dispatches #1

It's beautiful outside. Joseph the would-be-novelist is sitting at a table with his cigarette and black coffee and looks like a lonesome cowboy who might be interesting and have a lot of ruggedness in his life. He writes longhand with a sharpie pen. He produces these perfectly spaced and indented paragraphs in consistent typewriter script. He looks like he might have killed a man, maybe two. Maybe he was a rebel or a revolutionary and now he writes poems. Maybe he's wanted on ten outstanding felony warrants for twenty crimes he didn't commit. He has a beat-up lighter and an old leather bag to carry his manuscripts in. He's written a trilogy of journey novels. Think Cormac McCarthy. Think soul. He looks like someone who would write something like that -- multiple times if he had to.

He has all the accessories to signal a life lived out in the dust and under the sun in a place with too much sky where men are cruel and women lie through satin lips. Bones bleach there and cheekbones stretch out under skin like wings. Joseph looks like he knows something about cliffs and cars and the ways of hearts, bar fights, empty rooms, dead towns and America. All that stuff.

Looks like.

Joseph is not a cowboy, is not a rebel. He never joined the revolution or ever saw a motorcycle he would know how to ride. Joseph is a would-be-novelist who has written a mind-numbingly dull trilogy about journey and youth with himself as the template -- odd since the tail end of young is several decades back and he never was much of a traveler until the gangs in Los Angeles threatened to kill him and drove him north to my town where I met him in front of a coffee shop and he told me his life story in such a dizzying fog of words that I didn't surface for two hours.

Joseph lives in a low-income housing unit with a fabulous downstairs and series of upper floors crumbling into nothing, propped up with thin walls and the desperate funds of people who can't afford to live anywhere else. Joseph is an aspiring racist who blames Mexico for most of his troubles, everything from a broken typewriter (not to mention his inability to type) to why he had to leave California (God rest her beautiful southern soul). Joseph is an old man and I've noticed he looks older than he did four months ago. He looks like people I've know who got cancer, who died from a sudden chill, who are on their way out. He's also a little bit crazy. Probably he needs a friend.

He doesn't remember me and I haven't reintroduced myself. When people start talking to me for no reason other than they're drunk or crazy or have no brain cells left, I say my name is Kay and I will sit forever and listen to them, paralyzed by my curiosity. Who are you? I have to know. We all have such stories to tell about ourselves, most of them are lies but even we don't know that.

---

"I killed women and children over there and I enjoyed it. Hell, I'd do it again," says the man who I'll estimate at 5'7", in the neighborhood of 300 pounds. His gray hair twists like a pelt down his back. He may or may not be wearing a hat.

He is telling a tiny Hispanic woman that his friend is being held by The Coyotes for $3,000 and they're going to behead him in the desert if no one sends the money. They're going to mail his eyes to his mother. He is telling this small woman (with tea cup thin wrists) that he was in Vietnam, that he slaughtered people, killed them when and where he wanted.

"Oh, no, you didn't," she laughs.

And that's where you came in. He is saying,

"Yep, children.
All the time.
I killed women and children over there
and I enjoyed it.
Hell, I'd do it again."

---

Embrace a good friend, tell her goodbye. In the sun and the remnants of summer, walk across the street only looking the right way once. Do not expect to be so suddenly accosted, literally you blink, and there's a man with a sponge face and splinters in his eyes who holds up a shaking finger, cracks his face into a sideways grin and says,

"Deal or no deal."

Just smile, keep walking.

But like that neighborhood cat who follows you halfway to work and is always leaping ahead and getting underfoot so you fall down the steps cursing, he side steps with ballet swiftness and is dancing on the balls of his feet in front of you still.

"Deal or no deal."

He sees something in your eyes, decides it's hesitation and, being a good salesman, he pounces, shaking his hands to dispel your fears about the deal. "The answer," he assures you, "is already decided."

Someday you will die.

weather underground

Is it stupid of me to be excited about fall? The smells, the atmosphere. The memories, my goodness, floods of them, mostly school related. My childhood, again, I say, my goodness!

Slow down.

I should ask myself these questions:

1. What do I expect to be different about the fall?

Answer: Well. It will be colder.

