Thisbe Nissen: Tour Diary
Preliminaries - Day 1 - Day 2 - Day 3 - Day 4 - Day 5 - Day 6 - Day 7 - Day 8 - Day 9 - Day 10 - Day 11 -Day 12 - Day 13 - Day 14 - Day 15 - Day 16 - Day 17 - Day 18 - Day 19 - Day 20 - Day 21 - Day 22 - Day 23 - Day 24 - Day 25 - Day 26 - Day 27 - Day 28 - Day 29 - Home Diary -
July 25 -
July 26
Sweet peas at Pike Place Market, Seattle
Bounty at Pike Place
Delphiniums at Pike Place
Fish heads
Day 19: Seattle
Morning at the Pike Place Market amid overflowing flowering tubs of sweet pea
and delphinium, Rainier cherries and red-ripe strawberries, walking with
Chris and Krista, my college roommate who's here in Seattle in school, doing
a masters in the fisheries department. We eat breakfast overlooking the
water, catching up -- Chris and Krista haven't met before, so we're telling
stories since we last saw each other (when I was here reading from "Girls'
Room" the first time around, so fall of '99, and so much has happened since
then...)
Me and Krista, Pike Place Market, Seattle
Chris and Krista, Seattle
Katie and Kimberly come to get us at noon and we drive up to Bellingham, a
couple hours north. Chris says the landscape here is a lot more like what he
grew up with in southern Germany: the evergreen, the lakes. Our hotel is
right on the water and there's a jacuzzi in the bathtub. When I asked the
folks at Knopf if Chris could come along on part of my book tour with me, I
said if they paid for his airfare we'd stay at Motel 6 and eat at diners and
do a total low budget tour. But somehow here we are with a jacuzzi in the
bathtub. I don't quite understand but I'm not complaining...
The reading with Myla Goldberg goes well -- an amazing turnout! I'm really
bad at judging numbers but I'd say there are fifty people there. I read a
new chapter --5, "The Incipience of Their Discontent -- and feel good about
it. Myla is incredibly dynamic. The audience adores her. They politely
direct a few questions toward me at the end, but really everybody wants to
talk to Myla. They stand in line to ask her questions like "How did you pick
the last word for her to spell at the National Bee?" She bears up remarkably
well. She signs eight million books. I sign three, not including the three I
sign for good old friend of my parents who've driven down from Vancouver for
the reading. Somehow, tonight, this is fine with me. I feel really good. I
feel proud of the reading. I seem to like myself ok again tonight. I wish
there were some logic to these tides. But when I'm on the upswing, logic
doesn't seem to matter so much to me. Of course. For now, I feel good, and
that's all I ask.
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