GODZILLABIRD

As Our Leaders Go, So Goes Maine

David and I arrived in Oregon in the late 1980s as a newly-minted gay couple, energized by the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. We fled conservative Virginia, enticed by the seeming tolerance of the Northwest.

Soon after we arrived, the nascent Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA) brought us down to earth - or the mire, more accurately - with Measure 8, an initiative to repeal the Governor's executive order banning discrimination in state government and at the same time prohibit any job protection for gays and lesbians in government. The measure handily passed.

I remember finding a campaign brochure from the OCA explaining that all gay men eat four tablespoons of feces each year. However bizarre (and mysterious) that claim, I heard it repeated unselfconsciously a few days later on the radio. Then again. And again.

The campaign for and passage of Measure 8 sickened and, honestly, frightened us. We faced opprobrium of the sort that fed anti-semitism to the gates of Auschwitz. We wondered if we had made a mistake leaving Virginia. At least there no one talked about homosexuality.

But we soldiered on. We got involved politically. We told ourselves that the benighted OCA would burn out soon enough, and major straight political leaders would emerge who would grasp the moral imperative of fighting for GLBT rights.

But the OCA returned in 1992 with Measure 9, an initiative that, had it passed, would have amended our state constitution to say that the state "recognizes homosexuality, pedophilia, sadism and masochism as abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse." The measure did not pass. It barely did not pass, and it did not pass in the same election Bill Clinton won.

Naively, we thought the coming of Clinton coupled with the failure of Measure 9 meant change was inevitable. Yet within a year Clinton dashed out hope with the odious "don't ask, don't tell" policy. "Gays undermine unit cohesion," Colin Powell proclaimed (lest Powell slip into history as a decent mensch, remember that he talked Congress into invading Iraq in 2003 - blood, Powell baby, lots and lots of blood). Of course, gays undermine unit cohesion when generals tells units that gays undermine unit cohesion.

Meanwhile, the ongoing battle for marriage equality began. I confess that I did not get it at first. I thought of marriage as a holdover from the old common law, the means by which a man made a woman chattel. Who wanted that baggage? I did not for some time grasp that what matters about marriage - what matters beyond the obvious issue of equal treatment under the law - is whether we same-sex couples are entitled to belong, really belong, in our society.

The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) told us otherwise. Clinton signed it. Interestingly, he did not mention DOMA in his 2004 memoir, My Life. I guess revisionist histories leave out acts of manifest discrimination.

By the time the Bush Dark Ages began, I did get same-sex marriage. I got it, and I wanted it. I wanted it for the reason most straight couples want marriage (and, come on now, the reason is not spelled out in statute books). So it seemed abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse that in 2004 enough citizens of my state voted for Measure 36 to deny us a civil right straights can take for granted.

Okay, there have been advances. Certainly, David and I enjoy civil rights unknown to lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered persons of generations before us. And, okay, how much further advance could we really have expected during Bush's reign of reaction?

Still, I find it remarkable that nearly 25 years have passed since I met David, yet we still cannot marry in Oregon. We have "domestic partnership," but, ahem, separate but equal always was separate and never equal. There is no national law barring sexuality discrimination in employment. Gays and lesbians still cannot tell in the military, yet, I hear, they still are asked. We should have come much further than this by now.

This past October 11 was the GLBT National March on Washington. Many of our GLBT leaders stayed away. Some openly criticized the marchers for impatience, political naivete, even arrogance. "Why rock the boat?" "Don't mess it up." "Slow down kiddies," they said, "And shut up."

Hearing this criticism, I realized that too many of our GLBT leaders have fallen into the delusion that we are Players and can work "within the system." Hello? If we really were Players, what use would we have for civil rights leaders? I realized that the October marchers were right: Why should we settle for incremental civil rights? Equality is a unity. Either we are equal before the law, or we are not.

Last week's vote against same-sex marriage perhaps highlights the pretense of Playerdom. Yes, the GLBT communities worked hard to beat Maine's measure, but they had to do so in the context of national GLBT leaders whining about patience and restraint. We now must ask ourselves: Did political restraint help chart the way for this latest broadside of intolerance?

(Out of curiosity, I just checked the Human Rights Campaign's website. No mention of Maine on the homepage. There is a link to the new HRC credit card, and, my oh my, isn't it nice to see so many corporate sponsors. I am figuring something out: Maybe our "leaders" lead incrementally because real equality would put them out of their jobs.)

Given what is going on within the GLBT communities, perhaps it is not surprising that we do not hear clarion calls for equality from many straight political leaders, from the top down. A year of Obama now has passed, yet "don't ask, don't tell" persists.

