WATCHING THE RAIN IN GALICIA

06/10/12 UA3542 depart CMH 6:40 a.m. arrive ORD 7:06 a.m. UA477 depart ORD 9:26 a.m. arrive PDX 11:41 a.m.

09/10/12 depart portland greyhound station 12:05 p.m. arrive grants pass 5:20 p.m. old ford pickup to fort freedomland (via the kerby mart) via the oregon redwood highway (number 199).

13/10/12 depart grants pass greyhound station 9:00 a.m. arrive portland 2:20 p.m.

17/10/12 DELTA9100 depart PDX 11:30 a.m. arrive LAX 1:52 p.m. culver city bus to santa monica/sunset blvd metro rapid to silver lake.

20/10/12 red line metro to union station flyaway bus to DELTA4678 depart LAX 1:59 p.m. arrive SFO 3:20 p.m. to BART to civic center.

22/10/12 DELTA9051 depart SFO 8:35 p.m. arrive PDX 10:13 p.m. (two hour delay)...rose city taxi to terwilliger and taylors ferry.

24/10/12 amtrak cascades depart portland union station 12:45 p.m. arrive seattle king street station 4:30 p.m king county bus 255 to kirkland transit center.

25/10/12 king county 245 to 255 to amtrak bus depart seattle king street station 10:45 a.m. arrive vancouver pacific central 2:15 p.m.

28/10/12 amtrak bus depart vancouver pacific central 9:00 a.m. arrive seattle king street station 12:45 p.m. amtrak cascades depart seattle king street station 2:20 p.m. arrive portland union station 5:50 p.m.

29/10/12 UA321 depart PDX 12:19 p.m. arrive IAH 6:15 p.m. UA4341 depart IAH 7:20 p.m. arrive CMH 10:54 p.m. (no delay despite the efforts of the edge of superstorm sandy).

and on october twenty-sixth, after at least three prior visits, i finally succeeded in being talked to by a staff member at solder and sons at main and cordova on vancouver's downtown east side. nonetheless, having already eschewed a book purchase that day, i considered it unfair to consider buying the copy of granta number 10 that was on the fiction shelves of the small store. travel writing. and "in this issue," just as it had started coming down outside, márquez's essay "watching the rain in galicia." but because of more immediate commitments, i only gave myself a moment to smile at the thought of shedding a tear at the title.

on the thirty-first (which was as early as was possible for me), under the sway of the urgent tone of that article in the next morning's article globe and mail, i voted. way to go ohio. or, i guess, we'll see. then i went to the library. i had a book overdue. but the main branch also had a copy of a book that included that essay.

"i don't know where the shame of being a tourist comes from," márquez writes. ...and i don't know how i feel about that statement. but it was better, perhaps, that i hadn't read the essay in that issue of granta, because even more than the author's observations on the galician rain -- and on the wind, "that sows the lunatic seed which makes so many galicians delightfully different" -- i appreciated the poem by lorca that this other collection had included as an inset on one of the pages. "it rains in santiago, my sweet love. white camellia of the air, shadowy shines the sun/it rains in santiago in the dark night. grasses of silver and of sleep cover the empty moon/see the rain in the street, lament of stone and crystal. see in the vanishing wind shadow and ash of your sea/shadow and ash of your sea, santiago, far from the sun. water of ancient morning trembles in my heart." and in those words by the poet from the vega of granada, my own (unknown) far away lament for the delightful galician lunatic i had met in andalusia. and then for everyone i had met there. and then for everyone i had more recently left. my morriña for all of the places i was already missing, and that which was even deeper, maybe, for all the ones that i hadn't yet been able to see.     

 

DOUBLE DOUBLE; or, CONSCIENCE BURN...AND REAL ESTATE BUBBLE?

when the bars closed early sunday morning, there wasn't a single cab to be had anywhere on main street in vancouver. i mean, there were swarms of cabs, they just weren't for the having. flagging was pointless, not to mention the danger of approaching the curb (let alone leaving it) and getting closer to the aggressive flow of traffic. the only vehicles with their top lights lit up were ambulances, and although they weren't as numerous as the occupied cabs they were screaming past regularly in both directions collecting party casualties, some of whom might possibly have staggered themselves too close to an unavailable taxi and been hit as they were trying in vain to hail a ride. zombies.

