the heart of portland

This morning, thirty-five years to the day of my birth and almost eight years after I moved to Pacific Northwest, I woke at dawn and drove to Mount St. Helens for the first time. It wasn’t the original plan. The original plan was only to avoid Portland and certain pressing social obligations related to my birthday. That eventually evolved into an international road trip. By which I mean “drive to Canada”.

Unfortunately, because they are apparently a bunch of filthy terrorists, a valid passport is now required to enter/leave the People’s Republic of Canada and mine expired three months ago. I blame the Québecois. And Joe Flaherty. And Bachman–Turner Overdrive.

Hence Mount St. Helens.

Having been almost 3,000 miles away, not to mention five and a half years old, my memories of the eruption are mostly of the made-for-TV movie. Granted, I feel that way about most of the 80s. And the years 2000  through 2008.  Much of the last few months as well. My part being played primarily by Corey Feldman only with less charisma and more body fat.

So I’m at Mount St. Helens. It’s my birthday. I packed a picnic. I brought a peach.

Of course, things being what things often are, there was no mountain. Low lying clouds, rain and fog reduced the crater, the lava dome and the photo op to that of afterthought.  It didn’t really matter that much. I was probably more irritated at the lack of a coffee cart and my decision not to bring a sweater. I ate the picnic in the car due to the rain, forgot the peach in the backseat and drove home, slowly, oddly pleased despite everything.

Forty-five minutes into both the next ten hours of my life and the second half of the network television broadcast of The Notebook I can already tell that this is going to be yet another in a long line of poorly conceived, regrettable decisions. A few feet to my right a fidgety middle aged woman is confined to a hospital bed, capable of neither hearing the swelling score accompanying the reunion of long parted lovers nor expressing her displeasure with the predictable arc of the film. Deaf and mute. And sick. And despite the fact that I’ve had all of three hours sleep in the last two days I will be sitting here with her, making the occasional gesture of concern but mostly just sitting. I imagine there is a remote control in here somewhere but the lights are out and I’m really not up for disturbing the status quo.

So we’re sitting here in the dark, with the romance and redemption, her making her unconscious noises and me furrowing my brow as I preemptively regret bringing my laptop and thinking that this would be a good idea.

Gena Rowlands has just caught on that she was in love once. Before she lost her mind. Intriguing concept.

In love with Jim Rockford but that’s beside the point.

When I leave here in the morning I’ll have six precious hours to shower ,sleep, alienate someone, anyone, before returning for another 20 hour shift of compassion, caring and kindness. Or at least that’s the idea. The overtime helps.

She’s lost her mind again. Alas. She was better off with Columbo anyway.

The hospital’s internet filter prohibits patients from accessing flickr, censorship that philosophically I disagree with but find somewhat humorous given the role that the site, my photographs hosted on it and the part they have played in recent failures of communication. I almost brought my camera tonight, because what’s more fun then running around the cardiac ward at two in the morning taking pictures of catheters and biomedical waste bags? Or at least it used to be. And actually that was in proctology which is a whole different scene.

Okay, they’re dead. Tragic yet touching. Roll the credits and the organic cat food commercials. Only nine more hours of this.

I should have brought a book.

Yesterday. The International Day of Slayer/Satan/Evil/Emo Kid Beatdowns came and went.

Me? I woke at dawn, took a walk, and wrote a long-overdue essay on the use of the grotesque in the fictions of Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty. “And was it any good?” you may be asking. No. No, it wasn’t.

I didn’t celebrate with a fine virgin burning. There was no blood drinking, no forearm carving of pentagrams.

I did wake at dawn and take a walk though. And that was pleasant. And it didn’t involve much permanent scar tissue.

It was shortly after noticing that someone had taken the time to put a nice four foot length of black spraypaint down the side of my car that I realized that it was also an anniversary of sorts. Not the sort you celebrate and not the sort you should probably even remember, but an anniversary nonetheless. I have a knack for remembering these things. Stupid knack.

The spray paint started a trend. Car wrecks, chastisements, housemate troubles. Negative trend. I came home from class, ate pasta and took a nap.

And here’s where the strings come in. I got a haircut, found two four-leaf clovers outside of the barbershop, got a free beer and had a nice chat.

And forgot about Satan and spray paint and anniversaries.

In the fight against language, against semantics, and against inevitable misreading, I have refused lately to deal with words.

There is something exhausting in wondering if the pity and disgust you feel is all too apparent in the sentences you intended to be light-hearted or conciliatory. So I chose not to write.

I chose not to write like I’ve chosen to stick to the detours and to the outskirts.

But people are still coming around. They are still reading the words. They are still calling. And because of these things I keep looking for the better word, I use illustrations, I use what is left.

The billboard advertisement for Bud Light beer that sat on the rooftop, cynically demanding that the reader “Expect Everything”, is gone. And I, for one, am relieved. There are so many things that I am not prepared to expect from anyone.

