fears

“It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch.” - Anonymous

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When I worked at a bakery in Eugene, we made a list of fears. I found it again today.

Courtney is afraid of the economy because she is graduating this year and is worried about how hard it will be to find a job. She wants to work in a non-profit organization. Doing what…she’s not exactly sure.

Trevor is afraid of poverty. To him poverty manifests itself primarily in a lack of food. Trevor is currently eating a bagel.

Claire used to be afraid of accidentally letting a vampire into the house or accidentally saying “Bloody Mary” three times. She also used to be afraid that her family would end up living on the street.

Megan was afraid of being cooked in a pot; it was a reoccurring nightmare.

Ben is afraid of rabid, flying piranhas. That and people knowing what he's actually afraid of and judging him for his fears.

We are all afraid that we have grown stupider since being in college.

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Today I'm afraid that I might have a fever. I am afraid of finding a spider nest in my bass amp. I'm afraid that I'm developing a hunchback from so much sitting in front of a computer.

saddle mountain

Went hiking last weekend. Unlike this weekend. Coastal storms, don't you know. Yesterday, I spent time by the river in a friend's truck and we watched the trees blow sideways and the water rush and the rain fall and it looked particularly miserable.

Anyway, back when life was beautiful, worth living, etc:













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Part 2 of 3: Domestic Violence in Clatsop County.

I didn't write this story about BABY SCANDAL. I was on deadline for two other stories that morning so another reporter took it for me, but now I get all these calls from New Zealand journalists. "What say we trade some information?" but sometimes it sounds like they're saying something else and we spend a lot of time yelling at each other: "WHAT? I'M SORRY? WHAT?" International calls being what they are.

somewhere there's a place for us

Margaret Atwood. It's a caddish person who says definitive things about other people's souls, especially people they don't know, but I kind of feel like she's just showing off with "The Blind Assassin." Like, "Oh, hi, so you're trying to write ONE novel? How...droll. Me? Yes. I've written quite a few novels. In fact, this one...technically it's THREE novels in ONE." Then she sits back all smug and offers you some more coffee and you want to hate her but she's so much nicer than Ursula K. LeGuin and she is offering you more coffee and it is her house. So, really, you can't throw the coffee in her face and stab her with a kitchen knife and run screaming down the alder-bordered lane. Much as you might like to.

A sort-of-friend here told me Tom Stoppard is aggravating because every line the man writes is perfect and incorruptible. True statement. I replied with something I now suspect was propaganda shoved down my throat by my otherwise wonderful jazz guitar teacher: "But isn't it exciting that such beauty exists in the world? That there's something to aspire to?" My friend, who is also a writer and far more productive than I am, stared at me blankly and then sighed. "No, Katie, it's depressing." And, while re-reading "The Blind Assassin" yesterday, I know what he means. I love Margaret Atwood for what she's done. I also kind of hate her.

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People who drink beer and talk to themselves should find somewhere else to hang out. Also, the girl who keeps cracking up outside. MOST ANNOYING LAUGH. Like a mosquito whine except louder and more like a bark. I refuse to believe the guy she's with is that hilarious so what's she laughing about? He looks like he isn't doing much except waggling his eyebrows. Maybe that sets her off. He looks completely cowed by this girl, though, nervous that any second she's going to take her purple-painted nails, cigarette and trendy grandma sweater and disappear out of his life forever to start dating a bartender. Rough roads, honey. It makes me think of the Disney Peter Pan when Wendy's sewing Peter's shadow onto his feet and jabbering away, oblivious and cracking herself up and Peter's baffled. He doesn't even need to be there except as a sort of marker to direct the flow of words toward. Scratching his head, he says, "Girls talk too much." And chuckle-face Wendy says, "Hahaha, yes, girls talk too much...hmmmmm? ...Oh."

Good job, Peter.

Actually, the conversation outside isn't like that at all. What was I thinking?

Laughs, like exclamation points, should be used sparingly otherwise we get confused. Smile too much and people wonder what you're worried about. Dogs might smile because they're happy to see you but chimpanzees smile to show you their teeth. It's a hostile display. BACK OFF. Hence the term "She laughed off the suggestion that she was the one who killed the puppies and sent those nasty, insinuating letters to the city councilman."

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In newspaperland, I'm feeling a little worn out. But I'm going to laugh that off.

Currently working on a series about domestic violence in Clatsop County.

Here's the first installment

Here's a stabbing.

12 hours of sleep & the spider

The spider was as big as my face and I killed it with my left-foot running shoe. The first pass with the shoe only knocked the spider to the ground and there was that sickening moment when it was scrambling, all eight legs vicious and flailing. It was going to escape. I raised my shoe a second time and crushed its life away. Then I went back to bed. The spider is still there, between my bass amp and my kitchen door, a flat spider smudge, a warning to the others.

Now. The story, in context...