most everyone was in costume. vancouver, they told me, loves halloween. or, rather, vancouver loves costumes, they told me, and halloween is an easy excuse to indulge. as for us, we had indulged the night before and so were the exception on the streets when we went out. i had never seen so many people on the sidewalks of...anywhere, really, who were in costume simply for the fact of the holiday and a saturday. the entire city all dressed up and, it seemed for the most part, with nowhere in particular to go. so they went places. to the places that were available to them to go. and unfortunately that meant a long lineup of costumes outside of "hot one inch action," which meant that we didn't get the opportunity to trade any limited edition buttons -- or even see which ones had been made for the event this year. true, it's what we'd been looking forward to throughout the long afternoon aftermath of our indulgence the night before (including throughout the overlong only one mop cleanup of the toast collective where the dance party had been), but we hadn't come prepared to wait in rain with the characters of "adventure time."

it's easily possible that the gallery had planned this year's action for halloween saturday in order to make itself a place to get dressed up and go. it's also possible that the event had just gotten big. since i'd last visited, the city had been dressing itself up. maybe dubiously, but indubitably. gastown had definitively annexed the part of the demilitarized zone to its east/southeast and solidified its borders around a moodily gleaming design and lifestyle district. with the bulwark of chinatown pushing back along the vector of the opposite diagonal, the dmz had been squeezed essentially flat, into a cross of sidewalks with the heart of its squirming, dispossessed body at the intersection of main and east hastings, its feet milling up and down both sides of the latter as the street made its way through strathcona. the safe injection site at 139 hastings street east marks the edge of the western front at the bottom of the downtown hill. even the rents at the remaining residence hotels must be skyrocketing (not to mention that their old neon would probably look fantastic against refurbished facades and that they were likely already the subject of speculation). the panhandlers who had made their way through the architects, diner-shoppers and post-hipster tattoo artists all the way up to water street were panhandling for fives. but anymore, it's not so much the social services crowd bleeding back against the redevelopment push as the reverse ingress of the well heeled and costumed onto the sidewalks of the main/hastings cross that illustrates the tide of the conflict. from in between the grocery cart pushers, the junkies and the fawn legged prostitutes in miniskirts: the unmistakable drag of the contemporary young professional.

i had been driven by it a number of times in the past but had never before made it inside of spartacus books, which is located at the bottom of the cross across from the avalon on hastings as it makes its way through strathcona. on this visit, however, i made a point of passing by on foot during decent weekday hours. and on that friday noon i was part of the ingress (indubitably if maybe also dubiously), coming as i was from near the east van cross at clark and great northern way snapping photos (although i never got around to getting a photo of the cross itself). the non-profit, volunteer staffed store has a surprisingly large selection of journals for its size, many of them (of course) canadian and many of them (of course) with an obvious leftward lean. but there are poetry and fiction journals too. that friday, the staff was reorganizing the bookshelves, but i still found a used copy of the psychogeography collection edited by will self for under eleven dollars. inexpensive enough, yes, but too big and too heavy to have to carry around all day and then later have to pack with all the others and carry around for the rest of my trip. so i bought a magnet and a button as souvenirs, the button a bit of a crossword puzzle showing the words "mend," "melee" and "vneck." something for my lapel for the weekend, and good thing, since we wouldn't be waiting in the rain for the one inch action the next night.

afterward i walked through strathcona and onto main street from behind the train station, then up the hill to spend the rest of my afternoon looking for something signature secondhand that would be all the more special for my having not bought it in the states. from past experience i'd considered c'est la vie to be my best bet, but the woman there didn't seem to want anything to do with customers that day. luckily, i'd already found a vintage tote at woo when i got there and didn't feel at all put out by her inattentiveness. anyway, there wasn't a thing in the scaled back men's section that i wanted. plus, i needed to stop...although that didn't stop me from getting something else from the fancy thrift store on cordova when i'd made it back down the hill and into gastown. mercifully, my bandmate confirmed the advisability of the purchase when i met her back at the flower shop. an old piano key belt was definitely something that someone in our group would wear (offstage). we'd just been talking about the development of our new project the previous afternoon as we were making deliveries in yaletown and on granville island. rosehip & wax flower was a serious group about unserious shit. or something in between that and the other way around. unsarcastic songs about the bitterness of first world problems. "it's the sherry again." that was going to be the hit.