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Roadside monuments and plaster dinosaurs, the fact that “gusty winds may exist”, low-lying cloud cover over the Shasta Lake Bridge, the residents of Durham, Texas, Blu-Blocker sunglasses, mile markers, 38 cent coffee refills, all the sheep in Linn county and the geese in Gainesville, “right lane closed ahead”, watching for snakes, Dead River, Diablo Canyon, rainbow tights and microwave apples, the children of Alachua, the newlyweds and the stillborn, the extended network, phone bills, emu ranches and ostrich farms, pumping your own gas, Milka bars and postcards, almost but not quite, crosswinds and windsocks, the continental divide and the 45th parallel, the people who remembered and the people who chose not to, the travel agencies of Germany, adult entertainment, boiled peanuts, aloe vera, knowing the answer but asking anyway, Travis Fristoe, Walt Whitman, and T.S. Eliot, “no services”, seeing it go and seeing it gone, new bruises, the day’s first song, finally seeing it (or the sign for it anyway), Buck Owens boulevard, red clay, recognition and reconciliation, the old questions, the old answers, wanting to share, 90 miles an hour, taking the picture anyway, out of state tags, all the might-have-been-Libras, the James Bond ending, missing them anyway, creams not lotions, making plans, remembering when, laughing about it later, the bonus features, the acoustic version, three lanes not two, “lights on for safety”, rust, elevation, the Purple Heart Trail, 1723, 1998, a face for the name, knowing he looked a lot like you, saying “thanks” and meaning it, meaning it period, all the nation’s crows and all the nation’s airports, between here and there, seeing it die, feeling weird, scribbled notes on gas station receipts, that Cafe Gardens waitress, feeling very fortunate, coming back anyway, “hidden for” not “hidden from”, Sudafed, hating strangers, having valid reasons, genuine smiles, genuine anything, sunken ships, the bird’s eye view, the coded message, the mixed signal, knowing all the words, knowing that someone finally got what was coming to them, “the end of irony”, not saying “hello”, being a threat, that one Waffle House, kindness, waiting one more day, “despite everything”, Crass tattoos, Peeps, waiting for the next exit, dancers, jugglers, and bad poets, knowing it sounds silly, being from somewhere else, singing along, justifying or at least sympathizing, not being ashamed, the dialogue, four in the morning, you.

Not just the bridges. Five days ago I was prepared to burn this city to the ground. All of it. The busmall and the bars and the Safeways and the group homes. Specifically the group homes. I wanted to grind salt into the ashes and ensure nothing would ever again grow here.

This was my wish: A salted, barren valley.

And yet this morning, even though it’s cold and the sun hasn’t shone and I spilled coffee all over my book on the way home as I stared at the gangrenous leg of the horribly obese guy at the front of the bus, I can’t help but grin. Not a mischievous smirk but a near smile. It barely even hurt.

Last night, after several weeks of increasingly bizarre and somewhat violent behavior problems at work, there were no fights, no sweatpants stuffed with cheese slices, no naked albinos running through the halls. None.

Instead there was a spontaneous dance party in the kitchen to The Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner”.

A few weeks ago I bought an iTrip FM transmitter for my iPod. It was a spur-of-the-moment purchase and I kept the receipt, figuring that I would return it the next day. I don’t own a car and keeping it seemed pointless but a friend was driving me to the coast and her musical tastes are abysmal. So instead of listening the The Killers or Kasabian all afternoon, we listened the Go-Betweens and the Field Mice. I’m sure she was miserable. Of course I forgot to return it when we got back. So last night I took it to work. There’s a small radio in the kitchen and despite some periodic interference from the Christian stations that populate the lower bands, I had the pleasure of cooking dinner and listening to something other than Pat Benetar.

Around ten o’clock I was washing pots when two of the residents came into the kitchen looking for snacks. While we were kidding around about who was a bum and why they should be locked in the pantry, I heard Jonathan Richman counting off in the background and I thought of Sarah Vowell and her book Radio On and I thought about the last few days. And because I knew it would make them laugh I started to dance. And by “dance” what I really mean is “flail my arms and fight against gravity”. And they loved it. And then one of them started to dance. And then the deaf-mute started to dance as well even though she couldn’t hear a sound. And then a third resident who had been watching us flop around with all the coordination and rhythm you might expect, got up from the dining room table and began to hop around the kitchen. And for three minutes we were all in love with modern moonlight and driving alone late at night.

So on the bus home this morning I thought about that. And the fat guy’s leg. But mostly I thought about The Modern Lovers and going faster miles an hour.

