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14 Dec 2007, 1:17
Elisabeth and I both set our alarms, hers for 6:25 and mine for 6—I wanted to make coffee before we left. No time for that, though. Within an hour, I would travel by plane, train, and automobile.
I've never made a better investment—except maybe my 401(k)—than this MacBook. Not only is it my camera, my typewriter, my sketchbook, my mailbox, my (video-enabled) telephone, my photo album, my little black book (yes, it's white), my portable library, my jukebox, even my light saber, it's also my alarm clock. All this and more for the low low price equivalent to two months' rent in Southern California.
We both had set our alarms but, because I was up long after she and Josh went to bed, I had silenced my speakers. So the alarm dutifully rang precisely at 6—that is, the alarm program sent signals (1) to whatever wakes the machine from sleep, (2) to whatever fetches from disc the file I had specified to wake me ("You" by Moby), and (3) to whatever sends playable signals to the speakers—but, alas, the heirarchy of control had them silenced. By the time I opened the machine, it had been playing muted for 46 minutes.
So I texted Elisabeth, who wanted to leave 21 minutes before that, and 10 minutes later (I had to brush my teeth) all three of us were awake and outside.
Josh drove me and wins all awards for kindness. He usually leaves for work after 9:30, whenever, but because his girlfriend had overslept and her friend needed a ride to the MetroLink, he drove me. And waited there on the street until I was inside the train. If he's representative, the hospitality of the midwest just might rival that of the south.
I used the self-check in kiosk but had a bag to check, so after getting my boarding passes I gave my bag to TSA and said a silent prayer that they would/would not scan and open my bag due to concerns regarding the black book-like box stuffed into the clothes. Isn't that what bombs look like these days?
They didn't. Nor did they confiscate the lighter I had forgotten about in one of my two carry-ons. Amazing, isn't it, how I could travel abroad with only two bags, yet the familiar old USA somehow requires three?
Salt Lake City and its sprawl were covered in snow. Near the airport, a factory had created a tower of steam over a thousand feet tall. The shadow of it cast a cloudy cold zone running along and across the highway and through surrounding neighborhoods.
I red lined from the airport to a bus station, across the street from which was a Trader Joe's and other accoutrements of the suburbs, bussed from there to SE 39th and Hawthorne, and walked from there. The Hawthorne Neighborhood Hostel is one of two in Portland, and I planned on staying in them both before leaving for Seattle.
The depression began when I walked the nine blocks to the hostel. A nice dinner didn't help, wine didn't help, a long random walk around the neighborhood didn't help—nothing I did all night helped with the dislocation funk, my first in Portland.
Though the hike up Mt Tabor—a dormant volcano just down the street—helped some.
But, especially over my dinner of crêpes at the French restaurant Chez Machin, and even more especially overhearing the conversation of two women at the table adjacent to mine, about their travels in Italy and the Manhattan-Tuscany apartment exchange that allowed them to stay for so long, I felt like I had set myself on an inflection that I didn't really understand, and feared where it could lead me.
Because those women were pathetic. The only thing I could feel for them was repulsion for talking so sentimental and nostalgic about their time abroad. I can't justify that feeling because I also like to think about my time abroad. France was fun. But they were pathetic and I couldn't easily name why and that jarred me. I would have felt the same way had these two women been two early-peaking high school football champs reminiscing over their glory days.
Jeff had the bed below mine. The next day his son was driving in from Oregon City for their annual Christmas rendezvous and Jeff wanted to book a bed for him at the hostel, too. Jeff was an old, worn hippie, tattoos all over his arms, scraggly long hair reeking of cigarettes, he snored, he bought his clothes from the thrift store. Talking about his bad knee and his failure to find an Oakland Raiders coat for his son and the job he had as a concert crowd monitor in Seattle, I baited and humored him like you would bait and humor a sufferer of Down's Syndrome. His entire life had been drab and desultory and he was also pathetic.
The way these women and Jeff are pathetic is related. Another way to be pathetic is to unquestioningly play for points while you're young, following an easy trajectory you're not enthused about, and discover that in middle age, when it's much harder to claim your life and your time as yours. I've inoculated myself against that. But the other way—being pathetic in your declining years because you're doing nothing with them—would be a drag of a way to end it.
To clear my head and to clear my karma—being overly and unjustly judgmental is also pathetic—I took a walk. The signs along Hawthorne are covered in stickers, quotes and bands and OBEY and things like that. One read "Now is all you have". I've read my sutras, I already know that. But I didn't know the thing that has never seemed pathetic to me, and that sticker catalyzed an insight: the only thing that's never pathetic is an active and involved now. Assuming, of course, your involvement isn't with something like kiddie porn.
To celebrate the discovery of this uncharted interior, I bought a $3 ticket for Suberbad at the Bagdad Theater and Pub, I bought a pint of a local microbrew called Ruby, and I laughed for the next 114 minutes.
The next morning, over coffee and a bagel in the hostel's common room, for an hour or so, I talked with Jordan, 53, and Devon, 23 (those aren't their real names). Jordan talked about norml, hippie.com, webehigh.com, and what I should expect to see in Vancouver. Devon is an actor, recently had a role in an episode of The Office, etc, and co-starred in what he described as "a crappy baseball movie" which merited near wide release ("wide release" means 3000 theaters, his was released to 2000) and bad reviews. Devon and I both currently, reluctantly retreat to California's Central Valley when we retreat home. I suggested Jordan climb Mt Tabor—he was looking for a place to sit and space—with the hope that he would leave so I could commiserate more with Devon. But I had to check out before 11.
But I saw Jordan on the sidewalk a little later. He was walking with two brothers from Boston, Dane and Justin (those are their real names), who decided to leave Boston only two days before arriving in Portland. They had stayed the allowed seven nights at the hostel so, like me, were heading to the Northwest Neighborhood Hostel after breakfast. We exchanged numbers and planned to share a cab there in a couple hours.
A couple hours later we were in a Radio Cab, a company owned and run by veterans, talking about the rooms they found for cheap but couldn't yet move into, about the differences between milfs and cougars, about Portland beer and Portland honies. Actual exchange:
Me: Why'd you decide to move to Portland?
Justin: Because there's beer here.
Dane: And strip clubs.
Justin: Lots of beer and lots of strip clubs.
Dane: Dude. I think there are more girls in Portland than there are guys.
Justin: I know that. That's why we moved here, dipshit.
Dane: Hey, is that a car full of girls?
Justin: Hell yes. I think it's the 19-year-olds from last night.
Dane: Oh shit, flip them off.
We separated when we checked into the hostel. I dropped off my bags and went walking for a few hours but had to return because my knee hurt. Not my knee, the hamstring tendons behind my knee. (I like to walk when I get to a new city because, like, today I found the nation's only 3d art museum. And because that's the best way to familiarize yourself with the streets. I hate walking when I get to a new city because I always walk myself immobile. Not always. I've lazed from good shape.) Anyway, it hurt to walk. It's feeling a little better now. And we're all caught up, dear reader. And I'm hungry. And there's a profusion of microbrew to be had. And I still have Dane and Justin's number.
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