Portfolio Diaz

Portfolio Diaz

Carson K. Smith

Respeto! copyright 2009 Carson K. Smith b. 1979All rights reserved. type set in Adobe Garamond Pro and Futura Portfolio Diaz / Carson K.Smith p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and biography.

Portland, Oregon 503.250.0247 carsonksmith@gmail.com 1. Portfolio, Publishing, Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction—United States First Edition

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Porfirio’s Second Term I. ~ Everyday a favorite tree 3 ~To get to the park 4 ~ In the garage I constructed a box 5 ~The Year Winter Never Came 6 ~On Company Time 7 II. ~Dumpster Diving 13 ~The Investiagation 18 ~Walk. Don’t Walk. 21 ~ The Role of Steve 27 III. Willammette Week ~The Last Yip 35 ~Rogue of the Week [February 8th, 2006] 36 ~Rogue of the Weeek [March 8th, 2006] 37 ~Recycling the Hustle 38 The Vanguard ~Out of Place 39 ~Overcrowding 41

José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori

Porfirio’s Second term Mexico

used to have a no-reelection policy.

In 1880, Porfirio Diaz, despite his impressive mustache, could not get reelected. It was against the rules. The four years that followed Diaz’s term were filled with so much corruption that by the end Diaz and his `stache were welcomed back by the Mexican people. He was given a second chance and went on to serve the next 25 years as the country’s leader.

If Porfirio Diaz wasn’t given a second term, Mexico’s history would be significantly different. I’m not here to debate that, merely to suggest that second chances are permitted.

When rules are broken change is made.

I call this collection Portfolio Diaz because when I first learned about the Mexican President I confused his name with the term that describes a collection of creative pieces. None of the pieces in this portfolio have anything to do with El Presidente Porfirio Diaz. I’ve just used his name and image. The writing, however, the layout and the design are all my own.

I’ve tried to represent a spectrum of the writing not unlike the political spectrum. There’s some fiction and simple poetry that make up part one.

These would be on the liberal left. I give a third term to the portfolio with re-printed journalism pieces published the last few years in Willamette Week and Portland State University’s daily Vanguard. And put them on the conservative right. In the middle, I included personal essays and memoir pieces I wrote while enrolled in graduate courses at Portland State. They show more of where I’m coming from. Somewhere in the middle.

Thank you for voting and for reading.

Carson K. Smith 2009

I.

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Everyday a favorite tree The first day there were Many I picked out the biggest One It’s trunk had a stand-in Cave I walked right up to it; Stood My body fit perfect, In The view from there was great True Second time it was a Root That drew me in like a Bench Cause nothing beats a good Sit Little later my butt Hurt Still, I sat and looked out Wide There, I could see many More ‘Today it’s this one that’s Mine’ The next day I’m feeling Sad I go to the park anyWay And pick one to fit my Mood Tall this tree, too, it Droops Branches hang like a hound’s Cheeks

A certain amount of Moss Surrounds the circumference Low I see vertical bark Up Willow-like weeping, and Me I walk around every Day And say, this one, this day You When alone I need some Thing I choose a tree in the Park And make it my own tree, Then I walk home; I leave it There Everyday a favorite Tree

Carson K. Smith­

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To get to the park To get to the park I wake up.

I get out of bed and go downstairs.

I put shoes and socks on. a sweatshirt this day.

To get to the park I use the bathroom I drink a pink glass of water.

I put my dog’s leash on her collar. and a bag in my pocket.

To get to the park I go out my front door.

I take a right on the sidewalk I pass houses on my right and notice many DirectTV dishes.

To get to the park I cross the street.

I walk to a median and to the other side I pass Subarus for sale, empty bags of fast food.

I walk to the corner of Cora.

To get to the park I take a left.

Roadway not improved, the sign says.

I walk up a sidewalk until it ends.

A gravel road, an overgrown alley.

To get to the park I walk three more blocks.

It will be a surprise if I see another soul.

I’ll walk through stop signs, never needing to stop.

But my dog stops to eat some grass or just sniff.

To get to the park I go through a schoolyard.

It’s like a park: it’s got grass, playground equipment, Basketball courts and soccer goals.

But a bit further is the real park.

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In the garage I constructed a box

On the box I marked OLD THINGS I place a poster, some wooden figurines, a blue baseball glove, and some burnt CDs of bands and album titles written in neat handwriting with a sharpie.

Songs I don’t want to hear again.

I found a plastic St. Louis Rams cup, a blue-rimmed bowl, and some old VHS cartridges I won’t watch and can’t play I’ll place in the cardboard box above the newspaper I’ve used to line the bottom.

Still, there remains these items too big for the box: a bike, a bed, a desk I helped carry home.

And a past.

In the box I’ll have to place: music heard but not recorded, conversations remembered but no longer recalled; years and years of memories, of nights in-house, days in-class, trips in cars, on planes, on busses.

I’ll place news not published in papers or aired on TV. News insignificant to all but the two of us, that of new love, lost love, lost loved ones, and new members of families that are spread about many states.

I’ve left the box open—it’s not full yet.

I’ll contribute more to it before I have to seal and send it.

Carson K. Smith­

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The Year Winter Never Came There are droplets of water in the atmosphere. Families of them.

In the part of the atmosphere, where water droplets form, there was once one of the smallest bits of water named Drip. Drip’s dad, Drop, worked at a snowflake factory. Drop dried, however, before Drip got to know him, but Drip heard about the snowflake factory, and always wanted to work in the there. Just like Drop.

Many of the droplets Drip went to school with didn’t want to work in the snowflake factory. They were happy falling from the sky. Fine just being droplets. Drip was different.

Drip wanted to be apart of something. Make something with his life.

One day when he was a big enough droplet, Drip went to the snowflake factory to find out how he could make snowflakes. Everyone Drip asked said he needed to speak to Old Man Winter, the factory’s owner.

So Drip went to Old Man Winter’s office.

The first time Drip went to see Old Man Winter, Old Man Winter’s secretary Miss Umbrella said Old Man Winter was not available, and that Drip would have to make an appointment.

When Drip came back to Old Man Winter’s office in the snowflake factory, Miss Umbrella said Drip couldn’t see Old Man Winter. The Old Man was unavailable, again.

“But I made an appointment,” Drip reminded Miss Umbrella. “I want a job. I want to make snowflakes.”

“I’m sorry,” Miss Umbrella replied. “But Old Man Winter is out.” So Drip left.

When Drip went to visit Old Man Winter the third time, and without an appointment, he was determined to get into the office and to see Old Man Winter. He wanted to work in the snowflake factory. Just like his dad.

Drip walked right past Miss Umbrella and into Old Man Winter’s office.

“Old Man Winter, I’m Drip,” Drip declared, “and I’m going to work in the snowflake factory. I’m going to make snowflakes.” There was silence until Drip explained that his dad was Drop, and that Drop worked for Old Man Winter. “And I’m going to work for you, too,” Drip said.

Old Man Winter was surprised. No one had talked to him that way, much less a droplet. And Drip, in front of Old Man Winter, was surprised with himself.

Finally, Old Man Winter spoke. “I remember your dad. Drop made the best snowflakes,” Old Man Winter said. “And I like you, Drip, but I’m sorry, son, there aren’t enough droplets in this atmosphere to make snowflakes this season.

“There won’t be snow this season,” Old Man Winter said. “I’m getting out of the snowflake business.”

Drip thought of his friends, the dropouts. How they didn’t want to work at the factory, how they just wanted to fall. Drip became sad.

“Without snowflakes there won’t be snow,” Drip said.

“I know, Drip,” Old Man Winter said. “And without snow, there isn’t winter.”

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On Company Time The employee knew exactly why he was being called to meet with the timekeeping supervisor, he just wasn’t sure where the timekeeper’s office was. It’s next to the copy machine he was told on the phone. In front of the mailboxes. I’m sure you’ve walked past it a thousand times. You’ll need to come up here and sign some papers.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ the employee thought. Or maybe it was: ‘Oh, this again.’

Either way, he knew it was the clock—time—that got him into trouble.

The employee walked slowly up the stairs and past the copy machine, past the mailboxes and into the timekeeping supervisor’s office. Someone had given the employee a lollipop. He put it in his mouth; it wasn’t at all professional but he went right along sucking on it. The employee slouched. He put his calf on his knee like he does and waited.

—I don’t believe we’ve met.

The employee was always told not to hate the messenger but he often does.

—And I hate meeting people like this.

Who wouldn’t? The employee got the feeling that the supervisor doesn’t have the social skills to meet or be friendly with what is, on average, a younger, hipper bookstore workforce. How long has the middle-aged supervisor worked here? How did he get this job? This office? Positions at the company developed, those there from the beginning have these soft jobs. In the evolutionary time frame of the company, the timekeeping supervisor had spent his entire life there.

