ON ETIQUETTE; or, GOODBYE PDX! (ONCE MORE WITH FEELING)

really? the canadian dollar is stronger than ours? we'll definitely be filling the trunk at duty free before crossing the border, and the wine gums we bring back with us will be worth their weight in coffee beans -- word is that stumptown goes for twenty dollars a pound in new york.

my travel companion phoned this morning to say that she didn't think she'd have time to find me and give me the cash she wanted exchanged. (it's important to have a security detail that lives off the grid.) she asked if i'd just change a bit more than i'd planned to take for myself so that she could buy it from me later. "you just want two-hundred worth, then?" aren't words that should be spoken loudly over my work line. the conversation was harmless, sure, but it's silly to attract unnecessary attention. no one knows we're running those wine gums.

meet us at the drop off, vancouver.

THE NEW TRANSAMERICA: STILL FIGHTING FOR A BETTER WORLD

words without borders recently posted a new dispatch in a series "on reviewing translations," this one by translator, editor and reviewer tess lewis. in addition allying herself with the large minority of people who understand that, "Taking The New York Times Book Review to task for its neglect of translations is a regular (and vital) sport in the literary blogosphere," lewis also indicts careless reviewers of translations for their disservice to the craft of translating (and of reviewing) and proposes a standard for future reviews:

Important translations are so rarely reviewed at the length they deserve, that each missed opportunity for an authoritative piece is a double shame. Every translation is inevitably flawed, yet its weaknesses, like its strengths, can be illuminating as long as the reviewers are held to high enough standards. As a start, I propose one simple, inviolable rule: if you’re going to pass judgment on a translation, whether in one word or several paragraphs, whether laudatory or condemning, whether or not you know the original language, you should provide evidence to support that judgment.

although we read most of the books we've treated at this blog in their original languages, nearly all of our writing on books for other outlets (it exists!) has been on translations. we're not sure whether any of those translations have been of the "important" class mentioned in lewis' admonition -- and wonder what justifies her own judgment there. still, because of our fear of justified reprisal by authorities like lewis, we don't usually pass judgment on the quality of translations from a languages we don't know, but in some instances, one or another characteristics of a translation's language is marked (or grating) enough to warrant discussion. we wonder if this paragraph, excerpted from one of our columns at bookslut, would garner lewis' approval.

The Scale of Maps is heavy on metaphor. Gopegui employs it not just as a technique of language (e.g., "In a hotel room, on an unfamiliar table, I will draw the maps and give the final orders to an exiled band of guerillas in rebellion that is none other than myself") but also as a larger structural device that draws the borders of her central theme, what you might call a quantum mechanico-geographic repositioning of reality and imagination (e.g., "I'm a small man, but I have the feeling that you picture me within an even smaller scale, which makes me appear quite large. Couldn't you shift scales? Couldn't you enlarge your scale until, in your memory, I was the point that designates a town on a tiny map...?" or, "only when a woman is with me can I say that she exists, either as a wave or a particle. Thus all love is adulterous and all adulterous love is Schrödinger's cat, neither dead nor alive as long as we don't possess the woman"). Perhaps that's why Mark Schafer's translation seemed so plodding for the first half of the book. Was the figurative language so generally obtuse in Spanish? Was Schafer's just clumsy prose, or was The Scale of Maps a book that simply demanded to be experienced (and permitted) outside of "natural" language? Or, perhaps it wasn't the translator that found his stride as he worked through the book but the reader. Culling the first several dozen pages for a phrase about a mandarin that struck me as particularly awkward, I find the writing much easier going than on my first time through.

is self-deprecation sufficient evidence to support a judgment? maybe not. but just for good measure: words without borders had also recently posted a link to the list of finalists for the 2011 best translated book award (ay ay ay) at "three percent." we haven't read a single one.

GOODBYE PDX, LINGERING MEMORIES

the "salon daily" email that was still lingering in the inbox of my tertiary email account advertised an article on the ten most segregated urban areas in america, and i finally opted not to delete it and click through, sure that portland would have made the top ten -- and because i'm still waffling on the usefulness of purchasing one of those new digital subscriptions to nytimes.com. (new york, incidentally, is the second most segregated urban area in the country.)

portland, however, was nowhere on the list. granted, i wasn't at all put off by that result -- it was encouraging, really -- but i was very certainly surprised. portland has a not so illustrious history of racial discrimination and housing segregation, as well as a contemporary reputation as one of america's whitest cities. in fact, it's possible that portland is still so white that the maps that accompanied the salon.com article wouldn't have shown much contrast from one section of the metropolitan area to another, simply because no section isn't majority white -- and nearly all of them to an extreme degree.