A friend asked me this past weekend if my patience with Obama had worn thin. I wanted to say no. I really wanted to say "no," but the "no" no longer came. Obama's failure to end "don't ask, don't tell" seems emblematic. Obama could have killed the policy his first day, his first week, heck, his first month in office. He would have raised a fuss, of course, but the very fact of that fuss would have made his action all the more meaningful. Had Obama promptly ended "don't ask, don't tell," he would have made a powerful statement how much equality matters. After all, protection of equal rights is one of the reasons we have a military.

Obama now has squandered his opportunity. Worse, by perpetuating "don't ask, don't tell" even as the military desperately needs recruits, he has telegraphed the message that GLBT citizens are not the same as others. We are not entitled to equal rights. We are not entilted to really belong. As our leaders go, then, no surprise that so goes Maine.

Old Bass

Stefan Wunderlich glanced at his Rolex: 6:35. He had 25 minutes to dress, formally, barrel down the hill from his home above the city, find parking, and enter the museum ballroom, grandly, shaking hands and trying not to screw up donors’ names. However many times he had done such dog-and-pony shows, he could not help resenting them. He was, after all, an internationally known conductor, a respected musicologist, a “masterful interpreter of Mahler,” or so the local paper blathered regardless how poorly his orchestra mucked the 9th Symphony. He was not a fundraiser.

Andi Wunderlich looked at his Timex: half past six. He wondered, for the first time since his father had given him the watch, why it had no numerals. Just little metal bits. He had not noticed that before. He imagined a scene: He would be at his coffee shop. A total fox would lean over and ask him the time. He would look up, helplessly - oh, ah, six metal bits?

Andi took another hit on the joint lingering at his fingertips. He studied the watch. Shit, he realized, he had only four hours to eat, dress, and get to Molly M’s for the night’s first set.

7:01. Stefan entered the ballroom. Ted McCormick strode forward, one hand outstretched to shake, the other to clasp Stefan’s shoulder and thereby define the distance between the patron and patronized.

“Stefan, so good of you to make it,” McCormick announced, loudly enough so that a group of donor nearby would hear. Stefan appreciated the note of voluntariness McCormick’s greeting suggested. The donors would feel flattered. Stefan Wunderlich, world-famous orchestra conductor, had deigned to attend their little soiree. As if his attendance ever had been in doubt.

“Sissy’s got a surprise for you,” McCormick continued. “She’s one of you Viennese. I’ll bet you know her. Probably grew up together. I mean, you creative geniuses – how far could you stray from each other.” Stefan knew that Ted McCormick was putting on a show for the donors. A circle of them now had gathered. He searched their faces. Each looked familiar, but names eluded him.

The circle of donors parted, and Sissy McCormick materialized. Sissy headed the orchestra Board of Directors. She played the role of the trophy wife to Ted, but she was the CEO of a high tech concern, while Ted spent his days perfecting his fly fishing technique. Sissy seemed to Stefan the perfect embodiment of the brash, even brutal, American, yet he could not help liking, even admiring, her.

“Maahhstro,” Sissy purred, winking, “I want you to meet my dear friend Isabelle Maybach.” Sissy pulled into the circle a strikingly beautiful woman of about 50 years. “Not, mind you,” Sissy continued, “One of those luxury car Maybachs. She’s a real democrat. Grew up in Linz.” Stefan had grown up in modest circumstances. He wondered what Ted McCormick had meant by the suggestion that he might have known Maybach.

Stefan played the continental. He brought his heels together and directed a half bow first toward Isabelle and then towards Sissy. He glanced around the circle and registered the approval his gesture weened from the donors. Sissy and Ted McCormick beamed. The Board had spent a lot of money to bring Stefan, his wife Maria, and their son Andi from Vienna to Portland. It was a point of pride to Stefan to make sure they were satisfied with their investment.

Andi Wunderlich looked at his watch. 7:00 something. His father always had berated him for untimeliness. So how the fuck was he supposed to be timely with a watch that had no numbers? So typical of his father: Obsessed with the concept, but clueless about the execution. Just like the whole project of Andi becoming a classical musician – years of private instruction, tutors, the best schools in Austria and then Portland. The wink wink nudge nudge Julliard scholarship he did not deserve. Andi famously would follow in his father’s footsteps.

Andi had placated his father by studying classical music, but on the condition that he could play the double bass. Stefan of course preferred the piano or violin or some other instrument that came to donors’ minds when they heard the words “symphony orchestra.” But bass was okay. Marginoux, Stefan’s friend from his conservatory days, played the bass, and the Vienna Symphony had showcased three of his compositions. When Andi turned 16, Stefan gave him an old bass, a Cremonese instrument that Stefan had imported from Europe at some expense. Andi was slight. The bass loomed over him.

What had happened? Why did Andi seem to hate him now?

“We have met,” Isabelle Maybach said. “Perhaps you remember. Your son played so beautifully. I never imagined one could do so much with, well, a bass.” Stefan looked at Maybach, blinking. He remembered. She and her husband - what was his name? They had sponsored a competition in Vienna. Andi was 17. A difficult piece by Koussevitzky. He had won.

