sex and violence

"Interpersonal violence spans a wide range of human behaviors of which murder represents one of the terminal disruptions in the equilibrium of a society. Sexual homicide, a crime of increasing concern in our society, is the killing of a person in the context of power, sexuality, and brutality...

"Apprehension of the sexual murderer is one of law enforcement's most difficult challenges. Because sexual killings often appear motiveless and random, they offer few clues about why the murder occurred or, consequently, about the identity of the murderer. Even the sexual nature of these murders is not always immediately obvious, for conventional evidence of a sexual crime may be absent from a crime scene."

sexual homicide: patterns and motives, ressler, burgess, douglas.

isn't that first sentence delicious? i love it for some reason. but i feel smutty reading this book on the train home in the afternoon.

whiskey tango foxtrot

world leaders may be discussing global warming in copenhagen today, but i'm interested in a different sort of climate change.

as i write this, the weather channel is reporting that it is 25 degrees in portland, though with the wind chill factor, it feel like 12. all i know is that after coming home from work and then taking the train up to fred meyer, my hands and feet are numb and painful. what are these insane winds from the north that bombard portland? i've never felt colder (which is probably a lie). the wind roared all night long, keeping my little treehouse on n. mississippi frigid.

then i biked to work today. what a terrible idea. my thumbs died. i no longer have thumbs: they froze and fell off. tomorrow, the bus, no matter how early i have to wake to catch it.

and on the yellow/green platform east of pioneer square, everyone looked at least slightly uncomfortable. but some portlanders held their own better than others, braving bearing the cold in their smart winter wools, seeming almost relaxed except for their stony faces, turned rocky by the cold wind. i, however, fell into the other camp: grimacing and intermittently cursing aloud the cold. how dare the winter treat me so. i've never but adored scarves and hats and long sleeves and walks in the cold. i biked all through the last winter (except those two weeks of snow endearingly called by the local news arctic blast '08.)

and now: tea and the indoors. a glass of wine. a hot toddy perhaps later at the liberty class. a cold night in bed and a frigid morning waking early to catch the bus for work. i think i rather the rain than this cold.

have i mentioned it hasn't rained in portland for a week or more? i think this is the problem. these clear skies are unnatural. i could see both mt. hood and mt. st. helens today on my commute home.

sketchbook no. 8

this is the personal essay i read at lewis and clark today on an open radio station art piece by gregory green.







The use of "Ma'am" is disappearing and is little used in the North except by displaced Southerners or servants of the old school. In the South you still hear it and in some areas there is a strong effort to keep the custom of having children and, of course, servants address adult women as "Ma'am." I don't endorse this. I feel that Mrs. of Miss together with the surname is properly respectful for everyone for all parts of the country.

this is christopher bayerle and that was an excerpt from amy vanderbilt's Etiquette: The Guide to Gracious Living.

to the left of the plate, the fork. to the right, the knife (blade in), then a spoon. a constellation of utensils. sometimes there will be two forks, a smaller salad fork to the outside of a larger fork for the entree. on the right, above the knife and spoon, a binary system of water and wine glasses, the water to the left and slightly above the wine glass. around the table an orbit of men and women eating, talking, laughing, drinking, sharing. men wait to be seated until all the women of the table have taken their seats. no one begins eating until everyone has been served.

these are basic laws of the social universe, gravitational pulls that maintain the order and fluid rotation of a dinner table, of a family, of a group of friends.

If just the family is at the table, let us say mother, father, and three children, the serving is usually handled by both mother and father, with father serving the meat and the mother the vegetables. It is pleasant to vary the serving sequence if all three children are of the same sex, with the oldest one not necessarily always being served first, and the baby last. If the children are of mixed sexes, the girls are served before the boys as they will be when they are grown up.

when my family would travel during the summer from alabama to visit relatives in new york, my father would recall with a groan the friendliness of yankees. he would remind us of the waiter in some diner on one of these trips who took our order with barely a word let alone a smile, pouring water into cups in one fluid sweep of her arm across the water, leaving the table puddled with water onto which cups of coffee and plates of food were sloshed.

my mother, a yankee herself, never liked my sister and me to call her ma'am, telling us it made her feel old, but she instructed us that we were to refer to our teachers as such, that women in the south liked to be called ma'am and men were to be addressed as sir. that we would be looked more kindly on if we could remember this.

parents instruct their children to say please and thank you when asking a favor. our parents raise us to cough into our sleeves, to wash our hands, to ask permission before borrowing something, to say "excuse me" when we bump into someone else, to apologize when we hurt another, to not pick our noses.

If you are having people to dinner, mix only one kind of cocktail and offer, in addition, sherry, and scotch or bourbon or rye and soda - with vegetable or fruit juice for possible teetotalers. Old-fashioneds are a nuisance to fix for more than four or five. The safest choice seems to be martinis, which have the virtue of being relatively inexpensive, more or less foolproof as to concoction, and mixable well in advance... You make no mistake when you choose one of the following cocktails to serve before a dinner party - martini, bacardi, or daiquiri (especially in summer), whisky sours (good any time and well-liked by both sexes), manhattans and old-fashioneds (with a minimum of garnish for male tastes).

at a party in atlanta, ga a few years ago, i tried to strike up a conversation with a gentleman at the bar wearing a shirt for an album on which my friend, the dj playing even as i spoke, was featured. i said, "my friend, this dj playing right now is featured on that album" pointing to his shirt; he replied, "oh," turned away from me and walked away into the crowd.

certainly atlanta does retain its southern charm a lot of the time, but this sort of behavior to me exemplifies typical east coast, big city rudeness and uncaring. everyone seems too caught up in their selves, too busy, too uncaring, too oblivious to the details, too untrusting.

perhaps birmingham, alabama, the city where i grew up, is just small enough that it's easy to feel comfortable when interacting with strangers. but birmingham isn't the safest cities. in fact, its one of america's least safest cities. a place in which one can't walk alone or at all at night. a city in which everyone you know has at least one story about being held up for cash or beer or a bike. a city with some neighborhoods you don't even think about driving through.

so why then does it seem like we're so open with others despite all this?

