2010 ALLEGORY IN REVIEW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HOW TO TAKE A FALL

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

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

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

ooo-hh. your shoulder hurts now.

ON THE FIFTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS

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

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

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

ON THE THIRD DAY OF CHRISTMAS

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

we'll talk at the party.

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

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

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

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

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

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

STREETS OF GHOSTS (OF CHRISTMAS PAST)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CUSTOMS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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