“Where is your son playing now?” Isabelle asked. Sissy glanced at Stefan. His brow furrowed momentarily.

“He has, um, followed a somewhat different path than we had imagined,” Stefan said, raising a hand to his lips lest their tightness betray him. Sissy intervened, introducing some of the donors to Stefan. He dutifully engaged them in conversation as Sissy drew Isabelle away. He could see them talking, Sissy presumably explaining how Andi had left Julliard after a couple of years. How he had refused to pursue a career in classical music. How he now spent his nights playing God knows what God knows where.

There had been an awful row when Andi had returned from New York two years before. He announced that he would not, decidedly not, follow in his father’s footsteps. Stefan exploded. He berated Andi for wasting his life. He accused Andi of betraying him. “My life is not yours to betray,” Andi responded coldly as he turned and walked out of Stefan’s life.

Andi moved in with a high school friend of his on the east side of Portland. Maria kept in contact with him, but Stefan refused her importuning to reach out to his son. Stefan cut her off when she tried to talk about what Andi was doing, about what music he was playing. Maria resented her husband’s stupid pride. A distance opened between them. She stopped accompanying him to donor parties. Rumors began.

Andi jerked awake. He had dozed off. He looked at his watch. Shit, nearly nine metal bits. He called Slim, the frontman for their band, Texarcanic.

“I’m on the way.”

“’Bout time,” Slim drawled. “Bring some of whatever you been smoking.”

Andi had met Slim – Marc Steinberg by birth – after returning to Portland. Andi had gone to a musical instrument store for a new bow. Slim sat there, picking notes out on a steel guitar. He was long and lean, and tattoos routed up his arms, disappeared past the sleeves of his tight T shirt, and emerged to scroll up his neck. Slim looked up. His eyes ran the short distance up Andi’s body and then locked Andi in his gaze.

“Whatcha play?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“Whatcha play – what instrument?”

“Um, bass.”

“Ya ever play honky tonk?” Andi shook his head.

“Doan matter. We need a bass. Think you can learn fiddle?” Andi nodded absently. Slim scribbled an address on a pad of paper. “Nine o’clock. Bring your bass. You’ll be a rat shitting in high cotton.”

Something about the perfunctoriness of the invitation made it impossible for Andi to ignore. He went to Slim’s apartment that night. He met Nestor, a slide guitarist, and Jens, a drummer. Slim knew them from art school. The four smoked; they drank; they jammed. Slim, Nestor, and Jens taught Andi honky tonk – Ernest Tubb, Webb Pierce, George Jones, Hank Williams. If Andi ever had heard such music, he had not listened to it. Now he listened.

To hear that lonesome whippoorwill He sounds too blue to fly The midnight train is whining low I’m so lonesome I could cry

Andi felt the slide guitar in his spine, the percussion in his feet. He melted in the heat of Slim’s drawling delivery.

“Wow!” Andi said. “This stuff’s incredible.”

“It’s blues, you see,” Jens said. “White, north American blues.”

“Most folk don’t listen to it anymore,” Nestor said.

“We’re gonna change that,” Slim said.

Andi was back at Slim’s apartment then next night and night after and the night after that. Within a few weeks, the four had formed Texarcanic. Slim wrote up a manifesto: They would devote themselves to an authentic American artform – country music, real old-school country music from before the imperium of modern Nashville.

8:13. Stefan forked the last bite of salmon on his plate and urged it through a curl of hollandaise.

“Seriously,” Sissy McCormick was saying to those around the table, “I haven't seen the group, but everyone says it’s simply wonderful music. You’d never know.” Cocktails had merged to dinner with Stefan at the head table with the McCormicks and Isabelle Maybach. The conversation over drinks, not surprisingly, was about music. Stefan had regaled some donors with stories from his school days, how he and a friend had rigged a concert grand so that when a professor played a note, rock music blasted out. The mention of rock music prompted a donor to tell the others that she had been a groupie in the 1960s. “I saw the inside of Mick Jagger’s dressing room. Pictures of him everywhere. No one else.”

Once they sat down to eat, Sissy took over ranconteur duties so that Stefan could eat before giving the keynote speech at 8:30. She did her job well. Stefan was able to tune out the conversation without offense.

“Honky tonk,” Sissy said, answering a question Stefan missed. The words snapped him to attention.

“What did you say?” Stefan asked.

“Honky tonk. That’s what the band plays.”

Stefan eyed the donors, all of whom now were pleasantly looking towards him. He had pretended to follow many dinner table conversations before. He knew the drill.

“Interesting music, I’m told,” Stefan said.

“Interesting indeed.” It was Hale Burris, a former music critic, prematurely retired by the floundering of his East Coast paper. He now was back in Portland, spending his family’s money. “Sissy’s right. It’s subtle stuff. Influences from jazz, from blues, from Ireland, hell, even the Swiss alps.”

