Certain days have their own music

There are certain perfect things that could have happened and this was one: Mike, the owner of the Red Fox, took and break from the bar and sat down with us. I introduced him to my friend Booth and told him that Booth had been playing music, that he had produced an album in the past few years, and that we had been talking about musicians who care so much about their music, their sound, that they work and work and work, and tinker forever, and it becomes so hard to put out an album, to produce something full and you just want to scream, put it all out there, play it, and come back to all the details.

Mike launched into to all the details. He talked about sound equipment and we talked about musicians. We talked about how sometimes it’s worth coming in to a recording session and knowing what has to be done and know that it has to be in a certain time. Sometimes it’s not worth the technological advantage we have to be able to record and manipulate and lay tracks and edit tracks and snip and cut until the final most perfect sound can be produced. Sometimes music can perfectly be a recording of musicians playing music in a room. 

Adam and I woke up with music in our heads that morning. The neighbor who lives above me was loudly playing some record at 9:30 in the morning, the bass and guitar and drums transmitted down through the skin of the floor. We had stayed up late, our waking difficult, the pressure behind our eyes deep, and our moods delicate in those first few minutes. But we soon accepted the rhythms and vibrations; I had never heard any other sounds coming from his apartment and I couldn’t fault him for his suddenly and early decision to listen now.

We woke up and got coffee, the bleariness from our eyes quickly fading. We went grocery shopping and biked around the neighborhood, the weather warm for one last dry weekend in October. And everything just seemed really lovely.

I met Ryan that afternoon for a drink at Red Fox. The afternoon clouds lovely soft and modulated pastel in the sunset. We had seen some really beautiful sunsets this past month, already missing the color in anticipation of the coming months of rain here in Portland.

Ryan left and I stayed over at Red Fox, reading until Booth met me. It seems like there have been so many albums released lately that have excited me. Aphex Twin and Thom Yorke and Caribou. Doesn't it seem like a return to the days when people still cared about listening to albums?

Sometimes it’s nice to just catch up, talk about music. We talked about how he makes music; about his plans for a new album. And I walked away energized, like there was so much to do, so much that could be done.

Flight times

A little lift and the earth made two curvatures away from me. The ground beneath me tilted up and then back and sharply down; the sky above paralleled this parabola but with the movement of the plane, the angle and trajectory of the clouds contrasted sharply with the sky’s rocky companion. And my palms began to sweat, yet I was fine.

Sometimes, actually all the time, most of the time, hopefully, for those of us who aren’t neurotic, we don’t even consider the times our deaths are close, our lives immediately more tenuous. Because really, our deaths are always with us, hidden inside every moment, every sudden derrame cerebral, every hidden black widow spider, every gas leak, every car crash, every random mugging on the street.

It’s funny how we have this idea of the TSA security checks as stressful because it’s true. This agent is sweet as he says hello to the pre-scheduled passengers. That agent is reticent, quiet, unresponsive as she checks our boarding passes against our IDs. That one is a little tired and monotone as she reminds everyone to take off their belts, their shoes. I come out past the small-millimeter wave scanner, putting my arms down, the agent barking, okay, this way, and struggling to rapidly put away my computer, put my shoes back on, sling my belt around my waist, and I realize that my heart is beating a little quickly, that I’m a little nervous, that there’s no reason to rush. Everything is fine and really I’m haven’t done anything. I was prepared for the flight; I didn’t bring bottles of liquids; there’s nothing to explain. There’s no reason to worry.

Adam and I drank a bloody mary. It was ten in the morning and this was the beginning of our very short vacation to San Francisco. But really, you know me. I’d drink a bloody mary on any morning, any morning that I didn’t have to be responsible, to report to someone else. And then the flight was delayed: it was fleet week in San Francisco and there was an air show and President Obama had landed at the airport and everything was to be delayed by two hours. It was literally President Obama’s fault that our flight had been delayed.

Michael, the flight attendant, hands us free drinks “on Obama” and asks if my boyfriend and I “going home.”

