hayfeverish

two days in a row, as i walked along the willamette, i found a hummingbird buzzing around the thorny blackberry vines that grow along the base. the bird had a a bright magenta face and chest; a shiny, seemingly unnatural color. it made a whistling sound at me like a child's musical instrument. it couldn't seem to make up its mind whether to be afraid of me or not.

although we usually talk three or four times a week, i have not heard from madre in three weeks. i think my sister told her i was angry at her. i had mentioned to her that i had recently started seeing someone about whom i was pretty excited. she had absolutely nothing to say on the subject and could not remember my having mentioned anything about him in subsequent conversations.

i've found myself buying a lot of flowers lately. mostly cheap bouquets of daffodils. my roommate owen reminds me that there are daffodils blooming in the front and back yards, but i always reply that i want to keep those flowers there, that they're pretty to see when one arrives home in the afternoon.

and the afternoon, the evening no longer sleep so peaceful. they're longer. i find myself thinking it's four when several hours have passes and it is now six. it's past seven-thirty as i type this and the sun is hardly finished setting. the lawn is green and yellow and orange with sunlight. the trees dotted white with flowers.

forbidden colors. finished reading the yukio mishima novel by this title. is homosexuality always a narcissistic performance or have the interstices between living and desire for the homosexual been relocated? why am i attracted to men and can i live an authentic life or will my existence always be a performance in reaction to heterosexual society?

i saw a snake near my office the other day. i hear rustling in the brown leaves near my feet, stopped, and when i searched the brown hues piled there, i found a small, skinny dark brown snake with a red line down its back. i'm sure i had disturbed its nap as it sunned itself in the rare light.

when we wake up from the winter, it's a perfect time to ask yourself exactly what you want, exactly what you expect from the coming seasons. last year i was young, younger than this year obviously, but i felt young, i acted young. i was young and immature and i went to rooster rock often and took off my clothes and lay in the sand, sunning. but maybe this year i won't be content to just sun. maybe i want something more. gardens and garden parties; iced tea; front porches; little white gloves; plans and progress. a sensible summer. fun but sensible. right? sometimes you grow up believing you want a certain thing and cannot know that you don't want it at all 'til you get there.

i have always dreamed of a house and a spouse; a garden with children; quotidian routine; chocolate cake for breakfast. but perhaps this is someone else's dream i just grew up dreaming? can i live an authentic life or will my existence always be a performance?

columbia river dreams

gray blurs on the other side of the glass as the city slips away from us in numerals. 48th. 64th. 82nd. gresham. the columbia. and we're outside portland. we are driving toward the gorge. and below the flash, below the blur, beyond the car, clinging to the unmoving momentum of the interior, a small green strip of algae or mold, some water loving plant highlights the window pane. life does just keep going, even here in the crack between glass and plastic life reaches up tentative fingers to the light.

carpeted. that's what the woods here at eagle creek in the columbia river gorge looks like. green moss and algae and lichen. green fir trees and green moss on alders and green lichen on rock beneath falling water. emerald; sea foam; carbon-based verdigris. not a yellow smog, a yellow smoke, but a white mist that licks the skin, that obscures the tops of hills, that moves and shifts and hides. even mid-winter, the pacific northwest is green and moving and alive.

joseph has taken me hiking with his friends, almost miles out and back, past little waterfalls, a stream, woods, and rock. a stendhal affect from nature, a natural synaesthetic experience. i love portland, but in the winter i find it sleepy and gray, hibernating, alcoholic, demure. but out here a quiet life covers everything hibernating, a slow energy, and i think, "why would anyone live in any other part of the country."

and i wish i knew what it is like to live in san francisco. portland is safe, practical, well-designed, efficient; portland's citizens are driven, quiet, polite, idealistic, sometimes quirky. but san francisco is vibrant, lively, irrational, colorful, beautiful. i love the mission with the chinese shopkeepers hocking cheap imports pushed next to mexican taquerias below hipsters walking to bars tucked in between it all. there's great art and music and crazy people. a whole mad city; a city i've been drawn to since i turned 15.

fun and beautiful and mad: san francisco would be amazing. and perhaps i could live there for years, struggle and be poor and crazy and drunk, but would that be me? or i am the practical but quirky, polite but cold, well-designed but still boring pacific northwesterner?

back at asfa, when i was eighteen, my friend antonio would say, "uzbeki boys smell of oranges and baking bread." we learned this from a picture in a book. and everything in the world seemed possible. there was so much to discover. from asfa we would go where we wanted for whatever reason we wanted. we would find ourselves in difficult places and yet the possibilities for life seemed endless. and now my perception is different. the trajectory of my future is still uncertain, but its arch more directed, more predictable. my tastes and attitudes are predictable. my daily actions are predictable. my desires and goals are predictable.

