anti:freeze

I am having the dream again, and this time, it doesn't end with the map.

"Remember the swans at Cedar Memorial?" Ashley says, rolling up his right sleeve, revealing his bicep and forearm.

I try not to look. I don't want to see his needle tracks.

I haven't thought about the swans in years. Some teenagers broke into Cedar Memorial cemetery late at night and killed them, cooking both birds on the bank of the artificial lake. It was sick. One of them was a politician's son. "You mean the ones that got killed?"

"Yeah." He holds out his arm. "You can look. It's okay."

I close my eyes tight and touch the thin skin of his wrist, tracing a vein to the inside of his elbow. The ridges and scars feel familiar, even though I never saw them when he was alive.

"What about the swans?" I ask.

He pulls his arm back, tugs down his sleeve.

I never get the answer I'm looking for.

Hope Edelman just emailed me about her latest project, the West Coast Writers Workshop. It's a collaboration with novelist Leslie Schwartz, and I know it will be amazing. I know this because Hope was my first mentor in the Antioch MFA program, and her teaching forever changed the way I think about structure and form. Every month, she sent these amazing critiques, breaking essays into their essential structural elements and charting the narrative arcs. She did more than help me revise. She planted the seeds for my own critical awareness, empowering me to continue our work long after the semester ended. I can't even tell you how many times I revise with her critiques in mind. What would Hope say about this arc? How would she break this down? Where can my exposition go deeper? Where should there be no exposition at all?

If you can get to Santa Monica, take her workshop. You will not be disappointed.

When the second hand ticked past midnight, I beat a two-decades-old prophecy that I would not live to see twenty-nine. Perhaps I can thank my inner badass, which was already apparent at the tender age of two (or am I three in this shot?). When this photo was taken, I had already overcome two broken hips, a weirdly restrictive hip-and-leg cast, and several deadly reactions to foods, medications, and Sunday School.

I was a badass from day one. And who could blame me? I was forced to share my birthday with Ronald Reagan, at whose televised image I would later hurl dirty socks and tennis shoes.

Kindergarten marked my transformation to innocent teacher's pet, Super Skate queen, and ABBA fanatic.

And in first grade, I learned the joys of being nicknamed Bugs Bunny, because of the space between my two front teeth.

The year I met (or rather, started dating) my husband.

And the year I finally left Iowa, at twenty-five.

Last night, while watching my husband brush his teeth, I told him how I can't wait to turn thirty. I have always been impatient for my twenties to end - both because of the prophecy, and because I just like the sound of being thirty. It is, in my view, the perfect age.

"I'm glad you're only turning twenty-nine," my husband said.

I reached around him for my toothbrush, squeezing some gel onto the bristles. "Why?"

"Because it means I have you for another whole year."

Too bad there is no picture for that.

Karrie is taking a brief break following big deadlines for school and work. She will return later today or tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, check out these books (all highly recommended by yours truly):

The Predicament of Culture by James Clifford.

Writing Culture by James Clifford and George Marcus.

Boo Hoo: A Dot.Com Story From Concept to Catastrophe by Ernst Malmsten and Erik Portanger.

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan.

and this movie ...

Metropolis.

July 2003

Today is the big wedding.

In preparation, someone has chalked a pink line straight down the center of the pedestrian bridge, all the way from the east steps to the west elevator, creating two distinct aisles - one for the wedding guests, another for foot traffic. A trellis arch leans against the north handrail, decorated with vines and pink flowers. Blonde toddlers run around in tuxedos and pastel dresses. The best man is already tipsy, guzzling his fifth or sixth beer, lighting another cigarette, hitting on women who pass by.

My husband and I watch from our balcony, not quite sure whether to laugh or run down and clean up the scattered beer cans. Who in the hell thought it was a good idea to get married here? On a diesel-choked bridge? In a cheesy apartment courtyard? The wedding party stops almost every pedestrian, and none of the disabled residents at the Yards can access the bridge's elevators.

Three days ago, the bride called me a bitch when I stepped onto the bridge after a long walk home. She was standing in a huddle with several khaki-wearing, fake-tanned women. Excuse me, I said. They glared. Excuse me, I said again.

I didn't know it was a wedding rehearsal. Photographers and tourists hang out on the bridge all the time, snapping pictures of the Union Station clocktower. I was balancing a heavy grocery bag on one hip, trying to squeeze by, when the bride muttered the insult under her breath.

Later, I learned that she drove in from the suburbs, a wealthy district far away. Had she not noticed syringes littered in the grass beside the steps? Graffiti? Drug deals? Threats and sneers all along NW 5th and 6th? This is not a bad neighborhood, but it has its problems. A strange backdrop for a wedding - a rich wedding, anyway.