The timekeeping supervisor told the employee that he was summoned because sometime in the pay period ending 11/18 he clocked out for the evening at 10:54 p.m., one minute before the allowed time. This is a violation of the Attendance and Timekeeping Policy, resulting in this, a verbal warning.

Questions of conduct ensued: —Did you notify a Manager on Duty that you were leaving early?

—No. —Did you fill out an Early Out slip because you were ill?

—Of course not. I wasn’t ill.

—Then why was it that you clocked out one minute early?

—I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention to the clock.

—OK. If you come back in a few minutes I just have to check on one thing. I’ll

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have to have you sign the document.

It was the employee’s second incident. Paperwork from the first shows that on Oct. 7, the day of the city marathon the employee showed up for work more than 30 minutes late—he was Very Late according the company policy. He had called, left a message explaining what was happening, but still the employee had been brought into a conference room, the one he was interviewed in for this job, and was given a Restatement of Expectations regarding the Attendance & Timekeeping Policy by his immediate supervisor. And this, the employee’s second incident, was resulting in a verbal warning.

The employee had not wanted a job in which he had to clock in. In a previous job this had been a problem. Just getting to work on time often seemed the hardest part of the job.

It’s different, now: the employee is at a different company, at a different time.

One thing remains, however, there’s a clock and a timecard. For 40 hours a week the employee is on Company Time.

The employee goes through a metaphysical change when clocking in to work.

One minute the employee is on the outside, on his own time, and the next minute he’s inside the building and he’s on the company clock. He doesn’t belong to himself anymore, he becomes someone else. His work-self in a sense. The employee interacts with people differently than he normally would. I don’t talk like this, he often thinks.

The employee was working at the bookstore’s register when a man walked through the door and down the steps of the Northwest entrance and came right at him. The customer was drunk, the employee could tell instantly because he staggered to the counter and asked the employee to print out a map of the State of Washington for him. One with the lakes and rivers, he said.

—Can you do that?

—No. Yes but I won’t.

—I know you can. You can and you should.

—We sell maps of Washington. They are in the Travel Section.

The company (it is should be noted that the employee used ‘We’ when talking about the company—the employee is on the clock and part of the company, he’s acting as its spokesperson) is big on customer service. But also, it’s not this employee’s job to tell the man to leave.

—But I don’t have any money. And, I know you can print one out for me. I know this because I’m smart.

The man (he’s not a customer because he has no intention of buying product)

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was like a TV that’s on in a room where you are doing something else, aware that it’s on it’s being ignored.

He touched his skull with his index finger and one of his eyes wondered back outside from which he had just come, though, the rest of his body did not follow.

He wanted to talk or just stay inside the building where it was warm. It was the coldest it got that winter; it was to snow, and the homeless man for whatever reason thought it would be warmer in the state to the north.

The employee tried to ignore him. He looked around the room for a Manager on Duty, but he couldn’t find one.

None of the employee’s co-workers noticed this encounter. What they saw was the back of a “customer” standing at the counter, a counter that separates the employee and the man in front of him.

The employee saw the man’s face, heard his request. A woman in her thirties, an actual customer, approached the register with a product she wanted to buy. She wedged next to the man and sort of looked at him out of the corner of her eye, and then right at the employee. She was nervous because guys like these are capable of many things. The transaction between the employee and the woman ended; he gave her her receipt and she left.

The man remained.

The employee could have helped the drunken man with what he’s asked. He said later he probably would have done it for an “actual customer.” The employee was on the clock, and customer service doesn’t apply to the drunk, the homeless. The employee serves the company, the market, the tourists, so why does it stop there?

When the employee is on company time he’s not serving the community as a whole the way he normally might be drawn to. It’s like that when you are clocked in at work. With the click of the timecard there’s also this click of the brain that turns the outside world off and the work world on.

—I pray for a day when people are more willing to help out their fellow man.

The drunk man in front of the employee said this before considering the steps back up to the exit of the bookstore. If he wasn’t going to leave, the employee was going to have to page someone because employee safety is important to management, the employee remembered from his training. The man did leave and shortly after both managers on duty came into the room and followed the trail of the man to the door. They looked out the door and either saw him or they didn’t, but, still they knew he is out there somewhere, this danger to the company.

The homeless man wanted a map, some direction maybe, but he really just wanted to be warm, and he’s not alone. The downtown company, a city-block sized structure that offers more than just products but a bathroom, a coffee shop, a place

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It was the employee’s second incident. Paperwork from the first shows that on Oct. 7, the day of the city marathon the employee showed up for work more than 30 minutes late—he was Very Late according the company policy. He had called, left a message explaining what was happening, but still the employee had been brought into a conference room, the one he was interviewed in for this job, and was given a Restatement of Expectations regarding the Attendance & Timekeeping Policy by his immediate supervisor. And this, the employee’s second incident, was resulting in a verbal warning.

The employee had not wanted a job in which he had to clock in. In a previous job this had been a problem. Just getting to work on time often seemed the hardest part of the job.

It’s different, now: the employee is at a different company, at a different time.

One thing remains, however, there’s a clock and a timecard. For 40 hours a week the employee is on Company Time.

The employee goes through a metaphysical change when clocking in to work.

One minute the employee is on the outside, on his own time, and the next minute he’s inside the building and he’s on the company clock. He doesn’t belong to himself anymore, he becomes someone else. His work-self in a sense. The employee interacts with people differently than he normally would. I don’t talk like this, he often thinks.

The employee was working at the bookstore’s register when a man walked through the door and down the steps of the Northwest entrance and came right at him. The customer was drunk, the employee could tell instantly because he staggered to the counter and asked the employee to print out a map of the State of Washington for him. One with the lakes and rivers, he said.

—Can you do that?

—No. Yes but I won’t.

—I know you can. You can and you should.

—We sell maps of Washington. They are in the Travel Section.

The company (it is should be noted that the employee used ‘We’ when talking about the company—the employee is on the clock and part of the company, he’s acting as its spokesperson) is big on customer service. But also, it’s not this employee’s job to tell the man to leave.

—But I don’t have any money. And, I know you can print one out for me. I know this because I’m smart.

The man (he’s not a customer because he has no intention of buying product

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for people to warm themselves so long as they are not drunk.

It’s a terrible cycle, the employee said to a co-worker later, off the clock. The man was homeless and can’t be let into one of the many shelters in this neighborhood because he’s drunk. He’ll drink to pass out and be cold and hung over tomorrow, so he’ll drink again and not be let into the shelter the next night, when it’ll be just as cold out. He has no schedule. No place to be at a certain time. No clock by the door to swipe a card. He’s on his own time.

At the bookstore’s main entrance, four women—dressed alike in pink, glittery blouses and lime green dresses over nylon stockings and hot pink, feather boas around their shoulders, with tiaras resting atop maroon tinted w¯≤¯­­igs, all with flashy diamond rings on multiple fingers over white gloved hands, all with matching rhinestone sunglasses, and all with their same pink Chuck Taylor sneakers—all of them, the gaggle, approached the cashier, gawking. Identical in looks, the four middle-aged-almost-drag-queen-looking women shared something else (besides the books they were carrying) in common: they’re on their own time. On their side of the counter, it’s blatant and bright that these women were spending time in a just-the-way-they-want-to way. Someone off the street walked in the main entrance.

The customer paid attention for one moment to the women before he continued to walk through the store. Another customer walked through the entrance and didn’t even notice them—or does but didn’t consider the women that unusual. If the customer cared about the women, the event that was taking place, there might have been an interaction, but these just-off-the streets are on their own time, too.

On company time, the employee works. He observes. He’s not on his own time, he’s clocked in. The employee may like his jobs, he is doing what he likes, he may say but he works for someone else. A portion of his week, his life, is dedicated to the lives of others.

Carson K. Smith­

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II.

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Dumpster Diving “This one looks good,” Nate says, handing me an apple. “This one does, too.” He hands me another.

It’s 10:30 at night, and I’m wearing my navy blue sweatshirt with the hood on and pulled low to my brow. To see Nate I lift my chin slightly.

Nate’s a big guy and looks even bigger in his puffy coat. He’s got a red beard and a grin on his face. He has almost no pride. I want to see what he’s doing, but I don’t want us to be seen.

“Can you believe they’re throwing this shit away?” Nate says.

I can’t. I also can’t believe I’m putting produce that’s being pulled out of the dumpster into a canvass bag to take home. Produce from atop the muck.

Nate and I, we’re behind the Seven Corners New Seasons grocery store on Division in Southeast Portland. It closed at ten, and we think we’ve given the crew ample time to throw out what they are going to and leave the dumpster for riffling.

“They don’t care,” Nate assures me after my misgivings. “They usually just say to leave.”

It’s true that my close-in neighborhood isn’t known for its police presence. But usually? Nate has been here before. And he’ll be back again. He’ll come until he’s forced to leave. Nate’s neither poor nor homeless, though sometimes he looks it.

