2010 ALLEGORY IN REVIEW

at the motel in newport where i spent mine and caroline's divorce weekend in april, it was the chair at the dinette table, a danish knock off that i didn't regret not trying to stuff in the rental after i found a real one at the newport antique mall. i probably would have paid twice the $65 dollar tag if i could have found a way to get it into the sub-compact. i suppose i could have just paid the extra to enterprise to get a larger car. or sent caroline home on the bus and put the passenger seat down. she was, after all, marrying someone else after a couple of weeks.

at the prater motel in hood river it's this lamp. i want it. the beaded shade with the beaded fringe are just icing to the bulbous, transparent pink lamp body with the flowers painted on the bulges and the clouded glo-tube inside. the bulb goes on too, but it's too much light for the twilight zone marathon. the light from the tube through the pink lights the champagne bowls just right as well. (those we had to bring in the car.) the lamp wouldn't be hard to take, and, from the sound of things, prater's will probably have bigger problems tonight than petty theft. "'alfred hitchcock presents' is more my speed." duchess, apparently, prefers murder.

prater's was the first vacancy sign past downtown without the "no" illuminated (i put amanda palmer's version of "i will follow you into the dark" on the driving mix), and the "$39.95 and up" sign was encouragement enough for duchess and i to pull in. the woman at reception who croaked from behind the partition wall that we'd interrupted her nap looked just like the cashier at georgia's grocery on 12th and stark in portland (minus the red hair dye), a slightly alarming development since the particularly thick gravel in her voice could just as easily have been coming from her doppelganger as well.

"just a minute. she likes to know when guests are here."

she made a phone call. "yeah. we got a couple." a couple come upstate from the city for a holiday getaway. we'd already conjured the fantasy: she just knew her part.

we had a choice of two room types since the man who checked in for the night yesterday evening -- but then decided to stay a second -- had been taken away by the police earlier in the day. "and, you know, sometimes we get the people down from the "hospital." we give them vouchers, you know? they just have to give us the voucher, and we give them a key. but one time, this guy wouldn't get out of the cab. we just hung out there in the parking lot. crazy people." two virgos having brought up the possibility of bed bugs isn't a casual conversation, but after that introduction we had our minds on different possibilities. and then we forgot, because prater's might not have much more going for its rooms than kitschy lamps and heat, but its views of the columbia are spectacular.

just one more plus, because if something happens to us tonight, it's also happening to us in fancy dress. dead or alive, you'll find us well. now, hood river, who wants an excuse to punch me before 2011?

HOW TO TAKE A FALL

it didn't snow in portland. it was, however, cold enough that the front steps frosted over, and since they're wooden, and new, that meant not much traction for a rubber-treaded bike shoe. so you instinctively save your bike by raising it up off your shoulder and take the impact with the opposite side of your body. scrapes don't cost money to fix at the paint shop, and if you don't change your socks when you transform into your street clothes you won't even have to see them until you shower next. plus, now you have solid proof to justify your justifying those white leather gloves that don't do much for the cold but would probably save your knuckles in a crash: they're tested now, at least for protecting the brunt of your hand.

then it seems a little silly that you have a bicycle because you're just walking it trying to limp off some of the pain. your hip and shoulder will be sore and tight later. later you can take a bath. stop saying ouch.

undeterred. it's supposed to be clear all weekend. junk miles here we come. you can't look good at being bad if you don't get tough. just imagine all of the races you could throw.

ooo-hh. your shoulder hurts now.

ON THE FIFTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS

the wall street journal, which in september raged against the tide of the digital revolution (excuse the minced metaphor [ha!]) by launching a weekly stand alone book review, did not include freedom on its top ten list for 2010. laudable...although it's technically the third day's news, both in that it made the wire rounds on monday and in that today is the third day since then. it seemed so much more appropriate today, however, since rupert murdoch probably has all the gold rings. got it? just read eight white nights already. then snuggle up to someone for "a tale of winter." it might even snow tonight in portland!

it may or may not make the 'looking good in pants' top ten list (which may or may not get made), but i should finish aurorarama tonight -- provided i'm not so enraptured by the dandy vagaries of the new venice bohemians that i move too quickly on my pints of scottish holiday. i don't regret now that i put off reading valtat's english debut for so long since the week between holidays has proven to be the perfect time to read a fanciful -- yet literary -- tale of wintertime revelry and escape. it is, however, with slight begrudging that i admit to having been beaten to that observation by laura miller of salon.com, who on christmas day posted an article that included aurorarama as one of two novels "to whisk you away from the dregs of the season." our takes aren't exactly similar, but "giddy rococo instrument" does do well to describe much of the mood in aurorarama, and miller does deserve credit for her stylings there.

and there you have it: peace and goodwill -- then some snowcaine and psylicates to get the party started again. murdoch! bring me some champagne.

ON THE THIRD DAY OF CHRISTMAS

jonathan franzen!: the snow! in new york! (you lucky bastard) get thee a copy of eight white nights and finish it by new year's eve. fuck the french hens (this whole thing couldn't be more perfect).

we'll talk at the party.