*beeeep*

Brian, I have the right to say “Janet” upstairs but it’s [garbled] and I like it. I want to be your friend and I love you so much but I have to [garbled]

*click*

-My answering machine.
7:43 a.m., Monday, April 4th, 2005

Evidently this all started years ago, long before I came to find myself working here. Back when the idea of being a social worker wasn’t even conceivable to me.

There was a previous staff member. I’m told she was about my height with slightly curly, dark brown hair. And he was obsessed with her. Completely. He got into the office one night and found her home address and phone number. He started riding his bike past her home on the other side of town. Over and over and over. Until her husband came in and threatened to knock the shit out of him. Eventually she quit. He found out where her new job was. As you might expect, the cops got involved.

But what exactly are you going to do to a hairless albino with Down Syndrome?

By the time I started working here, coping mechanisms were in place. He was taking some new meds and his former crush (now known only as “She Who Can Not Be Named”) was replaced in his heart with television’s favorite dumpier housemate, Janet from Three’s Company.

Joyce DeWitt.

I’ll go on record right now as saying that, while I might be a brunette and not exactly graced with poise or height, I am much more attractive, damn it.

Not long after I started working here, he started following me around. At first it was sort of sweet. Then they told me about his fondness of sticking things, primarily his fingers, in places that things, like fingers, generally don’t need to be stuck. Unless you’re into that. Or have a medical license. And that he didn’t like to wash things. Like fingers.

My second week working with him, he packed his bags and ran away to Los Angeles so that he could live with Janet (and Jack and Chrissy. And Larry – the glue that held the show together for its eight glorious seasons). He got as far as the airport. The cops brought him home and chewed me out for letting him “roam free in society”.

On my next shift I edited some love letters to Joyce DeWitt for him. We found her publicist’s address in Los Angeles and mailed those things off. It’s not like it was David Letterman or Madonna. You have to figure that Joyce DeWitt needs all the encouragement she can get.

Soon after, he started telling me how much he loved me.

Jokes were made.

He’s taken to wandering the second floor naked these days. It is as pretty as you might expect.

Two weeks ago, I woke up at 2:30 in the morning to a soft whisper at the staff bedroom door. At first I could barely make it out but it got louder. And faster. And then became punctuated with heavy breathing.

Janet… Janet…

I’m lying there, staring at the door, completely mesmerized at how totally and completely fucking weird this is. I can’t decide if I should just call to him through the door to knock that shit off or if I should quietly creep over and suddenly swing the door open and scare the little freak half to death. Then I remember that he’s got a bad heart. And I remember that he’s grunting and prone to being naked and sticking things where things don’t really need to be.

Luckily, just as things were reaching their climax, one of the other residents who had been out on the front porch finishing off pack three of his treasured Gold 100 cigarettes, came inside, slamming the front door and sending a flustered, fat albino scampering for the bathroom.

The next morning, while giving him his meds, I walked over and closed the office door behind him. The look on his face when I told him that I had been awake and heard his little ritual basically made up for any deep emotional scarring a future therapist will uncover through the use of hypno-regressive treatments.

“It won’t happen again. I promise.”

That was two weeks ago.

I really should have quit while I was ahead.

Bingo night at work. Watching the cards. Keeping people focused. Trying not to get daubed.

Tonight the folks are a bit antsy. The ice cream sandwiches sent blood sugars soaring and on Bonanza, a bad guy just punched Little Joe – that’s never good.

So I’m locked in the office. Ending my week away from the computer. Or at least a week away from the evils of blogs and mySpace. No instant messengers. No underage predators. No filling the gaps in other people’s crumbling relationships. I’m tired and old and I have a house full of grown men and women screaming about how the bad guys should all be killed and how they never get the graham crackers anymore.

And I have a Xerox machine which has allowed me to copy several small collections of Jaroslav Seifert’s poetry I picked up from the library on my way here this afternoon.

I spent most of the last week sitting on the fourth story balcony of a house on a cliff overlooking the Pacific ocean. I used the time to reread Derek Sayer’s The Coasts Of Bohemia: A Czech History , finish Witold Gombrowicz’s Bacacay, and start Karel Capek’s Intimate Things. I socialized little. Avoided the odd little Asian fellow with the angel wing tattoos and shaved body. No hottubbing with the Russians.

I came back to Portland with an hour to spare before a twenty-hour shift of angry little men and meatloaves to cook.

The upside is that none of my residents will ever ask me what I feel the seminal recording of The Fall is. None of them will ever take a swing at me because I couldn’t order them a Whiskeytown 45 that’s been out print for three years. I will never have to sell them a ticket to see Less Than Jake.

The downside is they always seem to smell just a little odd and they always make me feel a little mean when I don’t want to listen to why they think Coy and Vance were better than Bo and Luke. For the ninth time in two hours.

So I lock myself in the office. I photocopy poems by dead Czechs. I search Alibris for faster ways to spend my meager paycheck and alienate myself further from the Nick Hornby fans of this world.