Saltwater Dream Journal
I
17 May, 2024 Day 11
I have a park notebook now. Being in the woods, at the campground, in my uniform, makes me feel very cute and right. Like the vibe is just exactly what it should be, I believe. It's all so far as I imagined and as I hoped. And I got paid almost $150 for today!
Things I've learned:
18 May, 2024 Day 12
I can't believe the kind of days we get paid to have here so far. Like low key where are these tax dollars even going.
Talked to D. She said she hates LA but loves Altadena. She can feel when she falls asleep. I miss feeling her fall asleep.
21 May, 2024 Day 15
Yesterday was my first day alone at the park. I saw the really great introspection in that, and the communing + connecting with the park part, but I also really felt the isolation, and when I got home, I was a little catatonic for a minute and I cried sort of a lot once I was on the phone with D. All the space yesterday was so valuable, but coming home to an empty home really got to me. Not much to eat, no one to eat with. And I was just tired. I was really tired. I moved this big branch yesterday that was probably above my pay grade and it almost really messed up my back. It was fine, I ended up just scooting it over.
It's really dreary and rainy today. It's nice.
I've decided to take on the role of biologist. I spent awhile drawing a plant in my sketchbook, finally, and I've come to realize I'm going to be seeing a lot of the same stuff in the coming months over, and over, and over again. So I might as well try to understand what's around me. Or just document it, or really anything to pass the time. Ha ha. If the physical area won't get bigger, I'll have to get smaller and deepen my connection to the land.
There is also the role of the Shaman to be discussed. These days do feel like the ideal time to meditate, take in nature, and perhaps touch the other world. Who knows. Either way, being a part of this ecosystem for three months will definitely affect me.
22 May, 2024 Day 16
I dreamt of the plant I drew yesterday. I appreciated maybe touching consciousnesses with that plant.
23 May, 2024 Day 17
If there's one thing I've learned from all these relationships, it's that you can say all you will about "forever", and it just doesn't seem to pan out. It's almost like this curse, because it seems to come true without fail once it's "forever." If it's a force of nature, I don't know. People just can't stick together. They can't, not really at least. So you love your little ghostly part of them despite the distance.
24 May, 2024 Day 18
Give her a chance to miss you.
26 May, 2024 Day 20
It felt like summer for a little while but these past few days it's just been gray. I hope she sends me a letter.
27 May, 2024 Day 21
Woke up feeling peaceful. I got enough sleep to handle the park by myself again today. I slept with the blinds open and the light is streaming in right now, it's good. I'm going back to sleep for a moment, I hope I see D.
Today will go down in history as Toilet Memorial Day at the park. Everybody was out. Families making food and playing under the cartoon clouds.
The bathrooms and the trash were denigrated. I mean, it was unspeakable. I'll try: The women's drain by the beach didn't drain and so there was a shit tsunami, and some (very many, actually) crabs washed all over the place, which lead me to allow two or three tiny girls into the lady's room mid-clean because I felt bad it would likely be closed another 45 minutes.
Naturally there was a big green poop explosion after those inconspicuous terrorist girls left. Also raw, bloody tampons upon tampons in the biohazard cache by the trail. No brown liner bag. Thanks world. And everything ripped on me, damn. I'm writing this down to avoid complaining out loud later. A very kind, very large Middle Eastern family gave me a very good veggie wrap. Premium late pay is looking nice, too.
28 May, 2024 Day 22
Thinking about what I deserve, and D's tone on the phone last night. Which came first, the trust issues, or the screw-ups? How much is my fault, and how much is my age?
If you can't figure it out, you're gonna keep hurting people worse and worse until there's nowhere for you to go for a good night's sleep. If you can't hold that dark part, it's there.
Are we really going to keep hurting each other in the same ways, over the same deep wounds? How do we live, like, really live, knowing none of us know?
Just ate some of the best peanut butter I've ever had. It was a nightmare to stir. Honey peanut butter, and I made it. Wow. All for me.
There's just things you have to ask yourself.
What do peoples' faces look like in the rear view?
More things I've learned about the park:
These days alone in the park are okay. I only ever really see the camp hosts, alone in their domain, they're good conversation. I sit in the truck by the creek and listen to the college radio or take the cart on a trail and raise hell. Or I sit under the bridge in the rain and draw a plant. It's the right kind of world out here, for the most part. It feels like the kind of summer job wanderers like me have been starting out their lives with for years, and in fact it is. But I'm also the youngest person here I've met. I think people with normal jobs must grow up into the woods too.