HOW (TO?) CHRISTOPHER GOT HIS GROOVE BACK...AGAIN

although he was hugely influential in the modernist literary movement in japan and counted kobo abe (woman in the dunes is, yes, still sitting unfinished on my night table) among his proteges, jun ishikawa is almost unknown outside of japan, a particular shame considering that ishikawa's own translations were significant to japan's introduction to the french in the 1920s. in 1946, he published "the legend of gold," which is available in english translation in a collection by the same title. japan had surrendered unconditionally to the allied powers the previous year, and large swaths of the country had been bombed into charred wastelands.

much of ishikawa's work was intricately symbolic. in the boddhisatva, for which ishikawa won the akutagawa prize in 1937, the narrator tells the story of a subversive he knows through his struggle to finish his biography of christine de pizan, the female poet who eulogized joan of arc in verse, while simultaneously layering the images of the boddhisatvas samantabhadra and manjusri onto the characters in both narratives. "the legend of gold" is another saint's story, and takes its title from the "golden legend" (both are called the same in japanese), a medieval collection of hagiographies. my copy of the legend of gold and other stories is on permanent loan, powell's has none in its immediately accesible inventory and it's too late for the library, so i've nothing to supplement my failed memory of which character in "the legend of gold" was supposed to be the holy one. i can, however, recap: the story is about regeneration, a possibility that ishikawa, a persistent and oft censored opponent of the pacific war, must have been anticipating with almost near hopelessness.

in the story, there are three personal items of the narrator's that symbolize his personal ability to move on and from out of the ashes, the most easily remembered of which is a broken watch. the two others -- shoes and a hat, maybe? (or not at all, i'm probably just projecting) -- are dealt with over the course of the story and the narrator's interaction with his postwar saint, and in the end, the watch begins again to keep time. (i won't deign to make an out and out explanation, but if you want to be kicked in the dead gift horse with being told the meanings of metaphors, i recommend seeing "black swan.")

sidi makes excellent shoes, but certain replaceable parts of their better offerings must certainly be constructed for failure. the strap for the ratchet buckle on the left of my pair of dragon 2s has been gone from the shoe since it cracked in half six months ago. with two other straps on the shoe, it stilled held sufficiently to my foot while pedaling for me to resist paying the thirty dollar msrp for a pair of "soft arch compression straps" (weakly fabricated plastic pieces with toothed bars for ratchet engagement). so my left shoe, it worked, but when the shoes are going on and coming off at least twice a day, a missing part is an obvious deficiency, the spot that pride won't let you go back to the barber for, even though it was him that cut too close.

there's no saint i can remember in this story either, but a friend just gifted me a single soft arch compression strap replacement -- ripped out of the plastic of a package of two and wrapped only in a desultory "merry christmas." it's black, which my shoes aren't, and the color, combined with the strap's brand new rigidity, make its presence just as glaring as the absence of the strap it replaced, but the shoes are definitely wholer now, even the right one, despite being looser now for its soft arch having been worn in. looking at them now, the newness of the strap looks even more out of place for the flaking of the white surface of the left shoe, which must have given up on appearances after being so long neglected (the finish on the right shoe is dulled but has remained smooth). still though, they both now go on and come off more easily, if only for my knowledge that something nagging has passed and that any ending is, come what may, a new start. and that a whole week before new year's. scoop. now get on the bike and ride.

STREETS OF GHOSTS (OF CHRISTMAS PAST)

portland, the indie darling of just about every booming cultural phenomenon that everywhere else wants to copy from the states, is no place to be on christmas. the indentured servants that run the culture machine go home to share the wealth and wonder with their families (ironically, we'll be released from servitude only in time to be kicked out of town for being over 35), and natives flee the city with significant others for coastal vacations at beach houses purchased by parents before the real estate take off (a favorable market and equity loans mean most of them now have two). as a rule, december weather in portland is grossly unfestive. even if it manages not to be too cold, the rain will still work to spoil your merriment. snow in the city is initially charming, but then crippling effect it has on transportation and commerce puts portlanders in even fouler moods than if it were raining. but then, it's christmas day, 2010, and the endlessly vanilla skies are balmy and mild. i'd consider it a boon on any other day of winter, but today the good weather just seems to be conspiring against anyone left in town to wander through the holiday, making it seem silly to held out hope for a festive mid-winter celebration in the first place.

this is my first portland christmas, and i wonder if i'll ever chance another. it's not that it's so bad, or that i haven't spent other christmases away from family. but those others (all three of the abroad) still seemed capable of making their own magics -- at least in recollection.

budapest was the site of my favorite lie. i'd met someone at a bar (the sort dank place with a maze of dark rooms in the back that still exists in most central european cities). peter, i think we'll call him, was an opera singer. at the time, he was singing baron scarpia in "tosca." it seemed like an easy way to up the romantic ante, so i told him that i was a concert pianist. in reality, i had taken more than a dozen years of lessons and was quite proficient, but i hadn't played anything appreciable from start to finish in no less than a year. lucky for me, peter lived with his ailing father, and by the time we made it to his apartment at night, it was too late to play. my hungarian was non-existent, and peter's english was only enough to tell me that there were too many hungarian words of too many nuances to describe feelings of love for him to be able to explain them all. we met in the middle where he praised the beauty of my talented hands. otherwise, they weren't a part of our courtship.

that week in budapest did well to prepare me for my first european christmas ten days later. the christmas village was up just off király (?) st., and in a maudlin show of shamelessness and poor taste, i had visited the cathedral for an advent mass on the morning after my meeting peter. i had come to the city from istanbul to meet a friend who was coming from berlin. we stayed so long only because we were booted from our hostel and offered an amazing deal on an apartment as recompense. our planned mutual destination was prague, where we arrived just over a week before christmas day.

we spent another week together in the czech republic before my friend flew back home. i had not peter nor any grand lie in prague, but i did meet a young man from poland whom i followed to kraków after being left alone by my friend. i'd originally planned to spend the holiday alone in prague, a city i knew from a previous visit, but my invitation from that young man proved irresistible once i found myself in a lonely situation. what was another five hour train ride?