 

but sorry. it's the sherry again (or the warm lucky beer chaser). my canadian person costume got an apathetic reception at the toast collective party, but people were drinking enough that at least one of them was willing to overlook my obviously american half-effort to compliment the elegance of my vomiting into the bushes before i headed face forward for my bandmate's couch. still, the general canadian eye was on other mid-fall american high jinks that morning -- or afternoon, in our case, when we finally made it to slickity jim's. the focus article in that saturday's globe and mail was on the election in ohio. "like us or not" was the message i decided to imbue, take and project, but as soon as i was finished with the article i drowned myself in the blurb about the forthcoming book of illustrations by rené gruau, which was set below an almost full page reproduction of an illustration (probably) from the book. dress-up!

we hadn't planned to dress for the occasion when we left for the button event later that evening, but by early the next morning my bandmate and i were changing. at a bus stop in front of the train station, just several blocks from east hastings on main, i was going barefoot. if there weren't any cabs to be had and we were going to have to walk, she wasn't going to have to walk in the heels of those boots. so she went as a clown in my shoes, and i went as a survivor of the zombie/"adventure time"/young professional apocalypse happening on the streets around us, stumbling and laughing through another end of the world. then our third, dressed in a toned down version of the train robber's getup that he'd worn the night before, ran off to steal us the cab with its top light on that was headed into the parking lot of the station across the street. and none too soon. in the short span of the walk to where the robber was holding the car, i knew that i would have had a difficult time making it back to mclean in my costume.

the cab that took me back to the station five hours later had been on duty since just after we'd gone to bed. the underage parties, he told me to my surprise, were the worst. and the driver had another eight hours to go on his shift. i didn't have much time before i needed to catch my bus back to seattle, but i wanted the coffee. so i left the station parking lot and went across the street to the tim hortons on terminal way. give me: coffee. two sugars, two creams. i'd saved just enough of my remaining cash after tipping the cabbie. i should have gotten that book at the radical bookstore, but i really didn't want to carry it. that morning, my backpack was especially heavy, and i had another bag waiting in portland -- plus whatever i added to the load once i got there. so i crammed my great white guilt into my new vintage tote bag and doubled down on my double double. there was room in the tote because i hadn't made it to the cbc shop. and that was fine, i thought, really a very petty worry; that and the customs officer at the border was going to give me trouble as i was.

    

...CONTINUED

my train was late in arriving at king street station, and i wanted a coffee. i'd been late arriving at union station in portland myself and hadn't had time to get back to courier like i'd planned. the beginnings of a sore throat had helped me excuse sleeping in. because, anyway, i had already repacked. when, however, my train arrived late at king street station, i did want that coffee. the zeitgeist! and a (new?) roaster by that name just down the street. and then didn't force me to wait for a pour over. still, with the train delay and the detour i took to walk my coffee around the vicinity of pioneer square, i didn't board my bus until five. i should have gone directly to the transit mall from the platform, but i made my excuses to myself again and imposed. the good lady was waiting for me across the lake.

it wasn't until almost half past six that i dropped my bag in her hall. i'd imposed again after getting off the bus and asked to be excused to the restroom at the public library near the parking garage. hail mara, ever so full of grace. and after my bag was down she let me take the time to change, too, even though our canceled then remade reservation was for almost just then. but it would have taken even more time to cook. plus, we'd already re-excused ourselves the indulgence of the restaurant in the car, and as soon as she was home she was on the phone getting us back our table. time was short, but we wanted to enjoy each other within the limits of it that we had, so we didn't rush. i hadn't yet seen the house and took another extra moment after changing to take in the living room while she attended some work that had been kept waiting while i'd made her wait. above the birthday couch in the living room there's a photograph of me. i'm kissing her husband.

at dinner, i didn't join her in a prosecco apertif. the beginnings of a sore throat, i told her. but maybe i could get her sick, and then she could keep up with the escape by calling in the next week. and say (she said) that i think i caught something while i was having dinner with the man who wasn't my husband? so when our server came back before serving us our dessert to ask if we were celebrating any special occasion (she'd recognized my date but hadn't been able to locate her customer history), i made sure make my meaning clear in my response: she was married to another man. a smile from the greener grass on the other side of the table. so maybe we could have a candle or something to celebrate her husband. her husband who was doing a stint abroad.