12 Jun, 2024 Day 37
Things I learned while on shrooms at the park:
14 Jun, 2024 Day 39
I am thinking about D. I am thinking about kissing her when she's smiling and how our mouths curl upwards at the same time and we pull back. I am thinking about when we're alone and the second the door closes she tears into me and one of us ends up pushed down onto the bed, looking up at the other. I miss coming to bed and having to reorganize her so I can get in. I miss D.
17 Jun, 2024 Day 42
Here marks the first day I have not talked to D.
18 Jun, 2024 Day 43
My shadow is fully at my back. He is next to me in bed like usual, laid over the comforter. Only now we talk.
I opened myself up one day and became sick, and he jumped out of me, a worm in the mess and fluid. My old accomplice and codefendant.
I'm turning over in bed and I'm looking right at him. He always has this childish grin I've felt on my own face since the first time I saw another naked boy, as a young boy, and probably even before that. His silhouette is softer than mine.
I think I might be hearing a dog getting eaten outside. A couple hundred feet away.
Suddenly my demented twin catches the light differently. The same grin, but softened, he reads like an old friend.
I think that dog is dead.
19 Jun, 2024 Day 44
Gaining it and losing it.
22 Jun, 2024 Day 47
Somebody is playing piano. I think it's "Across The Universe." At first I thought it was Radiohead's "Codex", but it's definitely Beatles. Nothin's gonna change my world...
I pulled over because I saw a man in scrubs sitting in the road. I had to swerve to miss him, he was resting on the curb. So I turned around and pulled over.
And I said: "Hey man, you all good?"
I remember the conversation exactly because it just happened.
He said "Yeah."
"Watch your feet," I told him. "Do you need anything?"
"Waiting for a ride."
"Where to?" I said, after hesitating.
"Not sure. It'll come."
He took a drag of his cigarette. The orange, smoldering tip was how I saw him in the wild dark. Like I was landing a plane in a storm.
"OK," I said. "You have a good night."
"You as well. God bless you."
"Hey man, you too." I meant it.
We were both in the street.
I had thought that if he was in rough enough shape I'd let a ranger know, but the man seemed dead sober. All of a sudden I wanted a picture of him, right there, looking the way he did.
I walked back the way I'd jogged from the Volvo. I leave the door unlocked out here.
I drove the speed limit home.
23 Jun, 2024 Day 48
The deeper, darker, inner world in which I am a visitor continues to open itself up to me like a flower. A cool, blooming death flower.
24 Jun, 2024 Day 49
I've been here for three hours and I haven't really worked yet today. I love this job.
Mycorrhiza.
25 Jun, 2024 Day 50
I love giant kelp. Even if it's just the scariest thing ever to swim over. Like flying over a forest and brushing the tops of the trees with your feet.
II
Even more things I learned at the park:
I got into a fight with D last night about her smoking cigarettes again and I feel pretty bad about it. I said sorry. She said I made her day worse which was pretty bad. I guess I deserved that.
I was walking away from the truck parked by the beach trash and an elderly person with basketball shorts and headphones was looking at me. I figured they were off in their old people world so I turned around, then heard:
"Hey! Garbage boy!"
So I put on a smile and turned around to face them. Within a closer range I was able to discern that they were a transgender man.
"I built this park!" He said. We get some crazies, so I wasn't completely sold on this, but I wanted to talk to him. "My friends cut back all the trails in this fucking place!"
I didn't ask when that was, but it came to light that they would all take their bikes through the park's woods after school. Likely a long time ago.
He said, "You don't know who I am! Nobody here does now."
KB. A little attitude, but seems alright. He told me "KB + ..." (fill in the blank for a few different girls' names) is on trees all up at the bluff. Nice. He said, "On opposite ends so they don't see each other!" I'll have to check. He asked if I knew when camping was opening, like everybody does every day. I said I didn't, and I didn't know why. He was under the impression I didn't know anything at all. I collected the trash and he walked by the playground, slow, way out to the end of the beach. If he's really as old as the park, I hope I see him again.
29 Jun, 2024 Day 54
I'm in the booth thinking about things. So many families come here to play and cook and celebrate on weekends. It really gives you this energy. All the faces and slang and foods and rituals and games. Today there's a birthday, a graduate party, and a funeral all happening around the same spot on the bluff where I found these roses and ashes dumped last week.
That night was creepy. I meant to write about it. It started when a strange man asked me for a ride up the hill from the beach. The park was closed, and he had been changing his clothes behind the bathrooms. It was pitch black out, almost. I wasn't supposed to give him a ride, and I didn't want to. And besides, I said, the passenger seat of the cart was full of stuff. I asked if there was anything else he needed. I offered sanitizer, which he took, and he asked for a water, which I had.