and then poland. my aunts hadn't been lying. the poles really do leave the end of a bottle for a wayward drunken sailor, and that's what we did with the ends of ours after the bars, which in poland, still a very catholic country, are closed for most of christmas eve until they open for the two hours before evening mass, just enough time for a table of half a dozen friends to nearly finish a couple of bottles of vodka before rushing to st. mary's basilica to push through the throngs outside and fall into the sea of tourists snapping pictures inside, where those friends get drunker on the pomp and circumstance that are simultaneously and eternally the living breath and death rattles of the roman catholic church.

then back to the bar, where a famous theater actor sends bottles to every table in celebration and then denounces a couple of lesbians (present) for being the insensitive orchestrators of the puppet show that is (to the speaker's mind) the contemporary kraków stage. my young man's sixteen year old cousin, an aspiring actress, is all ears.

after nearly all of the vodka in kraków, my young man and i walked back through the snow to his rooms, where i was not allowed to stay (or be seen, for that matter), but into which i sneaked through a ground level window for a short while before returning to my own lodgings. the young man's mother, still a staunch communist (though bigoted in the same direction as her staunchly catholic peers), hadn't been happy with the outcome of an affair between her son and his high school russian teacher. it was time he focused on his studies. i'll admit, however, that her christmas cakes were delicious. and to think that i nearly spilled my smuggled samples trying to squeeze out the window on my way home.

where's the smuggled cake, portland? or the clandestine encounters? can't we, for one day, drop the act? but surely you're tired, too, and you're well over the artifice of my using you just to tell a story. but portland, would that artifice by any other name...? whatever. it's dark, and that works for me: my family knows the way around a bottle, and if i can't see them, well, there's not much for me to do but put my sadness out of mind with drink. plus, you've probably got a beach house to go to, and i'm nearly late for dinner. oh, holy night.

CUSTOMS

that's the title of an article at embrocation cycling journal that i didn't read until today because i assumed (as you likely did about the title of this post) that it was either some story about getting hassled by border officials over a bike box or about something precious like holiday cycling traditions in belgium compared to their vainly bastardized counterparts in bike town, u.s.a.

it turned out that "customs" was about a different kind of vanity entirely. "customs" refers neither to duty collections or to and specific set of established practices but to custom made bicycles. had i known that from the outset, i would have opened the article earlier. the author does, however, write about the custom of purchasing a custom bicycle, so his title, if perhaps confusing in its clumsiness (everyone missteps sometimes), is at least thoughtful. (and yes, we do plan to heed our own advice.)

the crux of "customs" is that customs are conspicuous luxury consumption, plain and simple -- even if the bikes themselves aren't. sure, a custom bicycle is custom fitted, but, "let’s face it, nearly everyone can be fit well on a stock bike." people buy custom bikes for the same reason that they buy custom anythings: they're pretty and just for you. as the owner of a custom bicycle, i've no hesitation in ceding that argument. unfortunately, the author treats the vanity of custom consumption in terms of a half-baked metaphysical conceit, as if having a bicycle made were essentially just the desire to consume beauty, by which activity a framebuilding "patron" is ultimately resigned to the vision and inspiration of an unknowable artist.

granted, i live in a town where every street kid and his dog builds bicycles, so i was able to engage my builder in person at every step of his process (we're extending the art metaphor). the author of "customs" gets his bikes in boxes that come in the mail. the red bike he gets in the article came from ellis cycles in wisconsin. (i don't know where the author lives.) it's "bolder" than his general tastes, but he accepts that a builder had seen something in him that he hadn't seen in himself -- something "bold, flashy, red." what? "it’s strange, but dave [of ellis cycles], along with a small number of the very best builders, is capable of expressing something about his customers without those customers making a single aesthetic decision." i hope that epiphany wasn't just veiled disappointment. customs are expensive.

and that's why i made sure to know exactly what my kid glove grey paint job would look like. and that's why i didn't listen when both the builder and the painter told me that it would wash out the white label on my downtube and contrast too little with my white components. if i'm going to be disappointed in anyone's artistic vision, it's going to be my own. then the art metaphor breaks down anyway, because inasmuch as any one bicycle is necessarily similar to the rest of them (pedal powered two wheeled transportation the lot), any recognizable dissimilarities that go beyond the requirements of function and riding style are decoration -- pop art and graphic design, where "vision" reduces just to sensibility. the "art" of customs lies in the technical craft of framebuilding, not in an eye for embellishment (sorry, edwin). saying otherwise is just simply to say that personally one has inferior taste.

ironically, the author of "customs" recognizes the importance of communication between customer and builder:

in the end, it’s trust and circumspection on the part of both parties that makes the arrangement possible. "how well does the builder know me, how well do I know myself, and...do we trust one another?"...basic questions concerning custom bikes that, i’m afraid, don’t get asked much.

i can't understand, then, why he seems to let the whole thing out of his hands. but again, "customs" isn't unthoughtful, and in its (somewhat convoluted) description of a bicycle as a metonym for its rider it did pique my curiosity as to the specific difference between metonymy and synecdoche (this site is amazing.) a lesson well learned. our metonym? just call me vanity.

ON GETTING BACK TO YOUR ROOTS

this blog once purported to make portland culture one of its primary focuses -- and although general discussion of bicycles, beer drinking and esoteric consumption habits is a decent enough description of cultural discourse in this city -- our celebrity of this fall has taken an obvious toll on what 'looking good in pants' has been able to give back to the rose city. true, there was all that time we spent abroad (and in canada), but shouldn't that just have steeled our drive to get it right on portland -- or at least to better berate it for its sad points after gaining the perspective of distance?

yesterday, an entertainment blurb at oregonlive.com (the internet arm of the oregonian) ran an announcement on a schedule change for the independent film channel's upcoming short run series "portlandia," which will debut on ifc in january. the episode in which kyle mclaughlin plays portland's (maybe gay?) mayor will not air first, ladies and gentlemen. instead, the series will begin with an episode called "the farm." portland is so excited about a spoof of itself that its primary news publication sees fit to announce changes in the episode order of a television show. (we don't exclude ourselves from that excitement, but felt that journalistic integrity -- and a designation of authority -- required the use of non-inclusive pronouns in that last statement.) and that's portland culture. the spoof is no doubt spoofing the ethos of a place that delights in seeing itself spoofed. so i suppose that everyone's a winner, except maybe the parents who watch the show and are wakened for the first time to just what it is they're paying to support their aspiring [creative type] children to do here.

