The tone of this post might be somewhat influenced by At Swim-Two-Birds, a book I started for the 3rd time last week and finished for the 1st time last night. I’m liable to write in a manner similar to the way in which what I’m reading is written, fair warning.

Spent Christmas day, and days preceding/proceeding that occasion, with mother’s sibling(s) in Victoria, or alternately Nanaimo, British Columbia. Following are aspects of the subsequent travel to Portland which I consider noteworthy, listed in roughly chronological order.

– The seagull that hitched a ride on the deck railing of the ferry I boarded to cross the waters between Victoria, B.C. and Port Angeles, Washington. It swooped elegantly onboard moments after a crew member blew thrice the fog horn, signaling our departure, and the bird remained a passenger till our docking in the US. I would like to think the gull has family in both places.

– My father declaring the names of restaurants and roadside rest stops as we passed them by, occasionally speaking with an intonation suggesting a mixture of interest in entering the premises and a knowledge that we will not.

– Tree bark totally covered in green moss; trunk, branches, and all. The fungi being so much a part of the plant that one would be inclined to believe the combination was instead a single species, appearing this way since its childhood, only not as tall.

– Fixing my gaze through the glass window onto growth in the forest a short distance from the road, my view interrupted at regular intervals by the straight trunks of trees closer to the car, as if the outdoors were an over-sized filmstrip moving too slowly to trick the mind into seeing motion from still images.

– Regina Spektor’s sex sounds passing as song vocals, energized by the car stereo and engaged in an impressive attack against my defense of noise-cancelling headphones + cowon iaudio x5l + Proem at volume 7.

– The transformation, during the darkness of the night, of our vehicle’s interior into a fighter jet’s cockpit, this being made possible by the likeness of backlit speedometer, rpm gauge, etc. to control panel instruments familiar to pilots. The headlights of oncoming traffic were, naturally, the bombardment of antiaircraft ballistics launched by the enemy, their brightest points giving away their precise locations at moments in time and allowing the autopilot computer to infer as much as necessary to dodge their curved trajectories.

In Portland now. My real vacation starts on January 4th, when I am here alone.