There are times I become worried, even at home. I don’t lock the door when I step out to get coffee across the street then worry that some stranger has slipped inside the apartment in my absence. I worry that the cat will be run over. I worry that I’ve left the stove on, though I haven’t used it in days, and that the building will go up while I’m at work. A couple got mugged the other day down on Mississippi Avenue and maybe I’m next, maybe I’ll have been listening to music with John at his house late one night and on my walk down someone will take advantage of the hour and my inebriation.

The waiting, the sitting is hard enough, but it’s the constant state of tension that really gets to me while traveling. The tension between gravity and motion that one can distract oneself from but which stays just there at the edge of consciousness. The tension between here and there, between leaving and not yet arriving, heightens one’s sense of vulnerability. I hate to think about what I would leave behind if my life just ended. Suspended in that fluid state I have time to think about how fragile every moment is, how fragile my existence is, particularly as this suspension squeezes through wind and clouds and place and time 30,000 feet over the planet.

How do you stop though? How can you refuse to take this flight, to forego biking to work, to stop leaving the house? I just have to take another sip, wipe the sweat of my palms on my jeans, and beginning writing. The two hours of this flight will pass and we will arrive into another movement, a travel across a city, a difference experience, world without end.

It's not just but what can be done?

We all feel so very small sometimes I think. Even here in America.

We’ve seen all these movies about darkly determined futures in which everything is controlled, about future fascist governments that control the population through technology and labor. The US went crazy over The Hunger Games. I don’t think we all necessarily see this as far off, as a warning or prediction. Some of us have fallen for conspiracies, that control is much more far-reaching and complete than we are led to believe. Some of us have fallen for theory. And some of us recognize that in some ways, for some peoples, governments and societies have become more concerned about their own preservation rather than the will or happiness of their own people.

Ilham Tohti, a Beijing-based Uighur scholar, was recently found guilty of separatism in Urumqi, the capital of the western Chinese province Xinjiang. Tohti advocated in his scholarly writings cultural sensitivity and equal treatment for Uighurs, but did not advocate succession from Beijing.

As described by the New York Times, when he was dragged from the courtroom after being sentence, he screamed “It’s not just! It’s not just!”

I was describing this scene to my friends and they seemed unperturbed. He’s a Uighur! It’s Xinjiang! What can you do? These are people who lived in China near the border for years and saw up close how minorities in China are treated. Not just foreigners feel like this – I believe a majority of people in China and in every country feel powerless, have no idea what can be done. We brush these things off because Xinjiang is far away. We brush these things off because we have our own lives and our own struggles and what action can we take that would make any difference?

I think the first thing we have to do is shed our indifference. We all can’t fly to Hong Kong to support the pro-democracy protests there, but we can follow the developments in the news. We can think critically about what is happening in Hong Kong. We can attempt to understand the history of that place and the desires of those peoples. 

I don’t do enough. I don’t support my community enough. I don’t support other people struggling enough. I don’t attempt to express my frustrations. I don’t spend enough time thinking about what can be done. But paying attention may be a first step to doing more. It’s sometimes about being well-informed to be sympathetic then to be ready when it comes time to be active here in our community. Even if there is not a lot I can do about the Uighurs in Xinjiang, I cannot convince myself to be indifferent.

sketchbook no. 13

The other night at Red Fox, Ryan, Mikiel, Allison, and I were looking at photos we had taken over the past few years. We all had our phones out, cooing over memories and hair cuts. A few nights before that, my friend Greg, a friend from high school visiting Portland, had sat on the edge of my bed and scanned my photo album. He asked about some of the newer photos, made jokes, inquired about friends. Then we flipped through the older photos from high school. Do you remember her? Remember when this happened? Did you ever do this while at ASFA?

We looked through the photos I had taken out of Tony, talked about him and his art and his life and his death and that time he slapped me and that time we thought about running away to Manhattan together.

