anti:freeze

I love the roughness of the numbering here*, on what will someday be fancy lofts in the Pearl. I love the way process is exposed, how passing pedestrians get a peek into the structure . . . the work.

Whenever I pass by construction sites, I think about the strangeness of building a space - spending long days wiring the lights, installing water pipes, smoothing plaster - all the time knowing you will soon be forbidden from entering. Those construction workers will not be living in the lofts. They will not carry keys to the very doors they lock into each shiny hinge.

And when I think of these things, I think of my dad. He sometimes worked construction (sometimes worked as maintenance at a chemical plant). In his life outside work, he was still constructing: building spaces he could never again enter, the dark and unfinished houses spreading inside him like suburbs, all starting to look the same.

*photo by me, using the lomo. taken yesterday, when the sun made a rare appearance . . . hours later, it was raining again. alas.

Something fascinating has happened to this street corner, now that the bus stop is indefinitely closed. The space has become closed, too. I decided to sit on the bench inside the shelter, so I could change the film in my Lomo and rest my injured foot. Almost every passerby pointed out the "Bus Stop Closed" sign.

"You can't catch the bus here," they said. "You'll have to go down two blocks." They were trying to be helpful.

But really, why should the shelter be closed just because the bus stop is? Why should I let a sign dictate my movements? It's a perfectly good bench. In the shade. Protected from rain.

I am fascinated by traces of revision, when old and new stand side by side, like old jars dug out of their contexts by archaeologists. Maybe it's the art historian inside me. So many paintings contain evidence of their creation. Radiographs might reveal a figure that once loomed in the foreground, but has since been painted over. Or the drawing before paint was applied. Or a different painting alltogether, before the artist found her subject - or before she was granted a commission.

Here in this parking lot, I notice the lines were redrawn, moved slightly to the right. "43 Reserved" became "Reserved 43." Reserved apparently more important now than the parking space number. What does that say about our conception of space?

NW Hoyt and 6th induces desire to go missing.

NW Hoyt and Broadway induces fear of earthquake and desire to take off shoes

NW 23rd induces to confusion and craving for black and white movies. Also to spy, and to push people out of my way on the sidewalk (though I don't do this).

SE Hawthorne induces to hunger for sugar, craving beneath tongue.

More to come.

Tomorrow, I will use a Seattle map to explore Portland.

inspired by the work of the Situationists

setting out with the Seattle map, in downtown Portland

Part One: I set my watch to the wrong time and headed out. If anyone asked me what time it was, I was going to hold up my wrist and show them the display - no mention of the mad, random winding I just performed, which set the hours and minutes back into the early morning.

In order to fragment the city spectacle, I had to de-linearize the concept of time. Not letting my time be dictated, my hours precisely divided and demarcated. Not letting my day be ruled from the outside. It was ten o'clock, it was five o'clock, it was no time at all.

According to the map, Pike's Place should be right across the street, on the waterfront. So I crossed Naito and looked for the water. My map was one of those slick tourist fold-ups, with detail boxes of city attractions. It indicated I should head north, so I did. I walked along the sidewalk behind McCormick Pier, but I never found the fresh fish and artisan clocks the map promised. In the distance, I thought I saw the Space Needle, but it turned out to be a skyscraper with a helicopter hovering just above it.

I did find several "No Trespassing" signs, and on the sides of several buildings, the word "door," stenciled onto the foundations or wood. I pressed my hands against one of them, but it wouldn't budge.

note for psychogeographic map: waterfront by McCormic Pier induces to extreme sense of privacy. do not want anyone entering my space. also induces to feelings of being patrolled, or watched, or the sense that I'm about to get busted for a crime I did not commit. this might be because of all the no trespassing signs. terrible place to live.

see previous entry from today . . .

The problem is taking the map literally. The empty, straight streets and sharp right angles, all in blue. Maps are another way of saving time and preventing experience. Transportation made easy. The shortest distance between two points is a map. Using the wrong map is subversive because it is not efficient, and because it allows you to redefine space. (That was one of the reasons I screwed up my watch: to subvert time itself. Why should I worry if it's time for lunch?)