After collecting the trash, I had to double back to the bluff to get a picture of those ashes with my old half full disposable camera before they blew away. I just loved the scene. I saw the man again, in the dark, up the hill, silhouetted by the weak golf cart headlights.
So I was walking around up there in the dark, the light from the water just filtering in through the trees, lined trees with this sense of manmade scale, like great Greek columns, and I was scared. The woods had had that feeling all day. The spirits were out. I took my photo. Walking back towards the uncertain, idling cart, blinded by its headlights, I was more scared of the strange man than the dark woods that surrounded us. I made it back to the office not without goosebumps, my heart beating in my throat.
And in the same place, all those families celebrating and mourning and eating together. In the woods and by the beach. And everybody has a hard time figuring out the ticket kiosk. Everybody ends up just a little bit late and frustrated.
There was a big family with kids at a picnic bench by the water yesterday, with a couple hookahs, playing this traditional music. And I was just taking their trash and grinning so wide. E walked by me with her trash bag and told them there was no smoking, and the father said, "Almost done." And we were both smiling. It's just the kind of thing that makes you happy. All these kinds of people right up next to each other, their kids playing outside. It's whatever's left of the American Dream. It's the new, smaller American Dream, on the weekends.
30 Jun, 2024 Day 55
I got E to dodge work responsibilities and hang out in the booth with me today, but she ended up being a huge help. Lots of hundred dollar bills and relatives translating over the phone. The register app is still broken. Emotions are running high among the park patrons, it's exciting stuff. I got cat called! Somebody in a car thought I was cute. More parties.
I encountered two vaping teens at the bathrooms and I saw their unsavory asses again doing trash at a celebration of life for a kid at the river shelter! We weren't sure how many trash bags they'd need at one of those. It sucks that a kid died. Obviously. So much different energy all floating around the park on days like this.
Even the idyllic forest is spoiled by politics. They took apart the heaters in the office because we used them too much. E is talking to the Union President.
1 Jul, 2024 Day 56
Talked to the libertarian HAM radio enthusiast.
The camp host mused that the cement picnic tables we moved out of the empty sites look like headstones. I see it.
I happened to see my supervisor's supervisor in the office. The lights were off and the blinds were drawn, I opened the door, and there he was at the end of the long table, looking at me. He said, "Aloha."
Even more things I learned at the park, again:
2 Jul, 2024 Day 57
Things I found on the parking lot trail:
This trail is a quarter of a mile. It's no longer the quiet spring off season!
Assembly Restroom
Type Restroom/Bathroom - Signage
ADA Standard 216.2, 703.1, 703.2, 703.5, 703.6
Location Description Men's and Women's Restroom in Building RR-1
Observed Jun 4, 2019
Site Conditions The Braille on the accessible restroom sign is obscured by the mounting screw.
There's several photos of the parking lot bathroom, a Google Maps bird's eye view, and a set of coordinates at the bottom of the page. Also, a paragraph detailing everything that should be fixed. Good thing they worked on the closed camp bathroom.
To get to mom's for the weekend, I took the 509 from the middle of nowhere as far as it would go, and eventually it spit me out on the freeway. It was so inky black tonight. All the car dealerships and motels and mulch yards and restaurants and intersections and hoods and Seattle and West Seattle and not Seattle and SeaTac start to bleed together in the fast, smudged dark. I'm going to miss driving, back at school.
I see these places at different hours now. Late at night, and then sometimes on the lazy summer week days I have off. Hours when there's just nobody out in the stretch between cities. It's sort of magic. I drove down Rainier, past the new bones of my old school. They tore Mercer down last year and are starting again from scratch, this time with more metal. Macpherson's looks like it's reopened, but it isn't owned by Macpherson anymore. The original farm stand burned down in 2020.
Down by the lake it was even darker outside my dad's car. I pulled over at the "I" dock and turned the car all the way off once my album finished. I swear it was nearly pitch black. I got started on the Marlboros. It was really a cool sight there, me and the Volvo and the dock and the bridge stretching out to the city, way out there, smoking a cigarette. It just looked great. But man, the cigarette wasn't doing it for me. Maybe it was the fentanyl I inhaled earlier talking, but I just got a helluva headache. I took as much as I wanted (less than half, probably) then put the cigarette out in the water, and walked back up the dock into the trees, where I stashed them, like I'd found them, for somebody else to find. I hope they're the last I ever have, I just wanted to remember the moment.
3 Jul, 2024 Day 58
Didn't get all my errands done today.
