WHITE FLAG

"the gays do not need lil b on their side. that man is trouble." she was there last night. she knows.

DEATH IN SPRING, part 3

there's a habit i have -- and it's a bad one -- of putting off reading at the many websites and blogs that i should be -- and honestly do like -- following until i've accumulated a day's worth of reading covering two weeks of nearly lost (and impendingly irrelevant) information. i don't spend any less time on the internet as a result, and i probably have less fun too. even if it promises to be interesting, if the reading seems also important, i'll put it in the queue (and then visit brownpapertickets.com one more time to wonder again over whether i should shell out for the erotic memoir writing workshop). acknowledging that one of the benefits of keeping up with reading online is keeping up, i have to admit that mine is a particularly futile and dead end brand of procrastination.

i knew that i wanted to read arthur phillips' guest blogs at powells.com when i noticed his picture at the left side of the site last week, but i still hadn't gotten rid of a note to myself to read an older guest blog on dangerous writing at the same site. so i put phillips off. i never did read the dangerous writing post, but i did finally get around to reading (the first two of) phillips', and on top of the relief that came with catching up to where i could see the present just a few steps ahead of me, one of phillips' posts echoed a recent sense of mine as regards reading, and the validation was enough to help me keep on not keeping up.

i can tell you the story of death in spring by mercè rodoreda, but i can't say that i could tell you what it's about. shit is weird in that village. deformity is terrorized, and so is dissent. but there's chaos in the execution of the terror as well, and it was impossible for me to identify any defensible analogues between the individuals in that society and any historical one that the author might have known. a knowledge gap on my end, maybe. i don't know. i stopped trying. which doesn't mean that rodoreda didn't write death in spring about something specific, but the book is so sensually and evocatively written that it stopped mattering to me whether i got any possible point and had to let myself appreciate it anyway.

i consider myself a careful reader, so i was hesitant to engage anyone in conversation on the book: despite having been captivated by its language, i wasn't sure i had anything appreciable to say. for shame. although the second of arthur phillips' blog posts that i read was incredibly validating of that strife, i also couldn't help but feel chastised.

There is such thing as didactic literature, of course; I can't deny it. I even love some of it. But that hardly means that all literature is didactic. Animal Farm is certainly saying something beyond the story of a pig or two, but that doesn't mean Lolita is saying anything beyond the story of Humbert and Lo. (Molestation is bad? I think we could have expressed that in some other form than Lolita, whereas the magic and wealth of Lolita cannot be expressed in any other form than itself.)

if we decide to read death in spring allegorically, should we end up with just the simple conclusion that oppression (specifically the francoist brand) is bad? that certainly could have been expressed in some other form than rodoreda's book. in other words (and rodoreda's are truly brilliant), "the point" of the book is beside the point.

But the payoff, the beauty of reading non-didactic literature, and reading it non-didactically (reading it without asking what the author is saying), is that you can nevertheless extract something from your reading, something that feels not like a lesson or a moral, but like a communication devised -- in great detail and astonishing specificity -- just for you. As if the author has intended to say something to you about your very specific thoughts, life, actions, aspirations. When the writer lets the moral go, gives up on relevance or applicability -- stops trying to say something easy or hard or true or distillable about life, the country, capitalism, health care, molestation, war, etc. -- then, magically, a spontaneous moral education is possible, brought out of the reader by a unique reaction between text and that one unique reader, a magic from which the imaginary notion of a "writer," a writer trying to "say" something, is totally removed, and totally unnecessary.

thanks, arthur. i almost want to cry. i did cry, actually, the day i read most of death in spring, which seemed particularly poignant after hearing the stations of the cross delivered on the first sunny day of the season. rodoreda's lush prose, which quietly and impressionistically layers its images of violence over equally febrile descriptions of the natural environment and its cycles, was just the sympathetic hand in a certainly contemplative mood. "for a time that was not time, i lay with the cold and heat, a rattle in my throat, on top of the rock, as if i had turned to rock...during that time when Time did not exist, the pain in my forehead had grown." something like that. rodoreda's way with words makes it possible to read profundity into even her simplest descriptions, although those descriptions do lose some of their force when they're removed from the total emotion of the ("musical," "rhythmic") whole.

i hope that lets me off the hook for not giving more examples and, in general, for not having said anything about what death in spring is trying to say. i'd appreciate the favor, because i still have quite a bit of reading to do -- as always, but now with my resolve maybe somewhat renewed.

you all found out last week when the deal was announced, but i was excited this morning to read that elif shafak will be putting out a new book. i bet it's about ethnic identity.

HOW TO LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE; or, KEEPING PORTLAND SANCTIMONIOUS, part 4

it's nice for danny that the weather so far this week hasn't been as awful as was predicted on sunday. danny is visiting from pittsburgh. he moved there after a couple of years in portland, but it wasn't the climate that made him leave.

i ran into danny on sunday afternoon while waiting out the rain over a pint and the puzzle, halfway between home and the starbucks on barbur where the papers are free. more correctly, i ran into a friend who was waiting for danny, who had planned for the two of them and a couple of others to attend a "gay easter egg hunt" that evening. events like that one are probably what danny misses most about portland, although i didn't think to ask him if the kids in pittsburgh, the portland of the east (and so, effectively, the real berlin, pennsylvania), had gotten hip to that particular hep jive. i did, however, ask him how he liked his new city.

