anti:freeze

In my dream, the geographer tells me nothing can grow in the shadow of a Douglas Fir, not even its own seedlings. We're hiking a trail in Forest Park, fir branches brushing against our faces and arms as we pass. The geographer carries a GPS device, a 3-day supply of Power Bars, and a handgun. He calculates our coordinates on the GPS, but when I ask if I can see it, he says no.

Later, I find out this is true - nothing can grow in the shadow of a Douglas Fir, not even its own seedlings. I scan the horizon and wonder what this means for Portland, surrounded as it is on all sides.

I have been thinking about T.S. Eliot's objective correlative, what it means for artistic process, and how this relates to my theories about forensics, legal process, and writing. So I started a new project devoted exclusively to these questions. You can find it here.

I like the lofts better unfinished. The space not sealed. The grids not complete. Wind and rain blowing into the living room. Little puddles freezing on the granite floors.

Jamison Square is the perfect name for this park. Everywhere I look, I see grids.

Even the granite benches are square here (foreground). I like the way they echo the construction, with their structure exposed, each sheet of rock like an archaeological layer. Even though I know this park is complete, the benches invite questions. Are they finished? Are they remnants of something else? Are they in the process of construction? The process of deconstruction? Excavation?

In a sense, because I like the lofts better in their present state, I think they are in the process of deconstruction. Vast space is being destroyed, divided into tiny spaces, before my eyes.

Construction and excavation both end the same way: absolute destruction of the dig site. This is why modern archaeologists are reticent to dig. Artifacts may survive, but the site itself, and all its valuable secrets, are lost forever - the soil layers jumbled, the timeline out of order. This is also why history is never completely retrievable - if at all - because the very act of excavation destroys it. The soil, the context - gone. No way to rebuild without contaminating the site; our hopes and desires, our need for particular narratives, get mixed in with what was there (and the jars and spear points, the arrows and blankets and skulls, are also nothing more or less than signs and symbols for hopes and dreams, the need for particular narratives, of people long lost).

I wish developers were reluctant to dig, too.

A small patch of grass in the middle of Portland, gone. Another small field, once overgrown with wildflowers and weeds, just a few blocks from here, now surrounded by security fences, the grass dead, several square pits dug into the soil.

Ideal Cities by Ruth Eaton
The Yokohama Project by Foreign Office Architects
Jarhead by Anthony Swofford
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
Design and Crime and Other Diatribes by Hal Foster

There is a massive power outage in New York City. Manhattan offices are dark. Wall Street is quiet. La Guardia and JFK airports are shut down. People are trapped in subways and elevators. Thousands of citizens are flooding the streets, walking home because the trains can't carry them.

And the darkness is spreading like a bruise. Detroit, Ottawa, Toronto, and Cleveland are all black, too.

Earlier, CNN reported an explosion and fire at Con Edison. Now they are saying the Niagra power grid was overwhelmed, and that this was the likely cause of the blackout.

There is something exhilirating about watching all those people in the street, walking in traffic lanes, ignoring the normal rules. Something beautiful about the order of it all - the way laws are temporarily suspended and streets transformed into sidewalks. It happens instantly. Everyone knows and understands.

And yet, I can't help but think of New York a few hours from now, the alleys pitch black, the skyscrapers faint silhouettes . . . What is a city without its lights? What does it become? What laws are suspended in such absolute darkness? How is the urban landscape transformed?

Last year, Mayor Vera Katz created new enforcement guidelines for the "obstruction as nuisance" ordinance, which prohibits citizens from blocking pedestrian traffic on downtown sidewalks - only downtown sidewalks, in fact. We all knew which populations would be targeted: the homeless, the mentally ill, people of color, and other "untouchables." Perhaps coincidentally, these guidelines went into effect just a few shorts weeks before President Bush made a fundraising visit . . .

One year later, the mayor has strengthened enforcement again. Where before there were broad allowances for people attending events, there are now limitations. You may occupy a downtown sidewalk only for an event that lasts eight hours or less. While this might sound generous, it is actually a covert attempt to "clean up" the city's least favorite expression of free speech - the Portland Peace Encampment, a nonstop peace vigil that - until it was dismantled earlier in the week - has held strong since the first bombs were dropped in Iraq.

And just in time for Bush to visit again . . .