He’s been out of work for awhile now and is living frugally. I know Nate because he lives near by. He’s a fast talker and persuasive. This night, he’s convinced me to follow him to the dumpster to get, “all kinds of free food.”

We’ve come through a hole in the fence that someone clipped in the chain link on Clinton Street, someone then opened up another part of another fence that leads to the dumpster area behind the organic grocery store where I normally shop.

A light turns on and I flinch. But Nate doesn’t stop looking inside the dumpster that he’s holding open the lid of. He actually says, “Oh, good.” No one is coming out to stop us. It’s a motion sensor light. We can now see what else is in the trash receptacle.

A little deeper down: perfectly good bananas; just-find looking pears; avocados that look ripe to me, and tomatoes that I have to turn around three times before I find a soft spot.

“This one is still good,” I find myself saying holding up a pear to the light.

Nate looks at it quickly and says, “Yeah, I know,” before returning his attention to the inside of the dumpster.

By definition I’m not hungry, which is “a circumstance in which an individual unwillingly goes without food for an intermittent or extended period of time,” the United States Department of Agriculture states on its website.

The definition of intermittent is vague. I’ve been hungry for hours. But I know that I’m not as bad as some. Some in Oregon have been hungry for meals or even

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days. For people like this, there are programs set up; you can see the lines of these people by the bridge on Burnside.

I’ve never been called a “spanger,” or someone who’s asks for spare change. I’ve never been to a soup kitchen, though as an undergrad I sought out a Catholic church that served lunch for a dollar. I’m not Catholic nor did I have to scrounge for the dollar, but the Catholics didn’t seem to mind.

In a way, at the dumpster I feel guilty. Why should I get this food for free?

Certainly there is someone out there that deserves this food more. And I wonder if I am intruding on street people’s turf. If I’ve come through the clipped hole that someone needier created. I also feel that New Seasons should doing something better with this produce.

How come they aren’t donating it? Why aren’t they giving it to, say, the Oregon Food Bank. The Food Bank, which “recovers food from farmers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, individuals and government sources,” distributes food throughout Oregon to emergency food boxes positioned mostly in the western portion of the state.

Every month some 200,000 people in Oregon and Clark County, Washington, eat meals from these emergency food boxes. The dumpster apparently is not an emergency food box.

In Oregon, a state known for its abundant production of—mostly organic— fruits, vegetables, and dairy products, nearly 750,000 people receive food from emergency food boxes. Hundreds of thousands of Oregonians do not have enough food on their own to feed themselves and their families. At the same time, fiftythree percent of disposed food is fresh fruits and vegetables, grains and milk.

The Oregon Hunger Relief Task Force was created to assist non-profits like the Oregon Food Bank by the Oregon Legislature in 1989. Oregon ratified Good Samaritan laws. The first section of the law encourages retailers like New Seasons by stating that the donor, or gleaner, of the food “shall not be subjected to criminal penalty or civil damages arising from the condition of the food, unless an injury is caused by the gross negligence recklessness or intentional conduct of the donor or gleaner.” It doesn’t seem like liability is an issue.

The Portland metro region disposed of more than 180,000 tons of food into the landfill in 2000. “Close to half of that was probably edible,” a study states. The cost of wasting good food is in landfills is devastating, we’re talking tens of millions each year.

I have some money in my bank account and I have roommates who are willing to share staples: couscous, cheese, bread, but, If you ate my burrito, Adam says, I’d have to piss on you while you are sleeping. I laugh and believe he’s kidding, but I’m not so sure.

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Nate and I walked away with two bags of produce that we’ve paid for nothing for. While I understand we were trespassing, I’m still stuck not understanding how perfectly food, some of which I’ll use in a salad, some of which I’ll turn into fresh juice, and some of which I’ll peel and just eat, how this perfectly good food gets thrown away. Contents of the dumpster will wind up at a landfill; food will decompose, rot away, returning to the Earth uneaten.

A few days later I head to the People’s Food Co-op to find out how they handle nearly-spoiled food; People’s is six blocks from New Seasons. My house is equidistant to both. I’m a member of the food co-op, but I shop at New Seasons more often because of its variety and offers more samples.

The contrast between the two is immense. People’s is nestled in the neighborhood and feels apart of the community. It’s a converted house and feels tight in the aisles. Whereas, New Seasons is on the bus line, has a parking lot and is part of a chain, albeit local, People’s is a democracy, owned by shoppers.

When I go into People’s I ask Sarah Cline about discarded food and I’m shown two areas. One area is a shelving unit that has produce at a reduced price. Some of the pieces are small, some soft. They look like items taken out of a backyard garden.

But they haven’t been thrown out, not yet.

Sarah tells me People’s has multiple-bottom lines. Sustainability is a big part of the member mission. Besides selling produce at a reduced rate, the food store makes food available for free.

Brian, a volunteer facing product, takes me behind a partition. We’re in the back but that’s OK because we’re both owners, he tells me. I feel a little uncomfortable at first, not unlike being in the dumpster area of New Seasons. I’m a shopper in a sector of the store one would presume only employees to be.

“This is Food Not Bombs,” Brian tells me. Food not Bombs is an outside organization that distributes food collected in a barrel. The group comes by once a week to pick up whatever has been left. The plastic container is half filled with loaves of bread. I pull out a rectangular loaf, and flour chalks my palm. I hold it as Brian opens the walk-in freezer. There’s another basket filled with produce and veggie sandwiches. “They were here today,” Brian says, referring to the local vegetarian sandwich company that supplies both People’s and New Seasons with these pre-made sandwiches. “And these are the sandwiches that were left over.” I’m told that Food not Bombs is for members as well. As long as you inform an employee, or a hands-on member like Brian that you want to check out what’s in the back you are able to.

I take a sandwich. BBQ is on the label, and I wonder how you put a vegetable bi-product on the barbecue. But it tastes that way in flavor, this sandwich tastes good to me. I guess it’s hard to spoil these non-meat products.

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I also wonder without asking what it’s like when you bring your newly met girlfriend over for dinner. At what point do you let her in on your dumpster diving habits? You don’t, I’m told by my brother, who knows more than I. But still I can’t get over this image: The two of us sitting at my table eating a salad. I poor her another cup of juice that I made from produce in my automatic juicer. Do you like the way that tastes, Baby? She will nod in a seductive way, appreciative of my culinary skills, my desire to eat whole foods: a healthy amount of fruits and vegetables. I pulled that out of the dumpster for you.

I’m not all that strange in my ways. In London, because of Health and Safety laws, restaurants and markets, equivalent to New Seasons, throw away thousands of pounds of perfectly good produce every day.

Dumpster diving there has turned into a culture. People called Freegans, or the play off of Free and Vegans, have turned up dumpster (or dustbins as they are referred to) lids finding the ultimate in recycling: bins of onions, carrots, tomatoes, pears and bananas. Freegans are the latest group of thrifty people who choose to live off of other people’s forgotten food. Am I a Freegan? Is this the life I’ve chosen? Or is this the life chosen for me. I begin to tell my father about what I’ve done and feel ashamed immediately.

“Have you been dumpster diving?” he asks. I’m surprised by his lingo. He puts my mom on the phone (in my family, Sunday conversations are the norm), and she asks, “Have you been eating out of the dumpster?”

It sounds bad when she says it, as if I’ve brought my fork to the bin and am eating directly from the open lid.

“No, Mom. I’m better than that,” I try to reassure her. She’d like to think I’ve been raised better.

She says she doesn’t know, and won’t know what I’m doing thousands of m iles away and in a culture different hers. I can tell she’s worried.

“Fine, Mom. I’m doing just fine.”

“Can I put money into your bank account.”

“I’m not there yet.” Her buying me food, still supporting me isn’t something I want. But she’s not so convinced.

“Don’t borrow money without consulting me first,” she says.

And I won’t. But I won’t consult her next time I go to the dumpster, either.

Because by doing this I’m breaking my mother’s heart.

Nate comes over to my house to tell me New Seasons has hired security. It’s not even 9 p.m. “You’ve already been over there?”

He nods. “Yeah, and I’m going back. I’m just going to chill here for a bit.”

There has been about a week between my first visit to the dumpster and now.

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Usually produce is sitting on top of a flat cardboard crate. It seems like they were left there on purpose.

“I wonder if it’s a trap,” I tell Nate as he stares at my TV, “or if these pieces of produce are left on purpose. Wasted food not wasted at all, but left outside for someone to pick up without paying.”

The hole in the fence is fixed but a new hole is back the next day. I wonder if workers consider food bruised, set it out only to have their friends come pick it up.

“We are not the workers friends. It seems the left-out food isn’t for us.”

We go anyway. Through the front fence we hear, You guys gotta get out of here.

