anti:freeze

Finally, the first pictures from the Holga are here ...

Alan, taken while walking along Broadway Street, Thanksgiving morning

Yours truly, taken on Broadway Street, Thanksgiving morning. Alan snapped this one - the only time I let him grab the Holga away. Ha ha. Is my nose really that big?

Motorcyle parked in the Pearl, Thanksgiving morning.

little shack in the Pearl, on the edge of a truck parking lot

excerpt from one of my essays, Little Motors:

Remember: searching roadsides and backyards, parking lots and corridors, for a space I could hide inside, a place I could live if I needed to. A rock shelter in the park, an alleyway with a cubbyhole, a broken-down shed, or an out-of-business auto repair shop – wherever my body could fit, and where no one could find me. I fantasized about these spaces, how quiet they would be, how I wouldn’t have to listen for Dad’s footsteps in the hallway, or lean a chair against my door to keep him out. I still do that sometimes.

*and if you read the comments for "underground," you will see that Wendy and I are in synch again.

You absolutely must check out this photo album - Abandoned Bicycles of New York.
I just love the idea.

notes toward an essay about surveillance, which I'm writing despite the creepy feeling I get just thinking about it:

My cell phone has an accessory for 24-hour surveillance. All I have to do is install a tiny camera in my office or home, set the interval rate, and transmit the images via MMS. Every few minutes, I can pull out my phone and check the screen. The computer is still there. Drawers still shut tight. Sheets tucked neatly at the corners. No sign of theft. No evidence of an affair. This is not a feature I will ever use.

But am I somehow buying into the idea, just by purchasing the phone? (Even if the phone was free with instant rebates?) Am I indulging a subconcious desire - for safety, security, power? Or is it only indulged if I use the remote camera? What if the camera is installed in full view? What if it's hidden behind a picture frame?

I can log into the GPRS network, scan for friends, and track their approximate location (provided they are also on the network and grant permission). Karrie is near 1005 W Burnside and SW 10th. And if I had a GPS equipped phone, I could track my precise location on the earth's surface. My body could become a blip on the radar screen, never lost, forever cradled inside a right angle - the point where latitude and longitude collide.

My Nokia can snap pictures with the built-in camera, download my email on a POP3 client, or surf the web (although, at this point, the web is too expensive via cellphone). It can even record short videos in RealPlayer format.

What is all of this really about? What does it mean to track your location, spy on your own bedroom, or snap secret pictures in Pioneer Square? Do we have an inherent drive to surveil? These are the questions I'm wrestling with right now, as I sit here, "plugged" into wi-fi and live on the web, wondering why I feel the need to share my notes at all, and what that means, and whether these questions will ever lead to anything other than more questions.

*Here's an interesting article about cell phone cameras, in the Portland Tribune, dated November 28, 2003. I tend to listen to the radio (OPB, KBOO) for local stories (especially now, with a big project due for school) so I'm a little behind reading the newspapers.

parking lot in the Pearl

When I was a kid, I dug fossils from a small square of dirt at the bottom of my driveway, breaking tar chunks from the cracked, crumbling street and using them like shovels and drill bits, working until my palms blistered and my knees bruised blue from crawling. Every specimen was labeled, bagged, and placed on a special shelf in the garage.

This wall in NW Portland takes me back, makes me want to dig again. Sometimes I pretend the paintings are ancient symbols, the wall a ruin amongst hipster downtown galleries and lofts. What does the envelope mean? Reach out, open the flap, read the secret message sealed inside.

I was alone in the middle of a blue desert - that peculiar blue I associate with food coloring, frosted eyeshadow, and prescription pills. There were western larches all around, but the forest wasn't real. It was faint, insubstantial, a hologram or maybe a film. When I got close to the branches, I could see the needles were actually tiny glass tubes, like christmas lights or eyedroppers, filled with manuka honey.

No one knew where I was, or how to find me, except for you. You balanced a GPS device on your palm, reading its screen as you walked, and I got the impression you were tracking the needles. You found me, and then we were walking through the sand. I remember you reaching up and brushing blue grit from your face. It left a glittery pigment on your cheek, like blush.

Where have you been?

Walking through the rain, by myself.

And as I walked, I looked up at the buildings, reading the faded paint of old billboards, peeking in windows, hoping for a message or sign.

Hoping the columns and carved stone would inspire me, or remind me how insignificant individual lives really are, how brief.

It has been a difficult week.

(rough) notes toward an essay about technology, networks, wi-fi, sensuality, and touch.

I.

Making collages for you. Fingertips dragged through glue, spreading my prints across the glossy surface of the paper. Tiny ridges in skin, pressing. The archaeologist digs a fossilized footprint from the earth, and the shape of absence - negative space - transforms into object, a mold in which to pour speculation, evidence. My shed skin dried in hard glue, bacteria from my lips, on my fingertips, dragged along the edge of the paper, where skin cuts open and bleeds. Hemoglobin and plasma on your letter, leaked from me. What is more intimate than this?

Sending the letter. If you scrape your finger under the envelope flap, you are sticking your finger between my lips, letting my tongue run over you. Imagine the shed cells from a tastebud (the same tastebud that said bitter when it scraped across the seal?), the bacteria, the bits of teeth broken off. In the fold between your fingers.

II.

Touch. I am afraid I am losing my sense of touch.

I snap pictures with my cell phone, never winding film into the camera, never sliding paper into developer solution, or shuffling a stack of glossy prints. Deck of cards, joint of right thumb pressing down. Haven't heard that sound in years. I bluetooth the images to my computer, where they appear on a flat screen, ready for manipulation - but manipulation without touch. Files shrink, and I don't even have to snip. Chiropractor without hands, surgery without instruments.

This is why I love my Lomo more. Moving parts, vaguely lifelike. Compartments, hidden spaces. The shutter clicks, light splashes onto exposed film, and there is no going back. No delete. Touch with all the risk intact. And old record albums - I love those, too - with their ridges. Needle scraping the surface of a vinyl fingerprint, pops and cracks like no other disc in existence. A forensics of music. When we lose touch, we lose evidence.

III.

In the cafe, a bulletin board that says Starbucks Happenings across the top. Cork with a wood frame and glass cover, polished so the lights reflect bright. It's the glass that captures my attention - not the poster beneath. Smooth surface for a fingerprint. Sweet smudges of maple frosting, stuck to my fingers from a scone. I can look, but I can't touch. I can't press a poster against the cork, force a staple through the spongy surface, a tack. Passive as a radio antenna, a receiver that can't send a signal.

sidewalk on NW Glisan, shot with the cell phone

The first time I noticed this was immediately after September 11, 2001. I don't know if it was painted there because of the attacks, or if it already existed long before. I don't even know if the artist intended it to look like a crash, or for the strip of white to look like a tower. (Perhaps the white strip came later?) Now I notice it every day.

newspaper box, downtown Portland, taken with the cell phone

What a slow process for property destruction - standing hunched over the newspaper box, pressing the lit tip of a cigar (or lighter flame, maybe?) into the plastic. This box sits on a busy downtown streetcorner, and on a normal day, I push past the crowds and hurry across the street before the light changes. But when I saw the blackened plastic, I kneeled down to touch the melted edges of the hole. I found myself reading the headlines. (And, of course, it's a strange headline to provoke vandalism - the earthquake in Iran. Or maybe the burn was there before?)