But at Lowe's, I talked to a guy at the paint counter all about paint. A good paint is nothing without a paintable surface, and a lot of the time that means primer. The secret ingredient I wasn't aware of was liquid sandpaper, which opens up even a glossy surface to some paint, creating "teeth" in the wall texture, like on the bottom of a cat's tongue. I asked the guy if he knew as much about paint now as he did when he started at Lowe's, or if he picked it up being there. The guy went to art school in New York to paint people, but had a career for a while painting high end homes. He said he knew more about paint on his first day than anyone else at the store, so I was glad he let me know what I'd want to paint my sliding chalkboard door. He said something about the risks of pursuing art, e.g. my chalkboard door, and wished me well. He had a hat with two feathers in it, like my ears.
Walking back to the Volvo I locked eyes with a woman and we grinned for a moment because we knew we had words for each other but were too far away to speak them. She liked my hat and I liked her dress. She said the 240 GL was like a boyfriend she couldn't get rid of. I said it was a great car. We agreed. I thought about what I was wearing. It was an outfit I loved a year ago, and now I just felt stupid parading it around all day. It was kind of a bummer.
At the farmer's market, I people watched as I perused. I listened to an older gentleman playing a lyre. I walked past a booth that said "Let's talk about menopause!", then thought better and turned back to talk about menopause. I apologized for interrupting their conversation, but they were glad someone had stopped by. I was their first bite of the morning, they said. It was mid afternoon. They gave me a temporary neck tattoo. I said they had their target demographic figured out. I took a postcard home to my mom and word had already reached her somehow that they'd seen me. I felt like a sighted celebrity among the fifty pluses, but it made sense.
At Silver Platters, I picked up a couple records and talked to Eddie at the register for a long while. His mom picked his name out of a baby book because she liked the meaning. The love warden! I told Eddie I was Edward for 48 hours when I was born. Can you believe that? I also told him a baby book was like a phone book for babies. Like, where you call them from. Just a thought. We complimented each other's watches. Eddie said I was a good presence, and I said him, too. He said he didn't like to be called "Ed" and I said only a few people called me "Hen," and one of them was a girl I was sweet for. All this tired writing at three in the morning just to not stay up all night thinking about her. Didn't work.
6 Jul, 2024 Day 62
My ranger got back from supporting the Fourth of July effort at another park with news about our park. They're going to let nature take over.
They're taking out everything by the beach. They're digging up the lot. The Snack Shack is gonna close. The parking spot the owner keeps getting in trouble for painting over won't matter once it's all gone.
They're taking out the playground and they're finally just demolishing the shitty, always-flooded beach bathroom. The ranger house that was built in 1935 is getting moved, somehow. They're gutting the campsite.
A lot's going to change, I guess. And they're saying it'll start next summer, three to five years till it's really overgrown. So my ranger says.
I would have loved that a year ago. The idea that when we're done a space gets repo'd by nature, the ranger's boss's boss.
But I've seen now what happens when people love a place. Not just the space, the community. The food, the noise, the E. coli beach.
I remember walking through the open campground summers ago. It wasn't the perfect John Muir woods of posters and screensavers, but it was vibrant. It was where people lived, on the weekends. It's a hazard, now. We sink further into debt keeping it going.
I like to think we're all part of that ecosystem, but maybe it is playing us out.
After a secondary succession, who's gone for good?
8 Jul, 2024 Day 64
Man it's hot. Alone at the park today. I'll write.
I feel sort of like I'm at school here. I'm learning more than at art school. Tools, systems, individuals, communities, histories.
I talked to a Filipino family with a Hispanic last name and the matriarch had recently retired from parks. He said he still went for lunch with his boss and was seeing about part time work. A small lady who called herself grandma told me I reminded her of her grandson (allegedly tall and handsome, and also works at a park). I feel like I could set up here.
My drawings are of the woods now, not the city. I think about the concrete and the different kind of shit moving sixty miles a second I'll be going back to and I don't miss it. I think about looking out the window at an office building. Adobe. So far removed from the art part of art. I have a shot at making it out here. I feel like I could stay like this, but I'm only visiting.
9 Jul, 2024 Day 65
The volunteer group is using the classroom so I decided to organize it. I don't even know how to save all the records I found. There is a patina of Parks, CCC, and Mount St. Helens lore that would take days to fully sort through. I haven't gone out yet today. It's 5:30 pm. Oh my God, trash, I need to do trash. This is maybe the best day ever. There's documents buried here that date back over a hundred years. I'll have to try to summarize it.
Documents I found in the office:
Did trash, bathrooms, and swept by the beach, eventually. The sun on the water was blinding, and beautiful. A couple girls had the right idea and were set up under an umbrella. From the restroom, I could hear top hits blasting from the other side of the wall. I was sweating buckets, cleaning up those bark chips from the playground, while those girls were laughing about something. We made eye contact, and they looked like they were probably in high school last year. Their friend came over and I walked away.
