anti:freeze

My father's birthday is a matter of dispute, but if you believe the date on his birth certificate, he turns sixty-nine today. If you believe his mother, you're one day late. And if you're like me, you're not even sure about the year. 1935? 1930? Is he sixty-nine or seventy-four? So much about him seems timeless, as if he comes from no era at all.

He was forty-one when I was born, if you believe the birth certificate (and if you're reasonably certain about the year.)

I was twenty-two the last time I saw him. I am twenty-eight now, a few months short of twenty-nine.

A few things I know for sure:

He believes the metric system is unpatriotic.

He used to throw dirty work boots at the television, when Ronald Reagan delivered State of the Union addresses.

He listened to Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and Loretta Lynn, but only when he was drunk, only on the weekends, and only in the basement.

If I turned the volume dial past "1" on my Disco-80 Portable Hits Machine, he would pound my door and scream. "1" was so low I had to tilt my head right above the record, and even then, I couldn't hear the music.

He never heard of pizza until he joined the Navy.

He hosed down the neighbor's dogs when they barked, and when that didn't work, he threatened them with a shot gun.

He thinks fiction is a waste of time.

Magazines he reads: National Geographic, Discover, Scientific American, The Nation, Time, Mother Jones.

He left the buckle on his belt when he beat me.

When DHS sent a social worker to look at a deep purple bruise on my cheek, he lied about it. (And I lied too, knowing the consequences).

He blames his children for his divorces, even though he cheated on all four wives.

He has never eaten Chinese, Indian, Thai, or Japanese food. "Nothing wrong with American," he used to say, when my mother tried to cook spicy sauces or strange fish.

One of my favorite memories is a union march, when Dad lifted me onto his shoulders and handed me a sign that read, The Course is a Curse! Vote Democrat! That was also the last time he held me.

I want to say, Happy Birthday, Dad. But I'm not sure it's your day, and I'm reasonably certain you won't care.

lost notes, recovered:

Mondrian moving away from objects (opposite: moving toward them, as in american culture)

The terrorist goes to a strip bar to avoid looking like a terrorist (the terrorist goes to a strip bar because he likes strip bars)

so uncomfortable with people you have to make them into squares

forensic scientist as special expert, with vision into the unseen

The painter is trying figures again, painting two young girls amidst the forest and flowers. His critics do not understand what he's trying to do. It's not about portraits. He is trying to show people what they could be. Thus he paints the girls red, washes them in the stain of the next world.

A figure in space?

What about space inside a figure?

How tall do you suppose a building has to be before it dissolves into the immaterial?

The critic will ask: If the painter can't paint people, why does he paint? Can the painter paint people? Aren't all people just high-level abstractions?

If the painter can't paint ideas, why does he paint? Can the painter paint ideas?

The man who reads the bible to himself, under his breath (the one who sits at the center table at the cafe, the one who hasn't showered in months, so thin the bones of his knees poke through his pants) buys a small square of dark chocolate every day. He likes the texture of the foil, how it feels when he opens it. I can tell because he opens it slowly, crinkling the thin silver between his fingers.

*some of these notes became their own notebooks, and later, their own essays ... funny to see them again in their raw form.

list of items from a recurring dream:

a map, tattooed on my right arm, directly below the shoulder

another map tattooed on the inside of my right thigh, and yet another on my calf

a post-earthquake landscape, in which Portland is underwater (whether that makes any kind of sense, I don't know, but that's how it was in the dream)

one pack of cigarettes

an underwater cave, strangely not filled with water (something to do with air pressure, as explained in the dream)

one soggy notebook filled with code (that I was deciphering)

one GPS tracking device

one loaded gun (which never went off)

one geographer (who could read above maps, and who drew another one on my back)

one syringe filled with heroin

one helicopter

the earthquake was not natural. Al Queda had figured out how to control plate tectonics. San Francisco was on fire. Los Angeles was sinking into the sea. Donald Rumsfeld was on the radio, warning of more earthquakes on the way. No one questioned this.

The closer I get to the waterfront, the further away east Portland seems. It's the bridges - their heaviness, their delicacy, the extreme linearity of their design. Standing beneath the Steel Bridge, I think, if I want to cross, I can only follow this one path, this one straight line, to the other side. No choice but to end up at the ramp on the opposite bank. And no real choice of where to cross. It's all been decided. All the cities I ever lived in were split in two by a river, but this is the only one that feels like it. Sometimes I stay in west Portland for weeks at a time.

Maybe the river isn't that wide, but look at the engineering it takes to cross it.

Standing on the Hawthorne's pedestrian staircase, I remember the fabric of my favorite shirt, second grade. It was aubergine polyester, with a roller skate printed on the upper left chest, real skate laces sewn over the shoulder, and another skate on the back. The idea was to look sporty, like a professional figure skater on her way to practice. I remember the rib trim on the sleeves, with a texture so rough it could scrape my tongue raw. I used to suck on the left one, while solving math problems printed in purple ink, paper still warm from the Ditto Machine.

for the map: bridges increase distance, Hawthorne Bridge induces to nostalgia and tactual hallucinations (rough tongue)

Almost daily we are confronted by sensational pseudo-problems luridly and melodramatically treated which, of course, distract one and all from the really vital questions facing us at this time. How many children have been driven more or less directly into destruction by an outraged older generation and its outrageous laws? - Alexander Trocchi

We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness. - Manifesto of Futurism

In so far as the meaning of words becomes clear in the fulfillment of an expectation, in the satisfaction of a wish, in the carrying out of an order, etc., it already shows itself when we put the expectation into language. It is therefore completely determined in the grammar, in what could be foreseen and spoken of already before the occurrence of the event. - Wittgenstein

No, painting is not made to decorate apartments. It is an instrument for offensive and defensive war against the enemy. - Pablo Picasso

And what is an authentic madman?