The major problem here - besides the obvious constitutional issues - is that Mayor Vera Katz seems to think a city is the sum total of its streets and businesses, the cleanliness and order of its grid, the sidewalks and storefronts and skyscrapers. But a city is not just a place. If that were true, then any collection of buildings and streets could rightly be called urban. Imagine you walk onto a movie set - all skyscrapers and apartment buildings, restaurants and public squares, but no people. You wouldn't call it a city, and you certainly wouldn't call it urban.

In the Winter 2003 issue of Places magazine, Nico Larco defined the major characteristics of urbanity: interaction, density, public space, variation, memory and the stranger, to name a few. The Stranger represents the experience of interacting with something or someone new - someone that might even make you uncomfortable. Or even frighten you. Can you imagine downtown Portland without the dreadlocks, the panhandlers, the punks, the protestors, the preachers and screamers and drummers? Mayor Katz, if you can't stand the noises, smells, touches and vocabularies of the stranger, then why are you here?
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*There is some confusion about the ordinance that was used to dismantle the Peace Camp. KBOO reports that the peace encampment was raided as a result of strict enforcement of the obstructions-as-nuisance ordinance, and the editor at Portland Communique reports the same. I believe they are correct. Now the task is to figure out whether new, tighter restrictions were invoked.

Note: Some people seem to use the term "obstruction as nuisance" and "sit-lie" interchangeably, and in my original post I used the term "sit-lie ordinance." These are not interchangeable, and in fact, there is no official "sit-lie" ordinance - only tougher enforcement of "obstruction as nuisance." I have since corrected my post. See the comments section for more.

Special thanks to Portland Communique, for thoughtful comments and good information. Check there for more.

And here is a link to Portland City Code. Go to Title 14, and you will find the Obstructions as Nuisances ordinance.

UPDATE: There is a sit-in at Portland City Hall on Friday, August 15th, at 12:00 noon. This sit-in will protest the new enforcement guidelines for the obstruction-as-nuisance ordinance. The new guidelines went into effect August 12, 2003, and were used to dismantle the Portland Peace Encampment. The new guidelines were made by the mayor, the police bureau, and the city attorneys. (And if I weren't home sick with a massive ear infection that refuses to go away - making me dizzy and sleepy and almost completely deaf - I would attending the sit-in myself).

I've been talking about the city, and Alan Murdock (above) has been talking about architecture. Check out his post on the Foreign Office Architects, who designed one of my favorite buildings ever - the Yokohama Ferry Terminal in Japan.

below the Broadway Bridge, 6:45 AM, two weeks ago.

I'm fascinated by construction equipment, the way it looks in the early morning, before any workers have arrived, like the ruins of an old city or the set of a science fiction movie. How it's heavy and portable at the same time - a movable city.

This picture reminds me of Cedar Rapids, where I grew up. Especially the downtown industrial district, which you can see from the interstate, and where - because of the Quaker Oats factory - the air smells and tastes like oatmeal and corn pops, artifical berries and peanut butter crisps. In a way, all construction sites remind me of Cedar Rapids, which, like the equipment, is simultaneously heavy and portable, always in tow, following me where ever I go . . .

Construction on the edge of the Pearl District, new lofts - What strikes me about this image is the harsh geometry of the building - how it feels more machine-like than the construction equipment.

There's something elegant about the crane, the way it swings and lifts, the perfect measure of the counter-weights, its skeleton of painted metal bars. It has life.

The building, on the other hand, is for living - with its future lofts and retail spaces - but it doesn't feel alive. It looks like the innards of a computer - the top corner a giant processing chip, the support beams like long copper wires. In a way, it makes sense. These buildings are reproducing all over the Pearl, all with similar aesthetics - maple cabinets, nickel hardware, granite or hardwood floors, high ceilings, and secure entrances. They're not really designed to be alive, but rather, to project the image of a particular kind of life. All computing a simple algorithm for wealth and luxury. Over and over and over . . .

I've been thinking a lot about the intimacy of online journals - whether they're changed somehow by the tension inherent in public/private writing, or whether the format - with its clean, readable typeface and symmetrical entry boxes, the carefully selected author photos and collections of links, the lack of tactuality - can ever really reveal as much as notebooks.

For the sake of showing you what my process really looks like, here are a few pages from an old notebook about Mondrian, brainwaves, earthquakes, forensic art, and archaeology:

Of course, these were also selected. The second image only shows one page, which might make you wonder what I'm hiding. And why. There's that public/private tension again. It never goes away.

And yes, my handwriting is really that bad.