"my rent is so cheap. i'm paying a hundred dollars to share a house with a friend who bought it for something like thirty-five thousand. before that i was paying two-something for a giant bedroom at another place." then, tellingly, "it's nicer than i expected to be surrounded by people that aren't exactly like me," which, on top of commending pittsburgh's relative diversity, is another way of saying that the thrift stores there are cheap and aren't picked over.

rents in portland certainly don't rival those of any of the other major cities on the west coast, but they also aren't as low as they should be considering the city's self-styled reputation as a bohemian paradise -- or considering the ever restrictive employment situation. "i really like my job [in pittsburgh]," danny told me. "and i'm too old and fussy to spend a bunch of time [in portland] fighting for someone to finally get around to looking at my résumé so that i might get considered for washing dishes." danny didn't deliver that last statement with any gesture of innuendo, so i couldn't assume he was referencing any comment that had been written here, although i'm happy to take credit for evolving the meme.

the important thing is the jobs in pittsburgh. jobs that people really like. danny is blazing an important trail here, and he's been gracious enough to come back for a visit to let everyone still left in portland know about the next best place. our mutual friend started talking about chicago. there's a tech school there! go learn about electronics and get a a job in pittsburgh! portland is burning, and strangely, the rain just makes it worse. but don't worry, we'll hold it down somehow after you're gone.

THE CURE FOR DEPRESSION; or, HOW TO RIPOSTE CONTENT

do you know joey comeau? he's a funnyman. sometimes i wonder if i don't get some of the jokes, and maybe that's whence the awkwardness -- or maybe we're both just taken aback at how well i do get them. either way, joey must have been given a crash course in northwest etiquette before he visited a couple of years ago, because we both smiled and pretended ignorance when i had my copy of overqualified signed that october night at reading frenzy.

even famous funnymen get sad, and i think that joey must miss us here in portland. i don't think it was raining the night of his reading, so he probably still thinks that portland is the bright and shiny potency festival that everyone else does. he probably doesn't suspect that the rains are back and that apollo doesn't come through here very often so the festival tends to get claustrophobic and incestuous. even so, i guess he gets depressed about it. the rains are back and portland is feeling down too. we can share that. joey thinks, "there should be more blogs about dealing with depression when you're stupid and worthless," so he wrote a, "self help blog entry." i agree with joey's mission, but i don't think that if i took his advice and rode the bus to wherever it took me then laid down and waited to die that he'd be the one to miss me.

Really, think about it. If you went out to the middle of nowhere and just sat down in a ditch and cried by yourself until you were dead, who would be the first person to wonder where you'd gone? Call them up!

and so i wouldn't call up joey and invite him to ice cream. i don't have joey comeau's phone number, even if he did sign my book in two places. lying there, wherever the bus took me, i'd also know that joey couldn't possibly get that depressed up there in toronto because he's sleeping with the married creator of dinosaur comics.

it's true, though, there should be more blogs about dealing with depression when you're stupid and worthless. the problem isn't that people don't want to share the cure, it's that they probably forget about sharing it once they've shared in it. and that blogging seems counterproductive when the goal is drinking alone. but i forgot that beer is expensive in canada. i guess i could settle for ice cream. hey, joey: we could go together when i make it to toronto. we may not be each other's first choices, but we could talk about how no one gets our jokes.

DEATH IN SPRING, part 2

it poured rain from sunny skies yesterday evening, which acceptably better than the clouds that had accompanied the rain throughout the morning. seeing the sun if only to see it set is kinder on the spirit than having to watch the city resumes its regular business of transitioning between just grey and black.

people in the pacific northwest accept the rain until they've been given a glimpse of what's on the other side of the clouds, past which point (located at a vaguely demarcated intersection of sunshine, temperature and calendar date that moves slightly from year to year) the anticipation of summer -- and the fear that we might not have a proper one -- completely overcome our ability to tolerate any more rainy days. or so we insist to each other, but then we're happy to accept the rain so long as the sky we can see behind it isn't cloudy, because we know that it's going to be grey and rainy the next day, and probably for the next week. and if it rains all the way through to the next rainy season we'll just look back on those one or two perfect days with even greater fondness. praise be that beer is a drink for all seasons.

it was nonetheless glorious on saturday. friday was pretty, but despite the sunshine the air stayed cool throughout the day, and it was only a half an hour or so that was comfortable outside without a sweater or a jacket. plus there was the whole ordeal of our estranged brother's funeral. and the bars were crowded because everyone got high on expectation and needed something to help themselves down.

oh, but saturday! the air was brisk in the morning, but by early afternoon the sun had asserted itself and skin was showing. people's faces were slightly pink from the shock of the sun the day before. if the wanton abandon of their celebrations on saturday were any indication, however, those same people hadn't taken any extra precautions to protect themselves on saturday.

unfortunately, the saturday sunshine was more dangerous. in fact, that shit could have killed you. i'm surpirsed we haven't heard about more deaths. i wasn't wearing much sunblock myself, but i was on my bicycle, and so was every portlander who hadn't ridden his since september. anyone who ever rides here, fair-weather or not, knows to avoid the waterfront on a sunny weekend day. saturday seemed to be warning that, on the first sunny weekend day of the season, riders should avoid the streets as well, and had i not had other errands and appointments i would have parked my ride for the evening and stayed on at the lucky labrador beer hall where the darling ladies of lagers and ales (lola) were making whoopee while brewing a kölsch.

it's not just inexperience. cyclists seem to have developed the ability to tolerate a crowded street while almost completely masking their disdain for the torpid and clueless. drivers haven't. when on the first warm, sunny weekend day of spring the streets fill up with bicycles, portland drivers clip by closer and faster to reassert their dominance over the road. a cyclist gets hit, the local news starts running the bikes versus cars stories and everything escalates. it certainly doesn't help that some of the riders who show up to the war at the outset aren't experienced in battle.

but on days like saturday that doesn't really matter. experienced or not, everyone riding on saturday afternoon was so jacked out on vitamin d that we couldn't help smiling like simpletons and craning our necks toward every passing stimulus like excited backyard chickens just released into the yard. nathan?!? whoa, it's nathan! through the intersection on the wrong side of the street against the light? sure! nathan is standing, like, right over there! i'm going to tell him it's sunny.

lucky for me, nathan was sitting at the bye and bye where i expected him when i rolled up at four. i didn't need another distraction until i was safely seated behind an oakshire black ipa. just like those bitched on that show. i'm hoping that everyone else got to the bar safely too. cheers to what should be the prelude to a wonderful summer (but might also possibly be its best). if it does turn out that even brighter days are ahead of us, be safe. make love. bikes versus cars? pfft. one of the many benefits of day drinking is that you can be sloshed in time to still make the bus.