Modern notions of what constitutes proper dinner table conversation are drastically different from those that prevailed in Victorian and even later times. It was once thought that politics, religion, illness, accidents, scandal, were not fit subjects for the dinner table. I concur within reason... Impersonal conversation is, at best dull. A healthy give and take, warm expression of one's feelings and opinions, the accounting of interesting personal experiences, all means lively social intercourse. Even argument may make lively interchange so long as barbed and painful personal remarks are avoided.

when i moved here to portland, friends expounded to me the wonder of how friendly portlanders seemed to be. portlanders are friendly. this city is so laid back and trustful; its citizens having built a great community here. but i've been yelled at by older oregonians on the street several times, been brushed off when introducing myself to strangers at bars or parties, given straight-forward but brusque directions or the time when asked of a stranger on the street.

if a stranger on the street in birmingham had asked me for directions, i wouldn't have looked cross or impatient at all, would have answered warmly, would have paused in case the questioner had any other question, would have told the person to have a great day, expressed hope that the other would find their destination quickly. i would offer a stranger at a bar to sit with me. i would excuse myself even if another person in the street had tripped me.

In greeting people we say, "how do you do?" We do not really expect an answer, but it is all right to reply, "Very well, thank you," even if it is a blue Monday and you feel far from well. No one wants a clinical discussion in response to this purely rhetorical question. In fact, you may answer Socratically with "How do you do?" - expecting, and getting, no answer. In farewell, say simply, "Good-by," or something you really feel, such as "Let's meet soon again" or "It was so nice running into you." Don't some current banality such as "Good-by now." It is obvious it is now you are saying "Good-by" - not an hour previously nor an hour hence. Watch these cliches.

for amy vanderbilt there was a form for everything, a proper way of doing any activity. the complexity of the form or gesture seems gratuitous at times, but there was and can still be a purpose for such rules of etiquette. what these manners provide us is social lubricant. they allow us to interact with others more easily without offending. they alway refer and defer to the other. i hold the door open for YOU. i offer YOU a cup of coffee. i introduce myself to YOU. i say thank YOU.

it's not important to me that one always gets the form correct. i express deficient etiquette often. but looking at amy vanderbilt, i see as important that deference to the other, that consciousness of social interaction. perhaps the south's preference for sugary politeness and the comfort of manners seems false at times, but i miss the warmth and ease of social relations there, the coy politesse, the deference to the other despite one's motives.

first in memoriam

while i was laughing with friends at a bar in portland, or sunday night, my great grandfather, william ward, died in ithaca, ny. he would have been ninety-five in january i was told yesterday. he could barely see or hear, so i was told yesterday. what does one understand at ninety-five and does one's existence feel the same?

since i'm currently not drinking, this glass of water is for you, great-grandpa.

bearded coffee loving bicyclists in the roman empire

i am spartacus, come from the dead, come back to tell you all; i shall tell you all.

i do not believe we are doomed to repeat history again and again. similar events may happen repeatedly, but are similar only generally. history is too complex to follow even one trajectory: it is inevitably multiple, heteroglossic. yet it seems that for americans, the histories of rome and our nation spell our the same syllables of hubris and failure. we are the new roman empire.

my new friend rob invited me to watch stanley kubrick's spartacus with him and his friend ean the other night. a very long film, at three and a half hours it wasn't as painful to sit through as i feared it would be. the most striking scene to me had been originally edited out, though restored in the version we viewed. a roman general looks out at the countryside, down at a contingent of the army marching paswt, and proclaims to the slave he's just had bathe him that the scene below is rome herself. when the general turns around, his slave has vanished, having run off with the slave rebellion. the scene depicts roman opulence with homosexual undertones; it features a certain remove from the situation. the general speaks coolly: as ean pointed out, he describes rome animalistically, as if it is a collective, a society or culture, yet always separate from the individual, uncontrollable, with a will of its own.

if america is like rome, then the story of spatacus represents the last throes of nationalism in america during the 20th century. the slaves of the movie, foreigners to rome, rise up in an attempt to escape the empire. not just to be free and claim equal rights; they want to flee the gravity and corrupt hegemony of roman culture and society. yet in the end, the only slave that gains freedom, spatacus's wife, is granted roman citizenship and must assimilate to survive.

america has seen the cruelty of slavery, the hegemony of american culture, the dominance of corporate marketing. control becomes more subtle, more unconcious, and in some ways, perhaps more complete. but there are sites of resistance of course, places and groups of people which deny the dominant culture. in many ways, i thinkthe city of portland is one of these sites. portland has a very particular elan, a particular way of operating, a particular culture not completely separate from and against american society but distinct and divergent. this is apparent in the city's draw to local small business, its dislike of wal-mart, its embrace of cooperatives and trade. its also evidenced by its love of bicycling (6% of the city commutes daily by bike, more than any other city in the united states), its music scene, its love of film, its high regard for food, beer, and wine, as well as its fashion. its that strange mixture of fashion and attitude and interest that only this city can claim. one friend once commented to me that portland lacks any sense of fashion, to which i responded that i though portland just had its own, unique sense of fashion. another friend told me that portland is always two years ahead of san francisco. but really i just want portland to have its own agenda, its own aesthetic.

i want to live in a city unlike any other in the united states. a city that shares my goals and interests. i believe micro-communities become increasingly important at the beginning of the twenty-first century. more that fringe movements, communities that share very particular values and interests will become a structural element in american society. this will be aided by the growth of the middle class and thus greater wealth and spending on an individual level. inherent in this will be a greater amount of free time, allowing for the garnering of specific interests. on top of this, the capability for movement and relocation granted by free time, technology, and wealth. greater, more widespread education will also be a feature of this movement. all these developments were actually witnessed during the late 19th and 20th centuries as a result of mercantilism, manufacturing, and the rise of a bourgeois middle class. these development will continue throughout the 21st, becoming pronounced as technology, education, and wealth/free-time allows for individuals to become involved and interested in various and divergent hobbies, lifestyles, movements, cities, et cetera. i believe slowly, slowly, slowly cities, perhaps neighborhoods in a city, will align more closely with certain cultures or micro-communities. i believe corporate america understands this, and through use of recent technology, now scrambles to tailor marketing and sales at the urban and individual level (read: google).

as with spartacus, the stuggles american society faces are similar to, but as i argue, intrinsically different from those of the roman empire. i want to read more hope into our futures, show that history has changed, that history changes our cultural trajectory, the possibilities for freedom and agency.