2. Will rain patterns change?

Answer: No, they'll get worse. Two words: coastal storms. Two more words: gale winds. Three words: death by starvation. Culminating in one word: bleak.

3. So why be excited about fall and the oncoming winter of our discontent?

Answer: ...

...wait, I'm still thinking...

...hmmm...think think think...

Thanksgiving! Christmas! oh-my-gosh-this-chai-is-so-good! Do I even need more reasons? Just let me have my nostalgia, that's all I ask for. I'm taking -- oh wait, I'm sorry, did "Name" by Goo Goo Dolls just come on the radio in this coffee shop? I think it did. Wow, that was distracting. But, yes!, more nostalgia. Bring it on! Pile it! Heap it! Until it oozes.

I like how each season has its own feel and brings its whole "I'm new! Brand new! Buy me" with it. "Seasons?" scoff Oregonians. "What seasons?" But they're probably from out-of-town. Silly hipsters, Oregon has seasons sure as there's a nose on my face, it just takes a practiced...um...nose...to detect them.

The rain right now, as we near the end of September, is slightly brackish with faint undertones of something that reminds me of soccer (before I tore my quad), school (before I descended into the hellish, exhausting bowels of college), coffee houses in Eugene, things like bugs and plants dying, and the white room Tiffany and I lived in that first year. There's a kick in the air -- whiskey in coffee, perhaps. A sort of charged up current, something electric and brisk, but the light is mellower now and the water is even a different color, deeper and full of currents.

These little guys, however, takes all the joy out of the warmful-enclosedness: BED BUGS! Is anybody else as freaked out as I am that they're making a comeback? Did you know about this? The glorious bed bug revolution has dawned and we are just nurturing blood bags strewn along their paths to victory. We're those "healing" packs you see in video games. We'd like to think we're the soul-devouring mushrooms or the person with the really big knife. We're not. We're just breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Nations will fall before them. Businesses already are. Don't you read the news? There is no escape.

Bed bugs: Nasty and coming to a mattress near you. Hide your children, hide your wives. Etc.

thread & fabric

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months," said Oscar Wilde

...who was a snob
...who I love
...who is now dead
...who also wrote:

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."

---


Photo by Richard Mahar

Most of my body's life has been spent in thrift store clothes. It probably started as a cost thing, right? With 6 kids growing all ways at once, what would you do? You'd go to Value Village and Goodwill on 50% off sale days and buy cheap clothes, that's what you'd do, and you'd buy shoes that are at least two sizes bigger than a given kid's current foot because you know next week those feet are going to put a ruler off its meds with a violent growth spurt.

Oh the days of too big shoes. For me, a tall girl from a young age and the matching feet to balance all that height on top of, shoe sizes have always been galling. Now, at 23, I have so much more perspective. I know my feet are average if not even a little smallish for my height. At the time though, I hated my feet and wearing too-big shoes didn't help my pride. In the long run, it was probably good for my character.

When you're a kid, thrift store clothes always work. How can they not fit? You're basically a glorified oval. No weird kinks and corners. Just slap a t-shirt on and make sure you've got a diaper or undies and everything's good. I spent most of my time in the mud and up trees anyway, my hair unbrushed, my face unwashed. Savagery at its finest. Who cared about fashion? Wearing clothes was just a way to keep from shaming the family name.

Thrift stores continued to work until I was about 14 or 15 and then I hit the Self Conscious Years. My torso outpaced my shirts. "How much spine does one person need?" I wondered. I felt like I had enough to make another person plus a small animal, maybe a 'possum.

I started re-sewing cheapster thrift store clothes to get a more perfect fit. I'd buy 99 cent over sized shirts and turn them into long, fitted shirts. I'd hem pants, resew inseams, do all sorts of diddly to skirts, slash things in half, turn scarves into leggings, dresses into shirts. All my clothes with the exception of...um...undergarments and socks...were re-creations based from salvaged clothing or fabric.

The problem I was addressing: Things didn't fit as simply and easily as they used to. I hate ill fitting clothes. My teenage years were already uncomfortable enough (F.Scott Fitzgerald said: Everyone's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness), why put uncomfortable clothes on top? Still, I wore a lot of terrifying things.