Nate’s right, that’s the extent of the reprimanding. After closing the dumpster doors, we go back through the hole in the fence. Nate says he’s coming back later. I go home and wonder if this is what it’s come to.

Two years ago I was earning over thirty-grand a year. I was working for the state government, had benefits, even money in the stock market. Now, I’m being asked to leave a dumpster area, where I, on more than one occasion, have pulled food out of to eat. How did it get this way?

Another night and ten-thirty rolls around. Nate is at my house, and without asking he pulls a brown paper bag out of my closet where they’re saved and stacked.

The side of the bag says: New Seasons: the friendliest store in town.

“Wanna go?” he asks as he tucks the folded sack under his armpit.

“No, thanks,” I say.

Carson K. Smith­

17

The Investigation I was at Reynolds Optical replacing my eyeglasses, when I started thinking about why I need glasses in the first place. A long time ago someone struck me with a stick. Having not thought about it for a long time, I’m now picturing the incident and wondering who the boy who hit me is—Does he remember?

I don’t know the boy’s name until I ask my mother to riffle through files—mental and medical—to search for the name of the kid responsible for my partial blindness.

Surprisingly, she came up with a name indicated by our insurance company as the party responsible.

“The claim is not against him.” My mother says it was an accident.

I write down the name, anyway, and take it to my computer.

In the Google search engine I type in the last name, then the first name. I use quotations marks so the names come together. I’m not having much luck. The search hits, and, even though the name is unique, there are others just like it. I go to the site peoplelookup.com. My initial search is free and comes back with the name I’m looking for. For a fee the phone number and address are offered. The reason I know this name is right—it turns out it’s the father’s name—is that the recent city is in the region I know he’s from. Relatives are listed as well as their ages. A name is linked to the name I’ve found that’s close to my age and I figure that’s who I’m looking for.

I begin a new people search for this character and find out more. I can’t afford to pay for specifics but I’m directed to an alma mater, a filed patent registration, as well as a Toyota truck club blog posting. The blog posting is consistent with the location of the alma mater in the region I know he’s from, but it hasn’t been updated in years.

Listed in the blog profile is an email address, which I pan over with my cursor and copy, Ctrl C. I open my email account, and in composing a new message, I paste, Ctrl V, the email address in the “to” cue.

In the summer of 1989, at Camp Chimney Spring, a fellow camper took away my perfect eyesight. On the first full day of camp I hiked into the woods with a group of boys I befriended at breakfast. We wandered along a road, and off the road we explored a natural ravine. One of us started throwing things. The next thing: sides were picked and pinecones and sticks and dirt clods were being used as weapons. We were fighting. It wasn’t a serious fight. I think we were just trying to peg each other.

This was church camp.

Truce was called. I remember retreating. Walking up an embankment and heading back to the lodge, someone called my attention. I turned around to look down at who was remaining when something hit me right in the face. Whatever struck me knocked me down. I remember being on the ground. I tried to open my eyes, but only my right eye let light in. I thought, I can’t open my left eye. I was, however, the eye didn’t work.

And, I began to cry. I didn’t cry because of the pain—I was in shock—but from what

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one of the boys said aloud: Dude, your eyeball is bleeding. Tears mixed with blood.

The boys were above me looking down in a scene I see in retrospect. I told them to get my mom. I was at camp; the boys didn’t know for sure how that was possible. But my mom came because she was the camp’s director.

The nearest town was an hour away, and my mom drove me to the hospital there and I stayed the night. They next day, after CAT scans and dilation, the doctor told me my retina was torn, that now I had a cataract, that there was permanent damage, and that I probably wouldn’t be able to see out of my left eye again. I went back to camp and slept in the infirmary. Outside, fellow campers were hiking trails and playing volleyball outside the lodge while I remained alone in the infirmary wondering what a dark world it could be. Eventually, my grandparents picked me up and took me home.

I begin typing: Hey, you probably don’t remember this but in 1989, at Camp Chimney Spring I left camp because I was blinded. I was taken to the hospital, and then taken home by my grandma. You did this to me.

Sitting and staring, I highlight text and backspace. I’m looking at the blank body of the message yet-to-be-sent. The truth is I don’t know this person. I’ve learned he’s engineering major. And he enjoys driving 4x4 trucks. I haven’t spoken to this individual since the morning of the accident now 18 years later. I’m certain I have the right guy, and his email address in front of me, but still I don’t know what to say.

From this distance, when I close my right eye and look at my computer’s screen darkness covers a third of it. I remove my finger from my right eyelid and let light back in when I begin typing.

If this is the Justin M. that attended Camp Chimney Spring in the summer of 1989 keep reading. My name is Carson Smith, and you probably don’t remember me. I went by Kit back then. Early in the camp week a group of us went into a ravine and started throwing sticks and pinecones and dirt clods at each other. We were messing around, really. You threw a stick or something that hit me in the face. It struck me in the eye. I went down and was knocked unconscious. You blinded me You should know that I did get some of my vision back. I wear glasses now and it helps but it’s not perfect. I was angry for a long time at you and at the situation. But I’m writing you this email because I know you didn’t mean it, it was an accident and not your fault.

I’ve had nine email addresses in my life. I currently check two: my school address and my yahoo account. An email account from my undergrad college is forwarded to my yahoo. That leaves six addresses that I’ve given out or have written from that I do

not check and which may no longer exist.

Carson K. Smith­

19

In my email message to Justin M. I BCC six former accounts of mine. Four come back with mailer-daemon messages. The other two go off into oblivion. I do not get a mailer-daemon message from Justin M. I’m not expecting him to pay for the glasses I’ve had to buy, but I thought I should let him know I was thinking about him and what happened.

Far too often I think of someone from my past and do nothing about it. There, the memory rests. It doesn’t go anywhere and nothing happens. To expunge this particular memory from my mind I did an investigation and sent an email. If this memory resides00 in Justin M.’s mind I recommend he do the same. One gets a satisfying feeling sending on an email that might just wind up in a cyber black hole.

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Walk. Don’t Walk.

START I’m not going to stop, I make it a rule. I’m going to let the crosswalks dictate where I go. The signal boxes at intersections are all that make sense. I interpret the white man walking, what the red hand means: Walk, don’t walk. And that is all. I start out at Union Station in Old Town Portland because it seems like the best starting point for such an experiment, as if I was a foreigner new to the city I actually know with the constraint that I can only walk where I’m told. The premise makes sense to me: setting forth on a path I wouldn’t walk naturally. I’ll only go when the signal shows walk, stop when it shows stop. I’ll stop when the hand is blinking and wait for the first walk symbol—in front of me or to my side—and I’ll go that direction. I’ll turn right or left but I’ll have no destination in mind. Only a starting point.

800 NW Sixth Ave. Union Station Portland, OR 97209 I looked at the giant clock on the eastern wall of Union Station, and then my cell phone to double check the time. My phone reads 1:35 p.m. I noticed the train station’s interior clock is an hour ahead. No one had set it back an hour for Daylight Savings, which was more than 36 or hours prior. I wonder who’s job it is to set it. I think to ask but am in one of those moods where my tone will come across as a complaint no matter how I say it. It seems not having the correct time at the train station is one of the things that’s holding our country back. I looked at my phone’s time again and then the clock on the wall and shake my head as I put the coffee cup I was drinking out of in the trash and began walking.

SOUTHEAST on NW 6TH AVE There’s a bunch of construction going on here, but it’s not that loud this day. With the development of the new MAX line, set to be completed in 2009, this railroad station, these blocks are going to be a different place in the near future. I read an article weeks back that indicated a indoor public market that would straddle the station I was just in. Even if that doesn’t happen (Homeland Security doesn’t like the idea) it’s going to be different soon, that’s obvious to me. Now, though, there are few businesses here and as I’m walking past the Greyhound station (on my left), it’s this construction that’s keeping everyone away from here. We are fair-weather gentrifiers.

The first street I cross is Glisan-- there’s not a crosswalk signal here so I walk through. Across the street on the corner is Harvey’s Comedy Club. I went there one night with a girl I dated. After we broke up. I lied and said we could be friends but I have not spoken to her since. The new green line will go here but now there are empty shops that have Yellow Page phone books in yellow plastic bags at doorsteps to doors that don’t open.

I pass the Biltmore Hotel—apartments now for low income people—where Robert

Carson K. Smith­

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“R.J.” Anheier lived for eight years. At the beginning of this year his body was found four blocks away. Anheier worked at Sisters of the Road to pay his rent. When collapsed one night he died. He had a job and an apartment but was still thought to be homeless. Through an Online people search the Oregon medical examiner’s office contacted someone they assumed to be a relative of Anheier before giving the body to OHSU for student dissection. At Anheier’s Biltmore apartment emergency contact information for his sister and his best friend were accessible. I walk by wondering about the homeless with night jobs, with nowhere to go during the day except parks and benches. It’s warm this day and not raining. But the wet cold winter days are right around the corner Turn RIGHT onto NW EVERETT St I don’t know what street this is, it’s not marked but this signal poses my first rule to follow. I see the red hand across from me. I turn right and wait for the red hand across the street to turn to the white man walking. It does. So, now I’m going west on what I read is NW Everett Street. (The numbers are avenues, the names are streets). I pass an art studio called the Pony Club, and a shop that displays Dia de los Muertos skeletons. I pass a place called the Wandering Gypsy. Kind of like me.

