making christmas.

The Incarnation of Anita Floyd

Two years ago I was asked to write a Christmas piece for an online magazine. This is what I wrote. Merry Christmas.

The Incarnation of Anita Floyd

Trying to write something about Christmas makes me feel kind of cynical. Honestly what do I have to add to a holiday already saturated with tradition, stories, rhymes, hymns, marketing, and consumerism? Perhaps I should do the Christian thing and make a "Jesus is the reason for the season" type argument. I could condemn the outrageous sum of money that Americans spend during the month of December and with a righteous finger I could point to lofty theological tenets surrounding the doctrine of the incarnation. But I don't care to be the broken record. So maybe I will speak of family and friends, mistletoe, love, Love Actually, and the joy of finally getting that Red Ryder 200-shot Carbine Action Air Rifle. These, too, are all good, but I guess I just don't feel very passionate about them right now and I don't want to pretend to have something profound to say about them so screw it – I am going to tell you about Anita Floyd.

I never knew Anita Floyd. She was a beggar that I passed every morning on my way to the office. Anita would literally sit, all day long, on the same bench on Sixth Avenue between Alder and Washington in downtown Portland. Her classic line, delivered with an old, nasally voice, was "Spare some change?" and with this she would raise a little cup and smile with thin lips through a weathered face. Every time I walked by, I would either ignore her or simply tell her that I was sorry and that I didn't have and cash on me. It was an awkward exchange- at least for me it was. Some days I would even pretend that I was calling someone on my phone just to avoid acknowledging her all together. I thought that maybe if she noticed I was busy than she wouldn't ask me to spare some change. She still asked. I am a horrible person.

One morning, about a month ago, in the middle of a long, stressful work week, Anita lowered her cup as I approached, met my eyes with hers, smiled, and simply said "Good morning". I grinned and replied with the same and continued on my way. But as I moved down the wet sidewalk I felt different. There was something incredibly endearing about this beggar woman smiling and wishing me, with sincerity, a good morning. I actually thought about it a lot that day and I realized that, even though this woman was a simple beggar, she was probably the most consistent thing in my life for there was not a work day that went by that I didn't see her. After this I began to take notice. Anita would often have company with her on her bench: a homeless man, a businesswoman, a street security guard. All would be engaged with her in some sort of conversation. Many seemed to be venting about something and I noticed that Anita's body would be slightly turned
towards theirs', offering them her full attention. Her head would bob with empathy and with this I thought her to be a great listener. I started to think that maybe this woman was Jesus or something. At least she had she had a sort of softness that was compelling.

Two weeks ago, I decided I wanted to get Anita a Christmas present. I took my paycheck down to the bank with full intent of looping around to buy a coffee card at the Starbucks across from her bench. But, for the first time in my six months of working on Sixth Avenue, Anita was not there. Instead, flowers lay were she would have sat. Flowers,
cards, and notes all addressed to Anita Floyd. My beggar had died. I nearly cried. I was immediately regretful for never sitting down with her and telling her my story or perhaps listening to hers and I knew right then that I had taken her for granted – simply assuming that she would always be there. I looked at the flowers and all the cards and realized that this woman was obviously very special to a lot of people. I walked back to work, feeling somber and trying to figure out who this woman was.

This past Wednesday there was a memorial service held for Anita at her bench. I couldn't get away from work to attend and for this I am once again regretful. I read the sign on her bench days prior to the service and it stated that the local newspaper would be in attendance. I thought it strange that this woman's life was deemed worthy of a public memorial and media attention. Again I thought was that there must have been something truly wonderful about her. What sort of beggar, upon death, draws so many to bring flowers and cards in their memory? What sort of beggar causes businessmen to stop in the middle of a busy day to talk? Anita – Anita the beggar. And with this I am more convinced, in writing this now, that Anita was much more than a beggar. Anita was Jesus.

Anita Floyd is Christmas to me. For Christmas, this consumer lusted celebration of the incarnation of Christ, has once again become real to me thanks to Anita and her consistent panhandling grace. Furthermore she has taught me that the event that occurred two thousand some years ago is not an isolated one, but, rather, the incarnation of God is happening all around us everyday. And I fear that I miss it more often than not - that it is not only the Sunday school story of a baby in a manger that I know so well, but the beggar on Sixth Avenue. Therefore let us start looking, like wise men at the star, for laughter amongst children, wisdom in the elderly, and grace in the homeless for we may find that the Good News is guised in such. For me, Anita is proof that God is incredibly creative in the way he reveals himself to us. She is also evidence that the Kingdom of Heaven is radically different and that the "least of these" are truly "the greatest of these".

I wish that Anita would be at her bench tomorrow when I pass it on my way to work. I know that she would probably smile and say, "Merry Christmas".

For the Willamette Weekly's article on Anita please visit: http://www.giveguide.wweek.com/wwire/?p=6490

The perfect Christmas gift

misplaced landscapes

Constant rain births moss so
green it whispers,
"lick me, I'm toxic" as it shrink-wraps
bricks and ent-like forests. Then-truth twists
with now-reality until the big-sky
wheat fields become the fairy tales, myth behind
the moss curtain of memory. Was it
wheat or was it hay?