and in the end, or in this present, i want to define more parameters to that trajectory. i want to find myself secure: secure in working toward a career, in building a family, to coming home everyday and finding my cat in the garden, to planning a garden, to planning dinners with friends and having nights off, nights at home, nights reading and watching movies and reading and waking up early to coffee and the new york times, a bagel and a banana, the vitamins there on the plate. something planned and safe.

all this is what i want. it isn't bad, but at twenty-six, it is surprising that this is what i want from my life. so in the end, does that mean i start to nest down now, prepare for what could make me happy, or because there are so many years separating me from that pioneered existence, should i continue to live on the edge, without planning, drunk, mad, constantly in trouble, collapsing, and getting up half dead but wiser perhaps satisfied in the morning to do it all over again?

the emerald city that is the columbia river gorge is beautiful and one could live close to this beauty in portland forever, but there are some of us who need to see that mad light before we die, in san francisco and new york and tokyo and paris. what sort of temperament in the end do i want to own, for what sort of future arch do i push?

8k

bridge to brews

i'm running my 8k this weekend! the pacific northwest rain has ended just in time. hello three months of perfect weather!

anyway, i just thought i'd leave you all an email with pictures of the bridges over which i'll be running. five miles is not very long, but these bridges are kind of scary. i'm still excited but scared of the climb up to the top. luckily my friend rob has sewn capes for us to wear as we're running and i'm sure we'll be fine.

so everyone think of me this sunday at 9am pacific time.

here's a picture of both bridges, the fremont being the taller white one in the foreground.





i'll run over the white fremont bridge then through the northwest industrial distrinct back over the red broadway bridge to drink beer! and actually, my house, though you can't see it, is close to the bottom left of the photo in north portland. the start is like half a mile from my house.

and then that night we're taking photographs wearing all white for rob's birthday! exciting weekend.

america v. europe

in a "conversation" posted the 13th between the New York Times opinion columnists david brooks and gail collins these writers championed american capitalism over european socialist-capitalism. collins seemed to dither, but brooks took a surprisingly staunch, conservative, pro-american stance. he writes, "i became convinced that our system was better not for the wealth generating reasons the current bloggers are arguing about, but because it leads to more exciting lives." basically, brooks argues that even though american capitalism necessarily promotes labor and employment instabilities, it does allow for more innovation, and through personal motivation for personal growth, development, and both lateral and hierarchical movement in one's profession. this thought seems a bit naive to me, privileged and reeking of republican misconceptions.

here's brook's main argument:

"The American model allows for disruptive change because it is easier for firms to hire new people when they start and shed people if they fail. That makes places like Silicon Valley possible, where you have highly flexible workforces chasing radical new ideas. The European model protects producers more and has greater social trust within companies. That makes steady, gradual innovation more likely — the kind you find at German metallurgic firms. I’m glad the world has both models, but I’d prefer to live in the more dynamic one.

"The other big difference is that the American model encourages hard work at the cost of instability. I think that encourages people to maximize their capacities. The continental model encourages less work at the cost of boredom. I knew people in Brussels who went to work at an organization at 25 sitting in one desk, and they could tell you exactly what desk they will be sitting in and what job they will be doing when they retire at 60 or 65. Yawn."

gail collins agrees that the european system can make innovation difficult or at least impeded. money is a remarkable motivator, i admit, even to those who really aren't innovating but rather managing those who are. and though money is a parth to motivation and innovation, i have to ask is a cultural link between money, imagination, and passion necessary and desirable? rather, the underlying structure to innovation and passion in both economic systems consists of education. open, affordable education fosters passion and dedication in students knowing they can study and not have to worry about the costs of those studies and whether the student will be able to find a job and support him or herself in whatever field the student chooses. these engineers in silicon valley were able to afford and pursue educations that accommodated and heightened their interests. not only were these individuals pursuing careers in fields valued currently by our society, they probably also worked passionate to pursue their interests and found themselves able to attend prestigious universities and colleges.

david brooks went to the university of chicago and perhaps never felt stuck in a dead end career, scholastic or otherwise. for everyone not privileged in america, shouldn't we demanding, as gail collins put it, "health care and the guarantee of a very, very modest pension when [we] get old?"

now, even in the european system, market demands dictate the necessity for certain jobs for paying certain jobs over others. i do not propose that painters make the same as engineers or doctors or architects or computer scientists or executives. such a system necessarily fails. i argue merely that to truly pursue happiness, certain guarantees must be made for every member of our society despite the object and or device of his or her happiness. both in our system and in the european system, different objectives motivate different people: some are motivated for a passion for art, a passion for science, a passion for a certain lifestyle, or for money. this is not a judgement, but rather a justification. economic engines can be maintained while providing for basic human happiness within a society.

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.