Snowberry
Cascade penstemon
Palmate coltsfoot
Tufted hairgrass
Common camas
Pacific silverweed
Western blue-eyed grass
Dagger-leaf rush
Deer fern
Wild flag iris
Small fruited bulrush
Beaked sedge
Slough sedge
Sawbeak sedge
Yellow monkey flower
10 Jul, 2024 Day 66
Kids are yelling "Henry Benry Henry Benry!" outside.
I hope I end up remembering last year well. We were all just figuring it out. It almost all felt new. And I think about my time with D. A lot, still, but not as much. I try to be happy about it without hope now. When you hope for something you start to want it helplessly. And then you want other things. Now, I'm just getting as much of the world around me in words as I can, like I'm grabbing bills in a shower for live TV.
I think a lot about talking to Jillian and Mariko Tamaki, two childhood comics heroes of mine, about documenting. I asked them how they could still remember everything they wrote about from when they were kids. They said document, document, document. Yes. I know I'll remember this. I have this whole summer written down and it's not going anywhere. I'm an anthropologist now, like my mom and her mom. I'm glad I'm here.
We camped at the closed campground last night for Dad's birthday and it was great. I closed late and I was tired but he had made a great big fire down on the beach and it healed me up. I got an awesome cut on my face. I washed in the sink at the office. I cooked the falafel burrito I made by the fire. We made s'mores and saw a whole bunch of seals at 1 AM! I'm not sure what a group of those is called. They beached and went after a heron, all of them! It was loud and they were wild. They were running across the shore right in front of us and we'd never seen anything like it.
We woke up this morning and it was beautiful, beautiful. Daybreak at the park, rare for me. We were psyched. We talked to the camp host and I saw the new park aide. She looked younger than me! It's a bummer I'll be away for her first week. I hope someone tells her we don't have to work all the time. I hope she figures out she can spend the day exploring. She's thinking, "That's the park aide who lives here."
15 Jul, 2024 Day 71
Things I want to do with D in Washington: (updated and abridged)
18 Jul, 2024 Day 74
I woke up late last night in a cold sweat, controlled by a dark spirit in me. It felt like a black light in my eyes. My body wasn't tired, it was hot, sore, itchy, burned. I had to masturbate without hesitating. It was a weird, weird drive. I don't know if I was having any thoughts before I came.
I slinked down to the cold basement couch which I'd torn apart earlier to find sleep and found my phone. D had texted and called twice and I knew that was the tether that had yanked me awake, back downstairs. Nauseated.
I called her back and immediately the adrenaline left me and I was sober. We talked about being Just Friends when she got here tomorrow. That was all. Totally okay and normal for us. Makes sense. Makes the next month easier. Makes me hope it's still okay to go out for dinner just us two. Makes me hope we still talk like we did when we left. Makes my stomach turn knots.
So I don't know, I probably said the right things on the phone and she let me go. We'll still have a good time. All I can do is be honest and level. But still there's no deciding where your spirit goes when it leaves your body.
Naturally I couldn't fall back asleep and the pain came back and I started to sweat again. Nature beats down soft, exposed bodies. My own nature always wins.
I managed to nod off upstairs in my new old room and was visited by bad dreams. Fever stuff.
I was buried underneath a bathroom at Saltwater, my hands all dirty with the excrement that drains into the soil, and I was thrashing around trying to get out through this pipe that could go on forever. I was escaping people upstairs.
I woke and I went pee and ended up downstairs in the half light. And I was alone in the house and nothing felt right.
Cold spots. Cold flashes in a hot sick-house. Old ghosts.
19 Jul, 2024 Day 75
D is here. It's really nice. Still can't really sleep. I wonder if this'll keep going through the hot weather. Maybe my body's just missing an honest day's work. Bumming with a pretty lady.
I don't think I should write about how her face looked in the early light, awake before her, because she might read this, checking things off my list. She drew either a heart or a rabbit on my arm in the same pink pen. I think it's a rabbit. She's getting ready now. She's got a boy in LA she likes. I told her not to get married.
Last night a song was stuck in my head, keeping me company while I couldn't sleep. I'm hurting pretty bad. Every time I think I'm done, I'm staring into a toilet after.
20 Jul, 2024 Day 76
But I've been having a little too much fun to remember. It's the sort of thing you want to write down, but don't have the time to. It's too late. I have to get up tomorrow to have more times I'll forget.