DEATH IN SPRING

i went back to st. mary's cathedral of the immaculate conception because i left my book on the right back pew. the church lady who was delegated the task of entertaining me in the vestibule while the man who met me there went to fetch my friend's library copy of death in spring was disappointed: her curiosity had been piqued and she'd planned to take the book home, read it and then return it to the library herself. i took the book back -- i hadn't finished it myself -- and wondered if it wasn't just the title that had interested the church lady given the coincidence of the holy day and the service we'd both just attended.

good friday services are the only catholic masses that i'll allow myself to attend. because jesus dies on good friday, the church doesn't distribute his body or blood until the resurrection on easter morning. good friday and the following (holy) saturday are the only two days of the catholic calendar on which communion isn't given, so, unless you're one of the mortally infirm, it's impossible to be saved by the sacrament on either of those two days. christ became the martyr exemplar on good friday, and each year his holy church on earth gives the faithful that day to bask in their baptismal birthright. we're all martyrs on good friday, genuflecting in the sanctuary at each station of the cross with the knowledge that an act of god that day might mean eternal death. that's any day, of course, for those of us who have lapsed, but on good friday we get to share the ironic vanity of certain martyrdom with the rest of the congregation. and the rest of the congregation they sniff us out, the ones who go to mass only on that one day so as to avoid the shame of refusing communion, and they avoid us in the pews. they sniff us out and avoid us as if we really did smell, which i probably did today when i sat down at the right back pew of st. mary's, not so fresh after however many miles on my bike. we're not obliged to be compassionate until the sixth station when veronica wipes christ's face, and my neighbors' scorn made it all the easier for me to smile across the baptismal font at the two men sitting together on the closer end of the pew at the other side of the aisle. i was sure they were a couple.

good friday liturgies tend to be tear jerkers, and the minds behind the ones at st. mary's are top notch. my lip was trembling by the fourth of the cross stations wherein jesus meets his mother. "and his humiliation was hers." crying at that point would have been a sure testament to the tenacious psychological influence of a catholic upbringing. so you resist the urge. or maybe you don't, which also makes you laugh a little because it's just another reminder that catholicism is really gay.

the kicker of today's service, however, came before the officiants started their procession around the stations. you can't make this stuff up. unless, apparently, you're a priest at st. mary's. after the only reading of the service, the priest who had been appointed to narrate the stations of the cross gave a homily of sorts, a pontification on, of all things, the failure of jesus christ. picture the sensation of "the scandal of the cross" (the priest's words, not mine). spotted: jesus of nazareth, "rejected by society, both civil and religious," walking shamefully through jerusalem to see the pharisees and then carried away, completely discredited, to the court of pontius pilate like a biblical bernie madoff on his way to the federal court of manhattan, the scapegoat for what would become history's greatest ponzi scheme: the papacy. i can't say that the performance didn't make me wonder about listening more closely for a calling to seminary. it was the least i could do to shed a tear for the priest's wild act of showmanship, if not for the suffering of the man on the cross.

and that i did. for the priest and for jesus and for mary and veronica and all the women of jerusalem. that's why i go to mass on good friday. on that day, when each year we bear witness to the events from the sentencing to the crucifixion to the laying in the tomb, the melodrama of the catholic liturgy is at its most cathartic and evocative. what's more, without the option of taking communion, there's no one to save us but ourselves. whether that results in honest self-evaluation or an investigation of the mystery of hypocrisy is for the individual to work out for himself. in either case, good friday gives catholics the ultimate gift: a chance to wail our devotion to deaf ears, the dead end, all holy opportunity of being martyred at the hand of the church itself. frustratingly, the disturbing humor of that reality is equaled by its solemnity.

it's impossible, i think, that the church lady didn't read something of that into the title of the library book that i left behind when the processional exited stage left and i packed my bag to go. a title like death in spring commands it (catholic melodrama!). and, in as much as the book can be read as an allegory for life in francoist spain, it's no stretch to interpret the rituals and sacrifices it describes as having a catholic derivation. then there are the crosses and importance that the townspeople put on the purification of the soul through torture. on top of that, rodoreda's prose reads almost like the psalms in its heavy, poetic depictions of pastoral morality. or i could be imagining things -- martyring the book to my own vain lust after death in spring. it's a strange feeling, that one, but the boy who narrates rodoreda's novel is trying to understand it as much as anyone, catholic or not. there was that. his descriptions are simple, but everything he describes could be a symbol, so i had no reservations reading the book as one. reading death in spring after playing my part in the passion, it was easy to sympathize with the boy's strained relationship with the harried townspeople and their rituals. today, good friday, it was too early in the season for the wisteria that frames so many scenes in death, but outside of st. mary's cathedral it was a beautiful day.

SPRING FEVER

something about a book. something about a book. something about a book. something about a book. something about a book. something about a book. something about a book. something about a book. or just something. about a book. i never did find that copy of other people we married that was supposed to be in the small press section of the downtown powell's. powells.com still tells me that there's a used copy of death in spring at the downtown store, but the only copy i found on the shelf yesterday was the new not new one from a couple of weeks ago. so i have my justified doubts about the used copy that the website tells me is at the hawthorne store. but, it's supposed to be sunny and in the sixties tomorrow, so it might be nice to ride through southeast portland to 38th and hawthorne, even if i am already borrowing a friend's library copy of the book. the clothes, they start to come off this time of year. (in the sixties is warm here.) i'm also confounded by an image at the beginning of the fourth chapter (i'm not completely sure because the book isn't with me and i can only guess at how far i've read) that for some reason has me frustrated to the point of being unable to read on until i can picture it. i think that my frustration might be a result of my wondering if the translator of death in spring understood the image herself, which is probably also the manifestation of a memory i repressed of having once translated something too literally because i couldn't picture what the original words described well enough to be freer with my own. something about a pool shot. a massé. i think i got it wrong. i've got the gist of chapter four (or whichever): i understand what happens and why the boy's surprised. what happens with the bark, however, after the man cuts the transverse line of the cross into the tree i just can't picture. i shouldn't blame the translator, even if mercè rodoreda does usually have such an amazing way with describing simple things both simply and profoundly. all of the words of hers that i've read have been translated, too. it's just a distracting time of year. it's going to be warm and sunny tomorrow. "if this is the life, why does it feel so good to die today?" death in spring. or spring fever. all yours.

