visit to the village so luckily I get more flashbacks of Rai’s antics and Eoin’s questions than I do of that late afternoon walk around and inside the village. Matt and I go down by the beach and we tour Skaill house, because why not?

We have lunch in the famous (at least to me) Skara Brae Café, before driving off to Yesnaby. I’d never been before, and I really do enjoy a good cliff, but I’ll be lying if I say my mind was all the way here. I’m eager to get back to Maes Howe and preoccupied about knowing my phone number.

I think the others sense this, because we leave Yesnaby earlier than we needed to. When I walk into the visitor centre, she's putting things on shelves. We have a stunted, semi awkward, conversation. It's partly my fault. I'm not certain she wants to talk to me, or if she's just being polite. So I let the conversation die a few times to see if she'll pick it back up. She does every time. I’m immensely nervous, but my brain is working well enough to casually slip in the fact that I’ll be in Orkney for a few weeks. This way after the tour, I’ll be able to ask her to coffee, even though my gut twists with anxiety at the thought. Luckily it turns out not to matter, she beats me to it.

I’m so excited that I practically throw my mobile at her. At this point I’m not wholly convinced that my mobile is a reliable form of communication, so I insist I get her number as well so I would be able to reach her if she couldn’t reach me. I ask her when she’d be free, but she glances at her co-worker behind the desk and says she should probably be working.

Anthony 20.09.2014 @ 14:46

Testing

Well, I’ve sent her a message. That’s about as business-like of a first text as I possibly could have sent. I meet her at the bottom of the stairs where she says, “I should be free next Wednesday.”

We chat more easily at the bottom of the stairs, maybe it’s because I’m less nervous now that we’ve set a date (and we’re going on one) or maybe because she’s not being watched by her co-workers. She asks if it’s alright to call on me for input during her tour and I can’t help but smile. I was hoping she’d ask that, but certainly not expecting it.

The two of us take up the rear of the tour group with an elderly woman. I’m totally committed to my job as “assistant tour guide” so I’m really concerned with making this a good experience for the elderly woman. She’s cold from the wind and tired from the walk, and Rachael suggests that we skip the part of the tour outside the tomb. I was just about to suggest the same thing. Rachael explains the change of plan to the crowd, before heading into the tomb first. She doesn’t ask me to, but I take up the rear making sure everyone else makes it inside and that the gate is shut.

I feel a spark of electricity run down my spine as she puts her hand on my shoulder when I enter the tomb. It’s to make sure I don’t stand up too quickly and hit my head. She did it for everyone. That doesn’t seem to matter.

I think she feels it too because when I shakily say, “I’m the last one and I’ve closed the gate.”

Her “Okay, good.” is almost as shaky.

All and all the tour goes pretty well. I mean it's her tour and I certainly make no move to steal the show, but we kind of worked together. We were in sync, like we'd done it a thousand times. She’s every bit as knowledgeable and interesting as I remembered. Until the tour started, it hadn’t really occurred to me that maybe I had imagined Rachael into a person who was better than the real Rachael (or anyone) could ever be. So I’m surprised by the relief I feel that my memory has done her justice.

The tour runs a bit late because of two, tall, leather clad, troublesome, Scotsmen. They kind of hijacked the tour, or at least tried to. I think Rachael handled it very well, but Dr. Rader is a bit miffed by them. They corner me and bombard me with questions on the way back to the visitor centre, which under normal circumstances would have been good fun. However, I really just want to be with Rachael and I can’t come up with a satisfactory reason to ditch them and walk with her.

“See you Wednesday!” I say when I get close to her, but she doesn’t really respond other than a wave. I try hard not to be too dejected about that. Maybe she doesn’t want to see me on Wednesday after all… bugger me… Well I have her number. If I don’t hear from her I suppose I can always try again.

When we get back to the car, I tell my friends we’re going out of coffee and I show the sticky-note with her name and mobile number. I’m met with a round of congratulations and we make our way to South Ronaldsay and tomb of the Eagles.