Talked to A in their car after. They said "You love herrr" and I
21 Jul, 2024 Day 77
The air outside is so crisp and fresh, it smells like fall. Periwinkle and wet, I think the day finished with its raining right before I woke up. The cool air is doing its thing to the pain lingering in my peripheries.
Then, the warm green lake water has healing properties too. A day at the lake.
23 Jul, 2024 Day 79
We got from Seattle to Des Moines in eighteen minutes. Record timing. D made her flight. I cried in the car on the way back and things were so blurry I thought I'd hit them. I fell asleep in our spot in the basement.
Didn't mean to sound that dramatic about crying in the car. It felt funny sad when I wrote it. I had the thought "I don't know what to do" about my feelings for D which almost totaled me again, but we'll find out in a month.
It's not like I've never had a crush before. Or, liked someone a lot.
All I can do is be good to her, and respect whatever we end up being to each other. And try to live without counting the days till this dream life ends and a different one resumes. I hope I'll find her there.
I feel like a bug following the light from a car.
She kept looking at her LA boy through her phone. Ashamed, I invited myself into bed last night, where we slept on different ends like an old married couple. She checked her texts from him first thing. I feel bad for him if he catches feelings too. She's a catch. I hope she knows what she's doing. Sowing her oats, or something. Mom said that. That she needs to do something with her oats at this point in her life. I wish I remembered what she'd said about the oats because that might be important. No, not important. Oats.
We used to listen to this song that makes me sad now. That song was a trick, and we knew it, it was always sad. We never really dated, so we never really broke up. We acted the way we wanted to be treated, and we never met in the middle for long. What kind of a song do you listen to after that?
24 Jul, 2024 Day 80
Trying to get my taste out of your mouth.
III
25 Jul, 2024 Day 81
One last notebook.
I dreamed about a long, emotional night with someone whose face I don't know.
Out the window, gray.
I'm driven now, by a sense of wonder and purpose, to this little world before me. Getting down the details, so I can come back to visit even after I'm gone.
I'm an anthropologist, like my mom, and her mom. I hold a mind map.
Tricks To Avoid Working at the Park:
Being back at the park is great. We've been making a habit out of catching up when everybody's here. I found a spot with the new Park Aide, up a tree, past the roundabout, at the far end of the old campground, where we spotted a big bag from.
The bag was full of clothes, condoms, dirty underwear, and gloves stained dark red. It was also spilling out all these Made In China plasticky products, unopened, that looked like the kinds of things you would cap off a gift card with. Also, two handwritten notes with acronyms to text a phone number, that stood in for various sexual acts. All in Russian. Super bizarre.
More of these bags have been showing up, abandoned, in the park lately, including a backpack full of first aid and survival gear, and a pair of women's shoes. Shoes in every bag, and we keep finding shoes in the trash, too.
The find of the day, besides some 70s creep shades we washed and tried on, was a Modelo lager with the foil still on, confiscated and consumed in the closed campground, in the open truckbed. That was really nice. We've agreed upon a Parks Happy Hour.
My vacation kind of killed me and I feel like I'm back where I need to be.
I texted the Russian prositute's number.
E, my ranger, and I are sitting in the office. C is sitting through an especially boring maintenance meeting. E is eating a tomato, a slab of cheese, and a piece of ham. A "deconstructed pizza", or a lack of meal prepping. I'm journaling. My ranger is picking his cuticles.
The virtual meeting keeps pausing awkwardly until somebody brings up something trivial that drags it for longer. Someone is rummaging around in the class room. I guess we're all hiding from the heat. The hot air conceals an inside joke in its cool undercurrent.
C is eating a fruit rollup. A former ranger's supervisor I haven't seen before is on the meeting. Cool. The new Park Aide just came in. The meeting has turned into just the maintenance guys talking to each other.
27 Jul, 2024 Day 83
I had a drink with my brother last night and we caught up our lives into the wee hours of the morning.
He cried to me about a girl I'd known about but didn't realize he still had feelings for, unreciprocated. He said he'd messed things up at some point.
He slowly told me about another girl he used to see at parties. Mourning the absence of a meaningful relationship as a young adult, she came to mind. They'd sat outside one night and talked for hours, their shoulders touching. Nobody at school seemed to know her, but he said to me he'd have liked to. When everybody filed out at the end of the night, and the music was gone, he said, "Get off me." She tried talking to him again, and he didn't have anything to say. He said he regretted that.
We were now a few shots deep, and the stories had made me emotional. My words caught on my tongue like my mouth had been numbed and I told him we were assholes.
I told him I needed him to understand that actions caught up with you... or something.
He's a year younger. I told him in a year it wouldn't matter, but not to forget it, either.