HOW TO SURVIVE THE GREAT NORTHWEST FREEZE; or KEEPING PORTLAND SANCTIMONIOUS, part 4

pier park: who knew? i didn't. not until a couple of sundays ago when i decided to turn off lombard at the pier park sign into what looked to be just a park and ride bus station with a skatepark behind it. what i found behind the skatepark, however, was a welcome surprise. according to the portland parks and recreation website, pier park was designed in 1920 the style of laurelhurst park, which was then considered to be the most beautiful park in the city. there's an obvious resemblance between the two in their winding networks of paths and the stately verticality of their old, rugged conifers. pier park, however, is, at nearly ninety acres, over three times the size of laurelhurst; and unburdened by the looming luxury of a historically affluent neighborhood at its perimeter, pier park makes it much easier than laurelhurst for visitors to get lost. (laurelhurst park is to old timey dress up pig roasts as pier park is to romanticized hobo urban camping.) even better, and in true portland style, pier park is named not for it's geographical placement but for a man named pier who, ironically, seems to be one of the few men whose names grace our street and park signs who weren't admirals.

yesterday evening we weren't unhappy to wander for ten or fifteen minutes before finding the spot at the northwest edge of the park from which my companion said we could sit under the trees and watch the trains. the train sequences in "wendy and lucy" were filmed less far from the center of the city, but it's no fandangling to say that the aesthetic of the two sites and scenes is the same. i was happy to have recently found pier park and to have suggested it for the first destination on yesterday's ride if only because the trees and the trains and the sunset somehow managed to reignite my sense of wonder for the pacific northwest, a sense that had seemed utterly lost -- or just essentially juvenile -- as recently as my discovery of the park.

you have to take the bad with the good. although the article "our social dis-ease" by julia sommerfeld was written for the magazine of the seattle times in 2005, i was only made aware of it this morning (by a seattle native then transplant to portland who now lives back in new york). i haven't ever felt "the freeze" to be especially biting in seattle, but then again i've probably been the one putting it on, which is another way of saying that we shouldn't consider the phenomenon to be unique to seattle but rather as a characteristic of northwest culture at large. indeed, the crux of the article can be simply altered to expand its consideration beyond seattle and describe the region at large (or any of its larger cities):

[the northwest has] long been described in contradictory terms. The weather: Is it mild or dreary or mildly dreary? The politics: Progressive yet torpid. Progressing toward torpor? The attitude: Tolerant — of all like-minded people.

But the dichotomy most fundamental to our collective [regional] character is this: Polite but distant. Have a nice day. Somewhere else. [the great northwest freeze]

seattle's time may have come and gone, and its lingering frigidity is probably attributable to the sting of the lost limelight. portland's aloofness is only a natural consequence of its having inherited the glow. but vancouver? canadians are supposed to be friendly and welcoming, no? apparently, though, which is to say that i have it on good authority from a friend who moved from toronto, vancouverites are just as exclusive as the rest of their fellow cascadians. by the time canadian migrants have spent some time on the other side of the mountains in vancouver, their innate friendliness has been frosted over with just plain nice and polite.

According to the natives, we've trampled everything wonderful about their treasured cit[ies], so why haven't we cracked the icy crust?

First, it's an enabling cultural climate for socially inept people. So if you come here and you have any germ of antisociality, it will, like moss, take hold and flourish.

And if you arrive here open and ebullient, you're bound to lose your confidence and spark after enough cold shoulders. After all, why even bother going to that party when you know it will just be more nonchalant chitchat that will never go anywhere?

or, in better circles, nonchalant chitchat that will leave you knowingly and intelligently spurned. we could teach a class -- and that's just it. the best way to survive the northwest freeze seems to be to get in on it. find yours and then start pushing people away. right? if i've said it once...well, if i've said it at all then that should have been enough: there aren't any jobs in portland, so it's silly that you'd come here with the hope of making anything special, in particular a friendship with anyone i know. that's figurative, of course, because i'm obviously letting you in just by putting you on to the game. seriously, though, watch it. we know how much it sucks to have to go to the park alone sometimes, but we all got used to it. you can cheer yourself up by thinking that if you lose that leather jacket we'll work as hard as we need to find you and return it, even if we don't want to talk afterward. although there are those nights when you remember that talking with strangers can be fun. there was a shaman following the train we watched at pier park. wonder and awe.