"dream of the 90s," the "portlandia" promotional video that's currently making its rounds of the social networking websites, pokes fun at portland for its dedication to an eccentric, anti-mainstream laziness decked out in flannel (though what you and the show call a flannel is probably a woolen pendleton shirt if it's on a portlander). it's funny because it's true. carrie brownstein should know. but who knows, the show might be a big disappointment.

and then this morning, by pure serendipity, i read a review of what was the hipster?, a sociological study published by n+1 that was distilled for publication in shorter form by new york magazine in late october. the article in new york essentially roots the demise of hipsterdom in its self-realization and eventual spread to the mainstream. although self-consciousness in the sense of kafka and camus was always a part of the hipster persona, it couldn't tolerate seeing itself reflected in the mall.

the article also dates the era of the hipster (or, more correctly, its most recent and recognizable american incarnation) from 1999 to 2009, and in its analysis of hipsterdom as "something like bohemia without the revolutionary core," the "poisonous conduit" between rebel subculture and dominant class, articulates its own kind of 90s dream. the first decade of the twentieth century also coincided with portland's rise to celebrity from the ugly depths of fringe radicalism and urban blight, two things easily tempered by a heavy influx of educated middle-class cool hunters. that done, a city with a reputation for the unorthodox but raised newly high on boutique capitalism has a chance to steal the national limelight. (our perennially dewy skin doesn't hurt either.) or, to restate and recap, maybe the culture of the city over the last decade and a growing general ethos of the cool of quirky knowingness have just dovetailed to make a grey, second tier city like portland finally palatable to premium cable watchers of a middle class mainstream that has welcomed the warm, insulating fold of hipster aesthetics across the same timeline (if it wasn't already a part of growing that aesthetic during its twenties.)

determinism? pshaw! reactionary? forty-five percent. can't help it. i'm the product of a tail-chasing culture (and that's determinism). the second decade of the twenty-first century will do better. we'll see if portland learns from the failed insularity of late hipsterdom.

the hipster moment did not produce artists, but tattoo artists, who gained an entire generation’s arms, sternums, napes, ankles, and lower backs as their canvas. it did not produce photographers, but snapshot and party photographers...it did not yield a great literature, but it made good use of fonts. and hipsterism did not make an avant-garde; it made communities of early adopters.

i'm not so sure that last part names hipsters so much as homosexuals, but the article does mention that some british youth circles trying to emulate the american hipster have turned toward androgyny and "the queer." whatever, we can take a joke -- even if it is a big one.

HAUL OUT THE HOLLY

five bottles of red, a half gallon of milk, two pints of heavy cream, a dozen eggs, four oranges, five lemons and a big box of cookies from the heartland mean we're just a trip to the liquor store away from a cocktail party. the whole cloves don't pose any obstacles, but it's probably safer to stay away from the whole nutmeg next time. and it will be, very certainly, a question of safety unless there's a good mortar and pestle under the tree this year. hammering the devil out of those nuts over the course of several (now recycled) plastic vessels might have stuck us with the grinch if the end result -- after a quick sweep and a wipe of the counter top -- didn't leave the kitchen stinking to high heaven like the spirit. nothing says christmas like the sweet aroma of toxic delirium.

now that there's a poinsettia in the apartment there need to be at least a dozen more. or ten dozen. they'd fit. in the space and with the spirit...although they're supposed to be toxic, too (euphorbia pulcherrima, after all). let's glut this place with red. drape it with petals, because, well, without drapes this place gets cold. without drapes and without people, that is. but then the friends arrive and the oven's on and the crock pot is ladling out cups full and i can't imagine it won't be warm. let's hope it's warm. there's going to be a test batch made with bourbon tomorrow night, so come and say hello if you can stand the cold.

on the night before the night before the night before the night before christmas, it's to bed with a near future sci-fi novel by toba shin about a wartime quarantined plague city. sweet hallucinatory sugar plums, darlings. we're in for it. it's the longest night of the year. take heart, though. we may all have grown a little sadder and older, but there's a garland at the end of the tunnel. i may be rushing things, but pray that it does its job before my spirits fall again.

HOW TO AVOID A TRAP; or, ON MARTYRDOM/TRUE HERESY

the phil wood whose obituary ran at sfgate.com today had no apparent affiliation with phil wood & co., american manufacturer of fine cycling components, which will surely be no small source of confusion considering that the recently deceased founded a publishing house in berkeley called ten speed press in 1971, the same year that phil wood & co. was founded in nearby san jose. wood's first publication was titled anybody's bike book.

watch out, other bicycle riding book world wonks. it's easy to jump to conclusions. phil wood is also apparently the name of the new zealander with the record in the triple jump, and he'll likely pop up as a red herring on some site or another. the road is fraught with shad. don't get tripped up.

and where was bikesnobnyc on making this important public service announcement? after all, his seal of disapproval marks the very center of the complicated venn diagram that contrasts cycling and publishing across the internet. it would seem, however, that concern for the public good ends where the meetings with the literary agents begin. holiday sales must be good.

in other proliferations of confusion and deceit, on friday the new york times published a review of how to live ("or a life of montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer") along with a profile of its author, sarah bakewell. the review, in an echo of this much earlier one by laura miller, posits the subject of how to live, michel de montaigne, as the creator of the personal essay and, by extension, as the "father of all bloggers" (that one's in the title). we've already offended jonathan franzen, so we needn't tread lightly to avoid breaking with canon by decrying the reputation of montaigne. unfortunately, i can't insist that this particular oversight is the fault of a poor translations market, because montaigne has been translated from french, and essays in idleness has been translated from the japanese. montaigne was almost certainly translated first, but yoshida kenkō was spearheading the popularization of the personal essay more than two-hundred years before montaigne.

granted, essays in idleness is as canonical within the history of japanese literature as any other work, but i can give up on railing against the useless artifice of seminality for the moment and satisfy myself with crying euro-centrism just to be able to wonder again why no one can accept that the japanese invented blogging. no shade on montaigne.

sleep easy, phil wood.