The other problem, of course, is taking the city literally. We grow accustomed to the labels and definitions laid out for us by city planners: Pearl District, Waterfront Park, Cultural District . . . it is hard to see them differently, to find the loose wires hanging from the cracks of a fancy loft building, or to discover that the texture of the sidewalk makes your tongue ache.

Today, as I walked along the waterfront looking for Pike's Place Market, the spectacle of public space broke apart. There were boats anchored at the little dock and birds diving in to catch prey. Steps that led down to a small beach. But no people. Where I had hoped for a market, there was only an empty sidewalk. And everywhere I looked, "No Trespassing."

This weekend I was paying attention to my movement patterns, trying to understand why I cross busy streets at certain intersections and not others, or why I like to turn certain corners or cut across certain empty lots, when I noticed I was walking in circles around Pioneer Square. It occurred to me that I always do this. I rarely cross the red-brick commons area, and I rarely sit down to relax there. When I do, I always have this sense that I should move on, that there are things to do and errands to finish. I feel kinetic and restless and nervous.

Perhaps it's because the square is surrounded by retail towers and stores - Banana Republic, Nordstrom's, Abercrombie and Fitch, Gap, Meier and Frank . . . If you looked in the store windows, you might think it's late summer, with the sandals and swimsuits and beach-towel color schemes. Those windows are a kind of calendar, shifting time forward, constantly taking us away from the now.

note for the psychogeographic map: Pioneer Square induces to faster heartbeat, confusion of seasons and time, desire to move on and away, longing for synchronicity between time and season and desires.

Michael Totten at www.michaeltotten.com has written a nice, brief history of Portland city planning and architecture. He also snapped photos while walking around the various districts, so you can see exactly what he means. (There's some funny commentary, too). Check it out.

I thought about taking this picture for a long time. Every time I walked by, I remembered the old Bromo-Selzer advertisement across the street, painted over with drab beige so that no one can see it. How long before Fire Apparatus was gone, too?

At the bus stop nearby, I heard someone say, "Why the hell would anyone take a picture of that?"

That made me want to take it even more.

Enter Through Kaboom. I'm uncomfortable with the command, the way it directs rather than suggests. It's not at all like the "Accessible Entrance" signs you see on schools or government buildings, with arrows pointing toward the appropriate door. It's a flat-out order. Sure, I see these kinds of signs all the time - Use Other Door, All Bags Must Be Checked, etc. But those are directed at everyone, not a specific group, and so they don't have the same effect.

Or maybe it's the word kaboom that gets me. It's a shop name, of course, but it seems to have other implications, as if kaboom were some kind of religious experience or even catastrophic event, rather than a designer household store. An experience we are all supposed to enter through. (And in this reading of the sign, it does seem directed at everyone, despite the wheelchair icon)

Or then again, it might just be the red.

This building is only a few blocks from my apartment, but I hardly ever pass by. I usually walk along sixth or fifth, so I can take the pedestrian bridge over the train tracks. On this evening, my husband and I walked through Chinatown instead, past the Republic Cafe and the Chinese Gardens. When we saw the light on the side of this building, we stopped. We must have stood on the sidewalk for ten minutes, staring. Even after three years in Portland, I am still amazed by the quality of light here, the way it can sometimes feel so personal.

This is why taking different paths is worth it.

*click the thumbnail above to see a larger image

Outside, construction equipment beats against concrete, cracking like lightning, regular as a pulse. It's been doing it all day. The rhythm creeps into everything, so that it's almost impossible to move without falling into it. I slice a tomato, and I wait for the pound of the machine to slice again. My feet tap along to the beat, as I sit in the old restaurant booth in our living room. My typing is slower. If it weren't for my headache, I might actually enjoy the noise.

This afternoon, I stepped into my apartment courtyard, and I realized I was hearing the sound's echo - not the actual source. The machine itself wasn't that loud, off in the distance, only visible if I stepped onto the pedestrian bridge behind Union Station. If I stood at precisely the right angle, though, the noise was suddenly ten times louder, amplified as it bounced off my building, then bounced again off the building across the courtyard.

This is perfect. The sounds of construction radiating outward, growing louder and louder, until the surrounding neighborhoods are forced to listen, forced to get into the rhythms . . . This is how gentrification moves. This is how it sounds. You get a warning. An alarm. I ran back inside and shut my window, surprised to find I couldn't hear it anymore. My building is sending the noise back.

note toward a psychogeographic map: beneath the Burnside Bridge ramp, near Skidmore Fountain. 8:30 PM.