HOW TO UNLOCK THE SECRETS OF THE EMERALD CITY

all of the bathrooms in seattle are behind keypad locks. it's inconvenient, but you can't blame the city for wanting to keep its facilities clean after the disaster with the five one-million dollar self-cleaning public toilets that it installed downtown. now seattle's downtown tourists and homless have to buy something in exchange for a four digit code numerical code if they want to fuck or die (not respectively) in a public restroom. it's inconvenient, but it's much less off-putting than when the same food and drink establishments in control of deciding who does and doesn't have the information keypad locks don't include (seattle's astronomical) sales tax on their menus. once you're in, however, you do garner a sense of inclusion and belonging that, before your first embarrassingly naive attempt to go to the bathroom without first getting a code, you thought you could only win with the purchase of a portfolio of elite tech stocks. the first time i had to go, i was lucky enough to have tried to let myself into a women's restroom at the capitol hill building that houses maggie moon's (late night ice cream is a perfect way to break from the bars). the lone woman at the sink inside shared her inside information, which worked for the keypad on the men's restroom door as well, in return for getting out. i'd only been drinking the seasonal pale ale from maritime pacific brewing up to that point (and maybe some whiskey as a chase to my pints), or else i might have just saved myself the time and used one of the stalls behind the door that was already open. i'm glad i spared the group the ignominy. it was, after all, conceived to be a classy party. i don't think the hostess at quinn's was able to gather that when we found ourselves there two stops later, but we didn't do anything illegal, and spared ourselves the even more horrible disgrace of doing something vulgar. but that might have been different had we been drinking more earlier at dinner when that stripper tried to catch the eyes of our table. she couldn't have been of age. the accepted nature of a stag affair is that you don't share the intimate details (even if too many intimate details might have been shared during the affair), so i'll keep myself from letting on about anything else. if you're really desperate for more, you can ask the drag queens outside of linda's. they seemed pretty keen on gossip. and who knows? if you've got something good to share, they might even help you into the bathroom.

HOW ARE YOU CELEBRATING?

her name was chanel no. 2., and i had as little inkling of what that meant until i searched it (to make sure that i wouldn't be required to trademark mark anything) as i was of the chicken's name before she died. chanel no. 1 was so named because of her likeness to her sister coco, and the dead one inherited her name when whatever it was happened to her predecessor went down. i have to admit that i don't know what that was. when the archaeologists dig up the medium size flat rate box of chanel no. 2's remains they'll wonder after her genealogy, and we won't have left a single document to help them. those academics need to learn to live in the present. if portland's highest social hour isn't during sunday brunch then it's sometime between midnight and two a.m. on soul night at rotture. we had to drown our sorrows somehow. so well cocktails and sneers it was. drink it in and drink it up. cheers to you, chanel no. 2!

jerk chicken for dinner last night in memoriam. all twelve legs.

AVIAN AUTOPSY

i had a sick suspicion of what had happened earlier at the apartment when i came home to find the dining room table almost entirely cleared and a platter of delicately stacked feathers at one corner of it. there are pictures, but i asked to be spared a visual narration of the dissection until a time that wasn't so close to bedtime.

i did, however, get the official report on the autopsy.

forest initially suggested that if there were feathers we wanted to keep that they be removed from the body first, as they might be ruined when he parboiled the body in preparation for his incisions. unfortunately, because the hen hadn't completely defrosted (and probably due to quick avian rigor mortis), it was necessary to employ a set of pliers in removing the feathers to be saved, which, after no small amount of effort, were extracted and then piled on the platter that i found when i came home last night. she was a courageous chicken, and the autopsy report makes clear that the battle for her feathers was hard one.

the twist? it didn't take cutting the bird open to find out that perhaps she'd been more courageous than we initially thought (or at least stupider) and that she'd braved the fear that we thought had killed her. upon close inspection, the hen was found to have a gash across and down the right side of its face that had by all indications been bleeding profusely on the night of the raccoon attack. her body showed no other signs of physical trauma. it was concluded that the hen died as a result of blood loss from a laceration to the head likely inflicted by the raccoon that attempted to invade the backyard chicken run in the final hours of tuesday april 5. by what bad luck the raccoon was able to land a blow to the deceased through the chicken wire surrounding the undisturbed wooden framework of the run was undetermined. a forensic investigation was forgone as a result of the crime scene having been tampered with before proper documentation on the night of the attack. (it was dark and we were stressed out, ok?)

then they opened her up. i might be content never to see the pictures. i inferred that the remains of the hen were stowed in a united states postal service priority mail medium size flat rate box that had been emptied of its packing material contents and gone missing from the floor of the kitchen. someone out there might be getting a gruesomely ironic package for easter. that or they buried it. one of the two.

i suppose that closes the case, which now has me thinking about the whole mess more soberly, and i realize that in the chaos of the scrambling of the ranks of the brood over the past few months i never learned that chicken's name. that's sad, but, as they say, there's no use crying over mauled poultry. farewell, chicken lady. i'm calling you mark mckinney.

KEEPING IT CLEAN; or, HOW TO LIVE BY THE LAW

we will not be eating the fallen hen. i'm going to assume that all of our readers are strict vegetarians (the strictest of, even!) and have never had to question the circumstances of the deaths of their meals and that that's why no one wrote to warn us that eating meat that wasn't slaughtered is awfully dangerous. to be clear: you shouldn't eat a chicken that died of fright in your backyard. you also shouldn't eat it if it braves the raccoon invasion but then gets killed by the raccoon. it's something about the postmortem release of toxins, and possibly botulism. thankfully, our hen plucker seems to have known better and wouldn't have let us put the thing in our mouths after it was gutted anyway. (we would have been saved despite your neglect.) apparently forest agreed to help because he thought we were interested in dissection -- which it turns out one of us is.

the thought of a courage chicken stew was a nice one, but it's best we keep it clean. what's more, had we eaten of the stew we would also have incurred the wrath of the lord. eating meat found dead is prohibited by both leviticus 7:24 AND leviticus 22:8. and you know how we do our best to abide by leviticus. (be scorned all poly-fiber blends!) even worse, eating the stew would have meant sacrificing our rabbinical aspirations, because it's pretty clear from ezekiel 44:31 that priests should stay away from the meat of birds not slaughtered by man.

so we dodged a bullet, one that could have cost us our lives as well as our relationship with the god of the old testament. live and learn, i suppose. there is such a thing as being too clean and too careful, but keeping it clean in this case paid off. we can't (and won't) proscribe anyone's chosen way of life, but there are some lessons that you'd like to see friends avoid learning the hard way -- even if those friend don't pay you the same consideration. so kids, we know you're going to do what you're going to do, but when you can, do your best to use a condom, ok? i am the lord!