Dream walking,
each step sinking
and pulling. Salt waves
crash into teasings until fingers test
the waters. They brush wind-blown hair from
face, leaving a trace to be found by
a tongue wetting salted
lips, "wake up! this is the taste of water now," shakes
from a dream of back-floating lake
sunsets, eyes open to the cooling dusk, sound
water-muffled like the inside of seashells, sea
monsters just fingertips and heart-races away
until slow breaths drown them around
mermaid hair.

Orange haze of streetlights rises above
red-tipped steeples and
yellow incandescent windows saying,
“we are home, stay out.” Stay
out longer, lying in silent
blanketed white, cold hinting
through backs of thick-wrapped limbs held
still by the winter
snow. Moon spotlight
on this quiet bug captured
under black sky, body sinking
somewhere else.

An Alphabet of Thing I Would Probably Never Miss

My elbows fit inside your elbows.

Do you remember when we visited you in Utrecht?
It was summer,
but the sky dumped rain for five days.
I was on holiday
and certainly not prepared for the cold.
You lent me your
blue
corduroy
jacket
and later, let me keep it as a gift.

We lived with you in
your Dutch town,
your Dutch flat
with your Dutch cats.

Now I am somewhere else.
It is raining again.
Your
blue
corduroy
jacket
clings to my shoulders.
It still carries the shape of your shoulders

but you are not here.

a little dust

Still working on a Title (continued), part Two

“Son, you must atone for some things in your life. And when you know what these things are, don’t run from them like I did. You shrink until you become a shell of who you really are.” She gave me a sloppy toothless kiss on the cheek and then quickly exited into her overly air-conditioned house. From behind the closed door she whimpered, “And keep playing piano.” It sounded like she was either mid-yawn or trying to muffle the sob. I anchored my hand on the warm white-painted aluminum door. Her lips must have been close because I felt her sounds reverberate through the thin layers of metal that separated us. Her feet shuffled in a half-circle on the linoleum floor. I heard a slump against the door and the sound of clothes sliding downward against the other side. When I heard her begin to weep, I pulled my hand away from the door because I felt as though I had touched something that was off-limits. That sick feeling that I got when I was a little kid when I did something that I knew I wasn’t supposed to do hit my stomach and I wanted to run and hug somebody. But the city is lonely at twilight. I stepped back and the tiny carcasses of june beetles crackled under my sandals. Thousands of broken rainbows played off of their crushed emerald backs, each illuminated by the glare of the porch light. The stucco around her door was aged with layers of spider webs, dust. I walked home slowly and heat rose from the asphalt sponge beneath my feet.

 

That night I slept in my teenager bed while my adult feet hung off the edge. And when I dozed off in my teenager room, I wish I had my old teenager dreams. When I woke in dreamland, I was across the street from the gas station on the corner Panama and White lane. It was before the Wal-Mart and the Urner’s home appliance store and the AM/PM gas station and the In-N-Out burgers and the freeway. The hot night breeze hustled my face, sand grit coated my teeth. My bare chest was mauled by the small grains, a small dust bowl around my torso.  I was tired and hungry and needed to use the restroom. My toes clung to the sand beneath my feet. Each step brought the familiar swishing sound of corduroy pants. I looked down and saw my emerald green pants from childhood: either I had shrunk to fit them, or they grew.  In the distance was an old convenience store with massive pillars of neon light that shone upward creating a cathedral of light, a beacon in the night sky. I swished towards its, a small dust path following my footsteps.

Inside the non-chain, locally owned store, the ceiling soared heavenward. Rows of junk food, each thirty to fifty feet high lined the walls. The Dorito bags, Rold golds, Funions, Reese’s peanut butter cups, and overly heated hot dogs all crafted beautiful mosaics and patterns to adorn the walls. Founts of flavored Slurpees churned in the center of the store. 

I turned to my left and saw the cashier on the opposite end of the store. The register was elevated above the ground and stairs led up to the platform. Several dozen bic lighters resting on bottles of quick energy pill bottles illuminated the dais. When I approached, the clerks turned around and looked directly into my face. Each were dressed identically: clad in over-used work boots, blackened and glistening from oil, auto mechanic jumpsuits that were black, and a black nun’s headpiece. Their faces reminded me of the countless middle aged moms that I saw in Los Angeles: botoxed and emotionless from too much Paxil or Zoloft. The oil nuns floated from behind the cash register and formed a circle around me. Then, one knelt and crossed herself, wide-eyed. Others mumbled and pointed at my face and hands. 

My fingers met a slick substance when I brushed the hair from my forehead. I looked at my hand: it was blackish brown and smelled alkaline. The same substance was on both of my wrists. The nun-clerk who was bowed opened her prostrate eyes and proclaimed, “You have the oil-field stigmata! O, child, how blessed you are! You are anointed with the blood of the earth, the black gold from below, the riches of our valley.” The others murmured in agreement. They stood, then genuflected and bowed prostrate on the floor. 

I looked at them, greasy faced and was flooded by a deep sense of claustrophobia. From behind me, at the entrance, steely-blue moonlight shone into the store, casting my shadow upon the oil nuns. I turned to face it and squinted. Outside, a moonlit-blue halo surrounded an oil derrick. I glared back at the nuns, who were still lying on the the ground and then walked out of the store. 