The lighting is the same texture and temperature as the light in LAX the first time I walked through it. The same hue of yellow, even. The yellow of crime scenes. The yellow light that shines on security fences - the ones with "Beware of Dog" signs. A place you might find a body. Or, in the case of LAX, a place you might brush past a terrorist on your way to pick up your suitcases.

Strange to stand here and remember that first landing in Los Angeles. The long, yellow tunnel that led to baggage claim was the exact shade of headaches, influenza, drug addiction - if these conditions have color. My palms were blistered by the canvas strap on my carry-on, which was too narrow and weak for all the books I had packed. My finger joints ached. I couldn't find the claim area for Alaska Airlines. I was prepared to leave my clothes behind if it meant getting to the hotel faster. Los Angeles was terrifying, and I wanted to curl up on my bed and hide.

That was before I stepped outside and felt the air. Before the cab ride through streets lined with palm trees. Before I walked along Venice Beach. I fell in love with Los Angeles almost immediately, and I still fantasize about moving there. Now I have a little fragment of the airport, right here in Old Town. Cars roar overhead on the bridge, and I close my eyes, imagining the SUVs and stationwagons as airplanes, speeding off the exit ramp as if it were a runway, soaring over downtown Portland.

note for map: area beneath Burnside Bridge induces to dislocation, terror, the sense that one could stumble over a body or fall down and become one . . .

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.

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).

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 . . .

Living behind the train station downtown, I sometimes miss the scent of changing seasons. Brown leaves, cool air, slightly metallic at the back of the tongue, stinging inside the nose. It's there, layered beneath tops notes of diesel fumes and soot.

But yesterday, I took a walk near NW 23rd, slowing my pace so I could listen to the crackle and crunch of dried leaves beneath my leather-soled mary janes. One lawn smelled exactly like Halloween, and my mouth longed for the taste of taffy and peanut-butter crunch candies, butterscotch and caramel. The air had texture, like the sleeve of a scratchy wool sweater, on the first day you wear it. The kind of fabric you might chew on in math class, the rough yarn soothing to soft tongue tip and chapped bottom lip.

As a kid, I loved autumn best. It was the only temperate season in Iowa, the only time my body felt comfortable - not too hot, not too cold, my skin not revealed in skimpy summer shorts, or freezing beneath soggy layers of cotton and wool in wintertime.

Here in Portland, I'm getting ready for the quiet, the dreary mornings spent staring out cafe windows, the wet that penetrates every cell, every scar, every hair shaft. I am grateful for the deciduous trees, overjoyed that not everything here - in the land of Douglas Firs - will stay green. But I am sad, too, to think of the fog rolling in over the west hills, the mold, the sinus infections, the way everyone turns inward, hiding their faces beneath black umbrellas. Once, last winter, I was carrying groceries, and the shopping bag dissolved in the rain, so slowly I didn't notice until the bottom fell out. My apples and oranges rolled away, and the soy milk thudded hard against the concrete.

Complete dissolution. I never quite recovered from last winter, and now, in early September, I am already falling to pieces.

shop in the Pearl District, NW Portland

At first it just seems clever, saying shut instead of closed, but there is something deeper going on here - an entirely different conception of commercial space. How we transact with it, how it functions, what kind of access we have. When a shop sign says closed, windows transform into walls. The space inside, the rows of candy jars, the clothes racks and sales tables, become off-limits, even to the eyes. Have you ever walked past a locked store and wanted to lean into the glass, cup your hands around your eyes, and take a peek? Did you feel a little nervous touching it? A little uneasy about the darkness? After all, there are window displays for that purpose - sanctioned, pre-packaged peeking. If you want a closer look, better to come back when the interior space is open.

But when the door simply says shut, a surprisingly different mood is evoked. The employees have gone home, the lights are dim, but the space is still inviting you in, even if just for a peek. There's an acknowledgement of the physical boundary - the door - but no restrictions on your gaze.

I have yet to see a clever twist on open. But then, open is often defined by its opposite.

