Rockaway

In remembrance of William Elkins Johnson (1956 – 2023)

 

8:00 a.m., July 28^th, 2024, sitting in the car waiting for R, who stoops momentarily to fuss with a fern on the porch. The Subaru is packed, including bottles of water and a small plastic urinal I bought at CVS for emergency relief after days of struggle with two kidney stones, one small, one large, stubbornly resisting the gallons of water I’ve been drinking to make them dissolve and pass.

And no, didn’t use the urinal.

We decide to postpone breakfast till Tenino, little diner called Scotty B’s at a truck stop, ample parking for big rigs, clean showers and rest rooms, gas pumps full of diesel. Big traffic jam 10 miles out from the Nisqually bridge, traffic at a crawl, no reason why, people going as far as they can in the free lane, kind souls letting them in when they can go no further. Faint with hunger, we regret our decision, should’ve had breakfast in Tacoma. We get close to the source of the problem, expecting to see a car accident, paramedics, crushed metal, or maybe bulldozers red flags & the tumult of construction, but all we see is a group of men collecting traffic cones.

Exit to Tenino. Scotty B’s is gone, a victim of Covid. We enter Tenino, quiet bedroom community with a franchise featuring tacos. I gotta piss like crazy. We check the internet on a mobile phone, head further south to Centralia, stop at the Country Cousin, sizable breakfast place packed with people. Big plates of pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, glass of orange juice, coffee, gaze out the window at some blue petunias, homeless guy in the parking lot talking animatedly with his demons. Strange little birds in the parking lot I’ve never seen before, a weird mixture of crow, dove and starling. R has a conversation with a woman in the rest room who’d gone to the Willie Nelson and Chris Stapleton concert in Seattle. Fans of both, we fill with envy.  

We take highway 30 to Astoria, and to connect with the southward vistas of highway 101. Narrow lanes, up and down, maniac in a white Dodge Charger passing a lane of cars headed 80 mph toward oncoming traffic, R driving, she avoids a near collision. Stop at a gas station in Clatskanie for gas and rest room. Sign over the toilet reads “Men: don’t be shy, stay close, it’s shorter than you think. Women: remain seated for the entire performance.”

Seoul Food, Korean restaurant way off the beaten path, all by itself, surrounded by woods, closed, boarded up.

Mountain of sawdust in Wauna.

Collection of white propane tanks, like a cemetery for gas.

Eagle Sanctuary.

We reach Seaside, stop to stretch in the Coastal Craft Cannabis parking lot, Kool Shitshop across the street, skeleton in a rocking chair.

Go down 101 Oregon coast, hilly, lots of curves, but smooth, neatly marked with plenty of places to pull aside. Haystack Rock spotted through thick forest.

Spot the occasional hawk, eagle, winging its way east or west, north or south, over dense forests of Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, Oregon ash, Ponderosa pine. I tell R a blue rock-thrush was sighted in Rockaway last April, first time the bird had been sighted in the U.S.

Stop at the Community Center in Nehalem to avail ourselves of the rest rooms. Big sequoia nearby. I take a picture of R with her smartphone standing by the sequoia for scale. The trunk is gigantic. Must be hundreds of years old. And to think it came from a seed the size of a pinhead.

Check in to our motel room, which is huge, big table, refrigerator, stove, we could live here. Little packets on the bathroom counter: Makeup Remover Wipes, Lingette Démaquillante, all skin types, gentle cleansing, alcohol free, moisturizing, conditioning. Soap with little bumps on one side to keep it from sliding, but doesn’t work, soap keeps sliding wherever I put it. I feel like Stan Laurel trying to domesticate it, awaken its responsibilities as an object, and train it to remain on the counter without sliding into the sink, grabbing at it, juggling it, coaxing it into a stationary position.

White towels on a rack folded to form a cup for another smaller towel.