“Yes,” Stefan added. “I’ve heard it called ‘white North American blues.’” He could not recall where he had heard that.

“Have you ever heard the group?” a donor asked. Stefan searched his mind for some shred of recollection what Sissy had said the group was called. Nothing.

“No, I confess.” He smiled. “But that doesn’t stop me from playing the pedant.” The donors chuckled politely.

Ted McCormick got to his feet. “It’s showtime,” he said to Stefan. Ted took him to the podium, and, after cursory introductions, Stefan gave The Speech. It was a variation of the same speech he had given for years. He knew enough to keep it short and punctuated with humor. His listeners expected financial woes – it was a fundraiser, after all – but that did not mean that they actually wanted to hear about financial woes.

When he returned to his table, Sissy greeted him with a wide smile. “You’ll pardon us for not following your every word,” she waved her hand around the table as the donors looked merrily conspiratorial, “but we’ve been making plans.”

“Eh,” Stefan said, humoring.

“You’re coming with us later. We’re going to see the band.”

“What band?” Stefan asked.

“The honky tonk band.”

“Yes,” Burris said, “That band.”

“Well, I, um....” Stefan burbled. Burris interrupted. “And it’s settled: You can’t say no. I’ll take my car. Sissy, can you drive? 10:30, sharp. Agreed?” The donors all happily nodded. Stefan considered. He needed Burris. He needed the donors. He needed Sissy and Ted. And, hell, he might as well find out what this honky tonk music actually was....

Andi pulled his scooter up to Molly M’s. He looked at his watch: a half hour until their set. Molly M’s once catered to dockworkers in its neighborhood, but the docks had closed, and the neighborhood had gentrified. The tavern survived by becoming a hip music venue.

Andi slid into a chair at a table with Slim, Vicki – or Vikkers – his girlfiend, Nestor, Jens, and Jim, Jen’s boyfriend. Several empty beer glasses covered the table. Vikkers had downed most of them.

“Yer doin’ ‘Pearls Before Swine,’ eh baby?” Vikkers slurred to Slim. He had written the song.

“Mebbe.” Slim scanned the crowd. “Guess they look swinish enough....” Vikkers giggled.

“That reminds me,” Jim said, “You did that copyright thing I told you about yet?” Jim was a lawyer and something of the group’s de facto manager.

“Naw,” Slim said slowly. “I don’t know. Seems kinda stuffed shirt shit to me.”

“It’s a good song,” Nestor said. “That and ‘Staid Ladies.’ You never know. You oughta follow Jim’s advice. Say Dwight Yoakum wanted to pick up one of your songs....”

“Yeah, yeah.” Slim waived his hand, a look of annoyance creasing his face.

Texarcanic, truth be known, had not succeeded financially. The group was lucky to pull a couple hundred dollars a Saturday night. But money had not motivated them to form the band, and the lack of money had not dissuaded them. Andi and Nestor had day jobs. Jens had Jim. Slim had a trust fund.

An acoustic guitarist on stage finished his set. The emcee announced that Texarcanic, Portland’s Only Authentic Rib Licking Honky Tonk Outfit would be up momentarily. In the meantime, there would be a quarter-hour special on PBR on tap.

The band rose to set up. “Gotta pee,” Andi said and disappeared into the men’s room.

Stefan checked his Rolex: 10:42. He was sitting in the passenger seat of Sissy’s Jaguar, relieved that the wild ride he had just endured had ended. Sissy always drove fast. She eased her car neatly into a parking space directly in front of Molly M’s. Stefan had seen her do this before. Doris Day parking she called it, whatever that meant. Sissy did it so often that Stefan wondered if money changed hands.

Sissy, Ted, Stefan, Burris, Isabelle, and two donor couples gathered at the entrance to Molly M’s. A handful of smokers, all under 30, each dressed in grubby gothic, eyed them expressionlessly. Sissy disappeared inside. A few minutes later she emerged.

“It’s crowded, but I’ve got a table. In the back, but a table’s a table.” Stefan imagined the scene that had unfolded: Sissy appearing before the door check. The owner appearing before Sissy. A transaction of some sort. A table suddenly available when none had been. That was Sissy’s way.

The group entered the tavern and navigated the crowd. Stefan felt conspicuous in his tuxedo. They found their seats - next to the men’s room. So much for Sissy’s table negotiation, Stefan thought. The rules of the clubs she typically frequented presumably did not apply at Molly M’s. Stefan caught a whiff of odor from the bathroom. He took the chair closest to it to oblige the others, and sat with his back to the door.

A round of beers arrived. Stefan glanced around the room. Molly M’s was a long, somewhat narrow space. Pictures of music groups interspersed with old pictures of boats and dock machinery lined the walls. Crumpled dollar bills clung to the ceiling, how, Stefan could not tell. A slight stage rose at the opposite end of the room. Three musicians were testing their instruments.