IF ONLY IN MY DREAMS; or, ON KEEPING UP APPEARANCES, part II

the mailwoman knocked on my door this morning early -- early enough, at least, that it could only have been someone like the mailman, even though i've never lived anywhere else that the mail came so early. i was awake and getting ready to leave the apartment, so the timing wasn't inopportune beyond my having to race back to the bathroom sink to spit out the toothpaste and rinse. dear ms. mailwoman: i will wait for your knock on every of your postal carrying mornings if you are delivering cookies.

a box of cookies. certain of the sheet varieties were uncut and packed in slabs, so i ate a four by sixer (that's about ten by fifteen, winnipeg) for breakfast. it was the kind with the graham cracker base that's held together with butter and a half dozen (that's a half dozen, winnipeg) other delectables glued on with condensed milk. we'll be looking good in control top pantyhose at the holiday formal tomorrow night.

it doesn't hurt that it hasn't yet rained today -- there's even some sunshine -- but it's for certain that cookie box is behind my re-lifted holiday spirits, and my second attempt at seasonal joviality has me remembering tender moments from holidays past.

i've been struggling to finish a final essay on tokyo, but she and i haven't been on speaking terms since thanksgiving, and, not for lack of desire or planning, the whole thing has been frustratingly slow going. however, in deciding not to use a particular japanese word to describe some of the areas of the city through which i'd walked, i landed upon a memory of december with the extended family. in japanese, the word "shitamachi" (下町) captures a collective nostalgia for a tokyo of yore in which merchants and artisans bustled among closely huddled wooden buildings and a thriving popular art scene. the term means "low town" or "low city" and names the lower lying areas of tokyo to the east of the imperial palace, contrasting them with the hillier, higher lying "yamanote" (山の手) section to the west (and, literally, "toward the mountain"). as much as some of the neighborhoods i walked seemed shitamachi-ish in comparison to others, i was rarely ever outside the west side, and when i was, i was changing stations.

in abandoning the word, however, i thought for the first time about its etymology and for the first time associated its naming with a state of relative under-privilege, a distinction that is masked at places like the shitamachi museum in ueno which "focuses on the history of the downtown [emphasis added] area and the way of life in this community," and where "visitors can see reproductions of downtown spaces, such as tenement houses or well sides surrounded by alleys and stores."

and then the flood of nostalgia. (names have been omitted to spurn the egos of the guilty.) speaking of franklinton, the area of columbus, ohio west across the river from downtown where the aunts and uncle were raised, [aunt] (who was alive before there were alternative lifestyles, by the way) insisted against [uncle] that they called it the bottoms because it was at the bottom of the hill (bonus: it's also a floodplain).

"they called it the bottoms because we were poor, [aunt]."

"don't argue with me, thomas [uncle]."

"we were poor, maria, WE. WERE. POOR."

"THOMAS, don't argue with me. WE HAD A MAID!"

if only grandma were still around to experience the legacy. instead of the nativity pageant, at christmas my family interprets scenes from "who's afraid of virginia woolf."

happy holidays.

ON MON DÉGOÛT (THAT'S "HERE" IN PORTLAND)

it's been raining for a week, which isn't out of the ordinary for winter in the pacific northwest, but the bike i've been riding isn't ideally equipped for this weather, and the water resistance of my bag was already suspect in december of last year, which was the beginning of what must have been a comparatively dry season because i rode without fenders for the entirety of it and had never until now thought once about buying shoe covers (they're hideous, even if they do come in white).

so it's possible -- despite having been on a holiday spirited mission to purchase the most unique and inspired wrapping paper possible for my nieces' gifts -- that my irascibility at seeing the sidewalk sign outside of oblation papers & press was nothing more than ill directed ill humor caused from going on eight days of wet feet. it's also possible that since i didn't notice the sign until i left the store that my tetchiness was just a result of not having found any paper to meet my expectations (or my nieces', i'm sure, after the beans and rice and the patchwork stuffed animal papers that oblation sold me earlier this year). but "european style" paper store? is that still something we're trying so hard for, portland? i know that some stationers know people who can make them a new sign.

i'd meant to send you all to the bookstore this evening with the 'looking good in pants' best books of 2010 list, but my disappointment with oblation lit an already short fuse (a poor choice of metaphor, because i have no way of explaining how my fuse, albeit short, stayed dry through all the rain on which i'm blaming the origin of this mood), and so all you're getting of a list is that freedom wouldn't be on it. it's on nearly every other fiction list on the internet, anyway, including laura miller's at salon.com. we've been neglecting coverage of her work lately, but her list doesn't really make us want to go tracking back through the archives, either. i read neither her review of franzen's book (i think she might have moderated the salon.com book club discussion of it, too) nor her justification for selecting it as one of her favorites. to be honest, i'm unhappy that there's a copy of the book in the apartment.

sorry, jonathan. it's tough to pick on ms. miller when salon.com is in such financial straits, and you're so easy. it makes it easier, too, this mood. it may be cold in new york, but at least there's snow; and there's romance in that, no? or maybe the romance is all just new york. no. the snow is part of it. it's so much better than this rain. there's a good chance of snow there for the holidays, no? andre aciman's eight white nights was magical. the snow and new york and late december. and eric rohmer. he's a big part of it, too. i wonder what's going on at film forum. we'll see you at the christmas eve party. we can talk about it then. secret agents on the balcony. magical. read the book. we can talk about it then.

in the meantime, i have gifts to wrap.