I couldn’t take my gaze off of the blue light. The derrick was bigger than the ones I had normally seen and it was chrome. Its legs reflected the stars and its slowly moving head reflected the full moon when at the top of its rotation. I walked across the dusty soil and approached the base of the derrick. In its chrome legs, I saw the stigmata on my forehead, hands, and feet. I felt sick to my stomach and wanted to run. When I looked around, I saw the same thing in every direction: nothing. The mechanical beast continued to pump slowly. When the smell of metal and grease met my nose, I turned and vomited. The pumping slowed and the derrick stopped. The wind stopped. The blue light got brighter.

“You have been marked, small one.” It’s whisper was like the voice from my Speak ‘N Spell. “The city wants you here. I want you here.”

I felt sick to my stomach again. My mind collided with Virginia’s comment over dinner. 

The voice came to me again, in metallic, non-human, marked syllables. “I have marked you. I pump to keep you and all of this town’s inhabitants alive.”

Empowered by my desire to leave, I followed my impulse: I did what every child in my city has wanted to do, but couldn’t. I climbed the derrick. 

“Little one, you can’t do this.”

“Shut up, derrick.”

“I am holy and cannot be climbed upon.”

I found a good foothold and continued upward. 

“This is against the rules.”

I grunted and smiled because I could see over the top of the gas station. 

“Stop.”

I began to laugh because I felt like my Speak ‘N’ Spell was trying to berate me. Adrenaline pumped through my hands and fueled my ascent. The derrick began to slowly pump again, and the breeze began to blow. I stood balanced on its legs and waited for its head to bow. The moonlight cascaded from its chrome neck and shone in my face. I leaped onto its head and straddled its neck. Slowly, like dysfunctional father and his small child, I rode on its shoulders. At its peak, I looked down and saw our shadows projected on the cracked earth. 

“I don’t want to be marked.”

“You don’t have a choice, child.”

“I am not your child.” I interrupted the talking oil derrick.

It continued without emotion. “You and everyone in this city owe their life to me. I choose.” 

  I stopped to think. I heard the sound of a beetle walking on the dirt below, its shell crackling with each of its six steps. The barrenness of the desert scape began to convince me that nothing lay beyond the horizon. 

“You will stay.” It whispered.

I remembered the smell of the ocean. I tasted the frustration of five o’clock traffic on five lane freeways. I felt the weightlessness when the plane leaves the runway.

“There’s a flaw in your logic: I can move wherever I want. You can’t. You need us to believe in you.”

The metallic voice continued, “You have been covered by my blood.”

I touched the oil on my wrists and rubbed it between my thumb and forefinger. I wondered what decaying animals I pressed in my fingertips. 

“This dark blood is beautiful. But it is not yours.”

The light faded and the derrick grinded to a halt with its head near the ground. Its chrome faded into rust and black creosote. I hopped off and walked away from the base. Looking back, I saw just another weathered derrick. I took off my pants, and used my green corduroy to wipe off the oil marks from my forehead, wrists, and feet. Then, dropping my pants on the land, I ran, naked, into the wilderness beneath the moon. 

Melanie Brown

Youthful naivety of MacGyver’s ingenuity

preparationing.

I am trainwheeling myself to miss you,
talking myself into knowing I’ll soon likely
never see you again. too dramatic?
well, perhaps some someday should arrive
when we cross ragged paths again, and until
then your name shall be cross-stitched upon
the quilt of my heart. no no,
it is not the only name there, there are others,
you’ll be relieved to know. yet not many.
not many have lingered tall over me like you,
aimed a sharp toe arrowstraight at my jelly knees,
held a warm hand against the downy place where
necknape bends to meet a ringing skull. well what?
you talk too much, give yourself so freely
and I am nothing of the type. I’ll remember
this too: the way you traced my faults
in thick black ink, but never did circle them in red. no
emphasis in italics or lines running under as always
I have done. It is one thing to be worshipped
pure as Beatrice, another to be seen ugly guts inside out
and still soul-admired. I should award you a medal
for such valiance in friendship, a ribbon to pin to
your breast, right over the heart that sways to a rhythm
I could never quite guess. and it was never love—
no nothing like that. only
an imperfect understanding, a sixth-sense
certainty you’d catch me if these limbs launched
insurrection and finally broke free. after all, I tried
to play the safe one, wise one, grounded & deliberate;
though we both know it’s all lies told very badly. both
child and ancient hermit in your presence. and soon I’ll
no longer have chance to stand in your calm shadow, so
I’m teaching myself how to miss you, though it’s surely
nothing that can be found in books and books are all
I really can know. but. you know that too.

For Lori With Love And Applecores

Every day I walk to work and back. One point three miles there. One point three miles back.

I measure the miles in music. (Seven songs of normal length, three point five Broken Social Scenes or a whole spin through Best of the Lemonheads.)

One point three miles is a marathon in the morning. Stepping out on the meaner side of nine, my lungs seem smaller, neater, stuck together like two slices of stretch and seal. Of course my feet are a liability. I leave them behind me; one foot keeping time beneath the breakfast table, the second folded under my pillow with last night’s pajamas.

Every evening I wear a hat and eat an apple. It takes one point five songs to eat an average sized apple and another point five of a song carrying the core, before I arrive at the only rubbish bin on the Ballymoney Road.