The first sign that reads Pearl District is on Broadway, which is equivalent to SW 7th AVE. After Broadway on Everett are the north Park Blocks, bordered by SW 8th and on the west side of the park is Park Avenue. There is a bum sleeping in the grass of the park, maybe a night worker. It’s a nice day for a nap in the park, warm and not raining. I walk on by.

I get the white man walking, so continue going up Everett. The Pearl District brochure says that the name the Pearl came from an oyster processor that was once in the neighborhood. Another explanation paints the image of these industrial buildings (rugged shells) with pretty art inside (pearly, white).

Turn LEFT onto NW 12TH AVE I see construction up ahead — not rugged, it’s a new condo building, The Casey— on the corner of 12TH Street. Yet another condo building in the Pearl, The Casey shoots up sixteen stories. Normally, I would have crossed at 11th, but I’m following the rules. I don’t cross unless instructed, but when I can’t go forward (the sidewalk at the site is closed) I look to the other direction (left) and red hand turns to the white man walking, so I cross Everett on 12th. Before I pass the Everett Street Bistro the red hand has started blinking before I’m across the street. It’s impossible to cross comfortably.

I see “DO NOT ENTER” signs on 12th Ave, it’s a one way. I see stores that are part of the new Pearl: The North Face, P.F. Chang’s and Whole Foods. Some places I’ve never heard of like an African import boutique called Swahili’s. I keep walking

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past Couch (pronounced Cooch) and I pass Diesel, a place that sells bluejeans for hundreds of dollars, and Henry’s brew pub for which these blocks are named The Brewery Blocks. These are the stores and restaurants that those living in The Casey, for instance, will frequent.

Turn RIGHT onto W BURNSIDE ST As I get to Burnside the white man walking changes to the blinking red hand before I get to the corner. I wait for the white man going the other way before I cross 12TH; I’m going up the north side of Burnside instead of across it. Some sights I recognize: the Annex, which is a McMenamins basement across the street; a bus stop for the No. 20 or Burnside bus; on the corner of 13TH there’s an Everyday Music, which has big windows plastered with posters of musicians’ albums. I walk by before I come to the stop light on 14TH. The signal turns to walk the other direction before the one in front of me, so I cross Burnside, which divides northwest and southwest Portland.

Turn LEFT onto 14TH AVE This is where the Crystal Ballroom is. My roommate Barry works here as a security guard. He recently told me he watched Portland Trailblazers rookie Greg Oden drinking a whiskey even though he’s underage. There’s a sign, a sheet of paper on the door I read as I walk by. The Decemberists shows on December 5, 6, and 7 have been canceled.

Modest Mouse did the same thing at Edgefield when they were working on an album that was behind schedule the summer before last. I wonder if that’s what’s happening to the Decemberists. Or something else. Someone is sick I find out later.

After that block I cross the street, still going straight. A group of four people, all smoking cigarettes, walk in front of me from the street they were on, Alder. In pairs, the first two, a black guy talking to an older white woman, notice I’m behind them and he says in a nice voice, “Sorry, go head,” and they step aside to the left and out of my way. There is some room between them and the couple in front. I decide to follow at their pace. I make another rule: I’ll only pass if they notice me and not rush ahead (I’m not going anywhere in particular, so I don’t have a particular time to get there).

At this pace the five of us walk over the 405. They slow down and move towards the left side of the sidewalk, and so I pass without a struggle.

Turn RIGHT on SW MORRISON On 14th, I’m standing at the corner of Morrison—below and behind me is the 405—looking at a red hand. Ninety degrees to my right is another signal, a white man walking. I cross the street and notice the Morrison Plaza. A large Rose mural is painted on that building, along with an American flag and the caption “Freedom.”

Carson K. Smith­

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On my side of the street is Webb Plaza, an apartment complex. I go up SW Morrison to 15th and cross.

The sun is shining and I’m hot now and starting to sweat under my coat and sweater.

It’s hotter than I thought it’d be. I also have to urinate at this point. I don’t want to stop (it’s my rule), so I try not to think about it. Instead, I look around to distract myself , noticing the Scottish Rite Freemason building, big bold and white it is quite impressive. I wonder about this secret society but see no one to ask about it. On my side of the street another building called Artists Rep, or, the Repertory Theater, which has an entryway with a drive-up driveway.

Still walking, I cross16TH and see the Commodore building is. There is a diner at the ground level and apartments above. One of my first friends in Portland, Ben Chapel, lived in a one room studio with his brother Jed—both are runners. My brother’s name is also Jed—he also runs. On the ground are leaves and a sandwich board sign on the corner of 17th or Rexpost video rental. This is also where the Red and Blue MAX lines stop and turn from going east/west (downtown) to north/south.

It happens here near PGE Park.

The No. 15 Trimet bus passes by before I get to the intersection of Morrison and 18TH. Stopped, on the corner next to me is Rack Attack. I’m looking at the stadium across the street; I spot that mask sculpture in front of the stadium that hosts the Portland Beavers (baseball), the Portland Timbers (soccer), and the Vikings, Portland State University’s football team.

Turn LEFT on SW 18TH AVE All the signals are red, solid red hands. The one on my left changes first and I cross Morrison St., across the MAX lines. In front of me, a small dog walks off the leash with a woman in a wheelchair. Large posters on the building’s exterior to my left display exaggerated-sized newspaper front pages and I realize this is the backside of the old Oregonian building, where they still print the paper, which is no longer delivered to my house. I find the reporting boring and safe.

I cross Taylor St. after that and to my left is Bull Pen, a sports bar. For the first time since I left the train station I look at my phone to see what time it is. It’s 2:02 p.m.

At SW Salmon St., I wait for the light to change and anticipate going straight. I think it’s its turn. I’m wrong and the light changes going the other way, across 18th, across MAX tracks.

Turn RIGHT on SW SALMON ST I’m going up Salmon, past the Multnomah Athletic Club. Man alive, I have to piss.

I want to piss all over this place, elite and selective similar to that of the Scottish Rite.

Salmon past SW 18TH is a steep slope and I’m getting worried that there won’t be

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any lights up here and I’ll have to walk up clear to Washington Park. There’s a public bathroom there and that seems to make me want to piss more and climb this ill less, why didn’t I go at the train station before I left? I don’t know. It’s that large coffee. I’m going up Salmon, I look across the street and see a Lutheran Church with a sign that says, “Everyone Welcome.” Tempted to stop, I remember my rule: Walk, don’t walk.

I pass the Portland Towers and cross a street. A car isn’t looking or doesn’t see me and turns right right in front of me after I have stepped off the curb. It almost hits me. I wasn’t paying attention; he wasn’t either—that’s how accidents happen.

Turn RIGHT on SW KING I remember crosswalks and know there won’t be any up here. Salmon Street turns right without an intersection and I end up on SW King and walking downhill towards Burnside away from the Scenic sign. The corner has a secluded park. A yard, I notice, there’s a fence. On my right is a house with a for sale sign. Across the street is King Tower. At 840 King is the Washington Park Inn. Across from those the Park Lane Suites. At 806 King there’s a dog barking, looking up from his fenced yard at nothing at all in the Washington Park Inn parking lot. In front of me a man shuffles down an alley and away from me to the right.

Turn RIGHT on W BURNSIDE I look up and notice a recognizable sign, it’s the Volvo sign on corner of W Burnside and SW King. I’m back at W Burnside at a stop sign. In front of me is busy Burnside.

There are no crosswalks. I look up W Burnside and see Goodwill and Ringside steak restaurant. I decide to walk east on Burnside, and cross to the other side when there’s a break in traffic. I pass Wells Fargo, where I bank, and a Walgreens. I walk down W Burnside past Taco Bell, Panda Express and a McDonald’s. As I cross the streets 21st, 20th and 19th I’m not paying attention to crosswalks. I’m now paying attention to cars, not the flashing signs. If I was waiting for the lights to turn I’d be standing around a lot on W Burnside, and I really have to use the bathroom.

You can’t cross the 405 from the north side of W Burnside, so you have to cross over Burnside again. I wait to do so. I cross and then cross the overpass.

STOP At W Burnside and 14th again, I’m once again in front of the Crystal Ballroom. I notice something that I didn’t see the first time I past, a ghost bike. It was here recently that nineteen-year old Tracey Sparling died when a cement truck turned right and ran over her. A white spray-painted bicycle is chained here along with some tissue paper flowers in a makeshift memorial that makes a statement. Everyone who’s lived in Portland for sometime recognizes these statements, these tributes to the dead.