It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor.

So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses.

For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths. - Antonin Artaud

The more reality or being each thing has, the more attributes belong to it. - Spinoza

The most important tool the artist fashions through constant practice is faith in his ability to produce miracles when they are needed. Pictures must be miraculous: the instant one is completed, the intimacy between the creation and the creator is ended. He is an outsider. The picture must be for him, as for anyone experiencing it later, a revelation, an unexpected and unprecedented resolution of an entirely familiar need. - Mark Rothko

I am for an art that does not sit on its ass in a museum. - Claes Oldenberg

If it seems absurd to talk about revolution, this is because organised revolutionary movements have long since disappeared from the modern countries where the possibilities of a decisive transformation of society are concentrated. But everything else is even more absurd, since it is limited to what exists and to the various ways of putting up with it. - Situationist International

The crowd always wants to grow. There are no natural boundaries to its growth. Where such boundaries have been artificially created - e.g. in all institutions which are used for the preservation of closed crowds - an eruption of the crowd is always possible and will, in fact, happen from time to time. There are no institutions which can be absolutely relied on to prevent the growth of the crowd once and for all. -Elias Canetti

When do we understand a sentence? - When we've uttered the whole of it? Or while uttering it? -Wittgenstein

We are bored in the town. There is no longer any temple of the sun. The dadaists wanted to see a monkey-wrench between the legs of the girls walking by and the surrealists a crystal bowl. So much for all that. We can read every type of promise into every type of face, concluding phase of morphology. The poetry of commercial advertising has lasted twenty years. We are bored in the town; you really do have to be pretty bored to be still looking for mystery on the hoardings and in the streets ..." - Gilles Ivain

Total object, complete with missing parts, instead of partial object. Question of degree. - Samuel Beckett

All morning I thought it was raining. The gray, dreary light leaking between my window shades just felt wet. Imagine my surprise when I peeked outside and saw snow flakes. The best kind - fat and feathery, so big they don't even seem real. Like the ones inside a snowglobe. Or on a movie set.

I haven't seen snow in the city since I moved to Portland three years ago. There were flurries once while I was away, in Los Angeles. But here in the downtown, winter is all about rain. Snow always seems so far away, in the mountains, or on the hills.

When I moved away from Iowa, I thought I would never miss it. In the midwest, snow means long, achy walks through unshoveled drift on the sidewalks, winds so cold they freeze your eyelashes, burning lungs, pneumonia. There were mornings when I could snap my hair in two, like a twig, after a thin layer of ice formed around the shaft. Now, for the first time in my life, I understand why people long for snow. Why people write songs about white Christmases and dream about sleds. When I pulled back the shades, I gasped. My cheeks flushed pink with warmth, my shoulders relaxed. It looked like peace out there.

Well, it probably helps that it's not sticking. And that the temperature is 40 degrees.

Wendy has inspired me to post another reading list ...

1. Me++ : The Cyborg Self and the Networked City by William J. Mitchell
2. The Unseen Genome: Beyond DNA by W. Wayt Gibbs in this month's Scientific American (you might need a subscription to view the article, which I highly recommend)
3. The Mysteries Within: A Surgeon Reflects on Medical Myths by Sherwin B. Nuland (who also wrote How We Die, an amazing book that I have purchased for many friends)
4. re-reading: The Politics of Experience by R.D. Laing

Have you taken the time to check out Alan Murdock's site? If not, you really must. He is the kind of artist who can do anything. He's a dancer, video artist, peformance artist, painter, designer, and teacher. He has taught everything from drama to color theory to web design and non-linear digital video editing. Genius.

His writings on art history, criticism, and theory are especially good.

And I don't just say that because he's my husband.

Couch Park, NW Glisan Street

Rusty metal, chipped. Flecks shoved sharp between fingernail and skin, needle directly into nerve. Taste of dirty pennies on tongue, stale air rushing out as the door swings open. I want to crawl inside, see where it leads.

What does it mean that I keep walking by? And that I snap a souvenir to carry with me?

NW 21st, Thanksgiving morning

I love this little building, and I'm not sure why. The size, perhaps. Or the turquoise paint. The sans-serif lettering on the sign. The strange, criminal sound of its name. Optical brokers. Dealers in the eyeglasses underworld. Designer frames for street vendor prices. Or maybe it's just the red car parked out front. Or the way it reminds me of Los Angeles.

I love the sense of loss I always feel here, at this street corner. How the Salad World sign seems so out of place, with its bright colors and implications of fresh vegetables, health. How the bricked-up windows are only made more present by their absence (because I miss them, long for them, want to peek inside). And most of all, how the space is so personal, private even. I never feel like I can cut corners here, or reach out my hand and trace the bricks. Haunted is maybe a better way to say it. The place is full of ghosts.

As a pedestrian, I live in fear of the parking garage exit, the unseen truck ramp, the driver who only looks one way before slamming his foot on the accelator. Here, a downtown building spits a big, yellow truck from its side. Lucky me - the driver steps out to load one last box, and I kneel down to snap a lomo.