Conveniently located between the People’s Park and the County Primary, this rubbish bin has eaten twenty three of my apples already this month. Using the calculator we keep under the counter at work, I have calculated a further one hundred and thirty odd apples before I can go home.

“What if they didn’t empty this bin?” I think one evening, “What if this bin just kept on eating my apples every day ‘til early August? What if, by Easter, a small mountain of apple cores- comparable to Slemish, or Tabor for those caught short of the Atlantic divide- has begun to edge it’s way towards the Park gate? What if there were apple trees growing from the pavement and small birds circling overhead, the smell of cider wafting all along the Ballymoney road? Wouldn’t it be brilliant? Wouldn’t it be a kind of blessed Jesus thing?” And for some reason it’s the sort of thought we both might think so this bin begins to remind me of you.

Every morning now and stronger in the evenings, I think of you when I pass the rubbish bin.

I’m sorry you’re not a fountain or even a post box. I’m sorry you smell like soda pop cans and juice boxes fermenting in the sun. And each time a parent- waiting for their red-headed offspring to come running from the school bell- stubs their cigarette on your head, it damn near breaks my heart.

Rest assured I think nothing but nice things when I look at this bin.

I think, “Gosh that girl could pass for French, especially in her apartment, the underground one with the sink and the keyboard perched on a dresser drawer.”

I think, “Elvis Costello is the king of the road and his best song by far is Alison.” I think you’ll probably agree. I hum a few bars as proof but it never sounds quite as wonderful outside your car.

I think, “That girl’s a black and white movie when she wears the fifties sundress.”

Last of all, late at night, I think, “When she speaks it’s like someone has taken the time to knit me a sweater; a nice sweater done by hand with honesty and a whole year of fragile thoughts bound into every stitch. And each time I go to the closet and choose this sweater over all my new sweaters- fashionable sweaters from the Red Light and expensive sweaters bought with Grandmother’s Christmas money- each time I chose her sweater, I never regret it. In fact, I feel a whole day younger than yesterday.”

These are things I think by your bin. Also I think about the things we’ll say ten months from now when you are no longer a bin or a mountain of sprouting apple cores but rather a full grown, window of a girl, waiting by the Burnside bridge.

I will not need to say, “Lord, I missed you most on Friday nights,” or “thank you a million thanks for the postcards and the shoes, the empty packets of Junior Mints and the plastic pony whom I have christened Sam Adams and carry with me daily, hoping we might one day ride into something approaching an adventure.” Oh no, we will say nothing which cannot be spelt in Scrabble tiles and then we will drink gin and tonics in short glasses and never mention the missing again.

Jan Carson

November 4, 2008

It’s the first truly cold night in autumn: November 4, 2008. Off in the distance you can hear the sparse sound of celebratory fireworks. It was quiet for most of the evening, as citizens were glued to their television sets, anxious in anticipation of the upcoming results. Then, almost in an instant, the world was different. Suddenly we were in a different time. From the moment it was final, a calm seemed to wash over this city, as nearly everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief. And since then it’s been quiet.

He loves me,
he loves me not,
he loves me,
he loves me not.

Does it really matter
when all the petals are on the ground?
They were pretty once.
They were soft on uncalloused fingertips.
They teased with a brilliant gaze before
I had to look away.
They left a slight perfume on my pillow on the way to the ground,
the things of beer and cigarettes
that are magical in the night
and mostly rise out of wet hair in the shower yet
always remind, always remind.
A touch of melancholy and a punch of memory,
right in the stomach where you never thought
petals could reach.
But they do, always do.

A couple petals fall and
it's a shame but there's nearly
a whole flower left.
Another falls and did I do the pulling or
did he or maybe it was never there.
One more and the emptiness
is full in its symmetry.
Focus on the foreground
and the holes don't go very far.
Another and another
until it comes full circle and I think He Loves Me Not
but then everything shakes away,
and I hear the echo of that last petal falling,
he loves you he loves you he loves you.

But he is gone
because I am
gone and the petals had to
fall.

A few half-brave
steps from the petals, a hand still
holds the wilting stem.
Proof it had been real once, proof
a centerpiece doesn’t bloom.
No thorns; just
bristles that leave
a rash on my cheek, my hand,
pink dots that won’t wash away with the smoke.

Maybe
tendons will take courage and loosen my grip.
Maybe chipped nail polish will glint
off light behind clouds
as my palm opens to the sky and fingers uncurl.
Maybe the stem will become heavy,
unbalancing the scales, tipping
fingertips to the earth.
Hesitating maybe,
the stem will roll slowly
down my palm, gravity overpowering
the bumps and
fingerprints.
Releasing identity, maybe it will
exhale

and drop.

that was yesterday

Still working on a title, part one.

“I’ll tell you what, get back to your home. Get your feet on the ground.” A saliva web formed in the corner of her mouth as she spoke. I wondered how many days she’d gone without her teeth. Then, I wondered if she had to brush or if she just needed gargle with Listerine. She hacked up something and spat it into her red paisley handkerchief. Her milky blue eyes paused roaming the horizon of the restaurant and landed on the salt shaker at our glass topped table. Grasping it, she brought it closely to her eyes and squinted. “Why the hell do they put rice in those things? If I wanted Chinese food, I would have gone to a Chinese food joint.”
I looked out the window unto barren flat land at twilight. Giant robot insects dotted the landscape: the oil derricks methodically pumped up and down. They looked like a mass orgy from an apocalyptic-industrial porn movie. All of the structures banging the barren, cracked earth in the same hypnotic rhythm. No passion. No pleasure. No pain, just the hum of metal on metal and the smell of petroleum products. 

