24 September
Mountain Home, Idaho and points east


Ah, back on the road.  My 3 ½ days turned into
almost seven.  On Monday I did some local
deliveries from the USX yard in Kent, then I was
assigned to pick up there Tuesday morning, a load
going to Nashville for Friday morning.  Problem
with that plan was, the stuff wasn’t even in the
warehouse yet: it was sitting in containers at the
Port of Seattle, waiting to clear customs.  It was
a huge shipment of auto parts from Japan,
destined to become internal organs for Nissans
being assembled in Tennessee.  That is all fine
and good by me, but there was no telling when
the parts would start arriving in Kent.  And there were 11 USX trucks waiting around for them, me being among the last to
arrive (some had been there since Saturday I was told).  So surely USX would release some of us from the load to go take
care of other business, right?

No dice, and the explanation can be summed up in one word from the above paragraph: Nissan.  Auto makers are far and
away the most uptight customers in this business.  The products we haul for them –anything other than the finished
products—sometimes go straight from our trailers to the assembly line, and they always want the friggin’ stuff delivered
yesterday.  Both long-haul companies who have employed me for an appreciable duration, USX and Werner, have shown
that they will kowtow to the car manufacturers in just about any possible way; Werner once had me wait in Detroit for two
full days at the behest of Ford.  I also got some fat “layover” pay for that, so you know the trucking companies are not
doing it for nothing.  They probably make a killing for hauling car parts on demand.

So I waited all day Tuesday, and around 6PM they told us there would be no more containers coming from the port, so the
eight or nine trucks that were left all got a dock assignment and dropped the trailers.  That was when it occurred to me that
I was less than 20 miles from Seattle, so why not go back to Dave’s place for the night and come back to Kent in the
morning.  Sweet.

I bobtailed (truck without trailer –or did I mention that already?) back to his pad in the International District, which is up on
a hill overlooking downtown and the Puget Sound, very nice spot.  He was at band practice until around 9:00, so I typed
some Chronicles while watching the sun set over the Olympic Mountains, talked to Aubray and got some Chinese take-out.  
Dave was more than a little surprised to see me, but happy.  We watched the Mariners game and banged around on the
computer, went to sleep at a slightly decent hour, and enjoyed his fresh-ground Italian coffee in the morning.


                                                            degree of seriousness, that we should form a “writers’ commune.” This was
without any prompting on my part.  I had been having preliminary discussions with the other aspiring writers from my
Maryland coterie of friends, Ben and Jeff, about my idea of a “writers’ co-op,” but I had not thought to include Dave
because I didn’t know he still had the same aspirations.  

My concept of a co-op was not tied into the idea of a geographical setting –I pictured an affiliation tethered more by email
and the internet, and I still see the co-op as a whole this way.  I do hope to work in conjunction with people from all over
the country, or the world.  But Dave’s suggestion got me thinking…. a “commune” –some form of geographical
cohabitation—could be the core of an otherwise loosely affiliated group.  (Since one of the main ideas behind the co-op,
which I have been calling “Creative Anarchy Unlimited,” is for it to operate under creative anarchist principles –anarchy
meaning literally “no head”—efforts would have to be made to ensure that the core would not mutate into a head, and from
a philosophical standpoint I believe this is doable.)  In this way, anyone who wants to be involved in the co-op could choose
to be part of the core and become more fully immersed in it as a life-project, or affiliated from a distance to lesser degrees.

The thought of relocating myself to help form this core is what really gave this idea some legs on a personal level.  Then
there was the question of Where?  Where could the four people I hoped to convince to form CAU’s core –three of whom
are currently stationary in three different corners of the country, and me, the professional vagabond—all agree to locate
themselves?  My obvious sentimental choice would be New England, perhaps Boston, or an eastern Canada city like
Montreal.

But despite my own proclivities, the place that seemed to have the most potential, the one that always jumped to the fore of
my mind when I thought about what could make this dream become a reality, was Seattle.  Dave is already there; Ben has
friends at The Seattle Times and  has been steadily pursuing a job there for years (I told him time is on his side, eventually
they’ll hire him just so he will stop applying); Jeff has lived there before, and expressed some interest in going back a few
times for various reasons, all independent of this idea.

As for me, Seattle was the first “away” place I went to live after leaving college.  My scheme was to establish residency in
Washington by living there for a year, then attend Evergreen State College in Olympia the next fall.  ESC is a public liberal
arts college in which students build their own majors out of very eclectic offerings, and receive narrative evaluations in
place of letter grades.  There are some private schools, like Reed College in Oregon and Hampshire College in Amherst,
Mass., that have a similar structure but a very high price tag.  ESC was the only one I found that offered the possibilities of
discounted tuition, and at that point I still needed an academic direction to turn to so I could justify dropping out of
Maryland.  So I convinced myself that was the real reason for packing up and going west, and Jeff and I took a two-week
excursion across the continent in my Honda CRX, arriving in Seattle in late August 1993.

I did not do very well on my own at first.  I was afraid of and intimidated by everything, and without friends to help me
ease my way into the local culture and feel cool by osmosis –which Jeff and Ben and especially Dave, among others, had
done for me right off the bat as a freshman in the high-rise dorms at Maryland—I came face to face with the realization that
I had no social adaptability skills of my own, that my very sheltered New Hampshire upbringing made me out-of-step with
the bohemian Seattle culture I wanted to embrace, and I felt very Uncool as a result.  The early part of my stay in Seattle
was marked by manic swings of excitement and gusto, and some of the most horrible spasms of loneliness I have ever felt,
like all the toxins of an isolated  and anxiety-ridden childhood were coming to the surface and being sweated out, no sense
of home to calm them.  These were feelings that dwarf anything I feel in my lowest moments now.