But it was cheap and fun and I got mostly what I wanted in the end without all that bother of actually needing to look for the desired item.

Then I went to college and I realized I could turn it into a sort of hyper moral tenet: Look, I'm reusing stuff we just cast off for no reason. I'm being wise and sane in a gorged society.

I wore the same clothes for years, cutting them up and altering them whenever fashions shifted dramatically or my sense of comfort changed. One long dress I got when I was 14 turned into a long skirt, turned into a short dress, turned into a medium length skirt and then became a thin-strapped tank top. Now it's a halter-strap tank top and is still in my closet.

Yeah, so all of that's done now.

Sewing still happens, but I'm tired of cheap stuff held together with my crooked seams, cobbled together so it looks right on the outside. If you flip my clothes inside out, you'll see a crazy patchwork of corrections over corrections. Also, I'm facing the problem of fit again. Things really don't fit now. I don't know what happened when I turned 20, but I have something resembling curves for the first time in my life. Child-bearing hips? Maybe. They're foreign to me. I have to adjust.

So the point of all this: I bought new clothes and I spent REAL money on them and I don't know what to think. I had a friend who knows what she's doing take me shopping last time I visited Portland and I ventured out by myself today. Sad as it is, I have more of an image to keep up now, being a working professional. Not much of an image, granted, but I want to look competent and my old clothes are falling apart. The back of my pant hems are ragged from years of walking in the elements. Shirts that kept me through junior high to college graduation are threadbare and unfortunate. It's time to move on.

My hope is that buying this new clothing will not only keep me in clothes for the next seven years, but it will make the whole "What do I wear?" question easier. It was getting to the point of asking every morning, "What can I wear that doesn't have holes? Oh shoot, well check this off the list. Where did that hole come from? When and why? Dear lord!" or "What, of these holey ragged clothes, can I combine in such a way that the overlapping fabrics will conceal the general decrepit state?"

It was complicated and I don't like spending that much time just figuring out what to wear. Silly. I need to be able to get ready in five minutes and not be hung up by what's on my hangers.

So now I have what I need: a new pair of jeans, a pair of slacks for when I'm in court, some nice shirts, a serviceable/comfortable/adorably-appointed gray and black skirt.

Exciting, yes?

Also, I have the tights pictured above (left), but those are just sheer frivolity. Yay frivolity.

---

In other news, I think this story gave me an ulcer. Court stories always do.

I'm looking forward to Monday. Why? Oh well, I was just out, you know, drinking whiskey sours with a co-worker and we were walking back home when she spotted some police lights flashing outside a bar. Interesting. We continued walking forward, round the corner, come to be all of the officers on duty from all the agencies in town are outside this bar. About six cars with screaming lights. Whaaaaaat?

A brawl! Hoorah! People in custody are kicking at the doors inside the back of a squad car. Witnesses and sideline brawl participants are hugging the sidewalks wailing in drunken abandonment, all of them completely confused. Cops are standing around, arms folded across their chests or hands resting on top of their radios. Dark night, neon light. The bar is emptied and closed.

I snapped into reporter mode, caught the eye of a deputy who knows me and started demanding things.

---

When I'm typing up the police dispatches in the morning, I listen to this song:

The sheriff pulled me in and he sat me down
He said, you make no mistake
I know just what it takes
To pull a man's soul back from heaven's gates


Here it is: "Black River Killer" by Blitzen Trapper

the sordid tale of the pants

Hole -- in pants -- the pants I wear every day without fail to work and to court and to all places my legs must go modestly clad -- hole in back of pants. Oh my.

After utilizing scotch tape, I wore them anyway.

But now I need
New Pants
or Patched Pants
or a body that does not require clothing. That, of course, is the eternal ideal. Thanks, Adam. Stupid original sin and now no one gets to be naked EVER. Nor do we get to live in what was probably the most supremely amazing garden in the entire world.

---

Things that are happening right now that I wish would stop happening:

1. The child who, as certain as a metronome and just as vile and pointless, is pinging a metal ball against a metal table and staring all bored at his brother...

2. Inciting his brother into an epileptic seizure of activity. Must run! Must squeal! Must stomp around and cast paper to the ground! Must do this all in a coffee shop! DIVE DIVE DIVE!