Later, I caught myself warping in the bathroom mirror and thought about if I saw my teens or my twenties.
28 Jul, 2024 Day 84
Today'll be a long day. Now that I'm back, there's so much left to do for the Tribal Canoe Journey. The tribes might even start getting in today, we don't really know. They get to use the park basically however they want, briefly shattering our bureaucracy. It's a small victory.
They want the campground, so we have to get it ready. And then it's reopening.
Can you believe it? Something worked! It sounds like maybe it was a mix of backlash at HQ, and seeing how much we'd need to do anyway for this event. I wonder if it was the political power of the tribes, or just how things worked out. I've heard one of the maintenance guys went to bat for the park. They've been getting points lately. Against orders, we've been telling everybody to write in as well. Could it have been a little collective action that changed things, or just chaotic powers beyond our understanding? It happened while I was gone, so it's all the same to me. I'm just happy to finally have something hopeful to say to everyone who asks about the campground.
Maybe our old decrepit systems do have a little more life left to give before they give up the ghost. Or maybe it's progress. It's crazy, I work for the government, I should know better. But we seriously might have a woman of color for president. You're tired, and you don't believe in anything, but you also haven't even voted presidential yet. We're too young to be convinced already it's fucked. Let that happen after. Now we have another female candidate, nature's stewarded, and cops have to dress like Park Aides because the tribes have their own security.
I'll be wearing Parks polyester with the new logo, made by prisoners, making twenty an hour doing bathrooms and trash for a big, beautiful, coming of age party. The public will filter into a small viewing area while kids row in by the thousands on the beach, with elders, and state commissioners, and maybe even the governor watching. I can't wait to see it. From under the brim of my hat, with my head down. And the camp hosts will get to camp with their old friends. And then we'll go our separate ways and be back next summer.
29 Jul, 2024 Day 85
Things That Are Hard Right Now:
I had a dream D and I were crying and kissing. It had gone badly.
I had breakfast with a friend from high school at the Pancake Chef. He's doing LP, ("What's LP?") "Loss Prevention", which has him in a different spot in Washington every day, and it sounds like he likes it enough. He was in security, in high school, but has been kicked out from his parents, again, since then, and Seattle's expensive. He wears plain clothes, but has a badge, and shows it to people taking stuff from Safeway. It sounds more serious than my job. If he stops someone who didn't steal anything, and they report it, he's fired, just like that. Neither of us is law enforcement.
He got eggs and toast and I got an omelette that came with pancakes. We talked over the tray of homemade syrups they brought to the table for me. The Pancake Chef is one of many classic, syrupy, vaguely aviation-themed diners in the state.
He wants to be a cop, he said, with a deeply sad look in his eyes I didn't remember from high school. He lost his sister a year ago, and a best friend recently.
He's moving soon, with a partner, from Concrete, Washington, where I've been camping, to the other side of the Cascades. I probed a little about why he wanted to be a good cop. He said he'd always wanted to. I realized I unconsciously wrote "good cop."
30 Jul, 2024 Day 86
I dreamed I was stuck in an endless maze with a bunch of other young men and the way out was to be flushed down the toilet.
I had a pretty disturbing sex dream where I was a little kid.
I woke up pretty sweaty but otherwise full of energy.
Me and D's mugs are still on my desk. Dad said I wanted her DNA or something. I'm going to clone D and have the two of them draw each other.
I talked to a friend from New York today for five hours. I found out, weirdly, she used to work at a park down the street from mine.
She told me a story her sister knew about a boy who'd raped his girlfriend while they were drunk. He hadn't meant to, and she still loved him. But the fact was that he'd raped her and she cried and cried. They didn't know how to decide for themselves what had happened, and so she didn't know what to do.
I asked what happened in the end, and she said it just was more of a cautionary tale. It was intentionally gray, and we agreed it wasn't very satisfying.
I told her I thought maybe she was still depressed. We agreed that all we could do was accept things in our lives the way they were.
I asked her if she was excited for the future. She said she was living for the moment.
I liked that moment with her. I was in her dream.
There's a group of old ladies singing in an Eastern European language I don't recognize. The old man with the beer belly who walks around with his shirt off has his shirt on. An older southeast Asian couple is making eyes at each other. An older African man is talking on the phone to a female voice, who says "I'll never forget what you told me. You said..." and is out of earshot. It's hot and I'm dripping sweat. The aging general public doesn't clean up after itself the way the tribal members do. I ask an old man on a bike to find out what the ladies are singing.
I want to write about my supervisor's supervisor's story about the girl practicing ASL who the police wrongly thought was mute, and trying to say she had been raped.