Here we are given a sub-par tour of a lesser cairn and honestly my group has more fun being delinquents than we do with the educational portion of the tour. The woman who owns the place actually snapped at Matt for cracking his knuckles. We were all uniformly tempted to crack our knuckles in retaliation.

We stop at Tesco to buy some supplies before returning to the Peedie Hostel to make dinner. I make my home made alfredo and garlic bread supplemented by a salad by Dr. Rader and chicken Kiev by Ashley.

The meal turned out fantastic. I couldn’t be more chuffed. I’m always nervous when I cook for people the first time, especially people who know good food. Wine is passed around and someone else does the dishes. It's the perfect end to this amazing day. 

⁂ 

I think I had some small sense that that would be the day everything changed. Oleka is the realisation of how few days are actually memorable. So many moments lost to obscurity by routine and monotony. However, that day, one year ago, was the antonym of oleka. It was the day that altered the course of my life irreversibly. 

Homecoming Part 1

28 May 2015

Inverness, Scotland, UK

 

A breath of air escapes my lunges as my exhausted body slumps onto the worn black leather couch. My limbs and torso are made of cracked glass, one wrong move from shattering. My pulsing head turns to the wall, where I see a colourful, old-timey, map of the British Isles. It’s strange to see it here. I know I’m going to the UK soon, but why is this map here? My throbbing brain struggles to process the coincidence that is this map, until I realise it isn’t a coincidence. I’m in Inverness at my favourite hostel.

The moment this realization hits me, I’m assaulted with a stream of memories from the past 24 hours. They’re disjointed and sharp like shards of a shattered stained glass window.

• A nice man at the Scotrail ticket office in Edinburgh Waverly is telling me that I’ll be able to use the train ticket for the trip I missed.
• The smell of sweat and fear seeps from my pores as I wait on a chair by the immigration booth.
• My aunt Laura and I are eating a hotdog in Chicago, before everything went wrong – again.
• I’m riding the X100 from Edinburgh Airport into the city centre and telling Rachael they let me in. I feel numb, so very numb, but the relief in her voice almost makes me smile.
• My immigration officer escorts me to the bagging area, where I learn my checked bag is still in Chicago and my carry-on bags are ruthlessly searched through.
• I’m walking aimlessly through the sunny streets of Edinburgh, still in too much shock to appreciate how wonderful it is to be in the city I love more than any other.
• A deadbolt clicks into place, sealing me in a large room overseen by a window. I have access to a toilet, they’ve told me how to work the TV, they’ve offered me food, but all I can think about is the security guard’s voice telling me: “It could be hours.”
• I buy a sandwich from Oink, while wandering through Edinburgh before my next train was due to depart.
• I stand alone at the airport terminal in O’hare amid the other displaced passengers. We had been sitting on the tarmac for two hours before they pulled us off the plane. The sky over Newark is too stormy to allow us to take off, and I can feel the beautiful blue over Chicago, mocking me.
• My immigration officer sets a pile of folders and notebooks in front of me, knowing everything there is to know about my research and my book. I feel so incredibly naked, and I’m so profoundly grateful to be wearing my hat.
• There is a rainbow, no two rainbows, outside the window of my train car. I’m somewhere south of Aviemore, and this makes does me smile.
• I’m holding my head in my hands – trying not to cry – trying not to be sick. I’m certain they’ll send me on the next plane back to the US. It’s been five months, five agonizing months, and now they’re going to keep me from her. I’m so close and so infinitely far away.
• They’re out of the Jeans I like in my size at Primark, but I buy a pair, a size too large, anyway. Without my checked bag, I need an emergency wardrobe. A few new t-shirts, a new pair of trousers, some new pants, and socks – it’s all very me.
• My pillow is pressed to the window of the airplane, as my eyes open from a surprisingly restful and comfortable sleep over the Atlantic.
• I’m walking the streets of Inverness to my hostel like I had done it a thousand times – because, at least metaphorically, I have.