Carson K. Smith­

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I wouldn’t know the term ghost bike if I was a foreigner in this town. I would learn it if I spent enough time here, though, I would start to notice them more—there are a lot a bicyclists and accidents happen. I would come to realize that intersections, even with crosswalks and lights, are all around but that some people don’t pay attention to the obvious. I go to work, and to a bathroom, a place of purpose.

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The Role of Steve Steve, who used to live here, returns to Portland once a month for a medical study he’s in at the hospital on the hill. The last time he came we went to the Clinton Street Pub up the way from my house the night before his appointment. We were sitting at a table and I asked him about a theory of his we’ve discussed before.

According to Steve’s theory, people in your life fit into roles. It’s as simple as considering your life as a play, and your relations a cast of characters. You are, of course, the lead. The star.

Steve said I fit the role of Best Friend. When we met I replaced Ben Morehouse, his best friend growing up.

So, instead of names I think of roles others have in my life: Girlfriend, Best friend, Co-worker, Classmate, Supervisor, Neighbor. My cast gets specific, more minor roles emerge—Coffee shop counter girl, Friend who’s a bad influence, Apathetic roommate, Former lover, Exotic older woman, the Probably too young for me crush.

So, when an actor in a play can’t make a performance or rehearsals, the show must go on, I add to Steve’s theory. In this theory, if the characters, if these characters fail you they’ll be replaced. You recast them.

From now on you’ll be playing the role of _____________.

This is a self-centered way of looking at relationships, but sitting at the table in the smoky pub and sipping whiskies I agree: There’s some truth to the Role Replacement Theory.

One morning last summer, when we were still roommates living in a house in Portland, Steve packed 1985 champagne Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. I got up and opened the door to the garage. After he said goodbye, I watched him and his packed Cutlass pulling out of the driveway and then drive up the street.

I knew he’d drive through Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Minnesota on his way home to Illinois before permanently moving to Baltimore to be with a woman he was convinced he was right for.

I didn’t agree with it: the move, the girl, his leaving Portland. It wasn’t just that I was concerned with his health, I thought he was leaving because of something I did.

Or rather that Steve’s leaving had something to do with what I failed to provide as his friend. I thought he was walking out of a life we had. I got upset. When I get angry I start thinking about the past.

Steve and I had moved to Portland together two years before, now he’s gone. When he explained his reason for leaving it was simpler than his role theory: He came to Portland for school and to find a girl. He went through a master’s program and he met Olivia. He doesn’t mention anything about moving to Portland when I needed him to. When Poppa died and my girlfriend broke up with me, I needed somewhere else to go. He doesn’t mention our coming here and living someplace new. Together.

Carson K. Smith­

27

He doesn’t understand I wouldn’t be here without his being here. But Steve being here isn’t what this is about. It’s about him no longer being here.

I often think about that first night I met Steve.

Late one night in the fall of my sophomore year, while living in the dorms at New Mexico State, I met Steve and we found someone of-age with long hair to buy us beer.

We stayed up and drank them late into the night: Miller High Life. We smoked copious amounts bud, easily available and inexpensive at that time and place.

“I don’t know how I got stuck with this,” Steve, who’s a lanky, white and a midwesterner said of his roommate then who wasn’t around. “Sammy’s a Native American, Baptist Homosexual.”

We laughed together, making fun of Steve’s situation. It was our way of getting to know one another, two college students away from home.

At three o’clock that morning, after a whole night of drinking and listening to music, we stepped outside. I remember I was pretty messed up when he suggested we walk on the second-story catwalk that connected dorm buildings to one another—he had a friend of that lived in one a ways off.

Walking along the catwalk, Steve threw a plastic bottle to me. I threw it back.

The bottle came back to me and when I reached up to make that catch my back hit the railing and I flipped over it and fell from the second floor to the cement ground below. I hit my head, which I don’t remember, and was knocked out and taken from the campus to a hospital.

Steve stood and watched. He was helpless, I see now.

I didn’t return to school that semester. But when I did the next, Steve and I became good friends. We talked about music and life. But we didn’t talk about what had happened that night. The accident was in our past.

We became close and made plans to meet up in the summer. After spending my vacation in Boston working, I bought a Volkswagen Jetta and drove it to Illinois to meet Steve. Together, we drove from there to New Mexico. I remember being in the car, listening to music and talking about the coming school year. Driving through Iowa we made a sign and held it up to the window at people we passed. It read, “Iowa: it’s a-maizing.”

When we got to New Mexico we found a place to live, a two-bedroom townhouse in a cul-de-sac named La Posada. It was the first of five places we would live in together over the course of eight years: three in Las Cruces, and two in Portland.

Living together, we shopped for groceries. We’d go to the laundromat and wait for our clothes to dry. We’d watch TV, too. Steve on the couch, me in the chair.

We both moved back to our respective homes after we had graduated from New

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Mexico State, we called each other. Steve said he’d join me when I decided to come to Portland. One holiday weekend we met up and Steve could tell like no one else something was wrong with me. Lacey and I broke up and then my grandfather had died. And I was stuck somewhere between a rock and my parents place. He suggested we mutually move, somewhere neutral, somewhere else. I suggested Portland, and Steve seemed to think it was a good place for us to restart. Four months later, with Steve’s persistence, we packed up our cars and drove to the Northwest.

When we first moved we shared a one-bedroom apartment. I took the bedroom and he slept in the living room. At first we didn’t have furniture. We slept on the floor, in corners. Eventually, I bought a bed and a couch. I slept on one, Steve on the other.

We were trying to make it in a new city. On Thanksgiving Day that year, we ate steak on a card table. We drank beers and listened to football on a radio.

After we established jobs and knowledge of the city’s neighborhoods, we moved again, this time into a house, a three-bedroom. Steve said he would pay more for the bigger room, and we found a third roommate to live with us.

After Steve left for Baltimore I moved my things across the hall, into his room; now I sleep in his bed. His room is comfortable, and bigger. He left some things on the wall I haven’t bothered to take down: concert posters, CD inserts and such. I looked in the back of the closet and saw he even left some boxes. One day, I opened them and noticed they were full of CDs. They were all burned discs, concerts. I started to go through them.

Steve and I went to many concerts together, including five different Phish shows.

One of the first discs I pulled out of the first box was a Phish show in Las Cruces. It was labeled September 22, 1999, Pan American Center. I think about that date: nine nights before I fell off the catwalk. I think about the place: one hundred yards from that catwalk. Steve and I weren’t friends then, it was before I met him, before I fell.

Like so many other Phish concerts—I went to 12 total—I didn’t remember the set list. Fortunately, Steve typed it up on the back of the jewel case. I put the CD in the player. The first set starts out with the “Theme from 2001.” Another song from that first set is a song called “My Mind’s got a Mind of Its Own.” I remembered this show as I listen to the whines of the guitars, the cheers from the crowd.

I continued to look through the box of discs as the concert played in the background.

I searched for other shows Steve and I went to together. I looked for place names first, then dates, then band names. Steve labeled every one of them neatly but there is no order to the shows. The first box has over a hundred CDs in it. There are over two hundred and fifty in the second. It’s not just Phish, a jam band that I can best describe as the heir apparent to The Grateful Dead, but also the Dead is in there, Widespread Panic, Robert Randolph, the String Cheese Incident, Bob Dylan, Les Claypool, moe., the

Carson K. Smith­

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Rolling Stones, Victor Wooten, Charlie Hunter, Medeski Martin & Wood, the Talking Heads, Peter Tosh, Keller Williams, Galactic. All are bootlegged shows, collected and listened to. He left them all here. Every one of them. And me, he left me here too. I felt the weight of the void as I shifted the box on the bed.

I sifted through the discs as a live version of “Guelah Papyrus” played on my player until I found the last show the two of us went to. It was a Phish concert in Inglewood, California, on Valentine’s Day of 2003. I remembered driving west with Steve and two other friends, Eddie and Marie. I thought of who I left behind. I didn’t invite Lacey, my girlfriend at the time. I left her.

I thumbed through the cases, scanning until I came across a couple of winners: back-to-back shows in Las Vegas at the end of September 2000. Steve, my brother Jed and I drove on that tour to Denver, Las Vegas, and to Phoenix to see a total of five shows on that tour.

At the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas, the three of us were drinking beers and talking to people and listening to tapes before the show. A guy parked next to my Volkswagen asked if any of us had a cell phone. He said it would be just a minute. I let him use mine, and when he returned he seemed grateful—he had made the connection he needed—and wanted to thank me.

It’s quite all right, I said. It was nothing.

But as I turned my attention to my brother and Steve, he pulled out a vial of liquid and asked if we wanted a drop of acid. I looked at Steve and my brother and they nodded.