I also want to write about the camp host's journey into alcoholism while he was an extra on Titanic in Mexico, and how he saw James Cameron get broken up with by a lady in a helicopter.
I also want to write about the spider in the car.
I want to write all the stories down that are all so meaningful I'm scared I'll forget them. I haven't even written about the Canoe Journey. The summer's almost over, and I'm compulsively writing everything down so I can hold on to my little world, I don't want to lose it. Too many stories.
Why are you reading all of them?
4 Aug, 2024 Day 91
I'm just sort of... I'm... I don't really know how to describe it to you.
All of a sudden everything turned so rose-tinted. It's honestly something I avoided feeling, a little. For a while.
I was just trying to tear through this summer, counting the days at the top of the page until... Well, that was something I also sort of didn't want to think about. There's a luxury to passing your time like it's nothing. It's a young person's thing. But it's not my thing.
So I get outside and sit at my spot in the sun, maybe with a drink.
And I don't write anything down.
And I don't think about anything much.
Just me and the families and the park and the stretching trees.
5 Aug, 2024 Day 92
It's the strangest feeling, I just can't describe it, no matter how long I write.
If I said I didn't feel it now, I'd be lying.
It's like something's not happening.
8 Aug, 2024 Day 95
Camping again. Couldn't sleep last night.
My dad and I are out here in the woods just like at my job, ha. I brought my parks hat. The Park Aides here haven't made much conversation, yet, but I want to ask what they do all day, and like, where they live. They drive the same John Deeres.
The beach at Scenic Beach State Park really is scenic. I wish I'd brought my disposable camera, for the mountains, the old house, and the gazebo. I leave it in the ranger truck. They take good care of this park. My e-key didn't work on the old house.
9 Aug, 2024 Day 96
Still camping.
I woke up from a D dream crying. My mom was zipping up the back of D's dress and D was saying to me she was "Just a girl," or something. I looked at my mom confused but I was smiling.
12 Aug, 2024 Day 99
Hey, I sorta miss you, journal.
13 Aug, 2024 Day 100
Today is my last day at the park.
The truck smells like bleach. I tried in vein to get some trash juice off the door earlier.
I'm in the spot I cleared out in the old upper campground. Across from site 23. There's a really nice golden light back here that filters through the canopy that the lower grounds lack, and with everything so much more overgrown it really just feels so old. This is one of the spots I will miss the most. Here, the camp hosts' site, underneath the great split cedar, and my lookout on the bluff. I'm walking all the trails today to make my peace.
We're all gonna go out for pizza in Des Moines, which is really nice.
Those yelling kids are outside still.
Day 100 feels strange. It's not very long in the grand scheme of things, and it went by so fast, but...
Summer's Over
15 Aug, 2024
Things I Want to Remember About the Park:
Thanks for remembering, journal. A lot of this summer was just you and me.
16 Aug, 2024
I had a series of dreams I was being held in someone's arms.
Now I'm trying to tell myself it's okay, when it feels bad again.
In my little room reading comics with my headphones in.
17 Aug, 2024
It's a dark and stormy night. Lightning illuminates the street while I'm walking. Flashes of day breaking, wild energy. I saw night horses and got tattooed, spikes of anxiety cutting to the surface until the needle knocked me out.
It hasn't rained like this all summer. I see my shadow for a split second at a time, then he's reclaimed by the inky black.
18 Aug, 2024
Home stretch. I spent my first day of unemployment at the park.
I did my months alone, working. I went looking for myself. I made drawings. I filled up a disposable camera. I wrote a story. I let the story go. I got over D and I didn't. I made a lot of burritos. I drove and drove.
I didn't write down my dreams. I didn't fill my sketchbook. I didn't see everybody.
I abstained from a lot. I learned what I missed. I finally saw the night market. I saw D. We didn't kiss. I dreamed we did.
I think I'm ready for whatever's next... It'll leave a mark.
It's unfinished business tugging me back, some of it hurts, all of it is part of a bright, throbbing future.
The storm continued today, and the power went out. A struggle between light and dark playing out someplace else.
19 Aug, 2024
It's an early flight back to school. It's been a hundred and something days.
That wasn't so bad.
I had a really nice time.
I dreamed...
...I was camping with my Dad, I remember now. It's real hazy. We were... somewhere? Someone from the park, and my Uncle Gary, were there, too, I think. I was acutely aware of my tattoo. I was wondering if I'd have it in my dreams. We were all listening to the radio.
Keep dreaming...
Fall 2024 Dream Journal
Saltwater Sketchbook
Fall 2023 Dream Journal
Spring 2024 Dream Journal