She coughed again into her cloth and fell silent. I couldn’t tell if she wanted a response or was zoning into space. I looked over and saw the same people in the diner. Mr. Lewis and his wife sat in the corner booth, silent and looking past each other. He sat tall, with knife in his right hand and fork in his left. He cut through his chicken fried steak with mechanical slices. Mrs. Lewis squeezed her lemon on her salad: it was her staple meal regardless of the restaurant or time of day. But in all the years of her doing this, she never lost any weight. I wondered how long they have been here. Why did they come? 

I looked back at Virginia. She had not redirected her gaze. I couldn’t tell if this was standard old person behavior or maybe she had a stroke. Then, she gallantly stood up and went to the starlight mints stored adjacent to the cash register. They were a cheap knock off brand that tasted like stale toothpaste. After she wrestled off the plastic wrapper, she threw the pink and white mint it into her pink, slobbering mouth: it was caked with some white film. I had never thought about it before that moment, but all old people have that white filmy shit on their mouth. Was this plaque that looking to settle on teeth?

Virginia didn’t make growing old look fun. She walked hunched over and mumbled regularly about unintelligible things. If it weren’t for the fact that she was my neighbor growing up, I never would have known her. She had become the crazy cat lady who lived in the scary, unkempt house on the corner of the cul-de-sac. She was also my piano teacher. I never thought that she was weird when I was growing up. It wasn’t until I started coming back home from college that I realized her peculiarities. And I think that she could sense my judgments. Which led to her unsolicited advice after dinner. 

Apparently, she was a beautiful woman. So beautiful that a rich German man fell in love with her. They met somewhere on the east coast when she was going through music conservatory. He convinced her to marry him and move back to his estate in Bavaria. She never finished her music program. I saw a picture of the two of them together. She wore a ball gown that reminded me of some quintessential Disney movie character. He was much older than she was and looked like he might have been handsome in his younger years. Behind them were two marble staircases the led to a mezzanine. I assume that it was their house. I’d only seen the picture once, it was on display in her house: I saw it after one of my lessons. When I started to ask questions, she quickly grabbed the photo from my hands and ushered me out of the house. 

“Why do you want to get away so bad?” It was a casual question.

I carefully weighed my options. Honestly, there were plenty of reasons. Beauty existed outside the realm of our county. People here believed in the ethics of Wal-Mart and McDonald's. My feet itched to look and see and taste and feel elsewhere. The people around me were satisfied with marriage and children and houses and cubicles...and I wanted to kill them. I wanted to send them postcards from far away lands to both provoke jealousy and prove to them that I was more courageous than them. Every time I come back I feel like I am putting my legs into the green corduroy pants of my childhood. The pants up to my thighs then, the blood flow gets cut off from my legs. They go numb and feel as though they are swollen and going to pop. But I chose not to mention any of these reasons: I deflected.

“Why did you come back?” Touche. Try to put me in a corner, Virginia.

If she could have found my eyes (and read my thoughts) I think she would have glared at me. Instead, she softened and exhaled deeply through her mouth. She thanked the waitress; I led her out the door and we began to walk home. 

“Andre wasn’t the man that I thought he was.”

I waited, thinking that my silence would hold some type of power or wisdom that would convince her to tell me more.

“So I ditched his ass in Germany and moved back home. I was broke and my parents needed some help.  Any more questions, Sherlock?” 

I doubted the simplicity of the story. I assumed that something in regard to Germany and WWII played a part in her decision to divorce Andre. I shook my head and we walked home in silence. The derricks continued pumping to our right: giant grasshoppers flexing their legs. 

I could tell that she appreciated my smaller steps and the support of my right arm, but I could also tell that she was disgusted that her body had brought her to this place in life. I wondered if she still played the piano: I noticed that the signed had been knocked over in her yard. There was rust and dirt and cobwebs on it: it had been down for a while. The sign, “Piano Lessons by Virginia,” had been anchored in front of her house since I can remember. She’s fought through the years of vandalism. Before puberty hit me, asked my mom what “Piano Lessons by Virgin” meant: that prompted the sex talk. I didn’t ask my mom many questions after that day. Virginia unlocked her door and turned around. Then, she searched the air with her hands. 

“I’m reaching for your face, ding-dong.” 

As I leaned my head down toward her hands, she grabbed both of my cheeks. My stubble sought out each of the wrinkles on her fingers, palms. She smiled, “You’re a man, now.” Her eyes began to water, they were still roaming the horizon. I had forgotten how strong her hands were: everything else about her was frail, but she played scales on my face, registering memories and transferring emotions through trills and improvised arpeggios. 

“Son, you must atone for some things in your life. And when you know what these things are, don’t run from them like I did. You become a shell of who you really are.” She gave me a sloppy toothless kiss on the cheek and exited into her overly air-conditioned house. From behind the closed door she yelled, “And keep playing piano!”