lucky for lazy statisticians like me (i briefly visited censusscope.org, but couldn't find any easy to read city maps or ranking for cities outside of the top ten), the "oregon housing blog" recently ran a post on metro area residential segregation data in the northwest. according to that post, although white-hispanic/hispanic-white segregation in portland stayed roughly the same from 2000 to 2010 (dissimilarity dropped from 34.3 to 34.2), white-black/black-white segregation fell significantly over the same period (from a dissimilarity of 47.4 to 40.9).* maybe we're not so hypocritically intolerant as we thought. or if not, at least we're getting better. it's always difficult to gauge the relative awfulness of our immediate situation with what's going on outside of our progressive bubble. it's probably also true that, if it's not our generally overwhelming whiteness, our relative in-dissimilarity as compared to other educated, progressive-leaning metropolitan areas like chicago, new york and philadelphia is a reflection of our relative lack of money. the disparities of racial underclassing would seem to be less apparent where the really wealthy are fewer. (while similarly white, seattle is, probably by force of that argument, more segregated than portland.)

nonetheless, we're on an undeniable upswing of development and urban beautification. oregon was well ahead of the curve on cleaning up its meth house problem by requiring prescriptions for drugs containing pseudoephedrine. mississippi followed us last year. bills that would enact similar requirements were recently defeated in arkansas, kansas, kentucky and west virginia, but others have so far withstood attacks from the pharmaceutical industry in several other states (i'd read that article in the times already, so i don't think that clicking back to it today will count against my monthly nonsubscriber limit). portland, or: first in meth no longer! follow us, nation, unto the more mildly segregated future of sustainable urban development!

longtime residents love to lament how the city has changed over the last decade, but maybe there was something to the whole hipster thing after all.

*i'm not exactly sure what calculations are made to determine dissimilarities or in what units we should imagine the numbers, but the lower the number, the less segregated. by comparison, new york's overall dissimilarity was listed at salon.com as being at 78.04.

GOODBYE PDX, CONTINUED

it's us this time, but only temporarily -- and only possibly for keeps. a portland delegation will be traveling to vancouver, british columbia this weekend for the convening of a planning commission on the future of the republic of cascadia. several of the canadian commissars are shortly to be incapacitated by an important property sale, and our meeting, originally slated for the summer, needed to be quickly rescheduled for before may. in addition, none of cameron's, daedalus or st. john's booksellers have come through on a used copy of mercè rodoreda's death in spring (nor did a certain friend follow through on passing along his library copy), and our only option now for finding the book on a shelf seems to be to look outside the stops on our regular bookstore tour. (powells.com now lists a new copy available at w burnside, but knowing it's going to be there ruins the thrill of coming across it after just showing up at the store -- and that's what we've been at for these past two weeks.) in any case, the commission has business at solder and sons, and that's not too far from the used book mecca at w pender and richard sts, which is itself only a block from finch's. the edibles there are almost as appealing as the staff. maybe we'll even venture into the bangtown hair salon. the staff might even be waiting for rides back home from portland. from looking at them through the street front windows last time, we'd guess they've all been on a wait list for some serious work at atlas tattoo on albina. and that's not far from the apartment. if you're willing to squeeze, kids, we can fit three more.

GOODBYE PDX

this city couldn't be what it is without a constant drip of new blood (it's the essence of a creative city), but, accordingly, the city also has to accept that sometimes existing positions need to be swapped out: thriving in the culture trade means being willing to trade your own for the betterment of culture, which in turn means accepting an occasional exodus to new york, los angeles and san francisco -- and to who knows where for the kids that decide to go nomadic. those of us who stay are immediately bitter but ultimately contented, smug in the knowledge that the new friends of our old ones still think that the grass is greener here.

staying or going, every one of us can at least take solace in the feting of each going away, and last night it so happened that an important going away was feted, which meant, in the not so talked about beginning (not so many people knew), a deeply begrudging jostling for real estate, but after that the excitement and intoxication of a sale, a series of shows and a party. black licorice made her debut. before that, paintings of horses. during all of it, kombucha cocktails and quietly guarded bottles of (individually ported) beer. portland, or: love is a place.

but then (and how to not make this sappy?), the cover band. wait, though, there was a purple and gold "optimists" jersey that came downstairs to headquarters in the fourth wave of goods. and then (but very possibly during), the cover band. whether from the lingering spirit of past performances or the end of the vodka in the kitchen, the attic smelled faintly of, well, it's the northwest. better: it's portland. the all lady cover band came on (it was kind of an all lady party, but they happen to be our favorites), and they were note for note on every fleetwood mac song they did. m(organ).c(olleen). dance it out. but "heart of gold"? and really? "fast car"? i only went downstairs to avail myself of the light in the bathroom, but the crying in the hallway during that number was unmistakable.

you are this city, lady. goodbye, portland.