LIFE IMITATES ART IMITATES THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL

in retrospect, it seems callous to have ever imagined anything but the best of futures for the backyard chickens. two of the original brood were lost in a bloody midnight raid in november, and their eventual replacements have been tormented alongside their adopted sisters by the backyard rat ever since. the egg and chickenfeed bounty has now encouraged another rat to join the game, and the two of them won't be foiled by any efforts to close the tunnels they've dug under the walls of the chicken run. they dig around every concrete slab, and only one of the hens (the most timid otherwise) isn't scared of them. it's not clear whether or not the rats live underground, but they spend their afternoons popping out from a hole in the middle of the yard and running to wherever it is they've dug an access route to the run and taking whatever they can find. whether it was the clumsy chickens or the rats that did it themselves, the feed dispenser had been spilled on sunday and the rats had a veritable feast. unfortunately for spectators, the only chicken with any fight didn't seem to have it in her to stay vigilant at the spot where the rat tunnel opened on to her turf.

that, however, was understandable since another sister of hers had been taken last monday, and not dragged away like the one hen that went completely missing on that night in november, but stopped dead in her tracks by fear. a neighbor's off leash pitbull had torn down the sides of the run for the second time in two weeks just a few days earlier, and the added shock must have been too much when a racoon started hissing and rattling the roof of the run so soon after. we found the body when we went to collect the ladies into the carrier for a night inside after realizing that no amount of shooing was going to keep the raccoon away once we went to sleep.

she went in the freezer with the pants, shrouded in a vinyl bag from powell's. it would be a shame and an insult not to eat her after such demonstrated courage, so she spent yesterday, the day of the rat feast, on the dining room table -- but not to be eaten just yet. she's now lying in state in the refrigerator, where she was moved from the table just before midnight. the friend of ours who knows how to pluck and gut fowl can't come over until wednesday, and he says that she'll need to defrost.

HEAR YE, HEAR YE! THE FINEST IN MUSIC JOURNALISM

4:30 p.m. text message: "do you want to go, please?"

"i was going to poop out." yesterday afternoon, nothing seemed more appealing than going home to watch "i killed my mother" -- and maybe get lucky with the staff schedule and set the ball rolling for a go for broke ironic summer date at the bar at the convention center red lion. "what time?"

"i don't want to go before 10."

"ok i'm in." because, for some reason, later seemed better, even though ten o'clock would mean having to completely abandon my dvd plans, trading xavier dolan for bright eyes.

at just past ten o'clock, travis was waiting in front of the crystal ballroom. we collected our stickers from the box office. "where do the cool kids put these?" disinterest: "where we can see them."

beer is more expensive than liquor at the bar. mcmenamins thinks too much of itself. the last time i came to the crystal was for a metric show in 2009. i'm not allowed to pay to get in this place, so i pay for drinks. just like at metric, we didn't know anyone in the crowd, which was remarkable for portland, and which means that the crowd doesn't live here. "no one listens to bright eyes anymore." by which she also meant that everyone listens to bright eyes. the two men who were standing along the railing behind us must have been conor oberst's best friends, because they only used his first name. they also seemed to know how soon the set was going to start based on the music playing during set up. well, i thought, if bright eyes sounds anything like "these boots are made for walking" then i'll probably have fun.

bright eyes does not sound anything like "these boots are made for walking," which i had expected, except that i did expect a little elliot smith. "no. not at all," i got once the show had started and i asked after my incorrect assumption (that i suspect she had something to do with). i didn't know anything about music until last night.

the rasta man who was freak dancing next to conor's best friends was smoking pot from a one off pipe between every song, and with every song was less abashed about blowing smoke over our shoulders. we had to move. luckily, the view was better from farther back near the bar.

"ugh. why are encores mandatory now?"

"yeah, that set was over an hour. i would be impressed if they didn't come back out."

show goers at the crystal ballroom do a mandatory bleacher stomp on the spring loaded floor to call for their mandatory encores. later last night, i was convinced that the floor had done something unkind to my back.

the encore was nostalgic. bright eyes knew much more than i did about music until last night.

lights up. goodnight, travis. i liked the fourth song, i think. "which one was that?" "i was asking you."

later, backstage: "ok. i don't know if we're staying. let's just feel it out after i say hello. and you have to act really gay. but be nice."

"got it. no problem, i'm having a good time."

i know the layout of the crystal ballroom and i don't know where i thought the loft would be, but i expected the party to be in one -- and that maybe andy warhol would be there. i didn't know anything about music until last night.

"hi, i'm nathaniel." nathaniel got caught up on what he'd missed since the last time he was in portland. the bottle of tequila on the table across the room was empty, but there was beer on ice right next to us. and half and half, although i didn't see any coffee. the room that wasn't a loft was small for the number of people inside.

"i'm moving back to brooklyn at the end of the summer, but he's staying here."

"yeah, we're planning the summer around our divorce."

"so you guys are enga--?"

"yes he is gay."

"have you met our bassist?"

"this is andy." "hi, andy." "hello." "i kind of expected andy warhol to be here." "i think he's gone." "yeah."

i didn't expect there to be beds on the bus, but again, i didn't know anything about music until last night. the last time i was on a tour bus, emily haines asked me if there were any way we she could sign my underwear without my taking off my pants. i guess i only know that one band. i don't remember seeing beds.

people on the bus were friendly, probably because they were listening to billy joel. they liked my boots, which i couldn't blame for my back. that was definitely the floor.

we got off the bus and then got waved back on. second encore. back off the bus. we didn't want to go to arcata. the ride home was much shorter.

late, but not much later: "tell my barista that i'm moving at the end of the summer if you go to coffee before i do tomorrow."

at the coffee shop this afternoon, she didn't remember saying it. "check your journal for april 10 at around three-thirty in the morning."

i was eight minutes fast, but sure enough it was there:

"april 10, 2011, 3:38 a.m.
going to sleep annoyed."