Tree's can get in the way

I awoke one afternoon. I was feeling shifty that day but that has nothing to do with the story I want to tell. "It's a bit cold for an afternoon I think," I told my mirror image in the bathroom. My mirror imaged agreed with my veiwpoint. That's one thing I particularly like about my mirror image. It's so agreeable. Easy on the eyes to be certain.

So I awoke one cool afternoon. I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and have a short conversation with myself(and the look alike that always agrees and looks me in my eye). I went outside to smoke a cigarette and enjoy the late afternoon air along with the sunset. The sky was built that late afternoon for the perfect sunset I was seeking. The clouds were spread out at parts and together like a gossiping group of teenage school girls at other parts. I don't really know what gossiping school girls have to do with clouds but on the off chance there is some simularity I wanted to jump on the opportunity.

"Where the hell is the sun?" I said in my head. I couldn't see it from my backyard. I could sense that the sun was making its final sprint from the sky to the horizon so I knew the only advantage I had was my size. Certainly weighing far less and being much smaller could translate into me being able to out speed the heavy and massive sun, right?

"Where the hell is the sun?"I asked again. This time I said it out loud which peaked the interest of my busy bodied neighbor(more on that next time). I decided to go through a small opening that lies between my fence and girage(an opening big enough to put a door in). Past the opening my long strides placed me in our back alley that most cars dare not attempt to even conversate with(people with spray cans and those who love guns and punching things like it back there though. They find much enjoyment with other peoples cars and lack of safety). I searched the late sky as I walked down this alley and was also trying to watch where I walked. I wouldn't want to fall. I could see strong light in the sky but still couldn't make out the big round ball of gas that teamed with water long ago to give us life. That's what they tell us anyway. I guess I believe them.

"It's clear I cannot see the sunset from this alley," I say. So I take a main road from the alley that leads to another main road. I cannot remember what the names of the roads were but for the sake of argument I will tell you I took the alley to Broadway and Broadway to Grant. I try to remember where the trees aren't like a group of seven foot centers that block every shot I attempt. My shot, the sunset.

"Surely the blasted sun is somewhere in the sky! I see the light. Where is the blasted sun?!".

I walk many miles to a road I remember being so bald it shined. Kind of like the sun. Always the sun. Many miles have been walked and even runned. Much time has passed. Little remains.

I eventually make it to the street I remembered only to find that I was too late. "There is never enough time. I love breathing but sometimes tree's can get in the way." Why did they have to be there. I wish I had a remote control. This remote would be able to change my TV stations, write on chalkboards, pick up women(successfully) and temperarely remove tree's so I could see a beautiful sunset without going to the ocean once in awhile.

I didn't have a car so I had this idea. I would start walking now. To the ocean. I would get my sunset.

So I immediately began my trek to the Pacific(it's closer that the Atlantic). I head west with little food and rain as my water. No jacket. No sense. I need my sunset. It took me three days to finally reach my destination(I will tell the tale of my adventures to the ocean at another time. Suffice to say Polar Bears, knife fights and joining Hells Angels will all be mentioned. Things that won't would include holding up the liquor store and stalking a man that looked a bit like Paula Abdul. I may or may not include my starvation and possible death).

DAY 1

I am now at the beach. I am there as I am writing this to you. This very second. I feel the harsh breaze trying to tell me, "I know I am beautiful with the ocean and the sand and the mountains but I want you to GO AWAY!"I don't budge.

"I WANT MY SUNSET!"

DAY 2

It seems as though the clouds have teamed up with wind to keep me and the sun from seeing each other. It's like trying to date a catholic girl.

DAY 13

I have now been here for 13 days and have forgotten why I have come here. I am so hungry. So cold. I vaguely rememeber warm. I am remembering a phone conversation I had once. I think it was on this beach long ago. Hmmm. Yes. Now..... NOW I REMEMBER. I lived in Tucson once. I was talking to someone from there.

NOTE

Brian died. He was swimming in the ocean when an oil 'accident' occured off the Oregon coast. None survived. I found this in a journal entry. I thought it would be appropriate.

LONG AGO IN TUCSON

October 28th 2007

I woke up one late afternoon. It was a warm afternoon to be sure. A bit too warm. I am excited to be moving to Oregon soon. It's so beautiful there. Anyhow, when I woke up I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and grab a shower. I went to the porch undried(but clothed) because you don't need to dry off in Tucson. It's a dry heat only a blow torch might understand. I took out an American Spirit and lit it with my match(my lighter was out of fluid). I inhaled the smoke deeply in my lungs. As I exhaled I felt a huge calm come over my entire body. I looked up and saw the sky as God had 1st intended to create it for Adam and Eve in Eden. I was Adam. I had no Eve. But this sky was too amazing for me to care about the trivial nature of women and relationships. It's funny because I have gotten used to these sunsets. 300 days a year every year I see this same exact image. It's an image that deserves to be seen and not described. I can only tell how it made me feel. I know the person who created this. I feel like I have been wound tight only to be loosened by this image that no painting or picture could dare consider replicating. This is my life. Some people who live by the ocean go to the beach and are reinvigerated by the onslaught of repetitive and intense beauty. I just have to go to my porch.

I won't discribe it for it would be like Moses trying to richly describe what it was like talking to God on the mountain.

I won't describe it. I don't need to. I'll see it tomorrow.