From the balcony, I secretly wish for an Amtrak train to screech into the station - or better, a chain of dirty freight cars, industrial orange and yellow. A garish backdrop for the valentine-candy bridesmaid gowns. I want the trellis to tip over, the best man to pass out, the neighborhood to get the last word.

Many of you know that I recently revamped my other web log, alchemy. I finished the redesign today, and it is now ready for monthly essays about writing, objective correlative, and forensics. Some of the essays will come in two parts, in the same month, and there will also be shorter posts in-between. The photo albums are always being updated.

There is a new mini-essay posted right now. Enjoy.

Of course, antifreeze will continue to be updated as often as possible.

Some friends wrote me late last night, confused about my last post. To clarify:

anti:freeze will still be updated as often as possible - every day or every few days. This space is like my corner hangout. I love it (and all of you) too much to stay away.

My other blog, alchemy, will feature monthly essays about objective correlative, forensics, and writing, with other features in between the monthly essays. Sometimes the longer, monthly essays will grow and develop over several posts (meaning there will be many posts per month on one theme). I just redesigned alchemy's site to reflect that new purpose.

Enjoy.

in the days building up to a seizure

If I can get past the bridge, I can make it. How many windows on the building across the courtyard? Will my coat cover my legs? What if my socks fall down? If I get past the bridge, I still have to get past the Greyhound station. All the kids carrying rolled-up sleeping bags, asking for spare change and cigarettes. This apartment is shrinking. The north wall moved one inch. I don't have a tape measure to prove it. Do I want to cross the bridge? Yesterday, there was a trail of fresh blood spatter down the center. I did not take pictures. I made it across. Are bridge spans less stable in the rain? If drops pelt the same spot over and over, do they eventually drip through?

Karrie is stressed out and sick, so she offers you this list.

Books slipped beneath the sheets with me today:

Please Don't Kill the Freshman by Zoe Trope. A little Platonic object if I ever saw one. The weight and size of a logic textbook, the kind of binding that creaks a little when you open the pages wide. And the writing! This young woman is talented and insightful far beyond her years. I can't wait to see new work from her.

The Clear Cut Future. This gorgeous little book is available as part of a series subscription from Clear Cut Press. I love the idea of books by subscription, especially fat little softcovers with mysterious dust jackets. Here is what it says on the inside flap:

This book is a tool for the future, which is here. You can use it. Ithas words, pictures, and other information. The book is portable and durable. If you leave the area it will still be useful. There are many other places like this one. The book might help you recognize them. The future has preoccupations and it has trajectories. The book maps these conditions ...

enjoy. I will be back tomorrow.

There is a movement in ethnography to pay deeper attention to scents and sounds, flavors and textures - fabrics pressed into skin, burning of hot spices against tongue, mouth-feel of breads and cakes. Many ethnographers record rich visual details and dialogue, but not much else. As if language and images are the only things worth analyzing - not the lightness of a fingertip touch or the burning aromas of herbs, the rhythm of mortar and pestle.

For the past two decades, this has been challenged as a cultural bias, since in many cultures, touch or scent are more compelling. If you describe the ritual dance and translate the song, but forget the incense perfume, you are missing the point. Even in the image-saturated west, we rarely rely on sight alone, despite expressions like, let me see for myself, and I see what you mean. We seek to verify what we see. Cheeks flushed? Let me slide a glass thermometer between your lips. Nor do we accept words without evidence to back them up. You say you love me? Prove it.

Several years ago, I visited the dentist for a severe toothache. My lower right wisdom tooth was pushing up through the gums, and I was hoping for an immediate extraction. As the dentist leaned over my face, she said, "This tooth is infected. I can't pull it until the infection clears." She swirled around in her chair, lifted her prescription pad from a nearby table, and wrote clindamycin in messy scrawl. "Didn't you know it was infected?" She asked, as she handed me the slip. "Couldn't you taste it? I could smell it right away."

Sometimes, I feel so separate from this city, as if everything I see is through a window. Thick glass, the kind that stops all sound, save the muffled sirens of an ambulance or police car. This past week, the feeling has grown more intense, since I started a medication that makes me sensitive to sunlight. The pharmacist directed me to wear sunglasses in the rain. I am supposed to wear a hat and at least 30 SPF sunscreen (to which I am almost always allergic), and if at all possible, to stay indoors between the hours of 10 and 3. Now, I really am watching through windows.