Hold out your hands, he told us, and dropped a drip on our palms. We eyed each other, smirked and licked it up.

That concert was released on DVD, and Steve bought it. During one of the tracks a camera zooms in on us, Steve once pointed out. There we are swaying in the stands: We’ve got big grins on our still developing faces.

Back in the bedroom, I was only interested in the shows I was at. It’s as if I wanted relive them, try to appreciate them more. I threw everything else back in the boxes, I don’t know who else will go through them but expect probably no one. The copied CDs are like the baseball cards I left at my parents’ house: they have value only to the owner.

I didn’t get why Steve left them, for me to remember him by or for me to get rid of. I wondered if he’s left the part of me that was at those shows with him. Or just that part of him was left with me. If that was his intention, I wonder, or if I’m a character in his play and he is replacing me in his new life.

Now that Steve moved away I wonder what role I am. If I’m not Steve’s Best Friend, then who am I? Or who for him will become the New Carson. Thinking about it I get jealous of someone who does not exist yet—Steve’s been in Baltimore six months

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and hasn’t made many friends. We on the other hand had been great friends for the past eight years. We had lived together, moved together, laughed together. We cried together; we had had many great experiences and conversations. We’d been through a lot, and next to my older brother I thought of him as my best friend. Half a year after he’s left, though, we rarely talk. We don’t write letters, we don’t email. When we do get together it’s because he’s come back to Portland for a doctor’s appointment, and it’s for a night at a time. So, I wonder if our time, our memories will be replaced like his taste in music. If my run is up.

I continued to listen to some of the music I pulled out of the box. Another night I played one of the discs for my girlfriend Maggie, we just celebrated a year together.

I don’t listen to jam bands anymore, I told Maggie, opening my player and putting in the second disc of the Las Cruces show I had started.

I know, she said. She doesn’t either; she never did.

The music started up. The sound quality is good, I thought, trying to remember where I was sitting in relation to the stage. I also wondered why Steve didn’t take this disc with him, this tangible reminder of time and place.

Jam bands is such a lame name for a genre, Maggie said that night. She wondered if going to a Phish concert was like listening to one long song.

Kind of, I said.

If I were there, how would I dance to this? Maggie wanted to know.

I try to picture her there with me and tell her to imagine she was hula hooping without a hula hoop. Smile, I told her, as you look around. Feel the energy of the crowd and enjoy the music, and the way the lights play with it. You could take the blunt that’s being passed around the small circle we’re in, that it might help you get into the music and think of things as you listen. Like dreaming. It will release the tensions you brought into the show, I said, knowing it will never happen. That was what it was about, I said. At least I think it was. That, and being together, going to shows with people you care about.

I haven’t been to one of those concerts in five years—the scene is pretty much dead or it’s different than it had been. For one thing, Phish is no longer together. After one hiatus they called it quits for good in 2004.

We grew out of that phase, and I wonder if Steve grew out of our friendship. Was our scene dead? Is he planning to recast my role?

I brought up Steve’s theory with Maggie. I thought, briefly, that Maggie’s a replacement for Former girlfriend, the one I left on Valentine’s Day—no, she’s different. Maybe Steve thought I replaced him with Maggie—she’s now my best friend. These thoughts swam in my head as I asked Maggie if she thought Steve was recasting me.

Who’s he recasting you with, she questioned. That girl?

Carson K. Smith­

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I didn’t want you to move, I said to Steve as we stumbled out of the Clinton Street Pub. I know, he said.

But he did, and walking back to the house I realized Steve isn’t going to move back.

That he has started a new life in Baltimore. I also know that there is no recasting me, that we are one of a kind. I will continue to play “me” and Steve, “Steve” even if we act on separate stages.

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Carson K. Smith足

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III.

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The Last Yip

yippies founding father’s final interview

[February 1st, 2006] Stew Albert, one of the creators of the 1960s Yippie movement and a political activist for a lifetime, died Monday morning in his sleep at his Southeast Portland home.

He was 66, and is survived by his wife of 28 years, Judy, and daughter Jessica.

Days before his death from liver cancer, Albert spoke with WW in what he described beforehand in his blog (stewa.blogspot.com) as “maybe my last straight-up newspaper interview.”

Fighting exhaustion from chemotherapy during that two-hour interview last Wednesday, Albert reflected on his life in the 1960s with the Youth International Party, and what’s wrong with today’s peace movement.

On who the hell is Stew Albert (the title of his 2003 memoir): I’m a man who went out to change the world and had fun doing it. And I did have a lot of fun.

On the framed doctor’s permission letter on his mantel saying it’s OK for him to use marijuana: That’s just in case I want to go out and score a bag. It’s helped with appetite control, mostly. My friends have been generous.

On the Yippies’ historical impact: To engage the peace movement, and the Yippies included, raised the price domestically. Did we help end the war? Yeah. I’m not claiming we did it alone. There were other groups. The fighting skills of the Viet Cong were faltering. We played a part.

And we celebrated that.

Well, I hope there’s a certain permanence of spirit that the idea of the audacious, creative, imaginative rebellion is not dead ... We didn’t use the name Yippie. That in itself isn’t that important. It’s the spirit. What I hope is that the spirit is alive and will have a great rebirth.

On whether the Yippies could have achieved more if they hadn’t done so many drugs: We enjoyed drugs, but that doesn’t mean we were passive. When we were drugged, we weren’t lethargic. We were energetic people. Drugs, music was part of the lifestyle, in a strengthening sort of way. You look at the Haight-Ashbury part of the lifestyle, it was more energized than not. Our lifestyle was the alternative. On the whole, we gained by being a part of that alternative.

On the current peace movement: As much as we can, we go to peace demonstrations. But they’re boring. Rallies these days are atrocious. They lack good speakers, someone to psych up a crowd.

People think they have to be boring to be considered serious. We were serious, but we were able to charm people. When there was a demonstration, people would want to go like it was a circus.

Carson K. Smith­

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Rogue of the Week alice loretta gatten

[February 8th, 2006] Thanks to this week’s Rogue, an immigrant couple’s business helping others’ wedding romances come true is in ruins this Valentine’s Day. Last year, Mircha Strugar, 23, and his wife, Liliya, 18, opened a wedding-dress shop named Gorgeous Gowns at 14802 SE Powell Blvd. Both halves of the Ukrainian couple were optimistic that their business supplying sequined-style dresses from Europe would flourish.

But that hope crash-landed when Alice Loretta Gatten , 61, smashed her 1994 Mazda Navajo into Gorgeous Gowns at about 6:40 pm on Nov. 29. Police arrested Gatten at the scene of the crash, which is two blocks from her house, and charged her with driving under the influence of intoxicants, with a blood-alcohol level of .20 percent—two and a half times the legal limit.

According to a lawsuit filed by the Strugars against Gatten in Multnomah County Circuit Court on Jan. 27, the crash “destroyed” the wedding-gown business.

Among the damages: a ruptured water line that ruined gowns for customers, as well as the store’s business computer, which was stolen by a looter who entered through the hole created by the crash. The Dell computer also contained digital pictures of the Strugars’ own wedding and honeymoon in Hawaii.

The lawsuit, which seeks $88,754 from Gatten, says Gatten “knew or reasonably should have known that driving while intoxicated could cause defendant to crash into a building.”

“Everything was on that computer,” says Mircha, now doing construction work while his wife stays home, too distraught to do much else.

Meanwhile, Gatten’s husband, Gerald, told the Rogue desk that “the [weddinggown] business wasn’t doing well” anyway. He says the Strugars are exploiting their lawsuit to get money for a business Gerald Gatten knew was failing because he could see it from his nearby home.

If the Strugars win the lawsuit, Mircha says they’ll use the money to reopen the business.

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Rogue of the Week city of portland’s risk management

office

[February 22nd, 2006] Forgive Karen Morrison if she thinks the City of Portland’s Risk Management Office has treated her like crap.

But check out Morrison’s tale of utilities.

Last Oct. 2, just after 10 pm, the city sent workers to a sewage backup call from a homeowner a block away from Morrison’s house in outer Southeast.

The crew, in a process city officials say happens “dozens of times per week,” went through a manhole to dislodge the blockage. Karen’s 25-year old son, Michael DeBord, said the workers asked him when he approached, “You don’t have a basement, do you?”

That question smelled bad to DeBord, who ran down his mom’s stairs and whiffed, before he saw, sewage coming out of the toilet. He took a few items upstairs and tried to cover the damage with a comforter in what he likened to a horror movie with “the toilet lid flapping up and down.”

Karen Morrison ended up filing a $19,776.08 claim with the city for cleanup and damage to her furnished basement, which has hardwood floors.

Then she got a letter Dec. 27 from city Senior Risk Specialist Randy Stenquist explaining there was “nothing that crews could have done differently.” Stenquist’s letter called the backup a “relatively small amount” and “an unanticipated and unavoidable consequence of the City’s efforts to provide relief to another nearby property owner.”