Why don't we do that? Have little photography viewing sessions. Particularly with printed photographs. I love printed photographs. I miss having little prints all over my house.  Growing up, our foyer was devoted to photographs of family, hanging on walls and collecting dust in frames on the top of the piano.

I propose asking little groups of friends to submit photo albums of their favorite photos. Let's print everything. Then we ask that group of friends to come in, sit on a couch, look at photos, and reminisce. And we'll do little groups of this all night long. We can look through everyone's photos and watch friends share memories and hear all the secret histories of these prints. 

Mid-Autumn Festival

It started with champagne. Adam and I chopped vegetables, cut meat, with glasses of champagne next to our cutting boards: asparagus, mushrooms, spring onions, chicken, and quail eggs. Greg stood behind us at the stove, a wok cooking “Cola Chicken,” some recipe he had brought back from China. Luke started the fire in the pit outside.

I didn’t even get drunk that night but the moon was so beautiful, what little we saw of it, above the building next door, through the leaves of the tree. 

And it was so orange and round, so close, it seemed like we could just walk up to it. Climb a ladder onto the roof to get closer.

Chang’e found herself floating up to the moon, leaving her husband Houyi behind.

Greg told us the story of the moon goddess who found herself immortal but lonely on the moon with just a jade rabbit for company. Though he lives in Beijing now, Greg and I had gone to high school together. Birmingham, Portland, Beijing. The moon was round, the eighth full moon of the Chinese calendar and we were celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival.

Lee and her boyfriend were there, too: another friend from high school and her boyfriend, a man who had grown up in Birmingham with us but whom I had never known. 

Bench by bench we sat around the fire, orange silhouetted against we only knew was around us: plants and spiders and crickets and racoons watching us, ready to invade after we retired to the house. Greg and Ryan. Misti and Allison. I kissed Adam. Daniella and Ryan came out. Luke and Alisa helped make dinner. They had all just arrived back from a camping trip, just in time for the festival. Daniella’s friends from Vancouver were visiting.

Chang’e and her jade rabbit.

Adam’s roommates groaned when I told them I had bought moon cakes. I’m not sure anyone really loved the moons cakes. Except maybe me. Like a Fig Newton filled with lotus paste or red bean paste or date paste, they’re solid and sweet, brick-like. I don’t even mind the egg yolk baked into the middle.

And they look so perfect in their red packages, not sealed because they last forever, the tops of each cake decorated with the art nouveau impressions of Chinese characters and design.

I bought a string of paper lanterns set on a line of Christmas lights for six dollars at the Japanese market going out of business.

Greg had suggested we celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival. Adam and his roommates remembered celebrating in China. The rest of us were experiencing it for the first time, here in Portland, by a string of cheap lights and a fire with moon cakes and the Chinese barbeque Adam was busy seasoning. It was Sunday and there was plenty of wine.

Six years in the sunset

He said, “I don’t approve of this.”

He was looking at the fox head mounted on the wall above him, its tiny dark eyes fiercely looking down at us.

A lot of foxes, painted, drawn, photographed, can be found on the walls here at the Red Fox.

I agreed with the stranger, ahead of me in line for the single restroom in the bar, and added that I didn't think the owners hunted and stuffed this head themselves. They don’t seem like the types. It was probably gifted to them.

From across the bar I heard, “And this is white tea!”

A bartender, a big man, tall, tough but never threatening, showed a bag of tea to his boss. They held their noses to a bag of dried leaves.

During the summer almost everyone crams into the tiny patio to share their drinks. The booths extend down one side of the park. A tin roof protects the patrons from whatever rain there may be in a later season and what bright light it can shield from us now. We spend afternoons watching the sun patiently set behind the West Hills, beautiful sunsets painful in our squinting eyes.

When I first moved here, is this what I thought Portland would be like, almost pastoral as much as a city can be. Visitors sometimes complain about suburban Portland can be, and though I never think of it as suburban, it does have a completely different energy than other cities even here on the West Coast.

At six years, I don’t count the days until I have lived here another year.