These are the things that fill me with longing: cowboy stores in downtown Portland, window displays of authentic western boots, rusty bulletholes in the stop signs on desolate desert roads, the scent of sliced sage.

Just on the other side of Mt. Hood, there is a desert I cannot see. Dry ground I can't scrape my palm across. Open horizons. Possibility.

I have this sense the desert has gone missing, that I might find its mugshot tacked to the wall in the post office, or blotchy in black-and-white on a milk carton, crumpled and sour in the park grass.

The desert is the west I always wanted.

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)

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?

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.

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.

Recently, I stopped my practice of crossing the street against the walk signal. I used to look both ways, glance over my shoulder for fast-turning SUVs, and scurry across. I walk fast. I move fast. I like to feel my hamstrings and calves burn as I race through the downtown grid. I like to hear my breath and feel my cheeks flush red with heat. Maneuver through crowded sidewalks like a video-game spaceship through an asteroid storm.

Now, I stand at each red light, breathing deep, imagining my spine stretching upward, the spaces between vertebrae expanding. I pull my shoulder blades back to open my chest, then release my trapezius muscles, allowing tense shoulders to relax - not an easy movement with backpack straps digging deep into flesh and bone. My metatarsals engage, and my body weight spreads evenly across the soles of my feet. This has always been my favorite yoga pose. Standing Mountain. From the outside, it looks so simple - stand up straight, breathe deep. But it is not merely mimetic. Your body is quite literally transformed - torso taller, foundation strong as rock. Muscles twitch like little seismic shifts. Blood flows warm and slow like lava. At each corner, I imagine Mt. Hood in the distance, and my facial muscles relax, lips soften. For one brief moment, I have escaped the city grid.

Fellow pedestrians flash unapproving looks my direction. Can't you see the street is empty? You're not going to get hit. Businessmen, in their navy wool suits and polished black wingtips, seem to pity my slow pace. Doesn't she have somewhere to be? Powerpoint slides to present? Phone messages? Memos to dictate? Email?

In choosing to follow the traffic laws, I have broken a social code. Move fast. Live fast. Have somewhere to be. Don't get distracted. Don't stand still. Don't pay attention. Just move. I refuse to split time into its smallest intervals - to count the minutes and seconds between point a and point b. I am willing to take a few moments to stand still. In this case, it is more subversive to follow the law than to break it. The humble intersection transforms into a kind of transgressive space. A real place.

In the intersection, my private stillness meets your public movement. Breathing in, the grid is the grid. Breathing out, the grid is not the grid. I am fast. I am not fast. I have a strong foundation. I no longer live in the same city as you.

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.

I have been learning about geographic profiling. Some initial notes:

In geographic profiling, jeopardy surfaces represent the areas in which a known serial criminal is most likely living. The idea is that you can pinpoint a perpetrator's neighborhood based on the various locations of his crimes - the bars where his victims were picked up, the parks and highways where bodies were left behind. Profilers plot body dump sites and victim encounters on a map, drawing circles to generate Venn diagrams. The killer sleeps where the circles overlap.

How can you plot the movements of a madman? Murderers move just like the rest of us - forced onto the most convenient sidewalks and streets, rushed through the downtown grid, tempted into cafes and restaurants. Work schedules, transportation, education, and class all generate different movement patterns. And certain areas provoke certain behaviors. Imagine the moods and desires sparked by empty parking lots, narrow sidewalks, crumbling warehouses, and shopping malls. While places do not create crime, they can direct it. Geographic profiling, it turns out, requires a deep understanding of psychogeography.

But what about the victims? What enticed them into particular bars or alleyways? Were they wandering far from home? There is no way to calculate their movement patterns, no way to pinpoint their neighborhoods, from the places their bodies are found.

And this, to me, is the ultimate metaphor for loss: when your location plots a point for someone else, when your map is not your own.

unfinished ramp, meant for a highway that was never constructed

I come here to escape the perfect geometry of the downtown grid, to revel in a different sense of this city - as process, as living being, with moods and desires, unrealized dreams, pathologies. Here is a ramp the city never completed, for a highway plan that fell through. Does the bridge feel a phantom exit ramp? Does it long for a truck to crash through the fence and fly out over the river bank?

