anti:freeze

Powell's Travel Store taped brown mailing paper in the windows and locked its doors for the last time. Closed.

Which means: I have lived in this city long enough to lose a space I once loved. Long enough to have insider information. I can say: meet me where Powell's Travel used to be or meet me at the old travel store. But it mostly means an empty hole beneath the MAX station. A hole in Portland's living room, as the locals like to call Pioneer Square. Like a drain.

Lovely little fragments from the Forensic Anthropology Training Manual by Karen Ramey Burns:

Lamellar bone is bone with tubular lamellae.

Woven bone is fibrous, nonlamellar, primitive, embryonic, or healing bone.

Stress is the key to form.

The forehead is superior to the nose. (Not superior as we usually mean it.)

The count begins with a mid-morning yawn ...

Dear readers,

anti:freeze is experiencing some bizarre technical snafus, so I have been forced off the blog for the past several days. Alas, if only I could shell out the bucks for a hosting plan upgrade, along with the new Movable Type ... I think this may be a database problem, but I am not sure. I will be back when I figure it out!

Missing you,
Karrie

I *think* my technical troubles have passed. More soon.

At least once a week, I open my apartment door and find a rolled sheet of paper stuck into the door handle. Apartment managers leave them here without a peep - no knock, no footsteps, no muted scratches against the wood. I never know anyone was here until minutes or hours (who knows?) later. Each scroll announces grim news:

This notice is to advise you of recent criminal activity on the property. A resident reports an attempted unauthorized entry into their apartment. In addition, it has been reported that an attempted burglarly of the business office occurred ...

Residents report a bicycle theft and vehicle burglarly ...

It has been reported that vandalism occurred in the South lobby elevator ...

I always knew: Theft and burglaries are common in downtown apartments and neighborhoods. Local newspapers and community newsletters remind us: this is the price we pay to live near bookstores, work, and interesting architecture.

But I wonder what these letters from apartment management actually accomplish. Warnings do little to solve the problem, and fear does not inspire a close-knit community. Residents size each other up in the hallways now, wondering whether unfamiliar faces belong inside the building, or if they slipped in uninvited, when a guest dialed the callbox or a resident used their security key.

I wonder how long before unfamiliar fingers poke a lockpick into my door, or smash through the flimsy security on our mailboxes, rifling through bills and letters for that all-important SSN.

Every time I unfurl one of the scrolls, I remember a night in 1995, when I lived above a pawn shop in Iowa City, Iowa. A fire escape doubling as my back staircase led directly to a small balcony outside my window. I never considered it dangerous, until one night, someone cut out the screen and tried to break in.

My boyfriend and I were asleep on my futon, directly below the locked window. Suddenly, I had the sense someone was watching us, and the nerves in my hands and feet singed hot. I heard footsteps on the fire escape, followed by scratching on the front door. I rolled over to peek below the door. When I saw two sneaker toes pressed almost beneath the crack and heard the knob jiggle, I shook my boyfriend awake, whispering shhhhh and pressing my palm lightly to his lips. He didn't believe me at first. I was known for carrying on complex conversations while asleep, not to mention bizarre bouts of sleepwalking. But then the knob jiggled louder. Someone was trying to break in.

We crept out of bed, grabbed the telephone, and tip-toed into the bathroom, where I dialed 911. 911, however, refused to send help. They said I should ask who it is. It might be a friend, the dispatcher said.

Do friends pick locks? I whispered.

The dispatcher said there was nothing police could do until a crime had already been committed.

Never mind the serial rapist reported on the news: a man who broke in while women slept and raped them in their own beds.

My boyfriend grabbed a hammer and prepared our defense. Who's there? He screamed.

And the intruder ran away.

The next morning, we found my screen cut out, left like a note on the balcony. The intruder had probably intended to climb in the window, but was thwarted by the lock (a surprise on a hot summer night - usually Iowans leave windows open in summer, untroubled by crime.)

I never slept in that apartment again.

rusty door in the Pearl, NW Portland

I am not ready to write about the death of Hunter S. Thompson.

And yet, I feel this intense pressure to speak, to explore my feelings about a personal icon, to ask questions and make connections and, in so doing, expose the darker, sharper, rustier, less aesthetic parts of myself that I prefer to keep locked in the basement.

Why do I struggle with this post?

Maybe because suicide has touched my personal life - more than once.

Maybe because the endless speculation in blogs and magazines, newspapers and radio shows, has touched a nerve.

Maybe because I am never very good at dealing with death.

Push-button publishing is a wonderful thing, but sometimes, I feel like it rushes me to contextualize and digest, eulogize and memorialize, before I am ready.

This much I can say: The Hunter S. Thompson that mattered to me - the one who changed journalism forever - has not died. It is the Hunter S. Thompson I will never know - the man - who left us last night. And that loss does not belong to me.