“Watch this,” Ted boomed. Stefan turned around. Ted had a dollar bill in his hand. He flicked his wrist. The bill flew up and stuck to the ceiling. The group happily applauded.

At that moment, Andi burst out of the bathroom and headed for the stage. He was thinking about a song they would play, about the guy who had written it in the 1940s, about his sorrowful end in the Bowery of Los Angeles. “Sorry guys,” he said when they greeted him with slightly reproving looks. “Really had to go.”

“Yeah,” Slim said. “So wipe yer nose. And next time, share, dickwad.”

Andi drew some notes from his bass and nodded to the others. The stage lights came on.

“Evening everybody,” Slim drawled into a microphone. “My name’s Slim Witness. This here’s Nestor Case, Jens Jelsen, and Andi Wunderlich. You got yourselves Texarcanic!” Nestor strung chords from his guitar. Slim launched into their opener.

When you are sad and lonely And have no place to go Come to see me baby And bring along some dough And we’ll go honky tonkin’...

Stefan’s head snapped around at the words “Andi Wunderlich.” He squinted down the room at the stage until his until his face resolved into goggle-eyed amazement. Sissy turned too.

“It’s, it’s Andi!” She exclaimed.

“Who?” one of the donors asked.

“Andi, Stefan’s son,” Ted answered.

Stefan kept staring. There stood Andi on the stage. He had his legs wrapped around his bass, almost obscenely, as he sawed away at the strings. Nestor strummed his slide guitar. Jens beat a drum set behind them. Each looked towards Slim as Slim hunched into his mike, punching each word of the song.

When you and your baby
Have a falling out
Call me up sweet Mama
And we’ll go stepping out
And we’ll go honky tonkin’, honky tonkin, honky tonkn’ baby
We’ll go honky tonkin’ around this town

They played the song fast, and, without pausing, wound just as fast into another. They played a slow tune. Then a song Slim had written.

Stefan kept staring. Sissy put her hand on his arm and leaned towards him.
“You okay?” Stefan turned and looked at her. She eyed him uncertainly. He nodded his head, still staring at Andi.

And then a funny thing happened, or, rather did not happen. Stefan’s head did not stop nodding, and it started nodding to the music. His foot began tapping. He began listening to the music, really listening. He heard something he never had heard before. He never wanted to stop hearing it.

The song ended. Andi set his bass against its stand. He reached down, picked up a violin, and tucked it under his chin. Stefan’s eyes widened. When had Andi learned to play the violin, he wondered. Andi raised his bow. He set it gently on the strings. He cocked his head to the others, waited a moment, and played a solo opening to “Faded Love.” Slim sang a stanza. The rest joined with a chorus:

I miss you darling, more and more every day As Heaven would miss the stars above. With every heartbeat, I still think of you, And remember our faded love

Andi followed with a violin solo. Stefan watched his son standing under the lights, entirely absorbed in drawing out a sound. It was a sound that was sweet, yet sad, the sound of deep, ancient yearning.

“I’ll be damned,” Stefan breathed.

The song ended to wild applause and raucous cheering.

“He, he boys,” Slim said into the microphone, “Looks like we got us some real honky tonkers tonight. Am I right?!” The crowd whooped. Slim gestured to a guy operating the stage lights. He turned a beam onto the audience. The light scanned up and down the room. Andi looked up. The light caught his father. He saw him standing. He saw him clapping. He saw him crying.

Copyright 2009

Scenes from the Life of Christ: 15. The Arrest of Christ (Kiss of Judas) (an interpretation)

We know it as the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, not by its actual name, the chapel of Santa Maria della Carità. Ernico Scrovegni was the immoderately rich son of an usurer made immortally resident in Hell by Dante. Scrovegni sought expiation from his father’s sins through Giotto’s genius. The chapel’s ecclesiastical name now is forgotten to all but art historians and the sundry tourist who bothers to read the chapel brochure while waiting for airlock admission to the chapel. The patron’s name remains, but not the memory of the patron or the purpose of his patronage. Giotto and his art alone live on.

Oh what an exuberant space is the Scrovegni Chapel! A rich, starry blue ceiling drapes a space defined by frescos remarkable for their qualities of humanity, passion, and authentic emotion, qualities not, in fact, found in the grandeur of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel or the cunning strategies of Leonardo’s Last Supper. Walls dense with Giotto’s images rise high on the sides of the narrow nave, forcing any viewer to crane his neck to take in any one panel. In fact, it cannot really be done, suggesting that Giotto conceptualized the chapel not as an exhibition space, but as the private storage compartment for the complex and conflictual emotions of the son of the damned.