boise-eliot in the rain

my new roommate amanda says they call chicago "a city of neighborhoods." portland, too, loves it different neighborhoods and proudly preserves their separate names and identities. the apartment i now share with daniel and amanda on michigan avenue stands in a neighborhood in inner north portland formally called boise-eliot and is informally known by its main artery, north mississippi.

i love north mississippi. a little secluded and quiet, but very hip, north mississippi is very busy at least. i walked out this morning despite the rather heavy rain to forage for coffee at our neighborhood coffee house, the fresh pot. the rain poured down the streets and sidewalks, gravity pulling down toward the city center, to the willamette, which would carry it all away and dump our winter water in the pacific. the rain pooled in gutters and in intersections; deep puddles into which i would splash up past my ankles. i love my galoshes.

the fresh pot operates in an old drugstore, the Rx sign still visible in the concrete outside the door. the diffuse light of portland's fall filters through bright yellow awnings and mingles with the 20 watt light of old art nouveau lamps. the woman there kindly hands me a cup and fifty cents in change. i love my coffee. is there a secret god of coffee to whom i should be praying?

i braved the puddle outside fresh pot and cross mississippi to the new vintage clothing boutique that opened today. the shop owner offered me plaid western shirts and 501s. i found a beautiful pendleton plaid shirt (made in portland, oregon) in teal and purple and yellow, sized small, for twenty-two dollars. perfection! i love it. daniel will hate it. perfection!

back out in the street, in the miserable downpour, i passed the record store and thought it beautiful to see a man wearing black with raven hair and thick buddy holly glasses wearing huge earphones and listening to rock and roll on a turntable in the window there. i thought this is portland perfect. this is exactly how i want to remember my youth.

the rain streamed down off my raincoat and soaked the tops of my pants.

amanda and i made pumpkin pancakes, cut up a sample of bartlett, bosch, and d'anjou pears, drank coffee, and i stared out into the rain as we ate, dreaming of pendleton plaid.

l'autobus

friday, i was leaving trader joe's in the hollywood district, waiting for the 75 to come by and take me back to mary anne's place on belmont. while standing there next to trader joe's, another bus heading the opposite direction pulled up. the driver stopped the bus right in front of me in the middle of the block. he opened his window, and grinning, waved vigorously to me. he had dark hair under a hat and a goatee. he looked slightly older than me, but from a distance he looked not unattractive. he seemed to recognize me, though i had (and still have) no clue as to his identity, though because he seemed to be so happy to see me, whoever he thought i must be, i waved in return and smiled. then he pulled to the end of the block and to the curb to let his passengers out. i stared after the bus trying to figure out who the strange driver could be. before pulling away, he opened his window again, stuck his hand out and waved. when i waved in return, he gave me a thumbs-up and drove away.

today, i didn't have a particularly pleasant experience on the bus. i missed the 35 up from john's landing into downtown so i had to hop on the streetcar at ohsu. then it took forever for the 15 to arrive which i had planned to take up belmont to mary anne's place to collect a few more of my belongings. while on the 15, a woman started crying loudly at the back of the bus. the sobs became screams, blood curdling screams. screams that i haven't heard outside of a slasher film. my fellow riders were petrified with terror. what was happening to this lady? then she cried out to the bus about our fake, smiling faces who didn't love god. this shouting led to more shouting about satan and no one loving satan. at this point the tension on the bus eased slightly as people realized this woman was obviously insane. the man across the aisle from me tried to talk sociably to his companion about their thanksgiving plans, interrupted only by this woman's shrieking about satan.

i like bikes.

evian, i am with you in rockland (i mean portland)

"where you're madder than i am."
reasons i miss my sister, evian, my best twin in alabama:

1. the fall
2. october
3. halloween
4. watching hocus pocus over and over again all year round 'til we vomit
5. our psychic connection
6. having someone to sit and knit with
7. having someone to sit and do absolutely nothing with
8. having someone who will drive around with me all night, unspeaking, while we listen to air's "talkie walkie"
9. kittens!
10. knowing someone who knows my family
11. knowing someone who understands how fucked up my family can be sometimes
12. knowing someone who knows asfa
13. when i'm out of control, she will say to me: "you're beyond thunderdome" or "you're twelve years old and running with gangs."
14. having a friend around who likes the same movies i do and will spend endless hours with me watching them
15. she can honestly recommend movies to me that i would like
16. she named her kitten snakey and her dog popples
17. having a friend in front of whom i never have to be nervous or pretentious or bored or vomity
18. having someone with whom i don't have to worry about what i'm wearing around
19. knowing someone who knows my constant anxiety
20. she an amazing artist and i don't have to lie and pretend that i like her work
21. i can make fun of everyone else with her

ah, evian, "while you are not safe I am not safe, and
now you're really in the total animal soup of
time."

health science

mount hood rose white and misty against the white morning sky in the distance, taller than usual as the ohsu tram glided down toward the waterfront. i stood looking out toward the willamette and east portland, holding a bag full of nick's clothes, his shoes, a folder of forms, two backpacks slung across my back, his eyeglasses stowed in my right pocket, his phone in my left. i was shaking slightly.

there is actually no reason to fret. nick is having surgery on his hip today. the procedure began at noon and should take between three and five hours. he'll rest in the hospital overnight and then tomorrow his mom will drive him home. it seems like an invasive procedure, nick will not be able to work for three weeks, and still have to suffer through months of physical therapy, but it's not a dangerous procedure. no vital organs will be touched. they will not have to open his chest cavity, operate near his heart or lungs.

i arrived at the center for health and healing on the south waterfront around 7.58 this morning to meet nick. i planned to sit with him for a while before they took him back to get him prepared for surgery. i did not expect it to be a big deal. the people walking briskly around the lobby seemed calm and determined and cheerful. nick seemed chipper when he arrived, exasperated at having missed two buses and then having to wait for the perpetually snail-like streetcar, but not nervous particularly.

in admissions, nick began filling out a bit of paperwork. i scanned over what he was signing and noticed that all the questions were asking him if he'd like to be resuscitated and what they should do if he's locked in a permanent vegetative state. that's when i started to get nervous. then i had to sign this as a witness. then when i thought they were going to take him back to pre-surgery and i would go home, the nice admissions woman started to tell me about where WE should go, and what WE would find there, and explained where i could wait for him during the surgery, telling me i could come to her for updates and that she could tell me where his room is after surgery.

