Saturday-No Plans

On a day without plans, one can never tell where you will go. Went to the march, met a friend, ended up at Folklife http://www.nwfolklife.org/festival/, then tried to find somewhere to buy tickets to SIFF http://www.siff.net/. I sat on the curb outside the theatre thumbing through the guide trying to figure out if there was anything I wanted to see during any of my free time and while sitting there someone walked up to me and asked if I wanted a free ticket so I said yes. It was to a documentary called Harana which I think translates to Serenade, about a dying courtship ritual in the Philipines where a man would court a woman by showing up outside her window with his friends and play/sing love songs until her parents let them inside the house. It was enlightening, charming and beautiful. It was one of the producers that gave me the ticket, I thanked her again after the screening and she said I looked like I needed to see a movie. So I did get a free ticket afterall.

Is that my next destination? I don't know...my grandfather, whom I know almost nothing about except that he was born in the late 1800's, was a musician and served in the US military, was from the Philipines. Over the past year, I've been having these interesing Filipino encounters, first an oral historian, then six months later I randomly ate dinner with her sister at a Greek festival, and now this. Travel works for me that way: encounters build up until I go. It's just a seed that's been planted now.

Then I went back to Folklife, went and got coffee because it was cold, and wandered back through stopping to listen to what turned out to be my two favorite acts of the day: the Sweet Lowdown from Victoria, BC and Science from Seattle. Sweet Lowdown was two woman, banjo and guitar, Science was two men, both guitarists, who did a rockin' version of Eleanor Rigby. It began to rain, the air filled with the ozony raindrops-on-pavement smell. Started to leave again, but stopped to watched a juggling act and then stayed for part of a string-band's set. It was dark then, raining harder, wind picking up, half the audience dancing.  At the bus stop, a man asked me to waltz, I said I was uncoordinated (I am the woman who smacked her face into a doorjamb recently) so he handed me a button off of his jacket, and I jumped on the bus. Getting off the bus, someone made eye-contact and gave me the solidarity sign. I kinda' feel like I had been hibernating, (the cold, the lack of light?) and recently woke up and began ferociously gorging myself on life. When I looked at myself in the mirror when I got home, I was looking pretty scrappy.