The main frescos depict the life of the Christ. Centrally located, and more accessible to the viewer than other frescos, is the Kiss of Judas. The panel depicts the moment when Judas delivers the kiss of betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane. Luke tells us that Judas and a multitude appeared as Jesus urged the other eleven disciples to awake and pray, lest they fall into temptation.

Giotto gives us the throng. We see the central figures of Judas and Jesus. Surrounding them crowd the priests, one of whom suffers the loss of an ear at a disciple’s sword, an ear Jesus soon miraculously will restore. Behind and around the priests hang the soldiers. Giotto purposely obscures their faces, offering us only unequal accumulations of helmets from which lances and occasional hands erupt. A horn arcs up from a face at the edge of the smaller accumulation. These accumulations throb, but not humanly. They throb with the clicking ill ease of roaches. In its blind fear and loathing, mankind has devolved to force alone.

Jesus had retired to Gethsemane to pray, meditate, contemplate. That he chose a garden matters, as the concept of garden at first suggests purity, virtue, and deliverance from sin and venality. We have the Garden of Eden, the Norbolinkga, Kew Gardens, or Yaun Ming Yaun in old Beijing – all places of respite from the rapacious world.

But gardens are not what they first may seem. Eden became the locus of original sin. Norbolinkga masked the misery of feudal Tibet. And Yaun Ming Yaun vanished at the hands of torch-bearing English in 1860 because its very existence suggested refinement and sophistication that no English invader could accept so long as they had to perceive the Chinese as inferior. No doubt some of the same soldiers who laid waste to Yaun Ming Yaun later assuaged their troubled souls ambling through Kew.

Rather than a cliché metaphor for goodness, the concept of garden instead defines the nexus, if not integration, between good and evil. The garden offers redemption, even as it offers the space to find the need to redeem oneself. Giotto seems to have understood as much, for he pointedly gave us a garden, one hardly recognizable as such. We do not see any plants, even through neighboring frescos in the Scrovegni Chapel make clear that Giotto knew how to paint them. We see only trampled brown dirt.

Giotto has no need for the overt metaphor of the garden. Rather than have plants tell stories, sophisticated stories to the Renaissance eye, Giotto calls to us through the figures. The figures offer the good news of redemption through the Savior.

Most remarkable are the two central figures of Judas and Jesus. Judas’ robe is curious. It nearly completely obscures Jesus’ body. The yellow of the robe mimics the gold in the nimbus arching over Jesus’ head, and the spread of the color yanks the eyes immediately to the slightly soft, slightly contorted, torso of Judas. We see Judas’ arms reaching around Jesus’ shoulders, pulling his body up into the Savior as his lips aim up to Jesus’.

The two look deep into each other’s eyes.

Judas searches for forgiveness even as he betrays Jesus.

Jesus forgives him even before he asks.

© Geoffrey Wren 2009

Saying It All

Coming May 26th: "Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus." I've Fandangoed my tickets already.

I'm Baffled

I've just finished going through the medical file of a workers' compensation claimant, a guy who has undergone six back surgeries for various lumbar disk problems. He now, in his early 50s, has had to apply for social security disability benefits because of his back condition. I rarely see such a parade of horribles as I have seen in this man's file. I will be surprised if his social security claim is rejected.

The medical file dates back to the mid-1990s. Doctors noted continuously that the man was a smoker, but only within the past couple of years did they note their advice to the man to quit smoking. One doctor reported that he had told the man that smoking directly contributed to his back problems. The man had responded with bafflement; he knew that smoking can cause lung cancer. He had no idea it caused other problems.

This sort of bafflement I see not infrequently in my work. When I was a practicing lawyer, clients would bring me medical records detailing awful back problems. Usually, the records showed that they had degenerative disk disease, thereby setting up the workers' compensation issue to what extent that disease was responsible for their disability or need for treatment. Not infrequently, the records would reek of tobacco smoke. I would visualize the clients reading through their medical files while cigarettes dangled from their lips. When I'd ask them if they ever had connected smoking to their bodily problems, they almost always said they had not. "What do you mean," I remember one client asking me, "How could smoking affect my back?"

Research shows that smoking is a leading risk factor for degenerative disk disease, and smoking is heavily linked with chronic low back pain. Perhaps the news about the link between smoking and back pain is getting out. Perhaps some smokers will stop smoking once they appreciate the reality of the link. Many likely have not and will not. And therein lies my bafflement: How is it that the tobacco merchants still (mostly) get away with selling their poison?

This question is not for me just rhetoric. As time has passed, I've become genuinely puzzled that our society still permits the sale of cigarettes. We don't permit tobacco merchants to kill or disable people by whacking them with tire irons. Given what we now know about tobacco, there must be a basic societal disconnect going on, probably one related to the disconnect that enables gun merchants to arm criminals and the mentally disturbed. Oh, wait, another topic there. Same theme though: I'm baffled.

