Field Report

(Susan and Ariana, modelling their amazing new knickers)

I went to Portland again last weekend…. I guess it’s just what I do these days. I was there to register what it might be like to actually live there. Just to consider it. This is what registered:
1. The River- Living in a place where I can swim is very important to me. So we went to the Sandy river, which is a drive, but not too long of a drive, and we found some good spots to swim. The 3 dollar park has lots of weird things, like beer bottles and slushee containers and chips dumped into the sand, but also a big sandy island and spots to swim in the wide open river. It was fun to be there with the kids. They chased ants with rocks and I screamed in the cold water as the sun slowly set.
2. On Saturday night I sat in Ariana’s living room and did projects with Ariana and Mirah. We each did our own thing, talked through things, worked side by side. I was in deep peaceful heaven. Not that the conversations were particularly easy or cheerful, not that the projects were monumental- no, it was the simple fact that we were together, even in the struggle, even in the irritation. We were together. That is a pretty convincing argument to be in a place, to have your bests around you.
3. Sunday AM, riding the bus out to Gresham, I read a zine/book this guy wrote about substitute teaching, which I could totally relate to, and laughed to myself. Had brunch with parts of my family, then walked through the Chinese Garden with my dad and my sister. Amazing- It’s so nice to have my family closer to me. distance eliminated is distance eliminated, in more than one way.
4. Walking to town, walking by the water, walking down the bike path… I kept noticing that things were both so vivid and lush, as well as sort of filthy and loud. A city is a city- the trees are established, the jobs exist, and there are 100’s of thousands of other people directly around. This is both good and bad. They create beauty, they create waste.
I accomplished what I wanted by going to Portland- I spent the weekend there, just paying attention. Portland, registered.

I took a walk in Portland this morning and thought about quilts as colors, lines, and composition.

My new plan for being desirable is this: I am going to be the performer. When a person is a performer, they are desirable. As a part of an audience, you just exist. Everyone watches that performer up there, using the empty spaces to think, opening up thoughts, wandering through sounds in our minds, allowing the opportunity to think about how interesting, how intriguing that performer is up there. It’s because the performer creates the space in the air, in the heads of the audience, to be able to think something. And the easiest thing to think is, huh, that performer is desirable. I want to do something like them, dress like them, oh, or maybe make out with them. I need to get up on stage, and be a performer. I need to get desirable. There will be nothing new about me that doesn’t already exist, it will just be that I will stand up there and say what I think, in an organized way, instead of saying it offstage, in a disorganized way. Organization is hot. So I’m going to be the performer.

It was crazy townwide party weekend- I was in the streets. I figured out my community building project medium, and it turns out it’s so simple. Five dollars worth of nylon rope, and I’m set. Get a friend, start spinning the ropes (elbows in, it’s all in the wrist) and all those people, milling around, wanting to be part of something, they just emerge. The double dutch experts from 20 years ago(go now! go now!), the kids-experts of now, the wild risk-taking boys who just fling themselves in, the humble but totally coordinated women (oh, I haven’t done this in ten years!), the quiet bystanders who finally carefully cross the line, they’re all in. And normally they might not ever talk to each other. It’s so absolutely fun. And it’s so easy.

Lying. Sometimes when I think about lying, I think of it like hard drugs- I don’t do it, so I forget that anyone else does. They do, all the time, but I’m not paying the right kind of attention.
But really, there’s this other kind of lying. Like sugar or chocolate or coffee, the kind you do every day, and you think it’s not drugs, except when you don’t do it for a day, you get a massive headache. Lies you tell to yourself, nice ways to ignore things, like the person I’m dating doesn’t REALLY pack a gun into the movies, and they’re also not really courting some other person on the side. Convincing myself that it’s okay to just be mad, and not communicate. Rationalizing driving a car around as much as I feel like, since I’m not driving an SUV like some people. The thing is, I get a headache anyway. Even when you’re lying to yourself, you can’t lie all the way.
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The other morning I took a walk in my friend’s neighborhood in Portland. It was crisp and sunny, and I brought my camera. I took pictures to document my thinking and my seeing. As I walked, my brain slowed down enough to open up and notice some new ideas. I started noticing how I see things as lines. Lines dividing things up, and lines connecting things. When I was a kid, I would lay in my bed and look out the window, watching the outside world through the boxes of the wooden panes. Compositions created by lines.

One of my oldest memories is of watching Taj Mahal play at Hannigan’s, some bar that is now a gas station. He was wearing a railroad hat, and a piece of the ceiling fell down while he played. I got to watch him play music tonight, and the theater full of people my parents’ age was transportation back to 1978, when we listened to records and lived in an apple orchard.

I put my rainboots and a hoody on, and I go out into the street. The sky is dark deep blue, fading to black. I choose blue. Walking down the sidewalk, I think about blue. Tidy sign blue, dented newspaper box blue, cigarette-smoky neon blue. Meanwhile the sky is deepening, richer, darker. The clouds define patches of sky. Meanwhile, on the street, illuminated awning blue, flat telephone booth blue. All the items on the street are so flat and drab in comparison to the sky. I think about art, how impossible it is to capture the true color and texture of the natural world. Heading home, I see printed blue on ridiculous maps of Paris in a shop window, patchwork blue on a pillow, blue glass mugs. Those things I can connect to. Paper, cloth, glass. The paper evens out the pigment, softens it. The textures of the fabric chop the color into pieces, make your eye jump. The glass creates depth, imitates water. Blue.
auxillary capillary blog squad home base
rob’s blog
max’s blog
sam’s blog
chris’s blog
rachael’s blog

I watched the movie Born Into Brothels this weekend, and it reached out and shook me. All these smart, laughing kids dodging and navigating and surviving in dirty drunken red light alleys, taking the most amazing, saturated, intuitive photos. They really showed their world in pictures.
I think about myself behind the camera, hesitant and hiding- These kids had cameras like an extension of their arms and eyes.

I looked all over for calcium carbonate once, to make milk paint. Turns out it’s chalk. What’s good about chalk?
-Armed with chalk, urban renegades can make all the statements they want, on streets and walls, without indelible illegal implications. My neighbor can sometimes be spied drawing intricate designs on downtown sidewalks. Late night sneakiness, no criminal consequences.
-Buildings painted black by bizarre landlords turn into instant chalkboards. White chalk on black walls. What an opportunity!
-Some Saturday evening in April, the streets are swarming with kids and parents and town-people. The cops pass out buckets of chalk to bystanders, and the kids converge in the middle of the street. Before the parade is almost as good as the parade itself. Anything in the street that’s not cars.

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