ON RELATIONSHIPS; or, FULL OF THE JOYS OF SPRING

it's possible that it's only because of the onset of spring and the accordant spike in the population's collective libido. there are the natural requirements of the season. it's more likely, however, that it's just that time in the relationship when it's necessary to put in the extra energy required to sustain the magic or just to call it quits in the interest of saving time and sanity -- not to mention alimony and broken crystal. i realized yesterday that it's been over ten months with the blog, almost a year -- which is pushing the shelf life of any honestly passionate relationship -- and that the situation had gotten noticeably stale, albeit gradually and imperceptibly until i happened to look back and take stock of the whole. (a shopper in vancouver -- or, who knows, maybe someone planning a visit -- found his way to the vancity shopping live blog from last summer.)

isn't that how it goes? eleven months later and you hardly know how you got here. this isn't not what you want. definitely not. how could it be? you didn't have much of an idea of what you wanted when you got involved in the first place. it was so fun and exciting, and that was enough for then. and your friends liked him. and through him you made new ones. what more could you want? except maybe to have it with someone else, or to discover yourself again in the relief of being alone. just thoughts. not that what we have is bad, but something has to be done about that staleness.

by what i may come to regret as a serious and lamentable momentary lapse in judgment (or maybe i've actually done some growing), i've decided that i want to make it work. the going won't be as easy as it was as the summer honeymoon transitioned to international adventures and then the holidays, but resigning myself to a different kind of progress is, from what information i can gather from my observations, the essence of a "working" relationship. we'll definitely have to address the issue of monogamy and infidelities. so far, i've only flirted with the idea of another blog, but, to be honest, it seems simpler and more fulfilling to have our desires met where they'll be received most enthusiastically. we have different needs. just because certain of mine are being satisfied elsewhere doesn't mean we're any less important to each other. like i said, i've only flirted, but it's not a bit ironic that the other blog is called "sex and compromise" (thanks, michael).

i also recognize that part of making it work is moving past old hangups. having been together long enough to look back and see that things aren't as easy as they we're in the beginning means having enough to look back on to know what didn't work, which then means forgiving, and asking for forgiveness, too. this can't just be about me. and wouldn't you know? salon.com's laura miller recently wrote an encouraging article/book review on "a cure for writer's block." she has some good things to say, and she's not herself a bad writer, either. my beef, now all but forgotten, was just the peacocking of a self-conscious new love. i'm sorry ms. miller, the world to me then was a different place. we're much less hyperlinked here now, and hopefully a little more thoughtful.

plus, she gives me an easy out (as helpful suggestion), both for today and for through the inevitable foibles of this relationship in progress: "some of the most famously 'blocked' writers, such as samuel taylor coleridge, wrote reams of stuff -- just not the stuff they thought they ought to be writing. it's amazing what you can get done when you believe you're shirking some other, more important enterprise." indeed. "that's what every blocked writer really needs: something more significant they should be doing instead, an earth-shaking, life-changing project you're stealing time from to work on this little [blog project]. or the great [blog project] you ought to be drafting while you knock off your memoir just for fun." you see? it's just that this thing we're doing has become so important to me. "sex and compromise" would actually bring us closer. no?

it can be confusing...but, then again, it's probably probably just the libido spike. pretty petty euphemisms are the joy of spring. i, however, am in it for the long haul -- with the stipulation that i might back out, remorseless, at any time. it's no use pretending otherwise, all of this is exactly why we fell in love. now if portland could just do us something about the constant rain.

HOW TO LOOK REALLY, EXCEPTIONALLY, IMPOSSIBLY GOOD IN PANTS

there's a part of it that comes naturally, naturally, but there's at least as much that needs to be learned -- in our cases, anyway. some people, of course, are different, but those are the instructors and timeless muses. before we looked so good in pants, there was a short-lived performance art group known affectionately (although not particularly known) as the metaphysical pet project, and its memory be damned if elizabeth taylor wasn't the godhead of its guiding pantheon. we've been through it all since then, mother courage. thanks for your help.

"the problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues." -elizabeth taylor