down in anesthesia, the aid gave nick a robe and left us alone together so that that nick could undress. we sat together, nick naked beside me except the flimsy hospital gown, and waited for the anesthesiologist. i held him and laid my head on his chest and kissed him. we laughed and joked about what was playing on the television, what we'd do while he was recovering.

when the doctor arrived with a nurse, i started to get a little more nervous. the doctor looked young - looked like jonah from yacht, and i kept scanning his face looking for signs of insanity. andres, the doctor, was nice, told jokes, was pleasant to be around. the nurse asked nick for more information, asked me for emergency contact information. i was suddenly an emergency contact? i think i may have started pacing. the doctor turned to me and said, "do you want to sit? sit down here. thanks." i must have looked a little nervous at that point. then right there in front of me, blocking me into the chair, the doctor come over the bed to insert a needle in nick to take blood and connect an i.v. the doctor pierced nick, but couldn't get the tube onto the needle fast enough. blood pumped out of nick's vein all over his hand, dripping onto the bed and floor. luckily blood doesn't freak me out.

after this, the doctor told me i should say my goodbyes because i wouldn't have time to see him before surgery. i lamely looked at nick and told him goodbye, that i'd see him later, and walked out of the room holding all of nick's clothes and belongings. i had wanted to tell him that he'd be fine, that i'd be waiting for him. i wanted him to be okay, to feel safe. i had wanted to kiss him, but felt strange doing so in front of these strange men watching us.

i don't understand how someone can lie there alone in that bed and talk to these doctors who are about to pump something into your veins so that you'll quickly pass out and wake up hours later in a strange room. how can one be calm? i mean, nick's surgery shouldn't be a problem for these doctors, but how can other people lay in bed, alone, thinking there is a possibility i could not wake up from this? how can family members leave their loved ones? how can doctors come out to families and tell them there was nothing they could do?

walking away from nick, that's when i lost it. the thought of being alone, sick in a hospital just started to make me anxious. i just didn't want nick to be alone or afraid suddenly. no one should have to feel like that.

i just needed to get out of the hospital.

i have to go back to the hospital in a bit to drop of nick's clothes in his room so that he can dress tomorrow when he leaves the hospital. i'll be fine now. i'm fine now. and nick will be fine. he'll be asleep when i see him probably, doped up. but it would be good to see him after surgery, just to know he's alright, that the surgery went smoothly.

how can we have friends and family and lovers with lives so frail that we could loose them at any time?

mother's mother's father

his mother died the day before her one hundred and tenth birthday. they were both born in ireland and immigrated to the united states when he was young. he is now ninety-six years old, his eye having almost completely failed him, spending his days nearly blind in a rest home in upstate new york.

my grandmother recently returned home to alabama from visiting her father, my great-grandfather, of ninety-six years. slow, slow, slow. she says his hair is long, uncut and his body is almost as frail and brittle as his hair. it seems insane to me that this relative spends his days in a retirement home on the other side of the country with what seems like very little contact from his family, though his other daughter and son live in new jersey and new york respectively. i cannot fathom what this man understands after the accumulation of that time. what exactly can he remember and how exactly has the pile of time in which he is buried affects those memories.

he couldn't serve in the second world world due to a malformation in his thumb. he was a truck driver for much of his life. he lived with his wife, consetta, born in italy, in a same town on the eerie canal in upstate new york until she lost her memory and died a few years ago. the small town looked like the set of a disney movie: everyone knew one another, all of them irish-italians who painted their houses coral and seafoam colors. there were two graveyards across the street from each other, one catholic, the other protestant. there was one main street along the canal.

his health remained stable for a year, then rapidly deteriorated.

when his wife began loosing her memory, i remember visiting her. at some point during the trip, she turned to me and asked, "who are you again?" though i had known her all my life. i responded that i was her granddaughter melody's son. she didn't seem to recall, but accepted my answer.

so what is there to know now? i want to be there with him. i want to talk to him. it's strange how these american families spiral outward, detach, regroup, disassociate. will i find myself at ninety wondering the same questions about myself that i wonder about him? only if i'm lucky.

sketchbook no. 7

self portrait portraits: i want to convince a group of my friends to take pictures of themselves. i want each friend to take a picture of him or herself, naked. just the beheaded picture of a body, the camera gazing down like a head upon itself. it's all we can ever see of ourselves without a mirror or a camera or a reflection. and i think in that self-portrait each person would capture the things about his or her body that he or she most hates; he or she would have to face the imperfections of his or her body and still love him or herself enough to photograph the body. and then i would take each self-portrait and paint it or blow it up into a giant photograph. each self-portrait would become a portrait of mine of that person the way that person sees him or herself.

ghouls

the fall! the fall! my favorite season. with birds and squirrels and cold weather and jackets and the quiet. the rain comes to portland, but the chilly weather makes up for it. all the good fall memories remembered make up for the rain. and everyone has the best luck in the fall. we think of spring as a time for couples, but i think people begin pairing off during the fall: holding hands and linking arms and wrapping up and going home together. and drinks. and hot toddies. and the damp fragrant earth. and the leaves: they always surprise me. i wait and wait and wait and think i'll catch them, but i never do. one day they're just red and fiery and orange and floating.

and the hungry ghosts. the ghosts make me sad, their chill fingers pulling at my clothes, tussling my hair, caressing my face. they demand something, they always take something. but what? i feel like i loose something each year to them, the hungry ghosts. the sacrifice of time.

sketchbook no. 6

i want to put together a collection of memoirs from my friends who have moved to oregon. i think it would be interesting to have a specific place unite all the memoirs: portland, or. certainly they would all just be about moving to oregon, but would all address portland as a place in some way. i'm interested in making them/mine as specific as possible, with road names and store names and people. "place-names" : proust. portlanders should be able to connect to the piece(s) in a way that outsiders cannot.

everyday magic in north portland

i thought this was beautiful, although also a little scary to be around.

let's look at the numbers, oregon

today, i saw a tweet on my twitter feed reading, "Urban League Study Not Encouraging For Oregon's Black Population," with a link to this link, an oregon public broadcasting article.

the article reviewed a study from the urban league of portland concerning the status of african-americans in oregon. the study found that:
"30 percent of African Americans in Oregon live in poverty -- compared to 13 percent of whites... whites are twice as likely to own a home... [and] that while 28 percent of whites hold a bachelor’s degree -- only 19 percent of blacks have a degree."