That first stint in Seattle start to unravel when I realized that I had no intention of putting myself through college and all I
wanted to do was wander this massive country that Jeff and I had crossed in a banana-shaped path, seeing so much but
leaving so much more to see.  I had faith that I could teach myself to be a writer along the way.  So in late autumn I sold
my car and began a series of cash-depleting trips, mostly by Greyhound and Amtrak, that did, in very short order, take me
to all the lower 48 states.  (And, as is sadly typical for most of my life, on the day I actually moved out of my room in
Seattle, I found out that a nice, attractive, fun-loving German girl who lived in the same rooming house would have wanted
to date me, if she had only known I liked her…)  

[Ed. Note: For the sake of moving this narrative along, I have condensed the rest of the chapter considerably from its
original handwritten form.]

By March 1994 I was back in College Park, sleeping on a couch in Dave’s basement and feeling like an absolute failure.  
Not so much because of school –my disinterest in continuing was genuine, and I have felt very few regrets about it since.  
It was the feeling of having failed to make it on my own, failing the adventure of life by recoiling from a great challenge.  So
when I heard that the German girl was soon going home for a while, I decided to go back to Seattle and to see her off, and
give West Coast life another try.  Through a driveaway agency I arranged to deliver a woman’s Ford Escort from D.C. to
Seattle, my first solo cross-country trip by car.

This go-around in Seattle was very different than the first, but had a similar outcome.  I ended up falling in love with one of
my old housemates –but not the German girl.  It was my next-door-neighbor in the basement.  She was a very beautiful
woman and extremely sweet…and, as I came to find out, an untreated schizophrenic.  Because of our proximity we were
nearly constant companions for the next three months, and I found out that my ups and downs were only a fraction of what
someone in her condition goes through.  But I also found out how susceptible I was to going through it with her –and there
were many times I found myself wondering who was the one with the real illness: the person dealing with genuine mental
health issues, hearing voices that pitted her against herself, or the supposedly steady, sane person who cannot even hear his
own voice, and pits himself against the world because of it.

We had plenty of good times between the episodes, but the bad times were rapidly causing emotional burnout, and a series
of lousy, dead-end jobs –the nadir of which being the post-E.coli Jack In The Box—did not help my mental state.  By late
June I decided I’d had enough.  I quit the Box, found a car bound for Delaware, and skedaddled out of Seattle, bound to live
with another friend in another East Coast city, and my first Western dream dead and gone…to be resurrected six months
later.

Anyway, that is the sum total of my experience with living in Seattle.  I’ve tried some of the other major West Coast cities
with Aubray too –San Francisco and San Diego (wouldn’t even entertain the thought of LA)—and the sad thing is, it did not
go much better.  We gave each other the absolute worst in both settings, and they led to the only other times that we
separated during our marriage.  The last two places where we lived, Ashland and Greenfield, Mass., both felt ideal for my
temperament and way of life; both had about 20,000 people with quiet country surroundings, good places to hike,
backroads to explore, and a very friendly civic environment.  This seemed like the kind of place where I could really lay
down some roots…and we probably would have in both cases, if God weren’t compelling us to do otherwise.

So why would I want to try Seattle again –a city with more than 13 times the population of Ashland and Greenfield
combined, plus ever-sprawling suburbs, and that is 3000 miles away from what I have declared to be my homeland?  Isn’t
this the popular definition of insanity –doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?

I will tell you why: It’s all about the dream.  Creative Anarchy Unlimited must become a reality.

And something is starting to dawn on me, something I have known for years but never fully grokked, and never put into
practice: dreams are not built upon places –they are built with people.  People who share the same dream.  Like Ananias and
Sapphira: it wasn’t about the house beside the sea, it was about their love for each other and for their brothers and sisters
through God.  Maybe for others that dream is simply for a healthy family, or a company, or a more just society, or to put a
man on Mars.  It could be literally anything under the sun.  For me it is a community of writers, banded together for each to
share his/her own unique vision.  This is how Fish Out Of Water Productions can come to fruition.

To let it happen, I need to gravitate not toward a place, but toward people who share the dream.  And as I told Dave in an
email yesterday, all it takes to start a community is two. One cannot do it, but two form that all-important connection
through which all other connections can be made.  As long as he shares that dream, and he is in Seattle, there is hope for
me there.

Besides, this doesn’t fit the definition of insanity as I understand it.  I am a very different person than the one who tried to
make it alone out there 11 years ago –hell, I feel very different than the one who crashed and burned in San Diego less than
three years ago.   Therefore I cannot do the same thing and expect different results…because I can’t do the same thing!  It
is a new experience.  All week I would go to places in town that were both familiar and unfamiliar, old memories and new
experiences, until I finally had to conclude that it wasn’t I who had these experiences of the past; I had the memories in
the present, but something else had the experiences.  My ghost perhaps?  Maybe, but I just know it was not me.  I only
exist now.  The ego is free to wallow wherever it chooses, whatever stinking memory pit it likes; it does not affect
me.  I AM is here now, and so am I.  

Yeah, I can do Seattle.  For the sake of the dream.  It is alright if it’s not my ideal location.  I’ll get by with a little help from
my friends.  HC – central Nebraska

[To see why this lesson applies just as well to the future as to the past, see the Epilogue]

copyright 2004 by Hermit Crab
a Fish Out Of Water production



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