This ramp even looks like living tissue - a bone or limb in cross section. There are scars and wounds like this all over the city, clues for an autopsy.

phantom exit ramps at night, shot using a long exposure with the lomo

In my essays, I have described these phantom ramps as wicked and irresistable.

and in the daytime

My feet tingle with anticipation, urgency, potential energy. If I knew how to drive, I would speed toward the flimsy fence like an airplane at take-off. I would soar over the edge, plunge into the river. I would not slam the brakes.

sidewalk paint where a suicide counseling sign used to stand, Hawthorne Bridge

suicide remove definition one:

Portland is the city that works, the city with clean grids and perfect planning, the liveable city, the walkable city. So remove all signs to the contrary.

suicide remove definition two:

Suicide is sometimes a noun, as in: the man who hurls himself over the bridge railing, slits his wrists with a shaving razor, or swallows the bottle of sleeping pills. Example: There is no room for the suicide in this Pacific Northwest paradise. So remove him.

suicide remove definition three:

A campaign to stamp out suicide (but then, why remove the counseling sign?)

suicide remove definition four:

Time to put up a new sign. (Do suicide hotlines go out of business? Do they change their numbers?)

In any case, this is not what I want to see when I walk onto the bridge - my breath shallow, feet light, cheeks flushed and forehead chilled by cold sweat.

photo friday challenge: neglect

For me, neglect is only evoked by its opposite. When I stand beneath the budding branches and realize what can be lost, then I know what neglect means.

purple cubes set into the sidewalk, downtown Portland

I do not trust these delicate, artsy grates. Are the purple cubes made of glass? Polished stone? Resin? How do they stay suspended in the crumbling concrete? Most days, I tip-toe around the edges, imagining the squares cracked and shattered after an earthquake, rattled out of their settings by the rough tires of a mountain bike, or slicked loose after winter rain.

Today, one of the cubes has dropped out, revealing a dark, hollow space beneath the sidewalk. All last week, it seemed tenuous and tender, like a loose baby tooth. I wanted to crawl across the grid and wiggle it free - a purple bicuspid to hide under my pillow.

I can't resist. I jump onto the grid and play imaginary hopscotch. No one notices.

On another sidewalk, several blocks away, an engraved brick reads by the skin of your teeth. I am taking this as a sign.

shot with the lomo, near downtown Portland

After four years in Portland, I have finally adjusted to the light. The gray skies and long months of rain feel natural - nourishing, even. This year was the first winter I did not linger a little too long beside a bridge rail or dream about disappearing into the desert.

But even as my mood begins to change, my body fights harder against this landscape - my skin and sinuses reacting to mold and pollen more intensely than ever before. I am literally sick from this city.

Which brings me to these rails - one covered in mold and moss, the other gleaming clean in the sunshine. Do these parallels intersect somewhere deep?

my entry for this week's photo friday: self-portrait

When I think about self-portraits, I think about surveillance, how we consent to the creation of an intimate portrait every day, just by crossing a bridge or pushing open the glass doors at the bank. It is a little like using the timer on a fancy camera, knowing exactly where the lens is pointed, where the line is drawn, and crossing it, walking willingly into the picture. We are collaborators - consciously or unconsciously - in our own surveillance, and therefore, we are also creating self-portraits.

Is this true if you don't know the video camera is rolling? If you are unaware of the level of everyday surveillance? Or is ignorance another form of collaboration?

Once you start paying attention, you notice cameras everywhere.

I like the idea of independent surveillance, how I have trumped the parking lot cameras by snapping my own picture. The surveillance of the lot is now under surveillance.

display window for an upscale children's clothing boutique, Pearl District

Imagine a childhood this soft, with cotton voile skirts and vegetable-dyed leather shoes, silky labels printed in sweet fonts. Henny Penny instead of Osh Kosh or Lee. Ergonomic bookbags. Flower-print bloomers. Chickies lined up in the store windows.

Sometimes I pause to watch the mothers as they browse through the racks, babies strapped securely to their backs or chests - with one of those Evenflo padded infant carriers. How soft does the world seem, as a boutique child?

Up close, the little chickies are painfully cute - the kind of adorable that makes my calves and wrists ache.

