I read a book recently by a war correspondent, a woman, who had covered wars from the Spanish Civil to the Bosnian (the most recent Bosnian, not one of the innumerable ones prior to the most recent). It was not a book of her wartime experiences; rather, she had five essays of travels which all, in their way, had been for pleasure but which all, in their way, were less than pleasurable. She explained in the introduction that she wrote somewhat at the insistence of her editor and the demands of her finances, but also, she wrote because of what she termed her incredibly poor memory. All of the works had been written more or less when the travel had occurred – either as essays themselves or as collections of notes – but she remarked that memory was something that was always lost on her. The future, in her eyes, presented an infinite and surprising potential source of memories, which made her own past – closed as it was to new experience and limited by what her life had offered to her – seem unimportant to remember.
Remembrance of rest stops past
“Folks, you’re probably noticing a bit of turbulence. I’m going to put the seat belt sign on for the next, oh, fifteen minutes or so. Flight attendants, please take your seats.”
It’s getting a little bumpy over the Wind River Range in northern Wyoming as we cruise at 36,000 feet, on our way towards an early arrival in Seattle. I’m heading back for a four day weekend with my son, and I’m pretty excited about it. We’re going to go suit shopping; I’ve lost the weight equivalent of one and a half sons in the last few years and I now have only a single business suit that fits, which is a handicap. I have fond memories when I was little of accompanying my father to The Men’s Shop in Westbrook, Maine, when he needed a new suit, and I’m looking forward to taking my son to Nordstrom’s for a couple of hours of suit selection and fittings. Despite a rainy weekend we have a packed schedule, and on Sunday it’s my birthday, which I imagine will involve John Howie Steakhouse; my son heard a radio ad for John Howie Steakhouse when he was three and now he asks to go to John Howie Steakhouse for my birthday at least seven times a day when we’re together, regardless of the time of year.
Your own private Idaho
I lived in London for three and a half years, but looking back on it now, I’m aware of the fact that I never really made it my own. Indeed, having now spent the last week in east London – at a couple of grim Airbnb flats in Whitechapel – and while bouncing around between meetings and dinners and events in Shoreditch and Hackney and the City of London, it’s become apparent that I did not, in fact, really live in that London which people think of and attracts foreigners and British outlanders alike in their millions. I lived in Greenwich, and spent lovely days and evenings and weekends traipsing through the parks and suburbs of the southeast – but there was a sort of endless suburban feel to it. I think the fact that I often rented a Zipcar and did errands by car sort of sums it up: London, proper, is a city of the tube and black taxis and walking shoes. My time in there allowed me to have a quick commute to Canary Wharf, and while Greenwich had an amazing sort of village feel to it which definitely made it an English experience, it wasn’t really London.
West to east
The drive across the country took six days. I left Seattle on a Monday night after picking my son up from school and spending the afternoon with him, the dog and I making good time to Spokane. I was pulled over, speeding through eastern Washington, but the state trooper seemed to take pity on us driving to Maine and let me off with a warning. We didn’t see much once we got past the mountains, driving in the dark across the plateau. We stayed at a soulless roadside hotel; they allowed dogs, which was enough.
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When I was about six years old, my dad had to buy an IBM PC, one of the original ones, for his business. He was an insurance agent, and the company he represented put all of their actuarial models into a brand new “program” that ran on PCs, and agents were told they would have to run pricing models themselves instead of calling up the home office for the models to be run on the company’s mainframes. Dad wasn’t thrilled about it; to say he’s not technologically oriented would be an understatement. Being a precocious kid who loved anything complicated and new, I volunteered to come into his office and try things out.