His influence on writing will live on, so in a sense, I have not lost anything at all.

Still, I am sad.

Some posts that touched me today:

Portland Comminque

Wendy Ortiz

Rite Aid sign in the Pearl

Everyone knows: nothing comes cheap in the Pearl. Restaurant meals cost a few bucks more, even when the greens are not organic, the chicken not free range. Furniture stores - aka design studios - display hot pink couches shaped like luscious lips, or fancy plastic chairs that sell for $300 or more. Yes, you read that correctly: $300 for plastic.

Tiny boutiques sell 7 for all Mankind Jeans in sizes that live up to the name: size 7 for everyone.

Despite all the high design & sparkling objects, many people in the Pearl live on modest means. They seek modestly priced apartments and sacrifice lots of extras to live here. Many also live in rent-restricted housing.

These are the people who lament the lack of more affordable options. Whole Foods may be wonderful for some groceries, but a nearby Safeway would be nice. (A local Trader Joe's: even better.) Bumble & Bumble shampoo sure sudses sweet on dirty scalps, but Pantene costs a lot less.

Which explains the clashing feelings about a new Rite Aid store in the 10th at Hoyt building. While wealthier residents fire off angry letters to local newsletters, or complain in the cafes about an ugly, corporate, cookie-cutter drugstore invading the neighborhood like a virus, others see the sign and feel relieved.

Overheard on NW 10th this past weekend:

"Disgusting. Rite Aid doesn't have any alternative medicines."

I heard this and wondered if using naturopathic medicine was a prerequisite for living here. Was the issue really the lack of natural alternatives? Or was it that Rite Aid was corporate?

I suspect the problem lies hidden in the subtext: Rite Aid is cheap. It lacks that certain Pearl something. The signs and soda cases light up in garish brights. No granite. No maple cabinets. Just the same old rows of metal shelving, complete with a photo counter.

Because for all its self-proclaimed diversity, the Pearl really does have an exclusive streak - not necessarily based on class, but something more elusive and hard to define. A kind of aesthetic sensibility or style (which, of course, takes us back to issues of class.)

I have to admit: I have a drugstore fetish. I love the way my tennis shoes sound on the tiles. I love the long shelves of lotions and shampoos, the sense of abundance, the rippling, flourescent lightbulb reflections on clean floors. I am the kind of person who will (occasionally) shop in that Rite Aid, even if I hate the viral replication of chain stores in general.

I do not believe the Rite Aid will hurt Pearl Pharmacy. Really, they serve different needs. And I should know, because I already shop at both stores, for very different products (although, the Rite Aid I visit is nestled into a downtown space near Pioneer Square.)

Two men, overheard:

"It's gonna bring more crime into the building."

"You think so?"

"Just look at the one downtown. Look who shops there."

On the one hand, I knew what the man meant. I cannot even count all the times I've been hustled, hit on, insulted, and threatened near the downtown Rite Aid, when all I wanted was a generic bottle of aspirin or a new bar of soap.

But on the other hand, he was talking about me. I shop there, so according to him, I am suspect.

You have to admit: The sign is kind of quaint, old-fashioned even.

another letter to the dead boy

In the mortuary:

When rigor mortis is present (present, as if rigor mortis were some kind of soul), the dead man's muscles must be massaged. The mortician applies cream to cold skin and rubs latex-covered fingertips into legs, head, and neck.

Some people wait their whole lives for touch this gentle, only to finally feel it after death.

Is there any charge when your nerves no longer fire? Any small twinge of pleasure at all?

You can find some new work at evidentiary:alchemy. I redesigned the site, too, to create a cohesive feel with anti:freeze.

I. Dancing in the living room with my sister, and her fist accidentally knocks out my front tooth:

raw gum tissue and stringy flesh, a hole I could not keep my tongue from pressing into, the carnivorous ridge of a new bone poking through. I remember a hard wad of cotton pressed into the hole, my jaw chomping down to hold it there while I bled, and how the cotton soaked up all my saliva - sucked it like a vacuum, until that hole felt raw and dry and hard. And then the wound began to ache. Treatments, I learned, could feel worse than the injuries.

II. The adhesive from an EEG irritated my scalp, and a lesion bloomed along my part:

One sharp prick from the tooth of my comb, and the skin split open. No matter how I held my head, the tiny ulcer remained visible, so I tried to speed its healing with a tissue and antibiotic ointment. I applied the ointment with my pinky (thinking this finger touched the least surfaces, had the least chance of spreading something icky), then covered it with a small bit of tissue - like the chin of a teenage boy after a shaving accident. I wondered whether this small patch of scalp would go bald, if sores damaged the follicles forever, and I imagined the empty follicles as deep holes, straight through the dermis, into my skull. Holes I could never fill in.