GOODBYE VANCOUVER, LINGERING MEMORIES

the wine gums still haven't been unloaded, but we should really start thinking about doing the exchange: it would be wonderful to have some coffee or beer for sitting under the cherry blossoms on the riverfront. back in vancouver, i heard that the city was selling the trees to residents for just thirty dollars each in an effort to keep residential streets full of their blossoms in the spring. (death is waiting in the wings for many of vancouver's currently flowering cherry blossom trees, apparently.) but then the more i stare at the pile of candy the more i think that i should just go down to the "give pizza a chance" cart between 4th and 5th on sw stark st and get people souvenirs from there. nothing is more canadian than pizza by the slice on a ruffle edged paper plate. and if you don't know that, you're not one of us.

THIS IS THE TIME "WHERE" I WANT TO SING

the anniversary of vancouver's incorporation is not, in fact, the 5th of april as i erroneously wrote in my reflections on my stroll through douglas coupland's city of glass. the correct date is the 6th which, although it was not the day on which i looked through the book, was the day of the actual writing. that's light irony at best -- and heavily overshadowed by my incorrect and now completely nonsensical anecdote on the suicide of kurt cobain. so we were all duped by the globe and mail, which, four days after april fool's, ran a nostalgic column by a former resident in celebration of the city's birthday, but did so the evening before the day itself and without any mention of the proper date. it would seem that non-canadians just aren't supposed to know about canadian history. writing that, however, reminds me that canadians don't seem to be supposed to know about canadian history either. aside from some scattered plaques, the city of vancouver (outside of chinatown, that is) doesn't seem to care about its past. just ask around. according to coupland, however, vancouver's municipal esprit de corps is fostered by a collective desire for renewal and future opportunity. also known as "the terminal city," vancouver represents to itself the furthest thing from "old" canada. or it could really just be the pot smoke, which rises regularly the start of the morning commute and which vancouverites incorrectly call smog, having only experienced that phenomenon visually through television. either way, to hell with the past. vancouverites don't live there.

so i wouldn't be wrong to dismiss my error as ultimately inconsequential. (no one in vancouver seemed to care.) even more, i should probably celebrate myself for having come a step closer to understanding the diversity of the majesties of canada. if only. unfortunately, as i was stewing over the foibles of my amateurish research and my frustration with the globe and mail, ligia oancea herself was serenading a crowd of lightly ironic vancouverites at the biltmore cabaret. in celebration of the birthday of her adopted home, ligia performed her now northwest-famous ode to vancouver as part of a local talent contest. ("Ligia's soul is uncapturable. It would take a spirit bear trapper (in a fur coat) to track and trap that.") i can forgive myself the date confusion, but missing ligia's performance can't be so easily overlooked. then again, i won't put it past canada to have intentionally deceived me to test my commitment, in which case i wouldn't be surprised if i were stripped of my cultural exchange credentials and politely escorted back to square one (but on employment insurance, of course). that would be a shame, for sure, the worst possible insult after the pain of missing the show. but i'll have more than enough chances to get back and brush up. i never remember to buy ginseng (british columbia is a principle north american producer), and so far no one has seen me hard enough to write about it to the paper. at least it's the nature of the end of the line that you'll get there if you just keep riding.

HOW TO (GROW UP AND) FULFILL YOUR DREAMS; or, BY SEA, LAND AND AIR WE PROSPER

the rain that the experts predicted for all of this week hit hard on monday, but since then the weather in portland has been relenting. whatever transgression i committed to lose the internet in canada seems to have been of local interest only, or at least it doesn't seem to have been so grave as to have offended the gods northwest-wide, because their normally obdurate challenge of april showers (our groundhog's shadow gauge of whether winter will last until july) has so far been forgiving. other than the passing of a short but fierce storm late this morning, the skies have been clear, and as a result, i was able to take a leisurely walk to powell's yesterday afternoon without much fear of getting wet going or coming back.

i usually dawdle at the bookstore on weekday afternoons to wait out the heavier rains, but yesterday, despite knowing that it might have been better to enjoy the outside before it got wet again, i still stood and read. it might turn out that i was too easily dismissive of douglas coupland. the nickname "city of glass" for vancouver is most probably attributable to the coupland book of that title, a kind of memoir as guidebook originally published by the vancouver native in 2003, and the book that i spent my dawdling time at powell's yesterday reading, the day, it so happens, of the 125th anniversary of the incorporation of the city of glass.

april 5th is also the anniversary of kurt cobain's suicide -- the better covered of the two events -- but it's unlikely that cobain chose the date (if he chose that particular date at all) as any sort of tribute to vancouver. if we're to relate cobain's death in any way with that city, it's probably best to assume that the motivation was defiance. that's the sense you get from reading city of glass, anyway. as far as coupland tells it, relations between the emerald city and the city of glass have always been strained. the two cities are just a few hours from each other by car, but from the page on seattle in coupland's book it sounds like their residents, aside from once yearly official visits, regard each other generally with disregard.

after reading that page, i almost felt sorry for seattle. the chip on vancouver's shoulder regarding its neighbor to the south isn't so unlike the one that portlanders share toward that same place. while seattle has to combat rivals from both sides, vancouver and portland can double their strengths in bonding over a mutual grudge against their (justifiably or not) more famous sibling. maybe all the stress is what makes it so much less exciting there. or maybe it's existential ennui. seattle, so famous so easily isn't the wisest thing to be. we understand what you're going through a little better now, but -- yes, but still -- wouldn't it be easier to step aside? give it a rest, i think they say.

on the cover of the first printing of city of glass coupland admits to leaving vancouver for most of his twenties to travel in search of a better city. by his own admission, he didn't find one. conversely, portland has a reputation for being overrun with transplant twenty-somethings. smart and enterprising ones: we know how to cross our t's and claw some eyes for that dish washing job. unfortunately, the dream isn't forever, and as much as the lifestyle will get old, so will we, which keeps us mindful of our eventual ostracism from the best parts of the culture at thirty-five. just like the title of coupland's book echoes the pristine triumphalism of life in vancouver, the title that chuck palahniuk chose for his memoir as travel guide to portland, fugitives and refugees, is a perfect description of the character of the rose city's it generation (not to be confused with the IT generation of seattle). plus, the brooklyn wars can't go on forever. the whole country is well past weary of those, and we'll all have to find a way to move on.

so was the dream an illusion? maybe coupland did find the finest city in the world right at home: no highways, a closely regulated and thriving housing market, mountains (you'll hate those, brooklyn), the ocean, a sky train...and opportunity -- in style. there might be better places waiting to happen, but a marriage-for-work-visa plan would be infinitely more oppressive to execute in budapest.