between the prosecco and dessert there was food. i liked it. it was very likely very very good. the gay date in the corner looked to be of the sort that only went to restaurants with food like that. but what i liked better was that it lasted. the courses, which i could still enumerate but will say that i can't, whichever they all were, the fact of the food just helped us take our time, which was short, but which we were able to savor by drawing out dinner. with dessert we had coffee, like we'd used to. but this time we had decaf, because even though time was short we needed some of it to sleep. and at that point i lapsed for a moment and remembered that night at nopa. after dinner i'd had coffee, but he had opted for tea. my sore throat hadn't been beginning yet, so we'd both had a drink. it would have been nicer to have been less distracted over that meal, but i didn't let that thought distract me for long. she wouldn't have minded me sharing my thoughts, but i'd been in the middle of trying to share a different story. it's a good story, but sometimes it's nice not to have to live it alone. so we savored our decaf over some dumb shit that was just our wanting to savor our decaf. maybe we were quiet, but i think that we talked. talked quietly, maybe. (that's some dumb shit.) but we did whatever we did and drew it out until it was time -- not yet out of time -- for her to take me with her home. the night i spent, i'll tell the story, with the most beautiful woman in seattle. and in the morning, i woke up early, packed, picked up, and just missed the bus i should have taken if i wanted to get coffee before getting back to the station.
  

ANOTHER SUITCASE IN ANOTHER HALL

sans purses, packed for maximum efficiency. the white of my blaq backpack looks grubby even in the worst light. it hasn't been to the shower in a while. and it would feel like too much of an imposition to use his body wash on my bag. but by the end of it, the smell of every man jack in the bathroom that fights for attention with the smell of the bedroom on the other side of the hall will be my smell, too. (i won't impose myself on the more expensive shampoo.) my plain, grey travel sweatshirt (which i've become convinced is the mark of fine style this fall) smells like the combination of that dolce & gabbana (the one that reminds me of the dkny i wore in tokyo) and of jo malone orange blossoms, which i've alternated rubbing under the arms and around the collar of the shirt before each of my arrivals and departures. it must be really grubby too, but that doesn't much show away from the pilling that's happening where my backpack rubs it just above my ass. when, on monday morning, two nights after arriving, i first open my notebook to note some things about the weekend, the first thing i write is about the man at madrone on divisadero who was the only person really listening to the tired old new folk duo on the stag, but doing it dressed in my same fall styleway. his beard was shorter, his glasses blacker and his sweatshirt baggier, but he definitely could have passed. we'd gone to the bar to wait for our regular mezzanine table at nopa to open up. we needed hamburgers, and we could wait at madrone, but we weren't going to wait until the late night menu went on offer at zuny. then i write about how i'm wondering why that guy at the bar made my first note, ahead of our drive across the golden gate to marin at four on sunday morning or our ride along the east bay trail later that day...or even our date at the restaurant that night. or ahead of the mugging that we'd avoided on our way to breakfast that morning by just scowling and walking through those three guys in ski masks on hyde street between geary and bush. what fear or displaced priority was it that had me noting that other, almost insignificant man first? on satruday night, i'd happily danced with his friend in her living room at her husband's birthday party; and as he'd said at the donut shop after we'd driven back to the city from the bridge, we must have struck the city as quite the figure in tandem that whole night long (or had, that night, in common parlance, looked undeniably good in pants). all of this true. and after finally visiting city lights and finding the door of the center for the art of translation forestallingly closed (i left the building by the stairway and never signed out at reception), i had some time to think. hard knox. on 3rd. but that's not actually true. i brought him coffee and cookies from piccino first. (they were out of the flower-less orange cake.) then i went to happy hour lunch. time to think. but that's not actually true. i wrote some postcards, too, so my reflection might not have been as deeply probing as it should have been. or at least not inwardly. but after we'd taken the muni away from the only place to be in san francisco (according to travel + leisure) and back to where we'd started (and left off the first time); after our parisian goodbye against the rails; and after the second train ride between the city and the airport that i'd had to pay for as a result of my leaving my clipper card in the wallet i'd left in portland, my airline had the grace to delay my flight and extend me some time. which i used to do a bit of work. and to eat, because the airline had given me a food voucher. to distract myself, like the french guy next to me on the plane from lax who only took his attention away from the video playlist on his phone for heavy breathing, frantic forehead tapping and happily delivered reassurances from me as we'd landed at sfo. (i think he'd thought we were headed into the bay.) get back to work. come back to san francisco? fly, for the moment (and perhaps symbolically), back to portland. it was too late for the train by the time we arrived, so i had the airline write me another voucher for ground transportation. the taxi ride would be at least fifty dollars, i said, and the somewhat welcome delay had nonetheless not been my fault. as it turned out, it was $44.50 for the nearly seventeen miles, plus the one single i had for a tip, which i gave to the rose city driver with my apologies and in exchange for his reassurance that the airline would make sure he got paid. i needed to do the same. had i thought ahead to check the status of my flight before i'd gotten onto the train, i might have been able to stay in the city for another dinner. but there weren't vouchers for that. the time would have been borrowed as it was. it's no big deal, i told the driver, you really can just let me off here. i can find the rest of the way to bed on my own.

