southern fried rabbit

i think it is time to retire from adventuring.

portland has seen the worst snow storm in a decade...over a foot of that sometimes pretty white stuff in downtown pdx. this is rare for portland which lies in a valley and usually sees two kinds of weather: light rain or sunshine. after taking a taxi to the airport five hours before my flight took off and trying to converse with the russian driver named antinov, i made my way into pdx and hoped for the best. no delay! after spending days worried about getting home for christmas i was more than ecstatic to see that my flight would work out. i had hope. all will be fine.

wrong. we passengers sat in the airplane while they de-iced the outside (though there was no ice to begin with) for an hour...the exact amount of time that i had for my layover in las vegas. arriving in that fair city i sat helpless as i watched the plane that i was supposed to be on to go to tampa slowly back away from the gate and prepare for take off. crap.

waiting in line at the u.s. airways costumer service counter i griped and complained with fellow passengers about our plight and met a lovely man trying to get to detroit. we chatted about portland and lamented the state of airlines in the united states and i decided: i must move to europe. that way the only reason i would need to fly is if i was coming back to the u.s. other than that, trains all the way baby!

at the ticket counter i received another blow: the earliest they could get me home is 3:45 christmas day. i got my ticket to phoenix, my first-class ticket to tampa, my meal voucher for $10 to ellis island casino, and a room at the local super 8 motel. 

alone. in las vegas. at a super 8. on christmas.

i have not mentioned this yet but i despise this city. i stopped here for approximately five hours on my trip out west and told myself i would never come here again. and now here i was. spending christmas eve night in a city that has a miniature eiffel tower, where the brooklyn bridge is barely fifteen feet of the ground, alone, sitting and drinking whiskey tonics at a bar next to a man feeding his money into a machine. 

waiting to eat dinner alone, the couple i sat next to on the plane spotted me and asked if i wanted to join them. i did. after another whiskey tonic and a philly french dip the size of my skull, i put a quarter in a slot machine, turned around, and walked back to my room. i passed the evening lamenting to a friend that i must have the worst luck of anyone i have ever met. i also spent four hours watching a christmas story over and over, which brought me some christmas spirit (at least at the part when randy is caught crying under the kitchen sink and says, "daddy's gonna kill ralphie").

i am now sitting at the las vegas airport after waking up at 4 am to a cup of weak hotel room coffee and a shuttle driver who mentioned that his mother is going to make him his favorite dish today--southern fried rabbit. i asked him what makes it southern fried. salt and butter, he said.

i just sat back and hoped the new year would come as soon as possible.

clementines

a man stands on the side of the interstate in the snow, holding a sign that says, "anything would help." he is bundled and breathes into his hands, steam escaping from his fingerless gloves. i hand him three clementines instead of cash. his response: feliz navidad dude.

a midnight post

though it is not quite midnight, after a dinner party and a couple of cocktails with some friends and an encounter between a dog and a cat that look eerily similar, you obviously reflect on what the evening brought you.

we talked about poetry...how the disconnect between the modern reader and the art of poetry can easily be solved with the inclusion of sex or war. we talked about soviet film and the importance of hidden messages, words that are spoken when they cannot be and why those words are more charged and empowering than any others echoed among literary poets and authors. how the influence of a dictator or a military regime can sometimes bring along the best poetry, the best art...art that speaks above its medium and transcends to a place we have yet to explore due to fear of the populus, the fear of the majority. 

we talked about the movies we love and why we love them...spanning from citizen kane to the princess bride. about poets of the modern day, poets in the 17th century, writers in general. after all of that we came up with one conclusion:

the story. 

story telling is the thing that makes people want to read, no matter if it is fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or young adult novels with a hint of sexual perversion and magical, evil influences. the stories make us want to hear and repeat. the story can transcend us, make us into beings we are not, souls we can never become.

the longing for a story can hurt as badly as the longing for water. you dream of it. you know that if someone in your life came along and told you, to your face, "the perfect day for bananafish," you would stop dead in your tracks and forget about your life and the problems and concerns that go along with it.

when you read a good story, no matter what medium it presents itself in, the outcome is the same.

you transcend yourself and forget about your world. you become a part of something real, something more than life can offer you.

mcleod

on a saturday afternoon sara and i walked through a park on burnside, close to the crowded missions and a charter school displaying artwork by eleven year-olds. a man in an oversized coat stood talking to a man with a white beard leaning on a tarp-covered cart.