RED SCARES

holy weekend.

although it also meant a busy rededication to the caseload as a result of a renewed surge of zeal for the work, it was incredibly validating to read an article in the sunday nyt entitled "declassified papers show u.s. recruiting of former nazis and collaborators."

it was less of a secret that the u.s. occupation of japan restored most of japan's wartime leaders of government and industry to power after china "fell" to communism, but "hitler's shadow: nazi war criminals, u.s. intelligence and the cold war" was only issued in its final version in 2007, and it was only after the release of the report that the government documents on which it draws were declassified. however, just like in postwar japan, "tracking and punishing war criminals were not high among the army's priorities in late 1946" (although it's true that it took the initially idealistic occupation of japan until 1949 to give in to the pressure of international realpolitik on that front.)

the threat, ladies and gentlemen, is real. they're among us. it just goes to show that there's always a good reason to quote "glee." crazy? definitely. the taps were self-service at the holiday party, and my thoughts have yet to recollect themselves. also, it's that time of the month.

THE NEW TRANSAMERICA; or, LESS TRANS-FAT, MORE TRANSLATIONS

from esther allen, former director of the PEN translation fund, quoted in the article "translation as literary ambassador" from yesterday's new york times: “There is still a very entrenched attitude on the part of mainstream commercial houses that the U.S. consumer of books does not want to read translations.”

unfortunately, we know this. (a less confusing "we" this time: you and me. and you because i've been telling you so.) as the article also states, literature in translation only accounts for about three percent of the total book market in the united states. as someone who reads mostly works in translation, i feel disgustingly underserved. as someone looking for a modest sinecure at an outlet seriously involved in the publishing of new translated literature, i feel that an underserved and undervalued market is severely hampering my employment opportunities.

encouragingly, the times article is principally about efforts on the part of foreign governments and cultural institutions to help authors writing in less commonly translated languages get their works translated into english and break onto the american literary scene, a phenomenon typified by the SUR in argentina that looked oh so good in pants here (both the times and i recognized mr. steig larsson as a runaway exception to the norm).

“We have established this as a strategic objective, a long-term commitment to break through the American market,” said Corina Suteu, who leads the New York branch of the European Union National Institutes for Culture and directs the Romanian Cultural Institute. “For nations in Europe, be they small or large, literature will always be one of the keys of their cultural existence, and we recognize that this is the only way we are going to be able to make that literature present in the United States.”

the article doesn't include any statistical projections for the success of the different efforts it describes, but it does waft an air of optimism. it even mentions that late october tiff between melville house and amazon (which this year started its own imprint for literature in translation) over amazon's newly announced underwriting of the best translated book prize. it's an exciting -- and hopefully accepting -- time for publishing. the greater war may be between digital and print, but it's these overlooked fronts of voice, identity and unique artistry that really stir the blood and spur us to the fight.

it seems that many new translations are collaborations not just between authors, translators and publishers, but also (as per a quote by john o'brien of dalkey archive) between publishers and "consulates, embassies and [foreign] book institutes." that is so great. my question: why haven't the embassy, consulates and book institutes of japan been in touch? there's work to be done! but the awful feedback cycle of a down economy means that the underemployed are never able to keep their publicists on for much more than half time...

if you don't already follow words without borders and open letter books, you should get on that. and put in a good word, would you?

WOND'RING WHILE I WANDER; or, BRIGHT LIGHTS AND PROMISES

'looking good in pants' is quickly approaching its first christmas -- although its ghosts of christmas past are certainly remembered for looking good, pants or no...the holidays are, after all, a time for justifying special revelry even beyond our regular over-indulgence. and although no invitations have been finally rejected, it's looking like 'looking good in pants' will have a northwest christmas this year (unprecedented among all of its ghosts), although not likely a christmas in portland.

"why did i wander to find what lies yonder when life was so cozy at home?" that song is even called "ohio," dammit. but forget it! intrepid and inspired: that's what we are. how could you feel anything less when carol burnett is singing it to you (catching up, catching up). we'll get around to getting back some day -- if we ever feel like packing again. we might be encouraged to move if you ruined the couch and the beds, but probably not near the midwest...unless maybe to pittsburgh, which i hear they've been comparing to here.

until then, aurorarama. powell's finally has some used copies, and it's going to be raining all month. there's that stack from japan, too. joy to the world.

oh yeah, and "we're going to be hunting nazis." don't expect us back any time in particular, either. "...this might take a little while." "those nazis are slippery."

ON LOOKING BACK TO CATCH UP TO THE COMPETITION; or, IRONIES -- COLLECT THEM ALL!

you can't watch "30 rock" or "glee" from a japanese ip address, so we assumed that it was pointless to pay too close attention to the news aggregating emails that we get every weekday. maybe we wouldn't have had access to any of the outlets, right? and that's not even to mention any blogs...

so now it's catch up time. luckily, the internet is behind us as ever (in every sense of that phrase), so catching up ultimately meant slowing down to rejoin the present.

aroundabout november 10, jacob weisberg of slate.com had something charmingly naïve to say about internet journalism (in an article at the new york observer): "We basically invented blogging. And sort of the whole tone of the Web, which to me comes out of email more than anything else, a much more colloquial, personal form of diction. I think Slate was the publication that really, more than anyone else, developed that voice, which in some ways has now infiltrated back into print."

we all know that the japanese invented blogging, which, incidentally, was a source of much needed inspiration while we were in japan. that weisberg's comments were made during our absence does suspect his motives: perhaps he thought that his claiming the internet in the name of slate had a chance of flying under our radar. the japanese self-defense forces are widely manned and well equipped, but everyone knows that they're not organized to withstand a sustained attack.

looks like it's back to hardball. monday in america. can you smell the money? oh. but that might just be me. i haven't gotten the stink out of everything since leaving tokyo.