I fell asleep last night at 6:30. One minute I was reading "Clockers" by Richard Price and the drug dealer with the ulcer was furtively trailing another drug dealer who may or may not be a hired killer. The next minute it was 7:53 p.m. and I was trying to figure out if it was morning or night and what exactly was going on. There was somewhere I was supposed to be. Wasn't there? Confused, I decided to make my life easier and stumbled across the room, turned off the light and went back to sleep.

5:43 a.m.: I woke up. Wide awake. Kind of. Was it day or night? Rain pouring down outside. Check the window, light looks the same at 5 a.m. as it does at the middle of the night. I felt very little motivation to be actively awake, but, darn it, I wasn't tired. I was moving toward the kitchen when -- pause gasp heart attack -- BIGGEST SPIDER IN THE WORLD, crouched and evil-looking. Massive, lying in wait for babies, virgins, puppies and truth. No way I'm going back to sleep with that monster lurking. But you know the rest of the story.

7:53 a.m.: Wake up again. Groggily assemble clothing and push hair into something somewhat resembling dignity. Check my phone. Two texts, both from Bishop, both from last night. The first one reads: "Where are you?" The second one, several hours after the first: "Did you fall asleep?"

THAT'S where I was supposed to be last night, at the sports bar with Bishop, watching the Giants game.

Oops.

Watching Giants games with Bishop might be my new favorite thing to do in Astoria, even though it's only happened once before. It's like watching Nebraska games with my sister, or following a forester in the forest. The folks dig this stuff. They are closer to despair and elation in this element, be it football, baseball or forest, than they are anywhere else. Sincere and wondrous and it pulls me in. I'm a sucker for honesty.

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Some news stories, if any of you still care (and I've been told at least four times this week that my job doesn't matter. It gets to one after a while, but one must make one's money somehow and journalism is my equivalent of football so...yes, we move on)

1. Glory be! A boat! Boat is a weird word. Booo-at is how it SHOULD be pronounced, I think. Let's change this together.

2. Controversy.

Jess

Poets are the greatest believers of love, the greatest fools for it and the ones most likely to proclaim from mountain tops that though their lives be shambles, ash-worn and weary, love will triumph and the love that triumphs will look nothing like we expect. It's harder and comes after suffering and doesn't make things easier and sometimes you still wake up lonely, or you lose it or you never see it. Poets still go on proclaiming. Technically, they should start wearing llama skins and eating locusts because they're about two-degrees away from desert-dwelling shaman craziness.

But we all hope they're right...That "My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone" etc.

So I almost played piano this morning until my fingers fell off, precisely at each knuckle. To give my fingers a rest, I read poetry and so I was thinking about love. I decided not to think about familial love because that exists in a way deeper than I realize and I don't feel like untangling it and making myself homesick.

I hope I'm not the only person out there who sometimes wonders if they can love people in a way even approaching the poetic...selfless, pure and all that. There was a short story by David Foster Wallace I read last month. The character repeats over and over again how he's a fraud, a fraudulent person and all his feelings and beliefs are tainted by this fraud he lives. What you realize in the story, though, is that we're all jointed that way. We're all manipulating and stacking. I think DFW's point was, "Get over it." But he was one of those tricky clever people. I'd have to read the story again.

Anyway. Tangent. I'd like to think I love all the people I claim to love and I know, for the most part, what I say is true. There are some people, though, like my family, who I am rock solid in my assertion. There is no way I could not love them. This is also true of my friend Jess.

Years before I met her, on October 2, she was crumpled in a car and if a lot of things had gone differently, we might never have become friends. She might not have been around, is what I'm saying. This is a difficult thought to think now. A Jess-less world. Terrible thought. She has the best laugh I've ever heard. We almost accidentally kissed on the lips at her birthday party and she remains one of my dearest friends, always ready to perform "ceremonies" to celebrate random events with me because she (like me) thinks there should be more rituals and use of tea candles in daily life.

I love you, Trimmer. I'm glad you're still here.

super powers

Look at this picture, gaze deep into its soul. What do you see? The answer should be whatever's a degree less than all-encompassing divinity and power. But don't say "God" because that would be blasphemous. If you were, for example, to say Batman, though, you'd be all clear and good to go for the next 50 years -- depending on how old you are now. If you're already 50, I'm sorry, you probably only have 30 more years, best case scenario.

So, Batman. Superhero, right? Superheroes in general we can approve of? Yes. Batman is special though and he's special precisely because he isn't...um...special. He wasn't born in a radioactive basement in Kansas, or dipped in the lightening bath of the gods one quiet spring day, nothing he's eaten (and nothing that's nibbled on him) has caused him to break out in wings or gills or magnum force death rays. Instead, he's just got moxy. And, yes, endless wealth. We'll give that a nod. But, in general, he's just average and took a lot of those taekwondo classes, the kind you see when you're walking down an unsightly strip of suburban America and they're usually next door to a furniture store or an empty piano showroom.