“ladies, do you care to hear what this man has to say?”

his name was chanon—a religious man in his thirties who was on his way to give his coat to a homeless friend he had met earlier. sara and i did care to do so, since that is what we planned on doing that morning. we are the sandwich patrol—two girls who walk around the city with backpacks filled with sandwiches, exchanging homemade food for conversations. they are appreciative of the food, but mostly the ears and smiles we offer, and we are appreciative of their stories. it works well. an even trade.

the man with the tarp-covered cart was mcleod. he had a large, white beard and his fingernails were long and dirty, but overall he was clean and healthy looking. he wore small spectacles on the tip of his nose. he sometimes switched to speaking in a scottish accent that surprised us and made us laugh. he was born in scotland but considered himself a portlander at heart—a true oregonian.

“i lost everything, so now here i am, living in the great experiment.”

he and his wife were members of the upper-middle class living in a suburb of portland in a comfortable home and with a dog named mcguiver. he worked as an automobile inspector, inspecting the frames of vehicles and making sure they were safe to operate. his wife was a nurse in the er. they lost their jobs. in turn, they lost their home. in turn, he lost his wife.

she moved to canada to take care of his aging mother and was working as a nurse. he stayed behind.

“why aren’t you in canada with your wife?”

“this is my home. this is where i belong.”

he chose to stay in the city, depend on the social services portland offers, and build their lives to where they once were. he stayed in a “haunt” instead of a mission. he said he lived in the trees. he said he was a shape-shifter, a spiritualist who never used drugs or alcohol, who wanted to buy the empty space on the corner from which we were standing and turn it into an “89 cent store.”

“let’s just say the police know that i’m armed.”

although he never delved into any particular details, he said that life on the streets was hard, but he was used to it. he has been homeless since july without his family—his wife michelle of over 30 years, his daughter amy. amy is in school at the university of florida getting her masters in marine science. she does not have to pay a cent for her education.

“my wife and i saved up to make sure amy doesn’t have to worry about school. no matter how long she is in school, it is paid for.”

mcleod passes his time by doing puzzles and reading books. he particularly likes technical books—books about cars and machines, experiments and technology. across the street stands a powell’s—the only one in the city specializing in such a thing. he reminded us of a college professor, except that if he were that we would have attended every class, listened attentively to every lecture, asked him to coffee after office hours. he is currently writing to newspapers and public offices to explain, in detail, what portland lacks in social services.

“it is impossible to go hungry in portland.”

according to him, no person who lives in portland, no person who is passing through this city, has any excuse to complain of hunger. people hand out food everywhere he turns. he has been given submarines, sushi, pasta, salad—from hipsters on fixed-gear bikes, from men on breaks from work, from women walking their dogs. there are food kitchens all along burnside and in the chinatown district. but what portland does lack are places to sleep. the homeless lay on every street, no matter what neighborhood—from the metropolitan southeast to the posh northwest, from the hip southwest to the shady northeast.

mcleod never asks for anything. he never stands with a sign, carefully drawn on a damp piece of cardboard. people shove things into his hands, including sara and i.

at this point chanon left us to go find his friend after preaching about god, the love of jesus, and how everything would work out in the end. as i said, mcleod is a spiritualist. he lives for his family. he lives for himself. chanon asked us to take part in a group prayer. mcleod politely denied that request but allowed chanon to continue, saying that he would pray every day for us, including sara and i. chanon was missing many teeth. he wore a gold cross around his neck. he used to ride bulls at rodeos. he possessed a warm and caring heart, but one that was unable to see that mcleod did not need god or jesus to help him. he had his wife, he had his daughter, his dog, his city.

“i’m not going to give up.”

his family owns a cabin in the highlands. he and michelle have talked about going there. there is no electricity, no indoor plumbing, only a small shack barely standing up against the scottish winds. but for now they plan on buying that store, opening up a shop where everything is 89 cents, and living in the loft above the storefront with their dog. his cart is full of personal photos, knick-knacks reminding him of the life he had, the life he will never have again, and why, in a way, that is so liberating.

he speaks in a Scottish accent when he pleases. he lost everything he ever owned. he loves his family and still refers to his daughter as "my baby." he reads and does his laundry and tries to maintain a lifestyle he was once used to. he trims his beard, close to his neck, but forgets to trim his fingernails. he talks of scotland and a place he imagines as home. he lives in the great experiment.

a step towards the 21st century

this is my attempt at becoming a full-fledged member of generation ipod. more posts will be coming soon.