SOMETHING'S AFOOT

it's not raining in portland this weekend. i haven't heard anyone complaining, and it's a welcome "welcome home." it does, however, recommend some serious riding before the wet comes back again, even if clear skies mean lower temperatures. true, looking good in pants means happily equating junk miles with serious riding, and, true, the three coffee shops that occupied most of this morning aren't all that far from each other (or from the apartment or the closest store that sells the times). but there were some serious junk miles ridden after those three cups of coffee -- and the one burrito near the place that sold me cup number three.

beside the point. and beside the point there stands a line of pretty boys waiting to be met at three different coffee shops. too bad the puzzle was so engrossing. it was not, however, so distracting as to keep me from noticing that random order on alberta now serves coffee from seattle based roaster caffé vita. i hadn't visited in at least a few months, but t couldn't have been so long ago that i saw a stumptown sign in the window...

from random order (stop number two -- stop number one, the albina press, is still stumptown proud), i rode up alberta to what i thought was the concordia coffee house, but what i realized only after seeing the caffé vita labels on the whole beans at the register and then taking a better look at the lettered windows above the doorway to be an actual CAFE vita.

it looks like war for the title of indie rock starbucks, and the battleground is none other than stumptown, u.s.a. seattle giving us a run for our money? we're all for healthy competition, but there's no chance it's going to get the price of a cup anything less than the dollar at which the local market already bottoms out. so maybe money's not really in the running, but with stumptown coffee unsteady on its throne, might our other local microroasters have a chance at a bigger piece of the pie? and the cute ones, which pie do they prefer?

HOW TO PARTY LIKE IT'S 1957; or, BABY'S FIRST KEIRIN

remember just three years ago when america went fixed gear crazy and stateside bike shops were getting fat off of marking up and unloading anything with an njs stamp? no? not surprised. neither did a friend of mine -- a friend who lives with a hardcore commuter and bike collector -- when i started trying to explain the deal with keirin.

neither, i have to admit, did a cyclist friend of mine in japan know what i meant when i told him that i wanted to go see some track races. "track race?" "keirin, i mean. keirin." he'd never been, but was excited at the prospect. granted, there's other track racing in japan besides the specific style of racing that americans recognize as keirin (literally just "bicycle racing" in japanese), but there doesn't seem to be a culture of amateur participation like we have in north america, and everything outside of keirin in japan seems to be the realm of only olympians and world champions. i wasn't surprised that this friend had never been to a track.

in japan, keirin is more of a bettor's endeavor than a spectacle for fans of cyclesport anyway. actually, it's pretty much just a bettor's endeavor; and the japanese bet more money on keirin than on any other sport. what a country. i'm going to speculate that the japanese couldn't afford horses after world war ii and so turned to a cheaper, yet in nearly every aspect comparable form of track speculation as an alternative. it's probably not hard to find out, but i've already checked wikipedia once to get the year for my title, and that year would seem to be in keeping with my assumptions on keirin's origins. not that keirin started in 1957. that's just the year that the nippon jitensha shinkoukai (njs) set (froze) its standard for the equipment that can be used in track competition (of the sort that we designate as keirin in america). in other words, the njs stamp is a mark of authorization, not of quality or authentication. it marks an attempt to level a playing field made easily uneven by technological disparities. restating again: the njs stamp means anything but performance. but damn if that shit didn't sell.

keirin: it caught on. it's exciting, and you're likely to see it included in any track event that you probably won't ever go see at any of north america's fewer and fewer velodromes. if you ever make it, you'll understand all the betting once the keirin portion of the event is over. track events in the states include a variety of races, but keirin is just keirin. it's exciting, for sure, but you can only watch a five lap sprint race (and the racers are only really sprinting for the last one/one-and-a-half laps) so many times before you start hankering for a bit more excitement. it's something the first time you see a member of the pack pass the pacer (a cyclist in a specially colored kit reminiscent of "tron" at the track i visited in japan, but a motor scooter whenever i've seen a keirin race in portland). the pacer drops off the track, and the pack heads full force for the finish line for four, five, six hundred meters through four, five, six turns.

but the sprint gets less and less exciting the more of the races you see as part of the same event...and the races at keiokaku, the venue i visited, were scheduled from 3:30 p.m. until after 8:30. so we made it interesting.

there are about a million ways to make it interesting at the track in japan. nine racers ride in each race, and one through nine wear the same colors in each one. numbers one and two ride in white and black, and without the race schedule i can't tell you the rest of the order except that pink and purple round out the field. no one races for a team, but both the schedule and the "keirin newspaper" printed for each event list the home prefectures of each racer, and racers from the same regions are purportedly more likely to assist each other through drafts and sacrifice sprints.

the "keirin newspaper" costs about six dollars, but it's well worth the upfront expenditure if you're planning on making any bets (and you'll make them whether or not you planned on i if you plan on lasting the day). in addition to the information printed on the race day schedule, the newspaper includes expert advice, bar graphs comparing the recent winnings (in tens of thousands of yen) of the racers in each race, the way in which each racer took any recent places -- and a "talk" column. apparently, the racers are expected to ride in accordance with however they commented for publication before each race, and otherwise they're subject to hazing and ostracism. unfortunately, the "talk" is anything but straightforward, and deciphering its code is (in the best of all hopefully speculative bet-against-the-odds worlds) key to staying in the black.