3. Coffee. Why am I still drinking coffee? I can feel my DNA tightening into an even more helixy double helix.

4. Child #2 telling me what he's doing from second to second and giggling all crazy whenever I glare at him.

5. Perhaps I should stop hating the future of the world. It's playing peekaboo with me using a copy of The New Yorker. Kind of endearing actually. Cheeky cultured brat, I will not let you beguile me with your native charm and the fact that you're about 5 years old and need to wear glasses(a-dorable).

6. Child #1 kicking the couch I'm sitting on. Dear God, stop! Why are you like this? What sort of horrible trauma are you repressing right now that makes you act this way?! Stop kicking the bleepity bleep couch.

7. Time -- just in general. Stopit.

8. I want THIS to stop happening too. I don't know how this makes you feel. It makes me feel anger and sadness and nausea and as if perhaps we live in a cruel small world that suffers and sobs and is not heard very often by people who should be listening.

---

After a late night (2 a.m. ish?) and a morning wherein I could not sleep past 6:30 (technically, after a week of getting up at 4 or 4:30, 6:30 is sleeping in to my confused body), I decided to go hiking. Somehow got down a steep slide zone without killing myself. My legs were shaking. Not a good sign. I cut the expedition short and instead spent a good half hour sitting on a piece of driftwood someone set up like a bench atop a rocky outcrop. I watched the sea lions leap in and out of the waves, staggering their above-water appearances so that it looked like a sea monster was undulating and uncoiling out in the ocean.

mule variations

RECENT STORY

Related to the following photo:



---

I bought a CD last week. I can't stop listening to it even though I've heard the songs all before years ago. I think I'm in love with the handmade component of it all: a CD. In a CD player. The kind that still has a tape deck. Will wonders never cease? When I go on long driving trips, the CD player boom box comes with me and it runs off of...BATTERIES, huge batteries. Batteries bigger than babies. Bigger than five babies.

The CD, if you are curious, is Tom Wait's "Mule Variations." How do people (Laura) not like Tom Waits? How do they (Laura) not throw themselves prostrate before his holy altar, beating their breast and sobbing, "I'm not worthy!" How does that not (Laura) happen?

Regard:

---

In the last three days, I've subscribed to one magazine and bought four others: two trashy women's fashion magazines, one archaeology trade thing, and one science magazine.

I read in a book written by a journalist that people serious about their craft should read lots of...stuff. They should commit to read one weird thing each week. At least.

So...

The trashy women's magazines have taught me that OMG yes you can totally be a sex symbol (well praise God) in those jeans, but...you know...the good kind of sex symbol. Not the bimbo-y kind. In this modern feminist world you have to draw the line somewhere. Preferably, very very low.

All of the stories start with quotes, but the thing is they're all really dumb quotes. The writers aren't bad. Why are they starting with these quotes? Is it a requirement? Is it something the editors do?

"Sullivan! What's with these miles of context-establishing, beautifully written, poetic leads and opening paragraphs?! You know we can't print this! Here, watch. I'm going to just slash it all the way down 10 inches to...to...here."

"But, with all respect, sir, that's so confusing. You have no idea who's talking or why they're saying what they're saying. Actually that's the most boring part of the story."

"Well, you wrote it. Good lord, don't I have enough to do already? You're a writer for landssake. Just stick in an attribution there instead and put in a single sentence establishing the scene. Glory!"

Furthermore, in the beauty insider tips there's no point to why you have to do all this stuff to your eyelashes and the loose skin under your arm. Yet it's accepted that, Ummmm...of course you want to fix that. Of course you worry about that. Everyone does.

It looks like a never-ending course of disappointment and betrayal to me and this denial of pores seems unhealthy. The message: let them breathe, but make sure you hide them at all times. Women do not have pores...men must never discover that we do or else all is lost.

Also, these magazines are for straight-haired people and have no tips in their "8 Tips for Perfect Hair ALWAYS" for curly-hair folk. Well fine.