CITY OF GLASS, KIDS ARE ON THE GO -- PART OF THE WHOLE TRUTH

the internet had been inspired by the successes of vancouver's municipal strikes and wasn't providing even basic services for the first three days of the month. non-canadians couldn't get access, anyway. at first i thought that perhaps i'd offended the city's sense of territorial and intellectual independence with my fervor for searching out foreign authors at its used book stores without much of an eye to local writers (maureen medved teaches at ubc, but the tracey fragments was done in toronto). but, after (re)reading the first twenty pages of hey nostradamus! i remembered that i had in fact read the entire novel, my copy of which i was given by a friend of a friend on my first visit to vancouver after asking for suggestions on sampling native literature. so i had read douglas coupland, but i must not have thought much of hey nostradamus! -- which is to say that, although i do now remember that i've read it, i don't at all remember my reaction and i don't plan to finish it again. maybe, then, that doesn't count as putting in the effort, and that's why i was penalized. at any rate, the internet was down at castle vancouver for anyone without a canadian mobile contract.

offended or not, it's also possible that vancouver wanted me to take a different look at it this time around, to experience it without a digital filter, in which case the city was itself at odds with the visions of mr. coupland. embracing that, i understood that vancouver could, indeed, be different, and i only wish that i'd not been so shocked by the disruption of my recent habits of production as to forget to keep a notebook in my pocket. (alas, i hadn't brought a bag other than my weekender.) as a result, i'm left still experiencing a gradual yet uneven -- and, worst, unrecorded -- flow of recollections from my trip. and hence, the "details" i would have liked to have already described might not come back to me until after the most effective framework for their description has already been used and published, although other descriptions will certainly have been influenced by even unrecollected details, while whim and imagination will have worked their magics on the entire lot.

it came to light on the night before our arrival in canada that caroline had allowed herself to fall into a marriage contract without once having experienced the unique delights of a pig in a blanket. things were bound to escalate from there. although she herself wasn't necessarily hungry for a piggy, she couldn't help but continue to share her story the more it met with disbelief, which in turn continued to drive the excitement of her listeners. she wasn't necessarily hungry for a piggy -- none of us were, necessarily -- but her story definitely got us thinking. the rest of the residents of the city seemed to be experiencing something similar but under the more general influence of a spring fever, so it was (albeit a bit ironically, because that's where everyone else was) lucky that we conducted our affairs in town, because the rules are different, and differently binding, at the campsite. (everyone knows that, but the allusion to the detail of a joke about camping should conjure an at least humorous mental possibility for pigs in blankets.)

not directly, but as a result of the lingering effect of caroline's story, a later conversation turned to the subject of certain tandem activities, which after the application of slur, delirium and frustration produced the phrase that won saturday night. it was no surprise that the night ended with two chairs on top of the trashcan fire, and although quoting the phrase will completely misrepresent what happened in the hours before the chairs met their ends, it did humorously resonate with mine and caroline's experience at elysian coffee where we stopped for decaf americanos before leaving vancouver on sunday. we'd hoped to see a certain barista. unfortunately, the coffee pullers working that day were not one of them anyone we recognized. we did, however, see the employee that greeted us at the alibi room the afternoon before (and well before the phrase). a date with the parents. two dicks, one mouth. can i say that on television?

MY PLACE, MY TIME: VANCOUVER 2011

stranger than fiction: you can't make this stuff up. who could have predicted that seattle, unbidden, would have shown up to the cascadia future planning conference, no less welcome for its unexpectedness, but not unexpectedly disappointing for its failure to contribute anything productive to the conversation. leo chow's father just died. the least you could do for the proprietor of the oldest ironic (not to mention iconic) no nonsense bar in british columbia is agree to the push-up contest. you want to compare literature? that's my other show. (and it's on right after this one.)

none of solder and sons, albion or criterion books had a copy of death in spring. nor did they have used copies of europeana or the tracey fragments (and you know that we would have found ms. medved to get a signature if we'd have found that book). criterion is awfully organized and the plays section is small. i was happy to sift through the fiction piles on the floor that more or less corresponded alphabetically to the books on the shelves behind them, but i couldn't stand the scoffing that i got when i asked if the unsearchable section of plays had any sarah kane. he asked if he could help! macleod's didn't have any of the titles i was searching for either, but it is where kate beckinsale shops.

we would have had time to go to spartacus books on e hastings, vancouver's stylier answer to the black rose collective here in portland, had it not been for horseshoe bay -- but how couldn't i show caroline "where mountains touches the sea." that's vancouver. and despite the tendency of the commission to raise the bar at the bar on its nights out, standards are standards, and there's a reason we're here.

that reason, it happened again tonight. those gastropubs on water and alexander aren't half bad. they're wonderfully charming, in fact. i meant to give all the details, but tonight gave itself over to portland's corresponding responsibilities. i'm groaning as i check the clock. thank you, vancouver, for reinvigorating our faith that the real world can be just as tantalizingly distracting as the digital one.

compete? maybe. but do what you can to show your best. that's a weekend at the jewel of the west coast.

the old atsui gallery (i was never able to find it open) has been renamed fukai. heat or depth? which should we prefer? foster? that was a central focus of the accords, and i suppose i can delay narrating the specifics until their resolution.