When I moved here I could not imagine how much my life would change. Today I’m prone to worry how much my life would change. And it will. It all will.

When I moved into the neighborhood, Mississippi Avenue was a still a quaint street with some cool bars, a few coffeeshops, a restaurant or two. Today its blocks and blocks of boutiques and condos and construction. There are two new tea shops. The neighborhood made a store change its insensitive name. The patios at Bar Bar and Prost and Moloko brim every night with loud, drunk, young men and women, bridge and tunnel clientele I can only imagine.

There’s always Red Fox. Everyday I can drink on short patio at Red Fox where one bartender studied linguistics in college and that guy just finished building a banjo and this other one collects vintage detritus. He handed me a paper page torn from an old magazine, an advertisement for Columbia Music House promising me twelve free CDs. And we remembered and looked through the listings and said, Whoever bought this CD? and Wow, I remember when this was popular.

But if Ryan were to leave Portland, if Mikiel or I were to move out from our apartment building, would I hold office hours (those hours after work) at Red Fox as often? I might find a new bar. I buy cheap wine to eat with my meals instead, watching documentaries on Netflix before reading a little and turning out the light.

The nights are cold now this week and it smells like fall when I wake up, the windows open, the apartment a mixture of damp earth, fir trees, coffee, and the lilies Adam gave me. Soon enough it will be raining in Portland, Oregon again, but the patio is covered at Red Fox.

China and Ferguson

America’s gaze is focused inward, away from our borders, our coastal cities, toward our heartland. And the world’s attention has followed with us.

Obama said, “As Americans, we've got to use this moment to seek out our shared humanity that's been laid bare by this moment."

What happened to Michael Brown is not only tragic – the brutality of his death a profound violation of humanity – but also revealing of the darkly systemic racism that still exists in this country.

The entire country is talking about the situation in Ferguson. The world is looking at America, critical of the violence and continued history of suppression we are creating for ourselves.

China, expected to be critical of the situation, was largely silent, picking up some news from American outlets, until a critical editorial was posted on Xinhua. 

Austin Ramzy writes for the New York Times:

“While Chinese state news outlets can be highly critical of problems in American society and its government’s actions abroad, they can be slow to comment on events in the United States that may provoke discussion of similar phenomena in China, such as violent crackdowns last spring on protests against a planned chemical plant in the southern city of Maoming.”

This year we saw acts of terror, death, in Shanghai and Kunming and Urumqi. Tensions between the majority Han Chinese and China’s minorities, a suppression of minority culture and rights, military action against minorities have resulted in extremist responses. But I am not sure that a national dialogue has been generated about this problem in the same way that America was forced to talk about our prejudices and violence over the past several decades. The killing of Michael Brown and the media coverage and the statements made by the public exemplify the continued racism that exists in this country. America still has so far to go; black Americans still face so much racism and irrational fear and stereotyping and suppression. And though there may be many deniers of this racism, though there may be many people who justify these actions which should be labeled racist, America will talk about this. America will look inward and through shock and anger and outrage we will argue and enlighten and come together.

In China, the government cares about equality only as complete social integration. Cultural difference is tolerated so long as it does not constitute a separateness. And though many Chinese talk about oppression and inequality and human rights, these discussions are not wrapped into the national fabric as they must be here in America. Can events like this shape the Chinese consciousness like they do in America if the dialogue is not open in the same way? I fear that the conversation concerning minority tensions is so limited in China that what is seen publicaly are the extreme acts of terrorism but not the simple resistance of minorities to dominance and dispersal.

It should be noted that the Chinese commentary in Xinhua stressed that the real issue here is that the U.S. hypocritically chastises the human rights abuses of other countries while having so many problems at home. And the Chinese government is right. It is hypocritical. We need to do so much more for our own people who face systemic and overt racism here in America. But the difference may be the protections we have enshrined in our government for minorities, the actions we are working to integrate legally, and the conversation the people of our nation have in the media, in offices, at home, with friends about these issues.