Susan Boyle

I first saw mention of Susan Boyle on the Yahoo page, one of those videos of the cultural moment Yahoo features. I didn't click, partly as I was at work, and partly because I didn't want to feel manipulated.

A couple days later a friend showed me the video of her appearance April 11th on "Britain's Got Talent" (in case you're one of the four in the world who hasn't now seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY). I assumed from the buildup that she'd sing well, but, golly, when she launched into "I Dreamed a Dream" I felt genuinely and deliciously moved. And it wasn't just her voice - something about this woman made me want to join the studio audience in cheers.

In a week, Boyle has become an internet sensation. Cynics say we'll forget about her in a year or two. Perhaps, but right now she's the tonic this recessionary world needs: An unemployed, unkissed, unattractive, and utterly convincing sensation. Thank you Susan.

It's Wonderful, Life

I first saw “It’s a Wonderful Life” in college. The University of Virginia, as tradition-clad a school as they come, maintained the tradition of showing the film as a respite from December exams. I have passed few Christmases since without a viewing. I still cry when George returns home. When the film ends, I feel, well, good, just plain good. Good old-fashioned good.

I’ve shown the film to certain family and friends who view it, um, differently. “What mawkish nonsense,” one said. “That’s post-war propaganda,” sneered another, “what a fantasyland.” Or, “Jeez, Geoff, you actually fall for that?”

Okay, already. So the film is mawkish, sickly sentimental, perhaps even propagandistic (it was 1946, after all). So, by way of return to reality, consider what happens after Clarence gets his wings:

The Bailey Building and Loan prospers during the postwar baby boom. Potter’s rent collector gets a better job.

Potter has a stroke. Facing mortality, he apologizes to George for “that warrant thing.”

Potter “finds” the $8,000 and publicly announces the “good news.” George tries to return his friends’ money without knowing who gave how much. Litigation ensues.

Janie becomes proficient at the piano. Julliard rejects her application. She becomes a nurse.

Uncle Billy finds sobriety, memory, and industry. He no longer is much fun.

Potter’s benighted manservant tries to push Potter off the bridge on Christmas Eve. George stops him, after some hesitation.

Nearby Fennerville changes its name to Pottersville.

George submits Mrs. Welch’s name as Teacher of the Year. She wins and cries for an hour.

The Martini family moves from La Crescenta, California to Bedford Falls. This shortens Mr. Martini’s commute.

After Mr. Martini’s death, his children operate his bar long enough for it to become cool. They serve martinis.

Mrs. Martini gets over her aversion to bread.

Nick becomes a producer of popular television shows.

Potter leaves his fortune to his nurse, Janie.

Old Man Gower gets a court order changing his first name from Emil to Amminadab.

Peter is arrested at the Stonewall riots.

Zuzu develops a shopping mall, but loses her bid to become chair of the state Republican party.

Tommy is subpoenaed for jury duty. He is excused.

Ernie’s wife leaves him after that “thing with Peter.”

Sam Wainright is indicted for insider trading. Hee haw.

Ma Bailey frequently wins at bingo.

Annie never finds a husband. She finds work in advertising as the emblem of awful mid-century iconography. She retires to a mansion with a pool shaped like a pancake syrup bottle.

Marty invents most of the useful things of the late 20th Century.

Ruth starts signing her name "Bailey-Dakin." She takes "diet pills."

Violet marries Cousin Eustace. There is talk.

Bert the Cop retires from the force and runs for mayor with George as his campaign manager. He wins. Once in office, he replaces the bridge toll collector with a machine.

George never leaves Bedford Falls.

© Geoffrey Wren 2008

Solicitations

I live downtown, and I work across the Willamette River. I take the MAX train when I don’t bike. Mornings are uninvolved commutes. Evenings, warmer ones in particular, are another story.

The story is solicitation. There’s this pattern, you see. It goes like this:

First off when I board the train is the meth head de jour. A single shaggy guy lurches through the train holding out a cardboard box with an assortment of candy. The candy looks as if forcible wresting was involved at some point. The meth head wants to sell the candy, although no price is advertised. The pitch usually goes no further than “Candy?” It’s always just one guy. It’s always a guy, and it’s never the same guy. I’d swear, though, that it’s the same cardboard box and the same candy.

Empirically enthused, I tried one day to transact a candy purchase. I held out a dollar and pointed to a wrinkled bag of peanut M&Ms. “How much?” I asked. The guy jerked up his head and stared my general direction. He then backed away, his lower lip twitching, without saying anything. The train stopped, and he dashed off. “Whatever,” said the girl sitting next to me.

The candymethmen always get off the train just before it crosses the river to downtown. The petitioners, in season, replace them. These are folks hired to collect signatures for ballot measures. They’ve thinned out now that the most recent election has passed, but they still appear. “Registered voter?” they growl. They usually have petitions for several ballot measures. They have some words they can say about each one (if asked). None of the words actually inform.

