hidden treasures
It snowed in Portland on December 30th. About four inches when all was told. Growing up in the smack middle of the Rockies where it dumps from November to May, I now suddenly appreciate the magnificence of a once-a-year snowstorm. People run outside homes and office buildings to see the stuff for themselves. Businesses close down. Cars are left abandoned and folks prance down the middle of roads amidst snowball fights. In a city that’s usually wet and gray like an old ragged towel, the snow always purifies, always energizes, always makes things clean and festive and new.
Look, I'm wearing white jeans for a muddy wet bike ride. Awesome.
The neighbor's creepy Christmas seal under a few inches of fresh.
What else? Well, a new year, and lost of changes. One of them being longtime awesome roommate Traci buying a house with her man, one Mr. Jamie Weller, over on Duke Street. They moved out the last load yesterday and I must say, the house suddenly feels cavernous, silent, empty. I find myself missing the “Ksssshhhhsssh” of a Keystone Light opening at all hours of the day. But serious congrats are in order for these two. They have a long road of painting, tearing down, and building back up again, but it’s all in the good name of having a little corner of the earth to call your own.
Traci, in her new spot. That crust brown carpet's gotta go.
Luckily, there's hard woods under there. And if you look closely, the ink from decades' old Laurel & Hardy newspaper cartoons transfered onto them. A hidden treasure!
the dude abides, and other stories
A bit of news that knocked the wind out of me: “Vic Chesnutt died in Athens, Georgia this afternoon, Friday 25 December.”
A wee week or two ago I posted a link to an NPR interview with him. A new album out with Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto, a fresh, sorta hopeful take on existence. As a quadriplegic who waged war on depression and alcoholism, Chesnutt made dark stuff—but there was redemption in there, too. Now, though, suddenly gone. Just like that. In a wink of stardust and a blast of cold air. “There's widespread speculation on the Web, but no confirmation, that Chesnutt committed suicide.” At times like this, I say boo for free will. Boo.
But … that’s no way to start a new year.
So, considering certain lighter facets to existence, an NPR thingy about finding God in the Coen brothers’ movies. See, this chick Cathleen Fasani wrote a book called The Dude Abides: The Gospel According To The Coen Brothers.” Interesting stuff in there. According to her, Jeff Bridges' “the dude” character in The Big Lebowski is a mystical figure, a “righteous soul.” Says she, “There’s a deep centeredness to the dude. He’s not a perfect man—but a pure spirit.” Ha. Love me some sociology like this.
Chrisssmas in Colorado
Back from holiday in Colorado, where nephew Patrick received a vast arsenal of weaponry from Santa, and the bone-stabbing cold was chased off, as is the fashion of my mom and sister, with lotsa wine. Ah, good for the soul. Anyway, I don't have much of my own words about things, so I'll leave you with some excerpts from Dylan Thomas's "A Child's Christmas In Wales," and the accompanying pictures of the past days below.
"Years and years ago when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouses parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed."
"Our snow was not only shaken from whitewash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely white-ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunderstorm of white, torn Christmas cards."
"One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find."
"Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steadily falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept."
Alone In The Wilderness
If you find yourself with 57 minutes of free time in the next week, watch this: Alone In The Wilderness. Joel Muzzey told me about it when I saw him back in November—the story of Dick Proenneke, a 52 year old man who splits for Alaska's Aleutian Range in 1968 with plans to spend the summer building a cabin (just to see if he can!). One summer turns into the next 30 summers—he only rejoins civilization when his 80 year old body just can't take the trip back and forth from the lake hauling drinking water anymore. It's all footage he filmed himself to send back to his family as a means of keeping in touch. Anyway, Fuck errands. Fuck deadlines. Fuck paychecks. Fuck gas prices. Fuck making a living in modern society. Imagine work in its simplest form—not for money but rather for sustenance, warmth, and shelter. Free time is spent doing whatever, ever you want to: whittling giraffe’s heads from driftwood, spying on fox cubs, counting the stars in the sky.
"It was good to be back in the wilderness again, where everything seems at peace. I was alone, just me and the animals—free to plan and do as I pleased."
He builds the entire cabin both interior and exterior by hand almost totally with wood using simple tools like a hammer, chisel, and saw. And he makes Christopher McCandless look like a real pussy.
Things to Report
I went snowboarding yesterday with Yobeat.com. It was great, I learned many things, including new words like "web-lebrity" (someone who's a celebrity on the web, such the above members of the Yobeat staff), as well as the fact that all magazines are nothing more than antiquated web sites and therefore dinosaurs of the written word. Or something. I'm a big fan of magazines you know so that last one came as quite a blow. But I'm coping, don't worry. I love Brooke because when I ask her a question, like how was your weekend, instead of telling me the answer, she just sends me the link to the Yobeat story about it. Ah the Internet. Anyhoo. It snowed sixteen inches the night before, but since we got to the mountain at one p.m., it was all moguls and chopped-up mashed potato powder. Five runs later, it was back in the car, back down the mountain, back to Portland—with a brief stop at Calamity Jane's for beers and jive talk. Good stuff.
***
In other news, a holiday food and booze party at my house recently was a seeming success. Spaghetti with mushroom sauce, sun-dried tomato and white bean soup, mexican rice, stuffed mushrooms, a cookie bonanza, and bricks upon bricks of cheese. BTW: Trader Joe's Candy Cane Jo-Jos—I would go to jail for them, I would die for them. But it was funny how, by the end of the night when only the stragglers were left, things somehow turned into a sitcom from the 80s, with all the boys in the living room drinking beer and watching sports (i.e. skateboarding) and all the girls in the kitchen cleaning and gossiping. So awesome.
See?
