Vacation Recap, Part Two: Independence Day
I’ve been lax in following up on the initial part of my vacation recap—and, as the days pass, the memories begin to fade. So I might not have as exhaustive of a retailing for the remainder of the days, but to get things moving again, I’ll start posting one day at a time during the coming week.
Day Five:
I began the day the way I imagine many red-blooded Americans begin their celebration of Independence Day—by watching a forty-year-old Swedish art film. I’ve been meaning to watch Bergman’s Persona ever since reading a bunch of reviews about it when it first came out on DVD, and since it was in Scott’s DVD collection I thought I’d pop it in while my compadres slept. If I understood it, it’s the story of how one woman causes another woman to lose her sense of self without even saying a word (well, saying only a couple words, such as “Get up and go to sleep”). It starts out with a bunch of disjointed images and jarring sounds—an art film prototype that I’ve seen parodied much more than I’ve seen used seriously. But the technique was an interesting way to set the stage for the viewer to come to understand how quickly we can lose grasp of the patterns of thought that make our lives comprehensible—and our inner selves familiar. Because I was on vacation, thousands of miles away from my day-to-day life and my usual habits, I may have been especially prone to this interpretation. I enjoyed the movie, although it was stern broth for a sunny holiday morning.
And you couldn’t ask for a stronger contrast to Swedish angst than sitting in a Mexican restaurant on the edge of a park in one of the more yuppified sections of Seattle, which was my next activity to celebrate our nation’s birth. To take the edge off my daze, I ordered a margarita, even though it was early afternoon, and I was rewarded with a pint-sized glass filled with lime juice and tequila. Well, I was on vacation. We followed the Mexican repast with the requisite trip to the bowling alley. I couldn’t seem to get into my bowling groove—and Christine beat Sei, Scott and me in the first game. Having struck a victory for grrrl power, she sat out the next game. I continued to struggle, but I didn’t come in last place in the second game, mainly due to Sei’s attempt to master the tricky spin move in which the bowling ball teeters on the edge of the gutter before zooming toward the center pin. Sei’s ball, unfortunately, often did more than teeter.
The highlight of the trip, however, had to be the Scott/Christine dance machine smackdown. The dance machine was one of those video games in which you score points by tapping your feet according to the pattern that lights up on the floor—all accompanied by insistent Euro-junk dance music. Christine scored a very high number of goods, but not a lot of perfects. Scott, on the other hand, scored more perfects, but also a lot of misses. The machine judged workmanship more important than flair, and for the second time that day, Christine emerged the victor.
After dropping Sei and Christine off at the airport, Scott deposited me at the Mukilteo ferry, where I crossed over to Whidbey Island to meet up with Paul, Kanako and Emi, who were staying at a friend’s cabin for the holiday. The cabin is on a little spit of land right on Puget Sound, which makes for a very scenic location—the trade-off being there are a limited number of activities you can engage in. I mainly read and ate pasta. After the sun set, we all gathered on the deck to wait for the city of Everett across the Sound to set off their fireworks. The word was they’d go off sometime after ten o’clock. But strangely, at about 10:15, they set off one large firework, followed by about ten minutes of silence. Then another one went off. Once six went off at once, followed by another long pause. We all gave up and went to sleep. The next morning, Kanako told me she woke up at about 11:30 and saw that they had finally managed to begin the full-fledged show. It might be a fair guess that the manager of the Everett fireworks show no longer has a job.
Day Five:
I began the day the way I imagine many red-blooded Americans begin their celebration of Independence Day—by watching a forty-year-old Swedish art film. I’ve been meaning to watch Bergman’s Persona ever since reading a bunch of reviews about it when it first came out on DVD, and since it was in Scott’s DVD collection I thought I’d pop it in while my compadres slept. If I understood it, it’s the story of how one woman causes another woman to lose her sense of self without even saying a word (well, saying only a couple words, such as “Get up and go to sleep”). It starts out with a bunch of disjointed images and jarring sounds—an art film prototype that I’ve seen parodied much more than I’ve seen used seriously. But the technique was an interesting way to set the stage for the viewer to come to understand how quickly we can lose grasp of the patterns of thought that make our lives comprehensible—and our inner selves familiar. Because I was on vacation, thousands of miles away from my day-to-day life and my usual habits, I may have been especially prone to this interpretation. I enjoyed the movie, although it was stern broth for a sunny holiday morning.
And you couldn’t ask for a stronger contrast to Swedish angst than sitting in a Mexican restaurant on the edge of a park in one of the more yuppified sections of Seattle, which was my next activity to celebrate our nation’s birth. To take the edge off my daze, I ordered a margarita, even though it was early afternoon, and I was rewarded with a pint-sized glass filled with lime juice and tequila. Well, I was on vacation. We followed the Mexican repast with the requisite trip to the bowling alley. I couldn’t seem to get into my bowling groove—and Christine beat Sei, Scott and me in the first game. Having struck a victory for grrrl power, she sat out the next game. I continued to struggle, but I didn’t come in last place in the second game, mainly due to Sei’s attempt to master the tricky spin move in which the bowling ball teeters on the edge of the gutter before zooming toward the center pin. Sei’s ball, unfortunately, often did more than teeter.
The highlight of the trip, however, had to be the Scott/Christine dance machine smackdown. The dance machine was one of those video games in which you score points by tapping your feet according to the pattern that lights up on the floor—all accompanied by insistent Euro-junk dance music. Christine scored a very high number of goods, but not a lot of perfects. Scott, on the other hand, scored more perfects, but also a lot of misses. The machine judged workmanship more important than flair, and for the second time that day, Christine emerged the victor.
After dropping Sei and Christine off at the airport, Scott deposited me at the Mukilteo ferry, where I crossed over to Whidbey Island to meet up with Paul, Kanako and Emi, who were staying at a friend’s cabin for the holiday. The cabin is on a little spit of land right on Puget Sound, which makes for a very scenic location—the trade-off being there are a limited number of activities you can engage in. I mainly read and ate pasta. After the sun set, we all gathered on the deck to wait for the city of Everett across the Sound to set off their fireworks. The word was they’d go off sometime after ten o’clock. But strangely, at about 10:15, they set off one large firework, followed by about ten minutes of silence. Then another one went off. Once six went off at once, followed by another long pause. We all gave up and went to sleep. The next morning, Kanako told me she woke up at about 11:30 and saw that they had finally managed to begin the full-fledged show. It might be a fair guess that the manager of the Everett fireworks show no longer has a job.
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