The Totem's Kiss

AUGUST 1990

Time is suspended.

I am 27 years old.

I am neither lost, found, nor in between.

I'm somewhere and nowhere.

I am different and the same.

Yesterday is today and tomorrow, and I am blank.

Tabula rasa.

I didn't move here, I escaped to here. I needed to start over and leave myself behind. Seattle is as far away from my hometown of Chicago and my life there as one can get in the continental United States, so my criteria for relocating were met without difficulty..

There wasn't a new job, family or friends to join, nor a significant other or spouse with whom I would begin a new life. None of the reasons "mature, well-adjusted adults" relocate from one city to another were in play.

I packed just the bare necessities of my life into my white 1980 Datsun 510 station wagon and drove across America’s fruited plane on I-90. The highway stretched without end before me, a concrete ribbon leading me away from everything I knew. The closer I got to Seattle, the more the air crackled with a strange energy. It wasn't a bad feeling, but it was undeniable. The landscape seemed to shift, becoming more vibrant, the greens richer, the blues deeper.

Reaching Seattle early in the afternoon, I pulled into a seedy hotel on SW Alaska Street. It had a certain charm that spoke to me.

I have just finished unloading my gear here and I step outside and find myself drawn across the street to a park overlooking the city. There, in the center, stands a totem pole, its carved figures pulsing with a specific vitality.

It catches my eye.

The park is called Rotary Viewpoint. It offers panoramic views of downtown Seattle and the Cascade Mountains beyond. I take a seat on a bench and can't tear my gaze from the totem pole. An essence sends forth from it and emanates from the whole place. It’s power creeps through my body and makes me want to take leave from it.

I start floating like a balloon. Then I extend my arms and start flapping them like a bird. I'm flying around the park. I feel gusts of wind blowing me back, and I flap harder and hover.

Then I turn to my left and hear ''The Crystal Ship.’' I see a woman with shoulder length brown hair, bright blue eyes, high cheekbones, and a big radiant smile as she dances across the sky.

She is entranced and begins a Sufi Whirl spinning around and around. Then her body contorts in bizarre ways as she walks one way and then the other in a straight line. I hear wild and diverse forms of music playing.

Then her back arches, and her head is thrown back. She looks like Bernini's St. Theresa as she cries out louder and louder. Her face reddens. She seems possessed. Then she sees me and runs and leaps into my arms beaming and then she kisses me.

In an instant she now stands back wearing a grey woolen v-neck sweater vest over a white Marilyn Monroe T-shirt and jeans. Marilyn is bashful and she peeks over the collar of the sweater.

This woman seems to have been be waiting for me. I approach her slowly and she takes my hand and leads me towards the setting sun.

Then she is gone.

I am standing there alone in the clouds.

I look down and see myself sitting on the bench vacantly staring at the totem. I continue hovering above the park without needing my arms to stay aloft. I am adrift in the air. Time stands still for what seems like several hours, but in reality, it has only been a few minutes.

“Wake up!” a voice barks.

I’m startled and I open my eyes and see the silhouette of a cop standing over me with his nightstick poking my shoulder.

“I said ‘wake up!’” he barks again. “Sleep it off somewhere else.”

I’m groggy and confused. I look at him and my reflection in his mirrored aviator sunglasses.

“Okay, I’m going,” I tell him as I stand up.

But I’m taken by him. There’s something about him. What? I have to know!

I turn around and look at him.

“What?” he says. “Look pal, you have until the count of three to get the hell out of here or you’re going to jail!”

He glares at me, and I know I’m tempting fate, but I can’t help but look back at him, trying to figure this out.

We stand in silence for a moment. Then he takes off his sunglasses and his eyes soften.

“Alright, let’s go now,” he says. “You can’t sleep on the bench. People are worried about bums hanging out here. There’s..uh…kids in this neighborhood, okay?”

“I’m going,” I tell him as I back up and turn around and walk back to the hotel.

From that moment, everything looks different. The sky, the mountains, the buildings, the trees, the streets, the cars, the people, the grass. I can't describe how they're all different, but they are.

This place is a heady absinthe dream. As I walk back to the fleabag hotel, I don’t feel my feet touch the ground. There is no way I can describe it except to say that it is stupefying in the extreme.

There’s this totem pole with its mad native energy, a cosmic dance with this strange beautiful woman with echoes of a fragile Marilyn, and then the buzzkill from the cop, but even that pretense ends up caught in this strange new world.

Can you blame me for feeling a tad unmoored?

This city thrums with a secret pulse, a chaotic concert bubbling beneath the surface of ordinary life.

Perhaps it’s my heart sharing the city’s frantic beat.

Maybe it’s my starvation for something new and different after a lifetime of living under the boot of illusory limitations.

Whatever this thing is, it hangs like thick August air in Chicago, and I can almost taste it.

This place has gotten under my skin, and I suspect the feeling is mutual.

Hopefully it’s not shingles.