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 white-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 pinks from cherry and pear trees, like snow flakes that never melt.
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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. Short-brimmed black cap, scraggly beard, messenger bag, and headphones — as in headphones so big they’d look nerdy on me but make him retro cool.
Then I see it. His yo-yo, dipping and rocking, then circling in a wide arc, the finale to a five-second show. All this while he walks, listening to who knows what on those headphones. And he was gone. Read More
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It’s hard to imagine not having NPR on most of the time during the week. I don’t watch TV news, unless a huge news event occurs — 9/11, Katrina, and so forth. NPR‘s news is generally even-handed and not as entertainment-driven as most broadcast media have become. I like the interviews, like hearing music I might otherwise never hear, and like the sound of it from afar — a reassuring background noise.
That said, NPR recently has become a Clinton lovefest. Yes, I’m biased in favor of Barack Obama and therefore sensitive to even a change in an anchor’s tone of voice when discussing the Democratic candidates.
Two weeks ago I emailed NPR to complain about Cokie Roberts‘ report on Obama’s so-called “bitter” comment. She said he was “disparaging” voters. I contend he wasn’t. All I got back were an automated response that my email was received and several days later a perfunctory form letter than didn’t address my specific complaint.
But this morning I wanted to throw the radio in the garbage. Read More
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An Obama campaign worker was our overnight guest Sunday, part of a volunteer-your-home program Suzame and I signed up for. Then she was off to Salem this morning, two big suitcases in tow — “all my stuff,” she said. “I go where they send me.” It’s been that way for nearly a year. She spent many months in both New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
A recurring theme of our all-too-brief conversations was her chronic lack of sleep, and our guest room bed seemed to be a big hit.
We were hoping for some juicy gossip. Instead we heard an insider’s view of the insurmountable demographic challenges Obama faced in rural Pennsylvania and some of the tricks the opposition used. Most importantly, we came away with an up-close look at the zeal and commitment of one Obama staffer. No surprise that she’s passionate — “I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid” — but seeing it was invigorating.
When we told her how we climbed over folding chairs at Obama’s first campaign stop in Portland in October to shake his hand, she said with a beaming smile, “That’s so cool!” She meant it.
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For a few weeks, we watched the dozen green tulip buds grow taller and fatten. They cloaked themselves in a hint of red. I planted them three years ago in a small corner garden at the intersection where we live in Northeast Portland.
The tulips were on the verge of opening, an event we and the many people who stroll past every day anticipate. Then nine of them were gone, snipped overnight. And it’s not the first time they’ve been abducted. Nor is it the first plant theft from our yard. Two years ago I planted a variegated Jacob’s ladder next to our front steps. A few days later I noticed an empty hole.
I had to do something about the tulips, take some action in a futile, maddening situation, something beyond bitching and moaning. So I typed a letter to the thief, printed it out, and had it laminated. But by the time I got around to erecting it over the clipped stumps, an adjacent batch of orange and gold tulips bloomed. I realized the sign wouldn’t make sense next to a glorious display of spring. So I’ll save it for next year and the inevitable return of greed. But here’s what I wrote: Read More
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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 or five dollars or whatever you can afford,” Balloon Man says to the parents, smiling. The line is long, but the children wait patiently, mesmerized as his creations emerge.
Linger and listen closely, and Balloon Man offers more than clever toys; with little prompting he tells a disjointed narrative in rapid bursts. He’s a veteran balloon artist . . . 10 years on the job . . . a much-longer-than-expected break from his true calling as a magician . . . “I was going to work for David Copperfield but something happened — a long story” . . . he’s 41 . . . his thumbnails are yellowed and misshapen, the toll of handling too many balloons — “millions” — and the talcum powder inside . . . 100,000 popped on him until he developed “the touch” . . . a competitor nearby, only 16, resents his presence . . . he doesn’t mind: the boy’s still learning — “did you hear that pop?”
Balloon Man reminds me of a taut balloon. His words sound like air escaping, a lament easing the pressure.
He gives a little girl a pink balloon dog. “Now hug your daddy and tell him you love him.”
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Blue sky and a breath of warm air do wonders for Portland, especially on a Saturday in the midst of a cold spring. Among the throngs at the downtown Farmers Market are people with eyes closed, faces turned reverently toward the sun.
Strolling past baked goods and rows of vegetable starts for the garden, I hear a banjo tentatively strummed. Behind the vendors, in front of the Portland State University library steps, five young people line up and adjust their instruments: the banjo, metal washboard, plastic bucket bass fiddle, guitar, and accordion. No microphones or amps. Then they begin to wail and shake. Joyfully.
I’ve never heard the slightly off-key bluegrass tune, but it could be the fast-tempo soundtrack to my life’s happiest moments.
