The Imaginary Afternoon

Camp Long is an uncrowded park off 35th in West Seattle. It’s got trails that wind through tall trees, some attractive ponds, a handful of cabins, a climbing wall, a very cool WPA era visitor’s center, and a big meadow for events. I was in an imaginative state of mind while walking through there with my pal B, there was something about the mossy rocks and bright green color of the water, something about the magical early fall light, that made me feel like we were walking around inside a Miyazake animation. Any moment a unthinkable creature with big round eyes could pop out of the swampy, shadowy pond and scamper off into the woods, and maybe B and I would run after as cartoon characters on a transformational adventure with nature. But what was really happening at Camp Long that day was another thing entirely.

Seattle has a sizable Ethiopian population. Enough so that when, about two weeks ago, I’d planned to meet some friends for Ethiopian food at the corner of 28th and Cherry, we ended up missing each other. Why? There are no less than four Ethiopian restaurants at that corner, and there are several more up the street. I like to imagine that there is a central kitchen for all of them, that they are connected by underground tunnels. I know this is not the case, but it is fun to picture dim sum style carts rolling around below street level, delivering injera and doro tibs to diners at all the Ethiopian restaurants in that six block (or so) radius.

As we wandered the wooded trails of the park, the meadow filled up with Ethiopians in their traditional best. It was a very pretty sight, beautiful women, striking men, absolutely adorable babies, white gauzy fabric against their dark skin, smiling families in the slanting golden light. There was a pile of branches wrapped in a red, green and yellow banner, a cross on top, and later, music over the sound system that had earlier broadcast only, “Check, check, check.” Rows of white draped silhouettes filled the low amphitheater benches. Girls wandered in twos and threes, boys climbed up to the top of the climbing rock. The parking lot filled with more cars, more Ethiopian families appeared, a priest in black robes wandered down to the meadow.

September 27th, 2009, is not just Yom Kippur, it’s also Meskel, or the Feast of the True Cross. We learned this by asking two very pretty girls — one answered in her native language while the other translated, a third stood back and chatted on her cell phone. “It’s a religious holiday. It celebrates the finding of the cross.” The story behind the holiday says that Queen Helena, the mother of Constantine, found a piece of the true cross by lighting a fire and following the smoke. There’s a big bonfire on Meskel — that’s the pile of branches we saw — and a procession. Supposedly, there’s a piece of the true cross at Amba Geshen, a mountain top church in Ethiopia, and there are huge festivals — the holiday is kind of a big deal.

I have got it in my head that I would like to go to Ethiopia. It started when I saw Lucy, the 3.2 million year old humanoid fossil, at the Pacific Science Center, and the feeling has not gone away. There is something about those stone churches carved into the ground, about the icon painting and the far-away-ness of Ethiopia that makes me wonder what it would be like to pass through there. I have no preconceptions that I could crack the place, no more than I could crack Vietnam (and yes, we’d had pho for lunch), I only want to see those mysterious places in person, to stand just on the edge of things to observe the mystery of a culture I know nothing about.

How odd and magical and unexpected that I should have exactly that feeling that I crave a mere mile from my home, a mere 20 minute walk from where I sit now. Miyazake did not draw my afternoon, he did not pour extra condensed milk into my Vietnamese coffee and he did not fill the park with long shadows and golden light and people that looked like they walked out of dream. He could have, but it turns out I did not need his help.