---

You got to get behind the mule
every morning and plow

156: oh hi there

It's been a while. How long? So long ago that the last time I talked to all of you via God (aka, the Internet) I was only expecting Nebraska (as a woman expects her first child) and now (from where I sit in a coffee shop listening to some pseudo Euro techno poop probably created in fact by an indie band named [ironically] Consumerism Fist), but (I say): now, from where I sit, Nebraska is a distant memory. Almost.

I was sitting in court next to the security deputy today and somehow we started talking about how the Fatherland smells. Probably we were talking about the weather. Out here, it's not just a formality or a preliminary conversational politeness. Instead it's more like: DEAR GOD! The WEEEEEAAAAATHER!! Why do we live here?!?!

Please note: The weather has been awful. Everyone I've talked to recently has been contemplating suicide. One of my regular sources darkly hinted at a particular gruesome form: suicide by can opener. I said it would take more effort than it was worth. Today, however, is lovely. I went on a two hour bike ride with my new neighbor and it was perfect because we're both wimps about huge hills.

Anyway.

The deputy isn't from Oregon either, and he said they could pave Chicago over (where he lived for a long time) and he wouldn't miss it. Where you're born is different, is special. Nobody better lay a hand on it. Even if you hate the heat of the state wherein you were born, it smells like every good thing that has ever happened to you. When I stood out in the damp evenings in Nebraska and inhaled that thick air full of smells and heavy with everything growing from the dirt: a green, hot air. And the lightening bugs slowly turned on and off. And cicadas whirred loud and electric. It felt like home in the way that home rarely feels. I loved it.

But I will never move back.

Because (here's the other part) I don't know how to describe the way my heart (yes, heart) rose the second I saw the Oregon geography unfold in mountains and valleys under the plane as we flew back into Portland. I couldn't stop smiling.

But. Yeah. Anyway. No more smiling. Down to the bitter cruel realities of life as of person who works at a full-time job, gift-wrapped in deadlines.

We lost two reporters. One to retirement. The other to some lame job. And by lame job I mean an amazingly fantastic opportunity and she will shine star-like and perhaps become famous. Stupid C. Here's her blog. And follow her on Twitter. Do it. I have no idea what Twitter means (philosophically) or why it seems to influence people (emotionally).

When I interned at an alternative weekly, the arts editor would give me despairing looks and "tsk" when I voiced my anti-Twitter, anti-social networking angst. She'd spin back in her chair and cue up her screen which was mashed edge to edge with Facebook whatsits, chat doodas, various instant share type thingys and lord knows what else. Things were pinging and alerting and dinging non stop.

Looks stressful to me.

But let me not detract. If you're into Twitter (even remotely) and care about what's going on around you (even remotely), follow C. Read her blog. Appreciate her blog description which I think is new since the last time I looked it was something like, "C. is a journalist." She told me she'd been instructed to sexy up the description.

It is very important that descriptions be sexy.

---

So briefly, I want people to appreciate how mad it's been. Bear with me...I need attention. Or validation.

July 27-August 3, I'm in Nebraska/Iowa with THE WHOLE FAMILY. Awesome, rad and other mad greats. Behold:



Fly back into Portland Aug.3. Hang out with Tiffany downtown for a few hours. Drive back to Astoria. Get in around midnight. Wake up the next morning and go to work.

Work the rest of the week. Obviously.

August 6, drive to PDX after work.

August 7, leave PDX early in morning. Drive back to Astoria. From Astoria, drive to North Cascades National Park on a semi-self-imposed newspaper assignment. By the time I get to North Cascades, arriving at 5:45 p.m., I have been on the road since 7:30 a.m.

Attend climate change conference night of August 7 after quick intros to all the people I will be traveling with the next day. In bed by 10.

August 8, wake up at the crack o' dawn. Spend all day in the lovely almost wilderness. Climb on top of a boat cabin to take pictures. Get wet. Climb other things. Hike a lot. Interview. Photograph. Get back to my car, parked at the trail head, at 6 p.m. Still have to drive back to Astoria.

Drive back to Astoria. Get in town around 1 or 2 a.m. Get a few hours of sleep. Monday comes. I work for the rest of the week. Obviously.

At some point C. and our city reporter leave the newsroom forever and my workload goes up accordingly. 70 hours last week, I think. I stopped counting after I hit 50.

