Meet my doppelganger. I just saw him and his endless list of exclamation-pointed needs: instant cash, online psychology degree, anatomy adjustments, soul mate promising unspeakable pleasures, discounted Wall Street Journal, and colon cleanse. In the mirror I don’t see the alleged other me. His image emerges in disjointed words, thousands of them jamming my junk […]
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I posted last week about the Rapture after finding a man’s suit abandoned on church steps in downtown Portland. Today, I stumbled upon this portentous scene on the edge of a lush Willamette Valley wheat field south of Portland: I had stopped to photograph a long train hauling fresh-cut logs (the tracks are in the […]
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I see her every day, part of the movie flickering past my window. Driving an electric scooter chair, she talks to herself, occasionally gesturing as if stressing a point. The woman is among a cast featuring bicyclists galore, women carrying yoga mats, kids chattering to and from school, a United Nations of leashed dogs, and […]
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Dare I compare atmospheres at different high schools forty years and three thousand miles apart? Such comparison seems sure to illuminate nothing surprising and elicit a chorus of yawns. It would be like examining life on planets in different solar systems populated by different life forms and declaring, “Eureka! They’re not the same!” But after […]
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I don’t believe in the Rapture, though the concept intrigues me spiritually and intellectually. Perhaps that’s why a man’s suit caught my eye yesterday, abandoned on the steps of a downtown Portland church. A fine-looking suit with a subtle glen-plaid pattern. I considered inquiring at the Portland Korean Church, SE 10th and Clay. But if […]
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A dreaded Sunday morning excursion: stocking up on household staples at Costco in outer Northeast Portland. Luckily, I only have to run this gantlet once every few months. Not sure I could take the crowded aisles and old ladies peddling samples of bad food any more often. What eases my disorientation and general disgust with […]
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They’ve appeared before on the sidewalk across the street from my home office — grocery carts deposited like driftwood on an overnight tide. I noticed one this morning but paid it no mind. That is until I observed people react to this interloper in Irvington, my Northeast Portland neighborhood. There was the boy clad in […]
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From my car at the stoplight on NE 20th at Sandy Boulevard in Portland, I see a man so frail that the warm breeze might whisk him away. Bent at the waist, he’s shuffling forward six inches with each hesitant step. He reaches the sidewalk to my right. His pale yellowed skin appears brittle and […]
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A small story, courtesy of my home office window in the Irvington neighborhood of Northeast Portland: Many evenings a woman rides past on a recumbent bike with her two leashed Weimaraners striding behind her. Many mornings another woman drives a sedan slowly and close to the curb while her dog – a fox terrier, I […]
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“Is your birthday really Friday?” I ask the wisp of a man leaning against the Post Office wall in Northeast Portland and panhandling for money. Thickets of wiry gray hair spill from beneath his maroon stocking hat. A beard partly hides sunken cheeks. His clothes are faded but clean. It was our second encounter. I’d […]
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Twenty children clutching flowers stroll the sidewalk beneath my window. No older than six and with teachers in tow, they stop, wave, and smile at me, the gray-haired crank a half-century older. I open the window, and they all call out “Happy May Day!” The sidewalk and street are dusted with wind-blown petals, whites and […]
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Suzame, Atticus, and I wait for our food in the dinner-crowd din at Ken’s Artisan Pizza on SE 28th. I gaze out the window. People awash in early evening light pass on the sidewalk. A young man comes into view. Hip-looking in that Portland style that anyone on the eastside under 30 wears like skin. […]
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From a distance, Balloon Man looks happy. Little children line up next to him beneath an elm beginning to unfurl new leaves. The sights and sounds of the Portland Farmers Market surround them. The children watch in awe as his hands move in a blur, creating made-to-order pirate swords, three-corner hats, bugs, and dinosaurs. “Three […]
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