got it? now just decide whether to bet straight or open on two or three racers (or any two of the groups -- racers one, two and three are in their own individual groups, and racers four and five, six and seven, eight and nine are in groups four, five, six respectively). betting straight on the top three finishers pays out the highest. you can also bet wide on either individual racers or on any two groups (if the two racers or representatives from both of your chosen groups finish in any order in the top three you get some cash), but the return is hardly worth it. (that's not really making it interesting, anyway.) there's also box betting and something called "nagashi," both of which seem to be involved with grouping bets across categories, but none of us got so sophisticated. restating again: we didn't know what we were doing. luckily, the minimum bet at keiokaku is 100 yen. hedge yours and you're looking at between 500 and 3000 per race, and then twelve races means you really hope to hit something at least a few times.

"keirin newspaper" or not, gambling is gambling in the end, and whether it makes it more interesting or just wasteful, you start betting colors or on racers named like your friends or on the chubby fifty-somethings that you figure must still be in the game because they pull it off every once in a while. you're sure that this next one is the race that the twenty-three year old favorite from the same prefecture is going to sacrifice for yellow. it's impressive, though, (and also a little disheartening that you paid money for this) to see the video footage of the locker room before each race and realize that the bellies outnumber their trimmer counterparts. most of the racers are wearing pads, so they probably seem bulkier than they would otherwise (and how many pounds does the camera add?), but these physiques don't scream bike racing. regardless, they all look competitive when they make their entrance onto the track before each race, legs glistening with embro, and every entrance seems like the opportunity for an upset (if, that is, that's how you bet).

it's the music. really. they play a weird sort of fascistic muzak that, during the twenty minutes between the end of one race and the closing of the betting on the next, makes you sure that any wild guess is a certain victory. the racers look more like how they do in the locker room shots when you see them from the open air viewing area at the start line, but they all seem like ready equals from where we were sitting from races one through seven, a third floor gallery of boxes at the back side of the track. at that back side gallery there are a panel of ladies to take your bets, and the ladies smile and ask you for corrections when you've entered an incompatible combination for the betting category you've chosen above your picks on each of your betting scantrons. that made for an interesting experience of its own for the first part of the fun, but once three of our party had left the venue for other evening plans (one way up, one 30000 down and the other smilingly demure), the more interesting game seemed to be down on the track near the action.

you really do pick your battles. another gamble. it makes sense now why the woman beside you on the third floor was happy to pay for the box seat just to read next to her (probably) husband as he downed cup after paper cup of sake and made his bets. there aren't any bet takers in the anteroom behind the doors that open onto the seating area in front of the line. a row of machines accepts your cash along with your scantrons and spits out the tickets you use to claim your winnings post-race at another row of machines. the serious bettors -- and they're all serious down here -- crowd under the video screens that update the race statistics and the betting odds as more bets are collected. they wait until the very end to cast their best calculated bets. then they move out onto the track to heckle the racers as they line up. they shout some really awful things, though i can't deny that most of it could have been construed as overly enthusiastic encouragement. the "talk" from the "keirin newspaper" seems all of a sudden more than just an interesting novelty.

photographs aren't allowed from the track. they're distracting. but the late middle-aged man who growls the warning at you then screams something so assaulting at one of the racers that "distraction" becomes all but a laughable formality. not to mention the hanging cloud of cigarette smoke. and i thought alpenrose was decadent and depraved.

at about race ten, there's a crash. the sound of the tire blowing echoes throughout the entire stadium as if the sound of the helmet of the first racer to go down had been amplified over the loud speakers. imagine also thinking you've heard the sound of a bone breaking, a steel frame cracking. he takes down the entirety of the field behind him. the six gurneys stationed around the inside field of the track are there for a reason. the men at the line rail in expletives that their racers aren't going to have a chance to see the end of the race. forfeited bets. the racers spared the crash do finish, however, to a cavalcade of jeers. that muzak plays, and you're sure again that you'll make bank on the next race.

"did you want to come to the track for the bikes or for the betting?" i'd introduced myself to that friend of a friend saying that i was interested in bicycles, which is what prompted his question, and so i stuck to the theme in my answer. that friend of a friend was the one who bought the "keirin newspaper" and shared it with the rest of us over lunch before we bought our entrance to the venue and made our first wagers. when in rome, so it goes. and i don't know why the scene of the track didn't suggest the colosseum when i first spotted those gurneys.

bets are on as to why keirin developed the cache it did outside of japan in the late twenty-aughts, but the sport is undeniably not without its draw. personally, i couldn't have cared less for buying into the njs craze. the cranks on my commuter do, for the record, make the grade, but the mark isn't visible. you can hardly tell what they were to begin with. i had them blasted and custom powder coated. white. number one.

HOW TO LIVE THE DREAM, part 5

it's been a while, in that it has been, and also in reference to a series of plane rides, train rides, car rides, cab rides -- but as of yet no bike ride -- since we were living the dream on the other side of the pacific.

and what serendipity! the cross crusade awards party was being held tonight at the water heater, only two blocks from the apartment; and god! that's where you were hiding all of the slim, fit beardy boys. right under my nose. rose city, you really did want me back. we're happy to be home.

mr. mark wasn't there tonight...and just when i'd summoned the courage to start our courtship. oh well, for the time being. thanks to "dirty pictures," i've a photo of him ass up on the trainer right above my desk. for tonight i won't hold it against them that they never asked for the rights to the photo of me sidecaring the cross bike down to portland international raceway that they printed anyway.

portland, we'll talk tomorrow.