this does sound like sad news.

but let's really inspect these numbers.

according to some information from the census bureau, oregon's 2008 population can be estimated to be around 3,790,060. 90.3% of the population is white; 2.0% of the population in the state is black; and the rest of the population is of one of many other ethnicities or claims two ethnic backgrounds. 2% of the population is black. that means there are roughly 3,425,835 white people living in oregon and 75,801 black people.

if the study's percentages are correct, this means that 22,740 black live in poverty compared to 445,358 whites. it means 14,402 african-americans have college degrees (out of 75,000) in comparison to a mere 959,233 white people (out of almost 3.4 million!) isn't surreal that less than 1 million caucasian oregonians have degrees out of almost three and a half white oregonian adults? isn't it sad that combining the black and white populations of those oregonians with bachelor degrees, there may not even be one million college educated adults in this state?

and as the black population comprises on 2% of the population in this state, of course white oregonians are going to be be twice more likely to own homes. white adults constitute more than two times the population.

this study from the urban league doesn't say much about oregon's black population. and this not to say that oregon's black population is insignificant, can be overlooked due to its size. what it does say is that the state as a whole needs to address issues of poverty and education more actively. these are issues that are obviously affecting all oregonians and must be addressed at a state level.

sketchbook no. 5

booth, helen, and i went to the phil elverum performance last night at the white stag building downtown. elverum had been an "arist in residence" for the university of oregon in the white stag building this past year, and he had created an album for and "about" the white stag building. before elvrum performed, another sound artist showcased a sound and film project before there was a brief question period with the artists. listening to the strange, long-haired, idealistic hippie freak who presented the first piece of art talk about collecting sound from waterfalls in the columbia river gorge and then elverum talk about collecting sounds from the white stag building, i became fascinated with the idea of collecting sounds. all the sounds that no one else gets to hear unless they're intimate with a place. those sounds that are specific to a place and not cable of being reproduced.

and then broodthaers started to influence my thoughts. you know i love broodthaers. in mind mind i can foresee sound exhibitions or "museums." convention folding tables set up in the middle of a building or a field or a huge factory; tables set up with cassette players with microphones, something like what i would have used in grade school. and behind the players, cassette cases listed with labels in cursive script dates and perhaps subject matter. this would be a catalogue of all the sounds that comprise a place. i like the idea that after the exhibition closed, the cassettes could be neatly catalogued in a library.

genevieve and dragon

i dreamed i was reunited with my cat, genevieve, last night. we were standing on a wood dock in the middle of a large lake filled with water lilies and koi. we sat on the dock and talked together, laughing. then evian's cat dragon came and started splashing and swimming around us. genevieve and i laughed at the fat orange cat pouncing at carp in the pond. dragon was crouching in the water, concentrating on some fish, so i reached out to touch his body and scare him, when suddenly the cat turned into a golden crocodile and snapped at me, waking me from my dream.

how doth the little crocodile
improve his shining tail,
and pour the waters of the nile
on every single scale!

sketchbook no. 4

i'd like to make rubbings of every grave in the long fir cemetery with a crayon and newsprint or butcher paper. then i could bind all the rubbings into a huge book, a catalogue of all the faces of the gravestones. this project would take forever. and after ten or twenty years, i could do it again as experiment in how much the weather and time have changed the graves. do you think i could get a grant from an historical society to sit around all summer in the graveyard and do this? do you think it would ever get creepy? i have been on the halloween tour of lone fir murders. scary.

sketchbook no. 3

i could keep a pad of tracing paper with me at all times and trace out designs and images and textures and patterns and anything else i thought was interesting. then i could put each week's worth of tracings together into a book, with pretty little signatures of blue thread and a study cover. i could make a book each week for a month, or for a year.

sketchbook no. 2

hey remember how i wanted to play a day long game of one in one hundred during which i take one hundred photos of men i think attractive? you don't? oh well, yeah. i want to wander around portland and whenever i see someone attractive, i'll take a portrait of that person.

now i'm thinking it could be fun to adapt this idea and turn it into a zine. once a week or once a month, i'll wander around with my camera, take a picture of all the attractive guys i see, then print them in a simple little zine with captions listing where i saw these men. it'll be like an about town magazine for portland except only the cutest guys will be in it. no words, no distractions. just men.

sunny skies in portland

does anyone else think that adam liptak, legal correspondent for the new york times, is sexy? 'cause wow, i do. that's my kind of guy!



let me tell you about the gorgeous weather the pacific north west saw this last weekend, especially since most of you sun belt folk weren't seeing any sun at all. don't worry, i took pictures.



yes, portland did look exactly like une dimanche apres-midi a l'ile de la grande-jatte. the entire city came out to bask in the warm sun, fight off the depression and anxiety they were beginning to feel due to the cold and gloom. down on the west promenade of the willamette, people were running and biking and roller-blading and laying in the grass and smoking weed. children were playing. people were laughing. there were smiles to go round like drinks being passed out by your favorite drunk.



booth and i walked down the west bank as well. we walked around looking at the trees beginning to bloom, the people milling about. "now she's a looker." "that's who i'd like to meet." and we walked through the pearl. and played frisbee. and i bought us some gelato (i had orange chocolate gelato).



and then we walked home and i made a beautiful, summery dinner for us: tilapia tacos with lime and avacado, served with rice cooked with lime juice, and zucchini spiced with cumin and garlic and chili powder. it was amazing. afterward, we watched a movie while the sun set, a big pink cloud hanging over our fatness.



and the next day was much the same. more frisbee. more walking. more happiness. a happiness we never wanted to end and were amazed was the result as something so light and invisible as sunlight, as the weather.

i can't even wait for summer. okay, maybe not summer because we don't have air conditioning in the apartment, but warmer, brighter days definitely.

now didn't those images just brighten your day? that's what adam liptak does for me.

pre-fizz

i went to the library today to read artforum. i sat across from a small mexican man reading a book called hombres amor y sexo. i went for a short run when i returned home, encountering a small dog without a collar on 20th. he seemed sweet and playful. he was smaller than my cat. i didn't take him home because a couple walked up behind me and they seemed interested in him.