I miss the spicy chicken-and-bok-choy scents of the restaurants in China Town. I miss the texture of the handrails on the Steel Bridge, how they sometimes scrape my palm, sending shrill shocks through my tooth fillings and jaw (and how the towers loom above, filled with potential energy, the counterweights ready to fall and lift the spans so a ship can pass beneath). I miss long walks along the riverfront, lomo crammed deep into my messenger bag, pressing into my hipbone, ready to capture light and shadows so I can share at least one sense of this city with you.

for an exploration of touch and art, visit kelley.

for an exploration of taste and healing, visit wendy.

for an exploration of how senses change (written by an inspiring ethnographer), visit dewi

more future lofts in the Pearl

I have always loved the aesthetics of construction sites. Exposed floors, support beams, cranes, plastic sheets blowing in the wind. Here, I especially love the blue elevator and plywood boards. It is seasonably blue, cold and sinusy and wet, the kind of color scheme I associate with British films, earaches, and punk music. Blue headache. Blue exhaustion. Blue skin after seizure. The medication I am taking can turn gums blue if taken for too long. Good thing my course of therapy is almost complete, gums still pink.

This naked frame feels so different from the fiery oranges and reds of last summer's construction blitz:

I miss the warmth, the spray-painted numbers, the dark shadows you only get with bright sunshine.

Here, I am fascinated by the stylized numbers, stenciled inside playful dots, as if mass-produced for the purpose - a retro construction site for the uber-hip Pearl. It is as if the construction site has its own design, its own architecture, meant to please the aesthetes that populate this block (perhaps watching from their floor-to-ceiling windows, wondering if the new lofts will have granite counters and nickel hardware just like theirs).

In Portland, the light is so blue during winter. Darkness falls early.

Look at the Bagdad last summer, only slightly earlier in the afternoon:

Strange how it seems so much brighter, even with the lights switched off.

Do you ever think about how cities change with the seasons? Not just in terms of temperature or precipitation, but in the actual energy they emit.

Shops and theaters, cafes and bookstores, are not so different from the deciduous trees that line my front walk. When coldness creeps across the land, they change. They seem to fall asleep or even die. (And those with fancy lights disappear in the garish colors, blinking bulbs, and neon tubes. In a sense, they are more obscured by light than darkness).

Or is it our mood projected back on the world? In a real sense, light and color do not exist outside our perceptions. They are not particles. They are waves. The question, then, is not what you look at, but what you see. (Was that Thoreau?)

The Steel Bridge in winter:

The Steel Bridge in summer:

Either way, I can hardly wait for spring.

Days Inn hotel restaurant, downtown Portland

This wall clock is downright surreal, the way it looms over the cash register, washed out by a harsh, incandescent bulb. Imagine having to wait tables with time pushed into your face like this, a constant reminder of how many hours are left, how many tables, how many greasy plates.

Cup & Saucer Cafe, SE Hawthorne, home of the best vegan cornmeal pancakes in Portland

Last weekend, a friend visited from Bellingham, Washington, and we ended up in one of the sparkly red booths at Cup & Saucer. I had not visited SE Hawthorne all winter, and it was liberating to ride across the river on the No. 14, to break out of the downtown grid, even if just for a few hours. (You see, I have a tendency to hibernate in winter, to hide in my small corner of the city. My friends are probably giggling as they read. They know that I hide all year round, and that I fear bridges even more than I fear earthquakes. My psychogeographic explorations sprang from an effort to engage with this city, to push my boundaries.)

inside the Cup and Saucer (note the funky tile and lighting)

An altar of twinkling, electric lights on a lawn just off SE Hawthorne

I set my lomo on a car hood to capture this shot, not thinking about the reflections. I love how they turned out, burning across the hood like a trail of fire.

Bishops barbershop, SE Hawthorne

I love the signs on SE Hawthorne, how they jut out over the sidewalk, competing for attention. At night, I like to pretend I am somewhere else. Descriptions like Nick's Famous Coney Island feed the fantasy. (See it there, in the background?)

Mannequins in the display window of Red Light Clothing Exchange, a vintage clothing store, SE Hawthorne

I am never hip enough for stores like this. Do I want to be?

School bus parked in front of the Days Inn, downtown Portland, shot with the lomo. To me, this image says it all about the cultural neglect of our schools.

Is it just me, or is this school bus alive? I love the fierce squint of the windshield wipers, the storm clouds reflected on the windows, the fat tires poised to roll right over the American Barricade. And really, how perfect is that?

Why is a school bus parked at the Days Inn? Where are the children? I imagine a long line of toddlers waiting to board, their frazzled teacher counting heads, checking names on the classroom roster, making sure no child is left behind.