Oh wait. I am driving to Oregon tomorrow. Oh well. They probably have better sunsets there anyhow.

I hate my job!

UnEmployed

Unemployed #14

I dreamed a tunnel formed

silent mouths in each

of our empty basements.

This is as much

hope as I can muster.

Three nights ago I conjured you

laughing in torn jeans

and my white dress shirt, favorite

stock footage from years ago, and yet

I couldn’t make you speak to me.

I am powerless over

my own subconscious.

Still, I thought your look

might have said, I am sorry

about all this, and wish

it were different, but it isn’t.

If I close my eyes, hold

my breath, I can lean

forward into the tunnel

that will always

never lead me to you.

Unemployed #2

I find an

odd solace

in the possibility

you too are

remembering

how difficult it

is to fold

a bed sheet

by yourself.

Unemployed #8

I hold the remote just

so, it feels like her wrist.

My loneliness splits

in two when

the hero’s fiancée is stolen

by his evil twin,

who dresses snappier than

the good, is somehow

more handsome.

My heroine

advances, as if underwater,

toward his crooked

smile, to kiss it—picture

a finger slid down my throat. I click

to another planet, to remind myself

I lack the strength of this

indestructible superhero on the cusp

of being killed by an alien virus,

and the tension rises, until it spills

over into a dish soap demonstration,

making hygiene so piercingly

symbolic, I realize I’ll never

enjoy steady health insurance,

never again feel clean.

Click back to these twins

I’ve become: now locked

in awkward combat. Each fist

strikes its own face, then a caught

blade wavers between their throats

and the music crescendos like an over-

flowing toilet bowl, sanitized blue,

smelling of synthetic fruit—cut back

to when the evil twin—sucked into

a fall we won’t see the end of—

screams up at us, and the black

swallows him like a lozenge.

Already I can feel my teeth

growing whiter as I lose myself

in the eyes of my new lover,

amazed at how faithfully

they hold my reflection,

even as she winces, my misguided

dagger inside her. She daubs

at my tears, at my mouth

as it waters for a late-night hamburger.

I keep clicking to find a simile

for my desire for a responsive sedan

to drive off a moonlit cliff,

into the applauding waves below.

Television is the oven

I stick my head into.

Unemployed #4

I am so lonely

please at least

be my enemy

Example of the organized randomness and people that I miss...

First month of missing...

I miss organized randomness.
And the warmth that starts with a sip of red wine and catches on like wildfire through the laughter of good friends.

I miss the Portland attitude.
Even the skinny-jean, fixed-gear, tiny-mustache, wool-cap-wearing hipsters.

I miss late night talks on the porch.
And Mr. Fluff.

I miss the "fresh start" smell after it rains.
And the innumerable blackberry spines, pulled from flesh after a morning of joy and tangible service to the Lord.

I miss the community.
And our togetherness, like Mexicans at the river.

meh-ness.

Not So Much the Buildings

I was sure it wouldn’t be the people.

I was sure it would be the buildings which finally killed me.

Take for example the Albina Press, the new one on Hawthorne of course. (It would be madness to miss the old one, sheer, indulgent madness on my part.) Each time I remember the Albina Press the furniture begins to shift, moving left to right and rearranging like real life Tetris blocks. Tables pile on chairs, counters turn 180 to form walls and a bathroom where the front door should be. It’s difficult now to call anything bigger than a doorknob, solid. In the end it’s nothing short of an exorcism. The whole building runs down Hawthorne at a righteous clip- leaving behind a sorry trail of interrupted conversations and Sweet n’ Low- before jumping butt first into the Willamette. It sinks instantly.

October has more than her fair share of fire exits. Albina Press, Music Millenium, the back patio of the Moon and Sixpence, wasting away one square inch at a time. The loss is barely perceptible at first. My eyelids oblige, raising like garage doors and later both ears follow suit, offering an escape hatch for anything eager to slip free. It is only in November, when I can no longer remember the smaller details of Beulahland- the water dispenser or the cut of your head slouching against the back booth, which bathroom falls left and which right- that I finally admit to the loss. All those safety bricks, those planks and partitions infused with the home town taste of beer, of cigarettes and God-forbid, decent coffee, the very things I’d planned on hooking into, have turned to smoke and ghosts.

I am senile when it comes to buildings.

“What about Powell’s?” I ask myself, up to my armpits in romance novels at the local library.

“Of course you can still remember Powell’s, can’t you? The bookish smell of the front foyer, receipts slipped inside the pages of just-bought novels like crisply folded hospital sheets. The surly-faced chap behind the coffee counter, the Street Roots man with his cardboard sign, the way your shoes squeak too loud in the fiction section and people glare and you think, ‘Damn it, it can’t be my shoes. I’m wearing different shoes from last week. It must be my actual feet that squeak. Perhaps I should start walking on my hands when traversing the aisles of the fiction section, selecting volumes of Steinbeck and Carver with the un-socked toes of my right foot.’ Surely you haven’t forgotten Powell’s already, have you?”

“Not so much the moments,” I say to myself, “Not so much the moments, but the shelves are surely sliding so you’re unsure even what color the fiction room should be, though dear only knows how many million hours you’ve spent crouched and blissful under the letter S feeling the weight of literature burning in the back of your thighs.”