Things are Going South Fast: Part 2

 1 May 2015 @ 9:13AM

I was sitting next to an Indian man (not First Nations, but a man from India). There wasn’t a whole lot of space left on the bus, but I was tired enough where I soon drifted back off into sleep. My eyes fluttered open again to a different scene. Fast moving mountain streams mirrored the colour of the low hanging clouds that hovered at the top of the valley. The sparse tan-green hills were now covered with tall, mostly pine, trees that made up a sea of jagged green spikes punctuated by rivers of grey. This must have been the valley I was told about and it strangely reminded me of Io valley on Maui. I drowsily tried to take a picture with my phone, but the colours weren’t right, and my camera couldn’t capture the outlines of the clouds well enough to do the scene justice. I tried to watch it with my eyes, to take it all in and hold on to it the old fashion way, but my consciousness was like a handful of sand and I could feel the grains slipping through my fingers.

In the end we arrived at Pacific station in Vancouver after the 8:30 bus. I had only about half an hour before my next bus left for Seattle, so I walked into the station and froze. It was almost chilling to stand in the last place I saw her. I deliberated for a long time over if I should take a picture of the uncomfortable wooden bench where we talked about anything but our upcoming five months of separation. In the end, I decided it would be morbid. Vancouver was bright and sunny, budding with life and the essence of spring. But for me, it was haunted by ghosts, and they were all her. I was glad I wasn’t sticking around.

When I walked back through the doors, the man who inspected tickets asked me. “Where are you headed?”

I told him, “Seattle.”

I must have been grinning because the man said, “You look really happy to be going to Seattle.”

And that was when it dawned on me that I was happy to go to Seattle. For the first time in a long time, I was really looking forward to seeing a new city. I was really looking forward to being in the US. I was really looking forward to going home, even if just for a short while. So I grinned wider, in an aggressively American way, and said honestly, “I am.”

He tells me my gate, and I pull my suitcase behind me to gate 14 where I stand behind an Australian couple and in front of three girls speaking Spanish. I end up sitting in front of a woman who was from Oregon, but had lived in Canada for the previous decade. This was the first time she was going home, and her happiness was almost infectious.

Going through customs on the ground is a lot less strenuous than by air. The people are more relaxed, and when they saw my US passport I was told “Welcome Home” as opposed to the “Where were you? Why did [would] you leave? What were you doing abroad for that long?” battery of questions I was used to receiving from US customs. If ever given the choice, I strongly recommend it. Either way, I had a laugh with the Australian couple over the dichotomy.

When I got back to my seat, I noticed the girl sitting across from me had a YES button from the Scottish referendum. I asked her about it. She was from Perthshire, and her voice was a dead ringer for Karen Gillan (she didn’t look anything like Karen Gillan though). As often seems to be the case with me, the conversation soon migrated to the Edinburgh vs. Glasgow discussion. She said she liked Glasgow much better than Edinburgh, that Glasgow was all about the people and that once you got over the whole fairy tale thing, Edinburgh didn’t have a lot to offer. I smiled and shook my head and wondered phocesiously where I had heard this before.

After the next stop, the woman who was returning to the US got off to be reunited with some family. I told her “Welcome home” not realising until after it had left my mouth that I had tacked on an “eh?” at the end of my statement. She smiled at me warmly and gave the most sincere “thank you” I’ve ever received. I nearly hugged her on instinct, but that would probably have been weird so I stayed in my seat.

The bus continued to chug along, and I began to write about my southward journey. The view from my window was nice enough, but nothing compared to the earlier Canadian vistas. Eventually, a woman with an accent that sounded Caribbean sat next to me. She had several bags and it made the end of the trip uncomfortably cramped. Apparently she was at the start of three solid days of Greyhounds on her way to New York City. I really didn’t envy that journey, as dreadful as my own was.

Eventually the bus pulled onto a bridge overlooking Puget Sound. I switched my iPhone to from a podcast to my music player and played Owl City’s Hello Seattle (first the original then the remix). These tunes seemed like the perfect soundtrack for my entrance to the city. The bus station was right next to the light train line that led to the airport. Home was just two flights away.