this is a list of people and books that interested me while reading artforum and that i want to research more:
-dan graham, theatre
-and back again www.deitch.com
-matt green, pictures of women
-ataxia ii, michael gormley
-matthew barney, ancient evenings: a libretto
-martin kippenberger
-hollis frampton / stan brakhage / kenneth anger
-sergey dvortsevoy's tulpan
-dereck jarman
-rhys chatham / christina wolff / arthur russell
-harold pinter, art, truth and politics
-marcel l'herbier, l'argent
-barkley hendricks
-arthur zmijewski
-zhang huan
-santiago sierra

tonight i'm going to a sloe-gin fizz party a few blocks away. tristan sent me this video of lorreta lynn and jack black singing about portland, or and sloe-gin fizz.

remodeling health care

certain members of the democratic caucus within congress have taken up obama's mission to provide health care for all americans. as senators and congress people debate and brain storm how best to transform our health care system, a writer for the New York Times points out that, "[t]he industry went a step futher (after promising to accept all applicants regardless of illness) last week, offering to end the practice of charging higher premiums to sick people int eh individual insurance market." yet even this measure does not guarantee that health insurance would be afforable to all americans. "The government cannot require people to have insurance if they cannot afford it, so lawmakers must decide: who would get subsidies? How much? And if the government subsizes insurance, should it also prescribe the items and services that must be covered - the specific benefits or their overall value?" apparently, offering subsidies may be unnecessarily complex and ineffective. it would seem that government provided universal or 'socialist' coverage seems to be the only option then. therefore hillary's plan for government provided health insurance seems necessary. however, as the article later poitns out, the cost for putting together a remodeled health care system could cost by conservative estimates up to one trillion dollars over the next ten years. in light of this fact, a health care insurance system does already exist in america and it might make more pragmatic, that is culturally and historically american sense to utilize this pre-existing structure. the existing health insurance industry might cost less to restructure and could produce greater revenue, greater economic stimulation. however, a more socialist approach could be more efficient and has historical precedents for realization in several western nations. i don't know what i think now, except that a socialized system may not require as much trial.

question: am i actually doubting socialism?

your hair looks like a rainbow

long weekend. have i ever mentioned to you how much i like gin? yes. well, i've been trying to drink less beer, and i've committed myself to tanqueray and tonics. two problems with this: a. i tend to drink a lot and gin costs a bit more than $2 pbr, and b. i find that i down gin and tonics like i'm drinking apple juice.

so thursday night, tristan invited me to go see a play with him and his friends. we met at the aalto lounge. "tanqueray and tonic." i met tristan's girlfriend, rachel, a beautiful girl with the best sense of humor. i think she's probably my new favorite person here in portland. a writer, she actually reminds me of another writer friend of mine, paige poe. she looks a little like paige poe, but really, her voice and especially her laugh reminds me so much of paige. paige poe, why are you in new york and are you still writing? do you know i read your poetry from your years at asfa all the time?

the play, tragedy: a tragedy wasn't terrible. i didn't cringe the whole time. the acting wasn't bad. there were some nicely worded little monologues. and the concept wasn't uninteresting. but it kind of seemed like the writer had just taken a course on existentialism and wrote a play on how alone we all are. oh, woes me. but there wasn't any resolution. at least heidegger and levinas tried to make us feel better about it all in the end. eh?

friday night, more gin. this time at the blue diamond where i met a neighbor, courtney, who frequents the blue diamond at times as well. after a while, i met a friend downtown at the red cap for drinks and dancing. i have to have had a lot to drink to dance. at least i didn't get so out of control i was making out with strangers in a strange bar! it's happened before.

i woke up yesterday hung over and not so well rested, which is fine. but i did not drink at all. i stayed in, read, watched movies. i met jared last night at reed college. the band he joined was supposed to play in the dorms with some other bands, but had backed out at the last moment. we still dropped by to check out the other bands. we left while a band played, a group that sort of sounded like truman capote sings the blues. so booth and i hung out with jared at his place for a while. jared is another of my new favorite people here in portland.

portland!

i passed out last night on the couch watching anamorph. hm...

sketchbook

#1
if you've seen me lately, you know how obsessed i've become with facebook. i love watching everyone update, knowing what everyone is doing, how they're feeling, what they want to share, whatever they're vomiting up. i love the exchanges, the jokes, the flirtations. i don't really even quite understand really why i'm so fascinated. and now that facebook goes everywhere with me on my ipod, i really can't get enough. i love updating from where ever i am during my errands and when i go out to drink and when i'm at home, naked, writing on my blog (that's right, booth: i'm naked on the couch, typing away at my computer while you're not home.) that space can collapse and overlap through facebook amazes me. i want to isolate this phenomenon.

so, for my next magic trick, what i'd really love to do is throw a party. projections or video screens would display the pictures of statuses of like six or so "agents" on walls through the gallery, hopefully large enough that each visitor could see each agent's status from wherever he or she was standing or dancing or floating or whatever. these agents would mingle in with everybody in the gallery, talk to everyone, talk to each other, just enjoy the party like everyone else. but the agents would update their status constantly as they partied. "this guy really sucks." "i feel nauseated." "i want a cigarette." "dry martini for me." "i think i'm in love." and so everyone at the party could talk and party and watch the statuses and try to find the agents and there would be all these microcosmic layers of reality and information piled up and active.

#2
my other idea also includes a party. or rather, this is my idea. it's antonio's. we were talking about performance art once, and he suggested it would be interesting if he were to stand on a stage and make mixed tapes for hours and that would be the performance art. titled "making mixed tapes," right? i think this sounds amazing. but i think we could do it coast to coast. get a few people involved from various cities all over the nation, and during the night, each person involved has to make a mixed tape for every other person involved. and each even would happen on the same night in different cities in america, birmingham to portland. and then we could mail the tapes to each other and at the end of the month have another party and play all the tapes that were sent to each other.

you know i love parties.

at least it's not raining... yet...

at least my sister saw a few sunny days here in portland. the city of portland is so beautiful in the sun. it might have been a bit chilly, but it was still good weather to walk around in, though evian wasn't really prepared for the amount of walking we do. i have an inverse laziness as i am adverse to paying the two bucks to ride the bus, thus, i walk everywhere. so we walked to belmont yesterday for cupcakes from st. cupcake, we bought coffee at the stumptown annex, then after a little rest we walked down to noble rot reopened on burnside, then up for cheap sushi from the conveyor belt at sushiland. a very full day i think, capped by watching a movie called savage grace with julianne moore, a film so weird we had to turn it off when the mother started fucking her son. whatever.

