The next day was immediately off to a tumultuous start…quite literally. After waiting in line for an hour for the Ferry, we got our car on only for Anna to realize that the ill feelings she woke with were not going away. Still, we enjoyed a trance-like ride across the sound to Bainbridge Island where we discovered a sweet little farmer’s market going on. Again, my wallet lept uncontrollably out of my bag. I bought some fennel salt after being won over by a sweet conversation with the farmer who had a multi-faceted business that included soaps, lotions, jams and spices. The next farmer won us over by the simple fact that they were selling Goose eggs.
(NOTE: This is one of those things that you’re coerced into buying for novelty’s sake and then turns out to be not only, unexciting but much less satisfying than its more commonly purchased relative. The egg yolk ratio of a goose egg is actually quite nauseating.)
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| most humorous moment? This manikin. |
With our wallets suffering, pent up emotions building and feeling under the weather. Bainbridge didn’t seem like it had much more to offer us after the market. I did see a sign for a photography gallery and after Anna got some medicine for a headache, she agreed to stop by. Steven Fry’s photographs had a stunning color pallet and the fact that they were all done in film furthered my intrigue as I slowed down and stood mesmerized, image after image. Steven himself was operating the day-to-day business and when I made it around to the side of the room that he was on, he was in the middle of pressing one of his large prints. He was very humble and inviting and when I mentioned that I’d gone to school for photography, he offered to show us the darkroom set-up he had in back. We ended up talking for a bit about his experiences in the areas he photographed - he used to be an alpine climber and an all-around explorer of all things off the beaten path - and then we hit a point in the conversation where he eluded to having some summer employment opportunities. As Anna indicated we needed to move on, I offered myself for employment consideration; just another drop in the bucket of possible combinations I could piece together my future from.
Leaving, Anna made it clear that her ill-feeling state was getting ill-feeling-er. By the time we were back on the Ferry, I was looking up all sorts of sites about altitude sickness and stress-induced migraines. Her pain was to that apparent stage which makes one want to cringe in pain by the level of visible discomfort. She was able to sleep on the ride back which seemed to clear up a lot of headache but in the meantime, I’d looked up herbal shops and called my mom to get in touch with resourceful healers back home.
Enter Master Kim, my mother’s mystical Tai Chi guide. All through a phone call, he was able to guide both her and I through an understanding of the origin of the symptoms and alleviate some more of the pain and panic. With things calming, I left Anna to rest in bed and went to talk to my mother. No sooner had I gotten off the phone with her, I received from back inside; Anna wanted to go home.
I came in to ask if we could talk about it and that is when all of our past qualms and barriers with one another resurfaced. In a friendship that has lasted over a decade, it’s inevitable that the dynamic will change. Some “experts” say that friendships should be seriously re-evaluated every 6 years. This was not the first time that we’d come to a crux of questioning our purpose for one another. For me though, flying home mid-trip would be a good indication that we were at an end. When I said this, she responded ‘that’s why I think I should go’.
We followed that with some blunt blows to one another’s blind spots before we just let silence take over. I sat stark still as she collected some things to make a phone call about flights. Once she’d left, I made my way up the hill near our street to call my mother. The feeling was akin to ending a deeply troubled but involved romance. Were we really doing this? As my mom and I spoke, all of my hurt and frustration came pouring out. My mother had to talk me out of marching back down to express my most raw feelings about the whole ordeal. Both of us knew deep down that the things being expressed were not the real underlying issues and that reacting to those things would only make things worse. I prepared to tough up and set aside my personal needs to go address our predicament when Anna called. The first thing that was said was a sincere ‘I’m sorry’ and I felt a large shake in my breath as this huge inner stone was released; the acknowledgement I’d been needing was just met without request, something I never had thought would happen. That was all it took for me to be ready to forgive and come back to discuss a solution.
Fear is the ghost of experience. It is lingering in our atmosphere, pulling and pushing on our energy without notice. To become a fear hunter is a practice in the sixth sense. I’ve gotten to the point with my fear where I can usually see it speaking for my actions and words as they are happening, as I am letting it influence my reactions. However, with as powerful a thing as fear, it’s a feat even to be able to detect it in retrospect. When we met back up to talk, Anna immediately identified where her frantic decisions had come from. “You know its hard for me to find the best way to communicate these things.” I hugged her deep and long, wiping the last of my shaky tears away as I told her I was fine with her yelling or screaming at me, telling me she was fucking scared or just telling me she didn’t know what the fuck she was feeling. The only thing I couldn’t handle was not talking about it at all.
Given the tension, my mother had advised that I go back to Anna and try to have a quiet evening in. Usually, my mother has pretty good advice but after the intensity of the conversation, we were ready to shake things with a bit of funky fun, and we’d both been curious about one of the funkiest places around…The Unicorn Bar.
It’s pretty impossible to miss The Unicorn; besides the striped awning and giant unicorn head, there happened to be a woman dressed in a full-body unicorn costume outside the bar that evening. Anna was in deep deep love as soon as we entered. The neon circus decor was dabbled with dozens of earthy tones…in the form of taxidermic animals. The bar was lit entirely by antique chandeliers, each on unique. We took a seat at a booth with a neon tiger plastered onto the table and a decapatated baby head on a bottle took watch over my head as we pursued the menu. It was definitely the occasion for a cocktail, all names of which featured Unicorn references. Since we’d had our tiff around dinner time, food had to happen. Their menu was a flared-up version of bar food and I was surprisingly pleased with my crispy quinoa burger, even though the plate was void of accoutrements of a meal. Anna got her long-awaited Seattle dog and we explored the basement which housed photo booths and arcade games. Back at the house, we fell asleep watching What’s Up Doc.
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