LALALANDIA; or, WHO THE HELL IS CARRIE BROWNSTEIN, part 2

it was a good thing that we didn’t run into each other during the couple of days i spent in portland between when the bus brought me back up from the lawless wilds and fire dangers of  josephine county and when i flew south a few days later. i made the decision to race that sunday in large part because it was sure to keep me out of harm’s way for the day in rainier. i did, however, flirt with potential disaster the next day in choosing the course of my ride, but lucky for the both of us -- and probably for the rest of the city -- the james john café is closed on mondays, and so i couldn’t stop to keep procrastinating there, even though i was having my flat fixed at the bike shop down the street. tuesday i either holed myself up in order to get back to work, or didn’t and did my best to get myself away from all of it and forget. needless to say i was happy to put and end to all of the panicked apprehension on wednesday morning by just switching her places. she could have the overdone (over and done) city that the aughts had essentially done for her so that all she had to do was show up and do it over. i was going to los angeles. it was sunny there. and hot, too, when i left the airport and stood in line for the parking lot c/city buses shuttle. by the time i got to silver lake where my big shot l.a. friend was waiting for me it had taken me more time to get between there and the aiport on the buses than it had to fly from portland. but i was enterprising and i’d already contacted a composer. i asked him if he could write me a song about a sweaty guy full of too much coffee on a two hour bus ride through culver city. of course, he said, so then i followed up with a question intended to confirm that he was famous, and he said seemed to be saying that he was working on it. (and i would have liked to have heard that song, too.) then he came back, with a rejoinder. and of course i was. the song was for my show, which was bound to be super popular because it was about me coming to l.a. and getting famous, so it was pretty much just an ifc serial comedy version of that new ben affleck movie, and there were already a million billboards up for that. it was also about a guy who goes to hollywood thinking that the idea of starry eyed midwestern kids moving to l.a. to make it in hollywood was just a popular myth that had been made up in hollywood. it was also about a guy who goes to hollywood and finds out that scientology was, apparently, a thing, and one of the episodes of the show centers a hilarious story that a starry eyed midwestern kid tells at a party about how he got mixed up and showed up to the church celebrity center in nothing but a pair of those mormon underwear hoping to ingratiate himself to some kind of kinky casting couch. but the thing is that it worked because that musical about the mormons was having such a great run at the pantages. also, guess what? someone had incepted me with the whole idea, and another one of the episodes would be about how the show was fake but the mission was real. meta-irony, like the bourgeois pig and the trashcan and all of the broke people faking it under the auspice of assumptions on the strip in franklin village -- only, like i said, the ifc version. could he write that song? but then i was on the strip and forgot about the soundtrack because there’s a sudden plot twist when the guy on the franklin strip selling the two principal characters a couple of last call cigarettes tells them that, yes, he will take a dollar because he’s more careful now about overdrafting his checking account. you see, his dad is a big money guy, and his brother does something with hedge funds. everyone watching will laugh when they find out that being sarcastically ironically poor is the new drunk (had been the new rich had been the new gay). in that episode, i tell the guy that the conversation is going to be in my show and he tells me that now i’m acting (which, in the show, the character playing me will be). the guy tells me that he actually has a script being looked at by someone that knows his dad, who is a big money guy, and his friend asks me in french if i can speak that. (not even on the show, i tell her.) but then everyone drops their lines because someone breaks a glass. cut. we should just shoot the episode where the jaded redhead bombshell is telling the story about when she rolled over in bed and crushed daddy’s cognac glass with her ass. then he kept drinking. there’s another episode in which i’m thinking about throwing it all in until an inopportune cloudy afternoon (another bus song) turns into an opportunity to walk across a deserted venice beach and frolic like a giddy toddler in a pacific ocean that i have entirely to myself. what? my show, i tell her. the french speaking oe. it’s kind of like that one that carrie brownstein does about portland, except that the overdoneness is exactly the point it’s making. so it’s actually eternally timely. or it can maybe ride some coattails and be the smart kid series for the people who live in portland and can’t stand that other show and won’t see the new ben affleck movie. or maybe it's just "girls" in franklin village. i don't fucking know. “but who the hell is carrie brownstein?” she asks me. um, duh. she’s a character in my show.