A crowd gathers. Like other parents did with their children, Suzame and I give Atticus a dollar bill to deposit in an open guitar case at the band’s feet. I should empty my wallet.
I ask the banjo player — a boy, really — the band’s name. “Dapper Cadavers,” he says. “We may be dead, but we died handsome.”
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I’m a hypocrite. I rant about people yapping on their cell phones while they drive, especially on city streets.Â
Well, I wasn’t yapping but asking an operator for a phone number while driving through our Northeast Portland neighborhood. Suzame was sitting next to me. At the time my call seemed important enough for me to become one of “them.”Â
My complaint about mixing cell phones and driving is simple: it dulls your senses, making it more likely that you won’t see cyclists and pedestrians. Studies, of course, have documented the risk. On this day I saw too much.
As the operator talked, I noticed an open car door on the right and a man leaning into the car. As my car passed, his butt crack loomed into view, a crevice that blotted out the rest of the world.
I exclaimed loudly to Suzame, “Look at that big butt cra–.” I stopped myself but not soon enough to prevent a long silence on the phone.Â
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A familiar formula: too little sleep plus a frenetic start to the day equals foul mood.
My black cloud lifted in two stages.
Stage one: spotting one of our little boy’s books in the bathroom, propped against the wall directly across from the toilet. Suzame bought it for Atticus, and this was the first time I’d seen the title: Little Monkey’s BIG Peeing Circus.
Stage two: interviewing David Sill, 68, about his father, Jesse Sill, a legendary Portland newsreel cameraman who was among the first to film the Pendleton Round-Up, starting in 1915. (I’m co-authoring a book about the world-famous rodeo.) Reveling in memories about their life together, David said: “I had a great dad, best as you can get, or close to it. He really spent time with me.”Â
As I drove home shortly before noon, the sun found a crack in the low clouds over the hills of Forest Park. Among the brooding evergreens, hardwoods showed off their newborn leaves, glittering in shades of sage as if proclaiming, “We’ve returned!”
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Portland being Portland, it’s not unusual to see pairs of shoes dangling from overhead wires. I imagine the fun some jokers had flinging footwear in the air until one of them got lucky. Somewhere in Northeast, where I live, I once saw high-heels similarly perched above the middle of a street, string looped around the heels.
Dangling shoes probably represent a secret code that I’m not hip to. . . an anarchist cabal’s communiques or a notice that on this block the really cool people reside.
Thinking about this prompted me to Google the expression “shoes dangling from wires.” I guess I shouldn’t be surprised a global shoe-dangling fixation appears to be spreading. Theories abound, as do of photos showing the creativity of this “art.” My favorite pictures are here and here. And, naturally, there’s a buzz word – shoefiti – and a web site by that name, featuring everything anyone would possibly want to know about the practice.Â
But what’s the meaning of a pair of black Converse All-Stars abandoned on a sidewalk along busy Northeast Broadway? A few days ago the shoes were positioned on either side of a metal pole, as if the wearer had been hugging it.
When I came back with my camera, the shoes were gone.
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Watching the film with my wife, Suzame, I couldn’t help but think of my life as I contemplated the fate of Jean-Dominique Bauby. It’s a selfish response, I suppose, but isn’t that what art often accomplishes? It not only lingers but burrows into the receptive viewer.
Now I have to read Bauby’s memoir, though mindful of the controversy regarding differing portrayals in the movie and book. However, I’m not linking to articles about the controversy because reading them would spoil some parts of the film for you.Â
. . . it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback going through the mountains of a night. Going through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin. Never said nothin. He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him and he had his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in the horn in the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.
Darkness and dread then a flash of illumination and hope. Is it a waiting reality or fanciful and fleeting?
As for the film version of Bauby’s story, seeing the world from his rare circumstances and perspective reminds me of looking through a cracked window. Incomplete and blurred images flicker then flow into sharp focus in moments of bracing clarity. At the shifting refraction of light, what he sees changes again.Â
Like memory.Â
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I’m now an Official Stereotypical Blogger, languishing unshaven in my pajamas as I write my inaugural entry. An unpleasant image, yes, but not a habit in the making.Â
Why blog? I want an outlet to write more. Writing in a public setting imposes obligations and expectations, even if only family and friends occasionally traipse through here. Blogging creates deadlines too, however loose and unenforceable. I like deadlines; I need deadlines.
Other blogging benefits: commenting and reflecting in print on things I observe and ponder keep them from vanishing into the ether; they also force me to examine such things more deeply. But can I comment and reflect without lapsing into insipid navel-gazing? Or without trying to impress myself or whoever stumbles upon Cracked Window? In other words, an underlying goal is honesty.
Honesty is an easy declaration but hard to achieve when delving into the personal.
Stay tuned.
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