I think it has more to do with awareness than randomness. Those rare occasions when everything, and I mean every thing, falls nicely into place as if by design. Detectives like to say that coincidence is not conspiracy, until it happens as a trend. That is when the dots start to be connected with greater frequency leading to the final dot. Usually that one final dot appears below a tapered oblong known diacritically as a point. The point of exclamation. Ah Ha. Gotcha. Book ‘em Danno!
Yesterday the dots were coming at me fast and furious, falling from the sky like runaway hockey pucks. As I drove to the ferry listening to a book on tape, currently Amor Towles phenomenal “The Rules of Civility”, if the narrative was describing a lost dog running down the street, that is what I saw. As response I would think ‘Amazing’ just as I pass a billboard using that very adjective to sell whatever it was that is that. As I shake my head semi-violently to regain a semblance of reality, my phone screams to me that someone has sent a text. I resist the temptation to check on the fly, safely opting to wait until I have parked. When I initiate the game. OK. Mr Clairvoyant, without looking tell me who it is wishing digital correspondence. Go.
I visualize my rolodex and consider the situation and circumstances. I hear a Men at Work song as background. I am walking towards the ferry terminal on a Sunday afternoon along with what appears to be half the population Seattle. That is the bad news, the good is that there are many beautiful young women now calling the Emerald City their temporary zip code. My steps immediately lighten as I return my focus to the game. Julie? Is that you? Could it be my darling Clementine needing commuter comforts? Peggy? Patty? Pink?
I am three-for-three and on fire. I decide to push the envelope. I will see someone on the boat that has a clue for me. I nod affirmatively, anticipating the upcoming magic meeting. Will it be love, gold, opportunity, creative involvement or something other, like lunch at Pane Pane?
As I sit in the gallery sipping coffee for which I paid $1.38 because I carry a travelers mug for this specific reason, and jot notes from the inbound trip, I feel a soft call from my backpack, like the purring of a cat. I know by now that these cosmic prompts need quick response so I open my pack to find my book sitting atop my camera gear, almost glaring at me. Stop whatever menial task you are currently attempting to preform and dance with me, it purrs.
I obey and open to the page marked by a sticky flag that the previous owner/reader left for me as recommendation. Just the simple sentence of introduction ending with a quickly scrawled heart makes mine miss a beat.
It is Packing for Mars, by Mary Roach. It is every bit as good as the note indicated it would be. Inside of two sentences the author has established that space travel severely and dramatically tests the ability of human beings to tolerate one another while in close proximity for extended periods of time. Even the best of friends, the chain of command, and/or traditional social hierarchies crumble under this zero-gravity stress.
Walking through town, the newly revamped and vertically enhanced streets of Seattle, I pass two giant cranes stacking hefty scaffolding to allow overhead access for yet another crane to be placed atop one of the existing scrapers of sky. I stop and gawk, recalling my days of heavy construction on the dam circuit. I am standing there, head bend back as far as I can safely tilt, when I hear a voice behind me comment that it isn’t the same town that she was thirty years ago, is it?
I shake my head acknowledging the affirmative with a negative pan as I lower to look and see a guy whom we used to walk past every day on our commute from ferry to office. Thirty years prior. How are you mate?
After the gelato pictured in yesterdays introduction, I waltz into spectacular Benaroya Hall to find my seat for the presentation. Bryon Smith, an adventure filmmaker for National Geographic comes onstage and spends little time with small talk getting right to the heart of the matter. This is adventure, so big and so grand and so soul satisfying that every one of you will be impacted, and hopefully for the positive. Please try. Let go. Imagine. Join us as we flirt with the tipping point of failure, something we call a the risk/reward coefficient. Let’s start he says and turns to the giant screen.
First, he says, let me say that these fearless adventure athletes whose journey you are about to share all have a common dream, but that dream comes with a cost, yes there is danger, but perhaps even more devastating is the fact that adventure travel severely and dramatically tests the ability of human beings to tolerate one another while in close proximity for extended periods of time.
I close my eyes and drop my head, grinning like a well-hydrated Irishman.
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