He relies on gadgetry, wit and his knowledge of humanity to get through the day. Just like the rest of us. More or less. Right?

So, taking a look at my own activities and lifestyle, what would be my superpower if I were more Batman-ish? I've come up with a list.

My superpowers consist of...

1. Being able to just kill at driving around the roundabout off of the Youngs Bay Bridge. Roundabouts should be one smooth movement, precision is everything. Don't hesitate. Don't doubt. Line it up in your mind like a Tetris game. I have to say, I was born to drive that roundabout. With all superpowers though there's always kryptonite or some limiting factors, like no shark repellent in the old utility belt, for instance. Shark attacks not being things one plans for very often. So...things that dampen my power in this area are: Washington drivers who go to darningly slow and mess up the whole precision aspect of a smooth sail through the roundabout.

2. Going all day without eating. I don't start feeling sick, I don't get cranky, and I could still go on a hike with you if you asked me. If this isn't a legitimate super power, I don't know what is. Kryptonite: I need a glass of water right away in the morning or I'll feel awful. But this is true whether I skip food or not.

3. I can play Tom Wait's "Rains on Me" on the ukulele. This superpower is more akin to how Batman can kick people really hard. Lots of people can kick people really hard. It's not special. On the flip, you'd never want to be the person who CAN'T kick people really hard.

4. I can hear sirens in my sleep and distinguish between Medix sirens and law enforcement sirens. But my brain might just be making this up. Kind of like how Batman often trusts Catwoman and maybe only 50% of the time that ends up being a good idea and in that 50% of it being a good idea, half the time he's pretty sure it isn't.

I slept in late this morning and watched "Batman Begins" while eating breakfast (which was mostly kale and carrots, not the best breakfast), so I'll leave you with this:

"Well, you know how it is, Mr Fox. You're out at night, looking for kicks, someone's passing around the weaponized hallucinogens..."

come on up to the house

There's no light in the tunnel
No irons in the fire
Come on up to the house
And you're singin' lead soprano
In a junkman's choir
You gotta come on up to the house


Is it possible to be both completely exhausted, but not? Yeah, didn't think so. Yet I am.

The things that make me love my job have been happening every other minute this week. Unfortunately these same drops o' sunshine are what give me acute work anxiety, stomach cramps, headaches and, in general, reduce me to the level of a nervous dog with an abscess or something else disgusting and painful and needing medical attention. It's a sick, sick world, little pilgrim.

In a moment of distraction this afternoon, I pretended to stab the courthouse deputy with my cell phone. I don't know what came over me. Lack of sleep, I think.

"What are you doing?" he demanded. The only way I can describe how he said this is "faintly incredulous" which makes me think of Jane Austen books.

He then proceeded to tell me that when he's bored and nothing much is happening inside the courthouse, he goes and kicks cars out of the parking lot. Explanation: The courthouse has the misfortune of sharing its parking lot with a museum. Except, of course, the courthouse doesn't like to share. Especially not during the week when juries need to get in and out and the lawyers are armed and sleep-deprived and subpoena-ing whatever moves.

Technically, you can only park there for the museum on the weekends when the courthouse is closed. Of course people ignore this daily.

"Whenever I see them spilling out of their cars with all their cameras, all happy..." he trailed off, smiling to himself. I assumed at this point I was forgiven.

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I have a new neighbor who shall henceforth be known as Bishop...and her contemporary companion, Anne Frank. Inside joke. Really.

Bishop has taken over C.'s apartment since C. can't live here anymore because there's a county ordinance or court order expressly forbidding it. To help C. keep her sanity during this difficult time, we've started calling the prison she was transferred to "OPB." Her "job" as a top environmental blogger actually refers to work crew duties at the airport. But that's a secret.

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So I skipped out of work early a few days back. Wednesday, I guess. And by early, I mean, I worked all day except for a few hours in the afternoon when I escaped down the coast and took photos and hiked and ate candy.



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I met Oregon's attorney general. He used to hunt the Mafia...using a sort of talisman and magical staff, I assume, with all the fierce old magic of federal law behind him. Few can wield that power and not be consumed with the lust for more. Surely as motions are suppressed, the darkness overcomes. Lasses! Lads! Breeches! Unicorns!

Anyway, that's how I like to imagine the attorney general and the outworking of federal prosecution. Someone else in the newsroom, who will remain nameless, looked at my story and pulled up the photo we were going to use and saw a different man than I did. "Why!" this nameless person exclaimed. "He just looks like a big nerd...but he's killed people and such in the Marines and prosecuted the mob. My goodness."

HERE'S THE STORY, in all its objective glory.

And the DUIIs continue to haunt me. My editor asked me to please take "reeling" out of the lede. As in: DUIIs reel drunkenly back in front of the City Council for due consideration. Etc. I thought I was being clever -- typically a bad sign.