today, the clouds have blanketed our want to go outside much. we're going to walk to the laurelhurst theatre to see synecdoche, new york (we love phillip seymour hoffman!), then some dinner, and later i've invited some friends over to hang out. oh, saturday in portland.

partisan?

in an article about providing benefits to the homosexual partners of government employees, the writer of the article writes, "If he supports the judges and challenges the marriage act, he risks alienating Republicans with whom he is seeking to work on economic, health care and numerous other matters." alienating republicans?! is this really a worry? let's talk about bi-partisanship. the republicans are not always going to agree with every measure the democrats want to pass and vice versa. that's why we have two political parties in this country, providing a slow political negotiation and tug-of-war on these issues over the decades. the republicans did not vote for obama's stimulus package at all, and there will continue to be issues that republicans will not vote for. just because republicans object to a measure does not mean that one is being overly partisan or alienating. the parties have different objectives for a reason. when a president or congress person acts in an un-partisan manner, this really means he or she is accommodating to the other side of the aisle, that in certain situations agreements can be made jointly, that compromises and negotiations can be made for the benefit of the country. but certain ideals and political goals should not be dismissed just because the republicans won't go for them. i'm tired of this talk. obama is extremely diplomatic and as un-partisan as possible, but this does not mean that the republicans should always agree with what he's doing.

in other news, my sister evian is in portland this weekend. blow it up.

little christopher goes to lightbar

booth and i headed up further into northeast portland last night to check out lightbar, a weird portland phenomenon my coworker shannon introduced me to. some guy sets up this huge white tent in his backyard during the month of february and hosts strange happenings and parties on the weekend.



we missed the risque readings and film featured last night. however we did witness a sort of party, some people dancing, others standing around talking, some dressed in costume. there were cayote heads, and bear hoods, and a unicorn disguise.



this very upbeat guy named mark (i still have no idea how that name stuck in my head when i can never remember the name of anyone else) introduced himself to us. his wife is completing her phd in some bio-science; he is an out of work contractor. they're living on the savings accumulated during better economic times. he plays a lot of scrabble apparently.





after a while, the lightbar closed and everyone was encouraged to take a midnight mystery bike ride around the city. a huge mass of people would follow one person on a random path. oh, lightbar. you're so weird. another weekend perhaps?

let's play a game!

booth bought doughnuts from voodoo this morning. i bought coffee from stumptown. watch out world. i ate a super sweet pink doughnut with a piece of bubble gum frosted in its center.



it's so sunny here today. sunny and pretty warm. portland changes when it's sunny like this; it suddenly so beautiful. one could almost believe that's this is the most european city in the united states, like that blogger for the times wrote.

let's play a game! antonio and i used to do this every month or so while we were at asfa together. we'd empty our bags (we usually carried at least two book bags every where we went) and scan everything we were toting around. then we'd post the pictures on our blog. i'm not carrying a lot these days, so as not to weigh myself down as i pedal about the city. let's see what i have:


an "i love trader joe's" sticker the cashier gave me while shopping last weekend.


the birthday card my office gave me thursday.


everyone signed it. wasn't that sweet? it made me tear up a little.


the coffee i bought this morning at stumptown upon the recommendation of the guy working there. it promises pear and dark cacao chocolate topped off with a little peach for a very crisp, clean flavor. what do you know? i walked away from the annex with a cup and thought it fantastic as i sat outside next to the cafe, reading the times in the sun.


my nalgene bottle i take everywhere with me. i bought this one at powell's because matthew barney was listed on the side.


my sister gave me this yoshitomo nara journal last year for christmas. it makes me happy everyday when i write in it.


i'm almost finished with the new sedaris book. i'm working through the longer "smoking section" right now. i thought it thoroughly entertaining. usually i find myself carting around several books, but i'm at a loss as to what i should be reading right now.


this is a treasure i take everywhere. it's a tiny, foldable bike map of portland. while it doesn't list all the streets and does not point out bus or train routes, it's generally one of the most useful and least obtrusive things i take everywhere with me.


even in weather in which i may not need gloves while walking, i take these everywhere while i'm riding my bike else i usually show up to work with hands red and stiff from the cold.

since the weather was nearing something one might call balmy midwinter, i opened the windows and decided to mop the floors. i have to open the windows because the apartment owners only allow us to use a mixture of vinegar and water to mop the floors. they are apparently very proud of the wood floors and everything else causes buildup on the finish? i don't really understand. so now our floors are slightly wet and the entire apartment smells of vinegar. delightful! the mop i bought at the dollar store last weekend lasted about ten seconds then broke. i had to tie the spongy part to the handle with a piece of string. it's not going to last through another cleaning session. at least i purchased it for only a dollar, though now i'm wondering if it's recyclable or it i will just have to toss it in the dumpster.

i love being boring

i think i've been drinking way too much coffee every morning. that, or my eyes have already become adjusted to the low light of portland's usually cloudy skies and these strange, intensely sunny days we've been having here lately have been causing a my head to hurt. i just feel so tired every morning when i get to work; it feels like the cool night temperature has frozen my brain into a sludge and i can't think. so i drink a ton of coffee and by the time i feel awake around noon or so, my head begins really aching. when i ride my bike home in the afternoon, my headache lets up a little and i enjoy the sunlight and the weather. yesterday it was sixty degrees here in portland. i went for a jog. opened all the windows in the house. drank beer in the sunlight and fell asleep on the couch. went i woke up, my headache had returned. i really can't nap; i always wake up feeling mean and groggy and in pain.

but despite my headache after falling asleep yesterday afternoon, i did manage to scrap myself out of bed last night, throw on my coat, and bike down to helen and garrett's to meet booth. helen made us some indian food for dinner, and i stopped by whole foods on my ride down to pick up some wine. the food was delicious. i thought it was prepared perfectly and i really don't understand how helen knows how to cook so well. i generally get too distracted to cook well. and i have no sense of what would taste good with what when i'm cooking. i need to stick to recipes. however, i really wish i could make the meal helen made for us last night; i'd probably eat it every week if i could. indian food is some of my favorite.