That brings us to last weekend (which, odd, feels like it happened yesterday). I went to Eugene on a whim Friday evening and stayed through Sunday morning.

Now I'm back and, wow, it's the weekend again. This week has also been jam packed, but I took Thursday and today pretty easy...or, at least, found a way to cram more stuff into a shorter period of time. If I'm being honest: I don't remember what happened yesterday. Today, though, I know I spent the morning going at full tilt. I've been beating the layout people into work for the last two weeks. We're talking 4:30, 5 a.m. It feels great. I'm so happy about my job right now. Trust me on this. It's the most fantastic, lovely feeling.

Oh man, a siren just wailed by. It made me suddenly antsy and anxious. I will resist the urge to rush back to the office and listen in on Dispatch.

psychology today

In a last ditch effort to do something productive today beyond bush-whacking around half of a lake with C. (which is what I did earlier this evening), I offer a blog post.

Side note regarding lakes: I discovered the lake this afternoon and sat on the dock with my feet in the water (since we are now experiencing summer weather after what felt like two weeks of winter, right in the middle of July) and I ate cherries and spit the stones into the lake and apparently I've accelerated or exacerbated GLOBAL WARMING or something by doing this. You know, small actions piling up over time like refuse in a porta-potty.

How do I know this? C. told me. As a result of my carelessness the lake will dry up, a cherry tree orchard will infest the remaining mud flats and a zombie desolation will rise from the entwined corpses of two rotting herons. More or less.

Anyway, while my soul worries that one out, here I am, sitting with the dogs. I. is being adorable and obedient and lying prone at my feet. I have banished T. because he was eating poop again and lord knows dog breath is bad enough without fecal matter thrown in on top. Not sure where W. is, but he's only ever in two places: foot of the stairs or under the bed. He's the type of dog that rolls over on his back every time he sees you: "You are my master. Here is my stomach. Slay me, oh great shining one, if it be your pleasure."

I started out this post thinking I would list my favorite movies. It seemed like something I should do. It was, in fact, a very important idea ten minutes ago. I'm bored with it now, but one habit of highly successful people is to see a project through to the end and not leave a whole lot of unfinished stuff shimmying about and embarrassing the family. I think I should stop reading "Psychology Today". It's a bad habit I picked up this afternoon.

Movies, my favorites. No particular order:

1. Bambi (Many's the day my Kincaid House housemates came home to find me curled up like an unhappy and slightly asthmatic baby in our bowl chair, wrapped in blankets, inches from the TV with my VHS copy of "Bambi" playing on repeat, the strains of "Love is a song that never ends" echoing through our cold and empty house. Oh college days.)

2. Lawrence of Arabia (There was that Camp when I pretended to be Prince Feisal and Ange was Sharif Ali and nobody was Lawrence because nobody else was playing because they hated joy, love and probably America)

3. Muppet Treasure Island (Some foolish person did not believe that I could sing every single song in this movie PLUS hum the instrumental interludes. Boy did I prove them wrong)

4. The Fantastic Mr. Fox (It's just so, as it were, fantastic)

5. I'm drawing a blank. Maybe 5 is not a valid number. Let's try 6.

6. All the President's Men (Whenever I'm depressed and especially delusional, I watch this movie. It relieves the angst -- "Journalism makes the world a better place after all" -- and deepens the delusion -- "Hey! I could do that!")

7. Anne of Green Gables (I cry shamelessly straight through this movie now. Years of watching it while sick with fever, flu and all other manner of enfeebling pestilence have conditioned me to respond this way. Otherwise, I can't explain myself at all.)

Okay. I'm done. I'm bored with this game.

---

On the horizon:

a. Nebraska ("Where the girls are the fairest, the boys are the squarest of any old school I knowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!" etc. School song. Stolen, apparently, from Gainesville, Florida. Dirty east coast lies, I say.)

b. Two reporters are leaving the paper. One goes to retire. The other goes to OPB. August is going to be busy.

c. I can't find my tuner and thus can't tune my ukulele with ease and accuracy and thus my joy is diminished. All that's left to me is a narrow bed in a strange house with a poop-eating dog.

d. Good night.