THE OREGONIAN FAMILY ROBINSON; or, FORT FREEDOMLAND: MARRIAGE OF NOT SO OPPOSITES

it was with trepidation that they headed southwest on the 199 toward the turnoff for takilma happy camp and the shooting spot...well, he was trepidatious as he was being driven, but she, the experienced shot, was probably just driving...although both caroline and christopher were proud to have announced the marriage of irony and barbeque sauce a short while earlier as they passed the restaurant advertising sushi, bbq and family fun. (although they had also passed.) and after he'd killed a can from...the fifties?...with a rifle from 1911 (and then sniped that elusive bottle on a fluke with the first of three test shots from the nazi gun they'd borrowed from ephysema tom), they found another can in the shrubs while they were picking up their spent rounds, alive and unopened but recalescent from the indian summer sun, and they stopped at the kerby mart before going back to the picnic table at the fort so that they could toast the marriage of hamm's and hot coors. the marriage of toplessness and hard labor, which had been scheduled for earlier in the day had been not so unceremoniously delayed because of the shooting expedition (and then further because of all the toasting), but caroline and christopher were proud to announce that it was tentatively rescheduled for the following morning. you want some? get some at got somes. what they didn't have was that coveted small town signature sweatshirt, because caroline must have thrifted all of cave junction fresh out. not at get somes, but christopher did manage a las vegas rodeo tee from one of the other stores, and in the light of the lantern, the saddle in the middle of the print didn't look too different from a diagram of the female reproductive system. in gold. and they laughed as they finished the next round of hamm's (recalling the thirty from canada and the thirty-six in the photograph from spain), proud to announce the marriage of outdoor urination and home cooking. it might not have seemed possible after those first two nights and days, but the spirit of camaraderie that floated with the smoke in the lantern light that third night was even more intoxicating than it had been when caroline and christopher had proudly announced the marriage of cat tattoos and illegal fire pits. when the shirt came off for the wood chopping on the morning of day number four, however, his tattoo had been, in the meantime, rubbed off or faded; but it was nonetheless with pride that caroline and christopher (she still in her shirt) announced the marriage of precious moments and filthy hands (but not of the filthy hands to the precious moments figures that they stole from aunt judy's junk store in morristown, tennessee all those years ago). everyone in attendance smiled and wished the couple well, and the light of their benefactions shone all the way down from the army tent on the slope at the back of the freedomlands to the reception offices in the airstream at the entrance to the fort at the bottom of the hill.

when anything with sirens tears past the kerby mart and through cave junction southwest down the 199, everyone within earshot looks up and goose necks. and the brotarians who hold their daily afternoon meeting on the patio of dos gringos are anything but the exception. the sheriff's building in cave junction is empty, and when it isn't raining, the cruiser in grants pass is usually sitting under a layer of dust. the residents of josephine county don't want to pay the gas. the situation might be different on the other side of the ridge in jackson county, in applegate where the mountain homos have their man camp, in the hot springs around ashland, but for the length of the 199 to the california border, the law is just the mountain man itself. or that's how they'd like it. and they like you. the law of the mountain man is inclusive. it passes the nazi sniper rifle, and it doesn't give a second thought to caroline leaving the truck to walk in the opposite direction of get somes and buy ammunition at the store on the other side of the parking lot. the mountain homos from the man camp on the other side of the ridge are welcome too. (it's a shame that we hadn't more closely watched the weather so that we could have organized a river swim.) and there i was in the middle of it, an esteemed friend of fort freedomland, lost in a place called america, where i could be a mountain man too. so i ventured a joke. the biker walks into the place with an alligator under his arm. he walks up to the bar and plops his dick out on it. then he sets the alligator down, and it bites down hard on his dick. after about twenty seconds, the biker pokes the alligator in the eye, it opens its mouth, and he puts it back under his arm. then he asks the bar if there's any one there man enough to give that a try. and i say that i will, i told them, just so long as he doesn't poke me in the eye. then i proceed, without a trace of trepidation.