I wonder what all this softness does to the senses. How rough is the rest of the world, when your street is lined with fancy boutiques? How rough are your first used jeans, with seams that scratch against pampered thighs? How strange, the scent of linoleum in a warm bathroom, when your bare toes and bottom are accustomed to the cold clinks of ceramic?

I was sitting on a bench in Jamison Square this afternoon, reading Being and Nothingness,* enjoying the empty (and kid-free) stretch of sand behind the water fountain, when dirty smoke drifted into my face. Two hand-rolled cigarettes had been tossed near a tree, and now they were smoldering on the dry dirt, their paper peeling back as it blackened. I bent over and watched as a circle of gray ashes slowly expanded and collapsed - my own personal volcanic landscape, bubbling with tar pits and magma.

I remembered the two wisdom teeth I carry in my bag, and I wanted to toss them into the ashes, stir them around with a stick.

But the usual paranoia kicked in. I will get blamed when this tree bursts into flame. Someone will remember my red t-shirt and glasses, my bob haircut and baggy jeans. Are surveillance cameras recording the smile on my face? Do I look like someone who would burn down a park? I stood up and stomped on the ashes, but the paper still burned. A toddler squealed in the nearby fountain. I grabbed my messenger bag and walked to the Hoyt Street Properties office to alert the authorities.

And at the exact moment I made my decision, every person in the park came into sharp, high-resolution focus. The stripes and checkers on their swimsuits glowed brighter. Hair highlights flickered like prisms in the sunshine. As I walked past, I felt that I could wave to total strangers. Funny, these people seemed like actors or props when I first arrived, so perfect the city of Portland must have chosen them. Now, they seemed almost familiar.

I thought about Sartre peeping through the keyhole, how he flushed with shame at the sound of approaching footsteps, and I shuddered. What if nobody was watching me at all? No surveillance cameras. No park management. No police.

And what if I had sacrificed the two teeth?

*and yes, I do understand the irony, comedy, ridiculousness - whatever you want to call it - of reading this particular book on a park bench in the Pearl.

my entry for Photo Friday: ocean

As a kid, I used to dig holes in the hopes of reaching the ocean floor. I had heard the myth that you could make it all the way to China, but I just wanted to get somewhere deep - somewhere where even the surface was submerged, where surface and interior became one. Drain all the water, and the ocean floor transforms into a surface - the outermost layer of earth, a vast expanse of ground that we can walk on. In this sense, it exists in two states at once.

Here in the city, this sealed staircase is the closest I can get to that feeling. I want to follow the steps down, disappear beneath the city. Explore the surface beneath the surface.

But I am not even certain these steps still exist. Or if this was ever a staircase at all.

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

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.

How we divide space - how we claim it, name it, and fence it off - says a lot about a community.

Even something as small and unremarkable as a parking space. Do we number the spaces or claim them on a first name basis? How much do they cost? How wide are the lines?

Check out these photos over at But What about the Plastic Animals?

And an old post from me, about the process revealed in repainted parking spaces.

I find it interesting how this sign names the Portland Ordinance number. It is at once authoritative and completely rhetorical - an argument both from and with authority.

It is, when you think about it, a logical fallacy: Amplified music is prohibited because it is prohibited (argument in a circle).

Imagine a city in which signs attempt to convince you of the rightness and justness of their commands. Signs that make brilliant inductive leaps, reasonable inferences, and sound deductive arguments. How would this look? How would we behave?

shot with the Lomo, using the Tunnelvision lens

When I first saw this staircase, I wondered if the house had been abandoned. Foreclosed, maybe. Or perhaps the owner had died, and nobody cared to take care of the property. Maybe the occupants went missing. Maybe they fled the law. I can't help but imagine scenarios like this.

But then I corrected myself: Why would anyone build stairs as they hurried out of a home they never planned to live in again?

The unfinished wood, the lack of rails: both seemed almost improvised, finished in a hurry. This house was in transition - maybe from a single to multi-family home. The stairs represented a beginning, not an end.

Funny how beginnings and endings can look the same.

Window of a downtown immigration attorney. The signs also advertise passport photos and fingerprint services. When I took this lomo, some people inside looked nervous, and I felt guilty. I tried my best not to photograph any people - just this window.

food cart, fenced in, downtown Portland