Though saying the City was not liable, Stenquist enclosed what he termed “a goodwill gesture”: a check for $2,286.08. That’s the amount to cover Morrison’s emergency cleanup.

But Morrison didn’t accept the check because she was still out $17,490 to restore the basement’s hardwoods and carpet.

“It wasn’t my sewer,’’ Morrison said. “It wasn’t my fault. But now I’m out.’’

Her attorney, Andrew McStay, says he will file a lawsuit against this City this week.

Carson K. Smith­

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Recycling The Hustle what oregon’s lawmakers do hustler magazines.

with their free

[March 8th, 2006] Among Hustler’s 300,000 monthly recipients are all the members of Oregon’s congressional delegation.

Before that sets off any sirens from the world-is-going-to-hell crowd, know that Larry Flynt’s skin mag has long sent all 535 members of Congress a free copy, whether they want it or not.

Prompted by a recent item in The Salt Lake Tribune reporting Hustler’s mailings, WW asked Oregon lawmakers what exactly they do with theirs, given that Flynt tells WW, “Some members of Congress can’t wait to get their copy.”

Our reporting reveals that none of those lascivious lawmakers are from Oregon, though their staffs certainly know when the magazine comes in.

“Well, there’s no way it reaches the representative,” says a laughing Jillian Schoene, spokeswoman for Rep. David Wu (D-1st District).

“We get the magazine in question,’’ says Tim Daly, spokesman for Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-3rd District). “Just like every other office, we put it in the recycle bin when it arrives.”

The office for Republican Sen. Gordon Smith didn’t find any humor in the inquiry, hanging up the phone too fast to give any answers. The office of Oregon’s only female rep, Darlene Hooley (D-5th District), didn’t return our phone call. $1 million to anyone who could unearth a sex scandal involving lawmakers trying to impeach President Bill Clinton, says he sends Hustler to members of Congress because of its political and social satire.

In the April issue WW bought (for research purposes only) for $10.99, politicians could learn in Flynt’s “Publisher’s Statement” that he sees this year’s midterm election as “an opportunity to take back our democracy from an out-of-control President and his neoconservative clique.”

They also could turn to page 48, for a feature titled “How to Pick Up Chicks” in which two women appear to be in a loving same-sex relationship.

We’ll leave the last word on the subject to Josh Kardon, chief of staff for Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden. Kardon joked that he’d be happy to forward the magazine each month to WW, saying, “You guys at the Willy Week always have sex on the mind.”

Since Sen. Gordon Smith’s staff wouldn’t answer whether he reads the Hustler mailed to all congressional offices, we let our imagination run.

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Out of place

with nearly as many rooms as new freshmen, many students wait for housing at psu hotel

Inside University Place, two college-aged students stand at the front desk, checking in guests and answering calls. Walk out of the main wing of the Portland State on-campus hotel, and a makeshift sign stands inviting “overflows” into the student lounge.

For students like Krista, a sophomore at PSU, this is temporary on-campus housing.

Krista, who asked the Vanguard not to use her last name, moved into University Place the week before school started. Last year she lived in the Ondine Residence Hall and was planning to live in the Broadway Housing Building this term but misplaced her reapplication form. Coming back to classes this term left Krista wondering where she would be living.

Last week there were 109 students displaced and living at the university’s hotel.

Students like Krista, who are the of the overflow of students living on campus, are waiting for their applications to be processed and are waiting for a dorm room to open, according to Housing Manager Cheryl Spector.

Some students at University Place complain of the lack of comfort at University Place and the stability they left at home like a refrigerator, a microwave, and DSL connection-- amenities that University Place cannot provide in all its rooms at this time.

“It kind of bites,” Krista said. “Housing promised all these things and are not holding up their end of the bargain.”

“We encourage the meal plan,” said John Eckman, associate director of Auxiliary Services, of the students staying at the hotel. “There’s no doubt that the rooms do lack some amenities, but over the summer we installed Res Net in the B wing, where several students have agreed to one-year contracts.”

Eckman said Auxiliary Services found 31 displaced students a unit in other oncampus buildings last week, leaving 78 students in 69 rooms that University Place provides for overflow. Eckman said this has caused double-ups and caused one or two people to be turned away.

The overflow is due to the growth in demand for student housing. There have never been more students on the PSU campus as there are right now, according to estimates made by the Office of Institutional Research and Planning.

The number of available units Portland State provides as on-campus housing is 1,574, just 100 units more than the number of freshman on this campus. A problem the university addressed this year is that students at both Portland State and Oregon Health Sciences University are eligible for on-campus housing.

“There are only a half dozen or so OHSU students on campus,” Eckman said. “But the conversation has come up three or four times already [among administrators].”

The weekend that Krista was moving onto campus, the general manager of University Place Dennis Burkholder acted as a Resident Assistant, despite his qualifications.

For ten years Burkholder was the general manager of the DoubleTree, the hotel that formerly occupied the University Place building.

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“I know this building inside and out,” he said. Because all but 10 rooms in the 235-room property were full, Burkholder said he and his small staff were busier than usual this past week.

University Place is the farthest university building from the main campus but is technically still in the University District. A brisk walk from Smith Memorial can take 10-minutes, but without directions the building can be missed.

“Crossing at the intersection (4th and Lincoln) isn’t easy,” Eckman said. “There’s no crosswalk on that south side.”

It is farther than most on-campus buildings from Safeway, the downtown grocery store many on-campus students use. Krista says eating and doing laundry are her biggest gripes.

“It doesn’t take long to get here,” said Krista, sitting next to a bike she bought for her commute. “But it’s weird how just a few minutes can make a difference.”

Because Krista attends class fulltime and works at a law firm downtown, she often does not get home until 8 or 9 p.m. The laundry facility at University Place is open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

It was Burkholder’s idea to turn rooms 267 and 268, two conjoining rooms, into the lounge. “It gives students a place to relax,” he said. There is a refrigerator in the lounge, but Krista said she would never store food there.

This weekend, due in part to the Portland Marathon, University Place was booked, along with other hotels downtown. “If we didn’t have student housing set aside, we could have sold more rooms,” Burkholder said. “There’s always a demand for rooms during the marathon. People want to be as close as they can to the starting line.”

Burkholder said there is a difference between a student staying in the hotel and a guest, like one running in the marathon. “Students like to have more fun,” Burkholder said, “and guests come here for a good night sleep.”

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Overcrowding causes PSU space crunch pcat destruction will leave school with 13 fewer classrooms Classroom space is dwindling as enrollment at PSU continues to rise. In response to the space crunch, administrators have split the classrooms in PCAT using temporary soft dividers.

“We’re very crowded,” said Lindsay Desrochers, vice president for finance and administration.

The Portland Center for Advanced Technology (PCAT), however, is slated to be destroyed in July 2007 to make way for the new recreation center, leaving Portland State with 13 fewer classrooms.

“You cannot, realistically, reduce classrooms, and increase enrollment at the same time,” said Mark Gregory, associate vice president of strategic planning. The answer: find a space, figure out the cost, find out how to pay for it. “We’re looking at this time for a solution to that problem,” he said.

PSU bought the blue brick building for the location, and the plan has always been to demolish it and rebuild a structure for student recreation, a restaurant and academic space for the social work graduate program.

“PCAT has always been for temporary classrooms,” Gregory said.

Though official numbers for the fall won’t be released until after the fourth week of the term, the Office of Institutional Research and Planning estimates that there are 3.6 percent more students than there were last fall. There are even more students on the PSU campus, and as early as January there will be fewer classrooms on the main campus.

Desrochers says the university is aggressively seeking solutions to the overcrowded problem by renting out office space like the Unitus Building on Southwest Fourth Street across from University Place. Facilities has converted three to five offices into classrooms in the Unitus Building and the architecture department will move there in January, according to Desrochers. Other Shattuck Hall classrooms are being moved to the Fourth Avenue Building on Southwest Fourth and Harrison. And the 13 PCAT classrooms that go offline at the end of the school year will be relocated to unnamed near-campus buildings.

Currently, Gregory is touring locations that will take the place of existing PCAT classrooms.

Neither he nor Desrochers would say which near-campus sites the university is considering because they said it might affect negotiations.

Signs that read “Room Changed” and “Class Canceled” are on many of the doors of PCAT. Room 140 has 12 of them.

“There are many reasons for room changes and class cancellations,” said Cindy Baccar, director of registration and records. “If a professor can take on more students, but not another section, that professor may want a bigger classroom.” Other reasons for changes include the demand for a classroom closer to a department, or closer to a professor’s office.

Baccar said the office of admissions is aware of the pressure of the increased student population and the university’s limited space. Regarding scheduling, Baccar said at this time there is equal coverage for the necessary general pool of students.

Carson K. Smith­

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That is all.

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