GOODBYE COLUMBUS; or, PORTLAND IS BURNING, ALL OVER AGAIN

in the men's bathroom at the tip top lounge there's a photo. and it's screwed to the wall. i know because i'd thought about trying to take it at least once, on the occasion of my next visit to the bat after none of the photos of the leveque tower in the archives of the ohio historical center had been that one that i'd wanted. funny thing, though, that i'd forgotten about that photo until i saw it again on the wall of the living room of a friend. the framed digital copy that my mother had somehow produced for me to warm the old house, and that i had given to that friend of mine on the occasion of my leaving. and funny thing that i'd re-encountered that photo -- which shows a man in hat and suit with coat and briefcase in hand walking away from the camera across the broad street bridge toward the tower -- on columbus day, having myself recently re-departed from columbus. i don't know how the bridge looked back in the fifties (sixties?) when that photo was taken, and the photo doesn't give much indication. today, however -- or at least as of last month -- it's decorated at intervals with bronze plaques. "por castilla y por león, nuevo mundo halló colón," just a couple of blocks west of where the statue of christopher columbus stands in front of columbus city hall and a few more from where that dubiously conceived bicentennial public art project announces that to columbus the man himself had never come. but today, his day was recognized even in the rose city. and what do we have here? a confoundingly boring gallery reception for the wedding of two former ravers. downtown, later, dead on a saturday night. a revisit of the clyde that left us wanting more...although not in a way that would take us back. and then, the afternoon after, none of the stars that we'd expected to see at the season opener (although the moon rose early). old friendships, however, would seem to die hard, and the free pints that they afforded me on my columbus day rounds were indescribably appreciated after my first weekend back in the saddle, a saddle which, it warrants mention, should definitely have been ridden in padded shorts. but what of seville, and the perpetuation of the cult of columbus there? we're still awaiting the news. but in the meantime it seems clear: you really can't ever go home again, even if the neon sign that i gave to that same friend when i left the last time is blaring a hopeful declaration to the contrary over the dinner table. it's about time that i read that story by philip roth. "goodbye columbus." not that i think it has anything especially pertinent to say about our particular situation, but before this blog left portland the last time, i think i remember it having something to do with books. and whether we like it or not, the author might be about to win the prize. to the future. and to the possibility that the beers might still be free.

MR. CHRISTOPHER

mr. christopher said that he would make the sandwiches himself. for his mother had her work cut out for her. the grandchildren had gone off their hinges; their parents were coming. and then, thought christopher, what a morning -- fresh as if issued to children on a beach. what a lark! what a plunge! for so it had always seemed to him, when, with a little squeak of those shaky hinges, which he could hear now, he had discovered the cucumbers and the cream cheese and plunged at the crust of the bread with the window drawing his senses out into the open air. how fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a boy of thirty-one as he was then) solemn, feeling as he did, standing there at the open window, that something portentous was about to happen; looking at the kitchen, at the trees outside with the fog winding off them and the squirrels darting, changing direction; standing and looking until his sister said, “musing among the vegetables?” -- was that it? -- “i prefer men to zucchini” -- was that it? she must have said it at breakfast one morning when he had gone out onto the patio -- his sister. she would be back from the boondocks one of these days, next year or the one after, he forgot which, for her letters were awfully cryptic; it was her sayings one remembered; her eyes, her stilettos, her smile, her grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished -- how strange it was! -- a few sayings like this about zucchini.

and a picnic, off season, tea sandwiches, cake and sparkling wine. he was tipsy before they got there, and all the better for the color of the light, under which, for the fact of what the morning had given way to, the belatedness appeared well worth the wait.

what is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. what is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement? it is i, he said. for there he was.

WAY TO GO OHIO, part 2

"columbus never came here, but when the city sleeps, what our dreamers discover is that we have always created our own collective joke," it continues. en garde, columbus. "et songe bien, oui, songe en combattant." i'm in on it. we'll see where it goes.