and helen and garrett are some of my favorite people. this is the second time the four of us have met up for some dinner. i like sitting around on a weekday night and chilling with others, drinking wine and talking. it's good to see another face other than booth's, whose face i obviously see everyday more or less. and on these week day dates, there's no pressure, no heavy drinking. i can have a few glasses of wine, hang out with helen, garrett, and booth, then go to bed. it's hard enough to wake up so early as it is; i really can't afford to go out and get crazy during the week.

the other people i really love are actually the interpreters i talk to on the phone everyday. as i connect calls to these men and women sitting all over the country ready to talk to spanish and french and punjabi and somali and oromo speakers, i come to have favorite interpreters and get to know their personalities a little. like we have two interpreters named guadalupe, but i know which prefers to be called "lupe" on the phone, although now the other refers to herself lupe too when she calls to tell me something. and today teresa called to tell me her son had to go to the emergency room last night because he was in a carwreck; fortunately the child only has whiplash, but the car is totaled apparently. some interpreters tell me about the weather in the part of the country in which they live. one new interpreter lives in birmingham, alabama and i always want to say, "i just moved from birmingham!" every time i talk to her. and one woman screams at me every time i call her. it's strange how these people i talk so sparingly to have distinct personalities for me and how much it seems sometimes like i really know them.

as necessary as your miranda rights

dropping the exclusionary rule from criminal justice was not a manoeuvre i expected from justice john roberts. perhaps i just can't remember it as a goal warned about in the papers when he was elected years ago. certainly, the exclusionary rule has changed over the centuries, specifically being applied at state level after a warren court ruling in the landmark case mapp v. ohio, but the rule has been applied in other important u. s. legal cases since the 19th century. it is a means of protecting 4th amendment rights, specifically written into the constitution in reaction to the general warrants or writs of assistance that allowed british soldiers to search the houses of colonists before the revolutionary war. let's remember exactly what the 4th amendment says (i think it's always important to go back and look at the constitution once in a while): "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issues, but upon probable cause, supported by oat or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." certainly, the exclusionary rule creates obstacles for law enforcement and prosecution, but the rule seems necessary, natural, and historical. my favorite part of this article: "Justice Scalia cited the work of a criminologist, Samuel Walker, to support his point about increased police professionalism. Professor Walker responded with an opinion article in The Los Angeles Times saying that Justice Scalia had misrepresented his work. Better police work, Professor Walker said, was a consequence of the exclusionary rule rather than a reason to do away with it."

and i think this is a great idea: power bills that compare how much energy your home is using versus those of your neighbors. we need to know. it's one more way to become conscious.

last night i continued to take it easy. i've had a slight head cold, which hasn't been horrible, but has made me tired and sluggish. booth and i ate at esparza's, which was interesting. the food was good. i played it safe and stuck to a burrito. but the buffalo meat enchilada might be interesting? i don't know. after eating, we had a beer at beulahland while waiting to see a movie at the laurelhirst theatre. we saw tell no one, which i've been wanting to see a little. it's a french thriller that sounded interesting and received okay reviewed. i thought it was entertaining. not particularly artful, as cache was. it has a weird 70's look to it, slightly yellowed, many of the characters dressed in outfits that could pass as 70's, except the few arab thugs who help the main character avoid the police.

the walkmen at the wonder ballroom

booth and i walked two miles north to the wonder ballroom last night to see the walkmen play. i was pretty excited. i spent nearly twenty dollars on a ticket, a sum i generally don't dole out for many bands, but to be honest, i was a little disappointed by the performance. the walkmen weren't untalented. they were played well, and of course i love their most recent album, so it was enjoyable to listen to them. but overall, the show was lacking, mostly from the deficiencies of the venue. the crowd acted horrendously. they jostled each other, talked loudly, didn't pay attention to the performance. one girl put an empty pbr can in the hood of a stranger's jacket. when he turned and discovered the can, he turned around and asked if i had put it there; i pointed to the girl already running away from his vicinity.

to overcome the volume of the large crowd, whoever was running the sound just turned the volume louder. this just made the band sound sloppy; the loudness causing too much echo and cancellation in the large space. the wonder ballroom looks like it was originally a church in its first life, and the large room out of which the venue operates was not designed with acoustics in mind, so there was a loss of fidelity in the performance. one of the best aspects of the walkmen's latest album is the crispness and precision of the instrumentals, yet all that was lost at the wonder ballroom.

and really, i was slightly disappointed in the band itself. the band members deviated every now and then from the structure of their recording, but sometimes these deviations seemed to surprise the other band members and this led to several awkward moments when an instrument seem to abruptly end the theme it was playing to carry on with something different. still, the improvisations weren't even daring. when grizzly bear experiments with a song, the rendition ends up sounding radically different, almost as if a completely different band were playing it. during one ill-fated song, the singer seemed to be unable to hit the correct note; his voice sliding into several flat notes before saving himself too late. this occurred during only one song in which the singer was sliding between notes during the entire piece, but apparently this was just straining his voice, or he couldn't hear himself well enough to pull it off.

all in all, i love the walkmen, and enjoyed seeing them last night, but this was far from my favorite performance.

portland hearts its mayor: a rally

i just returned from the rally in support of portland's mayor, sam adams, the first openly gay mayor in the united states. there was a pretty large turn out, nothing ridiculously massive, but it was a circus. in case you don't read the news, sam adams recently confessed to having sex with an 18 intern years ago after lying about during a campaign in 2005 and his recent mayoral campaign. he says that he and the boy, beau breedlove, only had sex after breedlove turned 18, though they first met when breedlove was still 17. adams confession hit national news tuesday during the inauguration, and he admitted the truth only after an article in the willamette week concerning the scandal was going to press. some people think this affair will render the newly elected mayor ineffectual, but from the rally it looks like he still has a lot of support from the city, though to be honest, the rally looked more like a gay rights event than a rally in support for the mayor. it may be that certain people don't understand the difference between supporting someone because he or she is homosexual and because they believe a person who would excel in his or her position. there was exactly one protester against the mayor i saw there.




































just so you know, "just out" is a free gay publication for the portland / vancouver area. in an opinion piece, one of its writers thought the mayor should resign.






this is a sticker someone gave me at the rally.


this is the t-shirt of the friend of the person who gave me the sticker.





this rally was documented for you, antonio urdiales.