Things Are Going South Fast: Part 1

30 April 2015 @ 9:00PM

There was a German girl sitting across from me in the Prince George Greyhound bus station. I hadn’t asked her name; she hadn’t asked mine. It didn’t really matter. Her west bound bus was leaving in a half an hour, while I had another two hours before the south bound bus departed. It had been a while since I’d spoken with a backpacker, but it was nice to start the trip off that way. I was leaving Prince George for the first time in 115 days, and having this person to talk to about travel things helped me to get back into the traveller mind-set. Hell, just having someone to talk to was a nice distraction from the battle of emotions churning through my body. I wanted to leave so badly it hurt, but I also didn’t want to leave my new friends or this new place I now called home.

When the girl got on her bus, I turned on my phone and plugged my headphones in. Earlier that day, I had downloaded Cora Carmack’s “Losing It” and right about then, I couldn’t think of a better distraction than the awkward Sexyness that is the hallmark of Carmack’s craft. Awkward people need love too; I should know. Anyway, I was so engrossed that I almost didn’t notice that people had begun to queue up for the south bound bus to Kamloops.

After getting my luggage stowed in the cargo bay beneath the seats, I found a widow seat and snuggled up next to my pillow. It was already half past 11, and I so I told myself that I would just listen to one more chapter. I’ve told myself this lie so often that one would think I’d know better. Needless to say that when we stopped at a Tim Horton’s around half 2, I was still awake.

I considered getting a coffee, but I’m sorry Canadian friends, Timmy’s sucks for coffee. So I bought a sandwich instead and then proceeded to listen to the audio book until its completion. I think I finally nodded off during the epilogue.

My eyes opened to the soft, pale-yellow, glow of the eastern hills gradually blending into the lightest baby blue. Scattered cumulus clouds looked pinkish-purple in the glassy clear water of the numerous ponds and streams strewn about the rugged tan-green hills. This landscape could only have been the illegitimate love-child of Turkish Anatolia and the Scottish Highlands, and when seeing it awash in the predawn light, it was hard to imagine anything more beautiful.

The scene flickered before me, on and off, several times before a consistent shutter sound jarred me into a more stable state of consciousness. It took me a bit to recognise the skeuomorphic noise as a camera phone. It was a good idea so I followed suit.

After about half an hour, the sun rose above the hills and we had arrived in Kamloops. A twinge of sadness ran through me as I stumbled out of the bus and into the bus station. Memories of a black January night, bitter cold, and missing her flooded through my mind, as I took a seat and watched a line of bleary-eyed passengers shuffle into the station with all the grace of a horde of zombies seeking the all illusive grey matter, or maybe just coffee. 
The Kamloops bus station is nothing to write home about, which is probably a poor turn of phrase considering I’m literally doing that. However, my time here wasn’t supposed to be long, and so soon enough, I was back in queue to board the next bus to Vancouver.

I ended up chatting with two older gentlemen about one of those grab the prize with the claw and joystick games. A few days before, I had been listening to NPR’s “How to do Everything” and they explained the trick behind these types of games. So I shared it with my new companions, as I will here: Not surprisingly, the game is rigged to insure you lose the overwhelming majority of the time. So the secret is that not only does the claw have to be positioned exactly right to grab a prize, but also that the actual strength of the claw’s grip changes each time. This works out to where only around 1 in 20 times the claw is actually strong enough to pick up the prize, assuming the claw itself is aligned perfectly. The moral of the story is that those games are not worth yours or anyone’s time.

Our line slowly marched towards the bus, and we began to wonder if there would be enough space for all of us. There wasn’t. As it would turn out, there were two busses to Vancouver in quick succession and some of the passengers from the later bus were on my bus. The first bus was scheduled to leave at 7:00; the second bus (an express bus) was due to leave at 8:30. It took so long to get all the passengers sorted onto their correct busses, that our bus didn’t leave Kamloops until 8:00. No one, and especially not the bus driver, was happy.