July 29^th, 2024. Gloom. Drizzle. We go have breakfast at Grumpy’s, small restaurant with twinkly lights in the windows, kites on the ceiling, dragons and butterflies. I watch a lonely soul in a black raincoat, hunched, walking the rails south, where the goofy Candy Cane Express travels between Garibaldi and Rockaway. I wonder what the decibels are in Grumpy’s, there are so many people, so many voices, so many kids, shouting, talking robustly.

We go down to see the Pacific, but it’s cold. I remembered to bring an umbrella but forgot a jacket. We go back to our room. I watch Jimmy Dore and Due Dissidence on my smartphone, a short lecture in French about Albert Camus, Le Paradoxe de L’Existence.

We meet up with R’s older sister and nephew and wife from Texas and their two rescue Chihuahuas, rescue dachshund, & a very skittish rescue mutt, step-niece, also from Texas, a warm, calming presence, constantly vigilant over the hijinks, curiosities and explorations of her two kids, 3 yr old girl and 1 ½ boy, cute as can be, sociable, good-natured, hilarious. Pizza and conversation. D, now middle-aged, an archivist, regales us with bizarre histories and nougats of anecdotal piquancy. Billy the Kid’s gravesite encaged, ironically, in bars because people keep stealing the headstone. Travels to Budapest and Romania. The medical ordeals of each dog. An explanation as to why Whitman supported the Mexican-American War. Currencies. Surgeries. Dental odysseys. Weird toilets of the world.  

Went for a run down Miller Road, paved road parallel to 101 which has hardly any traffic, down to the beach, felt good running on packed sand, sand gives a little, unlike the unforgiving asphalt.

Shower. Relax. Lie on the bed watching some podcasts on YouTube. Go for a walk down Miller Road to a small touristy business section where I’m assaulted by a horde of bubbles emanating from a sinister Bubbletron perched outdoors on a wall. We visit a small cannabis dispensary, which is empty when we walk in. A short, middle-aged woman appears from the back with the sourest disposition I’ve ever witnessed in a human being. I wondered if she might be the reincarnation of Arthur Schopenhauer. We ask questions about the products, to which she provides scant answers. We each buy a packet of 1:1 ratio gummies. Northwest Berry and Dragonfruit. 10 bucks each. 24 dollars cheaper than Seattle, which puts a 37% tax on it.

We walk back down Miller Road. Small white house with pretty white curtains. Call of a Eurasian dove. House with a lush shrub of pelargonium sidoides.

We enjoy three days of vigorous conversation with relatives convened from hundreds of miles for the memorial of R’s brother, who passed away unexpectedly last November. The mood is upbeat with a tinge of sadness, given the underlying circumstance of everyone’s being there.

Spritely conversations shift and migrate, changing partners, mingling connections, memories, affiliations. Eruptions of laughter. Sparkly counter, granite & quartz. Pop of cans.

We talk about the complexities and joys of raising bonsai with B, who has a collection of bonsai. How to train the branches, sculpt the plant into graceful sweeps and arching curves; the delicacy of root pruning, wiring, the fulfillment derived from patience and ingenuity.

Day of the ceremony is warmer than the gloom and chill of the previous day. We all enjoy a catered dinner, a veritable banquet from the pages of Rabelais, so beautifully arranged and sliced and presented R takes a picture on her smartphone.

The family walk down to the ocean, several holding bouquets of blue balloons, wibbly-wobbling in a gentle breeze. D, with his dashing handlebar mustache, standing in front of the Pacific holding nine blue twitchy balloons. It looked like a scene from Fellini.

A prayer was given and R and her brother’s grieving widow and sister and the three children he brought into this world, now adults with kids of their own, poured the ashes into the ocean. Someone played Amazing Grace. The sand felt fresh and good under my feet. It was rippled and grooved with the tiny holes of razor clams. That sharp division between heaven and earth was blurred, as if the beyond had been rendered weirdly attainable during a moment of charmed transformations, the border of the infinite opened by wave and surf. The two colossal shapes of Twin Rocks went in and out of focus, contingent on the random shifting of ocean mist, imbued with muted, afternoon light, creating a wistful sfumato. Champagne was poured. Kids played in the surf. A flock of birds flew west, into the setting sun.