Scared of losing everything, even the sound of the speaker system announcing worship on the top floor, I make a list of the very best seconds and surprise myself. For these clever seconds on tenth and Burnside aren’t bricks or even books, but rather flesh and blood moments with mouths and teeth where the mortar should be.

1.The morning with the photography books when we told our stories in maps and pictures, racing from one rack to another, plotting a six thousand mile journey from home to Portland to the possibility of all tomorrow’s ships and planes. The way you smiled your thin-mouthed smile over black and white potato fields and I saw for the first time that your hands were spades and your teeth, far from perfect. Practicalities aside, this was a grand thing in my book.

2. The afternoon in the fiction section, right there under the letter T with Blankets in my hand, when I looked to my left and saw the man with tiger tattoos crawling up his arm, Thoreau splayed open in one hand. (Perhaps it wasn’t Thoreau. Perhaps I only imagined it this round and this good, but casual poetics would claim Thoreau a fitting choice.) I looked long and hard at those tiger inks clawing out from under the cuff of a blue, plaid shirt and that shock of black, dive hair emerging from the collar and I thought to myself, “Holy Hell, it’s a fat Ryan Adams.” Then lo and behold, three days later in the evening paper, I realized it was the fat Ryan Adams and I might have smiled at least for all the heartbreak songs of my student days.

3. The evening we three, dressed all in black with eyeliner eyes, turned up late for the wrong reading and sweated our way through two hours of cancer and climbing Everest: center right in the front row, with nothing but thoughts of escape fermenting in our doughy heads. And afterwards how we laughed and ran almost a block in heels, pausing to laugh at the lights as if everything had suddenly come loose inside.

4.Finally the late afternoon in the foyer, Carson McCullers breathing down the back of my neck and the feeling that I was shrinking into the soles of your shoes. How I steadied myself and thought for the very first time, “I could marry you right here in the foyer of Powell’s between the special offer books and new releases. I could stand on a pile of coffee table books to reach your mouth. They could shut the store around us and eventually we might leak into the literature.” How I turned away and felt my cheeks burning for I’ve always been too blunt for that kind of good fortune.

I have surprised myself, for each of these losses is neither bricks nor board, but rather flesh and blood moments with mouths and teeth and arms I thought incapable of such a very long stretch.

Tuesday.

October is cold when you cannot see June. Cleave to or cleft from this place that once seemed so strange. There, there will be a big backyard with a low sky swinging, trees to lean a spine upon. Read a book. That is the way I will walk home, and this is the route I take now, a gauntlet of gold and red boughs, leafmeal beneath my feet. Something is wrong or right. Possibility widens the window. Me, then you with our lives stretched before us like a Thanksgiving table, though sometimes I think, I cannot eat. Cannot enjoy the taste of anything. No, any thing you say can bring a smile. Old creeps into my bones every now and again. Sinews sewn taut and my limbs wish to run. Could I blink and be there? Across a table, fingers stretched to grasp a glass of wine. There’ll be time.

I worked the math out in my head, then killed the feeling completely. Cut down my hair. A new beginning, a naked baby-feeling. Lose my sex, my fingerprint safety net. [Been told] a man’s mind and woman’s red heart. Ancient soul with elastic skin. Pull on my too big overcoat, the wool one with all the buttons I must retie again and again, wear it like abstraction, obscurity. So this is what security feels like: a little too heavy, warmy, fusty, but necessary in case I am becoming too weary for the knowing. Am relying too heavily upon the unknown expanse of may be. Possibility. Like Emily, dwell there too willingly. Homebound.

Crashkill all about me, defeat the life that threatens to suppress the carnival spirit sense, the horses. The horses, the oats and apples unspent, the games we play to pay the rent. Reel back, reel in acrylic goldfish, time away from lovers and mothers, sisters, brothers, fathers. Ascetic assertion, just to make another day orange and bright with tries. Trying to make a home of my heart, only cinematically in technicolor and polaroid captures of the future fitting. Fitting that I should be so lost here among leaves that turn to crimson and copper waxshine.

And cake and wine was a picture of me, what I could be, lost too, lost to reality. never wanted just me or who would either? All black boots and a wool coat, broken doll eyes. Out at sea, a full fathom five gulf between you, and then me. Missing that self that is selfless and true. Pearls on a string, these loves I’ve left behind. Pressed round and shiny, all platonic ideals shaped and secured in the void, the ether out there, rising high to greet the stars. A bluehot kiss hello and then wandering on to elsewhere. Great big purple bursts poison the teeth. Leave a sweet residue that can not forget she bit his cheek. Drew blood. And it was love.

I miss the chance to create stuck on the paint desk

I am main street
I am alabaster
I am independence on the hillstar
I am the apricot touch on the paint desk

I am bored

I am summer breeze
the wasting sunblush,the soft haze
the planet’s atlantic mist
I am the alpine meadow wasting the planets resources

I do filigree, I do rich cream
I do enjoy toffee treat, rain cloud.

I do not enjoy my sailcloth
I do enjoy driftwood

I do not enjoy my job

I want brownie
I want mystic beige
I want grey slate.

I want to draw pure green
I want dapple
To make art rich raspberry
To live cocoa bean

a rich sapphire
a more olive grey
sustainable subtle skies
a lifestyle magical
a more cherry red

a more hospitable soft black

Heat up your cold hands.