The petitioners seems to consider only the first four stops on the downtown side profitable turf, perhaps because the trains get too crowded thereafter. It’s among those crowds that the next solicitor gets to work. A guy (again, always a guy) loudly announces that he’s got to get in touch with his friend/father and can he use someone’s cell phone. Inevitably someone offers up a phone. The guy then launches into a dramatic “conversation” after punching more than 10 digits. I expect to read any day about the workings of the “can-I-use-your-cell-phone” scam. Fortunately, they leave me alone, so I guess the “I’m Blind And No You Can’t Use My Cell Phone” sign I wear works.

As the train moves into downtown, it passes the block of sedentary street kids with hand-lettered cardboard signs and puppies. The signs usually express different needs that can be gratified by donations of some sort. Money, of course, is the usual object, but others occur: “I need a bong hit” or “My puppy needs food; I need beer” or, my recent favorite,“I need a kiss and won’t give you harpies.”

I get off the train at the end of our so-called “Fareless Square” (I’m not particularly cheap; that’s just my stop.) At the corner of 10th and Morrison I run into the “got a minute” canvassers. These are pairs of impossibly enthusiastic college-age youths hugging clipboards. They want your credit card number or at least a name and email address. Sensitive I may be to the issues, I'm not inclined to give out personal financial information to strangers on the street, so I resolve to dispatch their entreaties, ah, efficiently. I see canvassers scanning the detraining citizens, ready to pounce on the guilt-ridden. I apparently fit some demographic. They go right for me:

“Got a minute for the environment?” (no)

“Got a minute for the ACLU?” (no)

“Got a minute for equal rights for gays and lesbians (no, actually)

“Got a minute for endangered Mexican sea turtle eggs?” (huh)

“Got a minute for a starving refugee child in Darfur?” (oh, for Pete’s sake!)

There’s only so much turf available for the canvassers to work, so the pairs spread out along 10th Avenue and on across the next street. As this is my walking route home, I’m lucky to have to dodge only one pair a day. My personal best is three. That means that three times I’ve announced to impossibly enthusiastic youths that I don’t care about their worthy enthusiasms. I tell myself I shouldn’t feel bad not giving perfect strangers my name, email address, and credit card number, but the guilt trip works. The last four blocks home my head hangs in shame.

All pitches, you see, eventually connect.

© Geoffrey Wren 2008

The Election and Distrust

The polls this weekend say that Barak Obama holds a healthy lead over John McCain, both in popular and electoral votes. Articles talk about cheerful Democrats and glum Republicans. Pundits already are analyzing where McCain went wrong (hello: P-A-L-I-N).

And yet I don't dare to hope that the eight years of darkness will pass.

Come Wednesday, John McCain could be our next president. He probably is not as bad as Bush, but, then, that says little, as Bush surely must be the worst US president ever. But if McCain wins, hopes have so been stoked these past several months that I'm genuinely concerned that half of America will lose that golden ability to trust.

There would be distrust in the electoral process itself. A video is circulating on the internet showing a computerized voting machine in Indiana changing a Democratic vote to a Republican vote. Conveniently, the code for computerized voting machines is proprietary, and a friend of mine versed in these matters says that one could bury the code to change votes without detection in any event. If this sort of obscurity now trammels our electoral process, the energy Obama has instilled to participate in the process will be for naught.

Then there would be distrust of each other. There's much talk lately of the "Bradley effect," the idea that voters who say they will vote for Obama in the end would not vote for a black man. Enough of that talk now has gone around that people will believe it to be true should the actual vote not reflect what polls have shown for a few weeks now. That means that people will not trust what their neighbors and colleagues say about race. We would face a setback of many decades of dimension.

And there would distrust of the future. This would have two aspects. First, Sarah Palin actually could become president. I hope that even those who think well of her could acknowledge in their hearts that she lacks qualification to serve. Sure, perhaps she will be there some time in the future, but not soon enough to serve as president within four years.

But, more fundamentally, there would be distrust in the very essence of the presidency. Barak Obama in these past weeks has hewed to the image of a leader, of a president who would wield presidential power, not presidential symbols. John McCain has resorted to Joe the Plumber, a real person who happened to catch the attention of Rovian political advisors when he spoke to Obama on camera. Joe the Plumber now is everywhere. I even saw him last night, appropriately enough, as a Halloween costume. McCain has lost touch with what leadership means. We could not trust him ever to be presidential.

God, how I hope this post will seem quaint in just a few days.

The Steerage

I don't know many times I have seen this image. It appeared in high school and college textbooks, the iconic image of America the "melting pot" (a metaphor that always struck me as disgusting). I've seen it appended to political pieces. I've seen it in photo books, both of the how-to and how-to-appreciate sort. But it wasn't until last night that I understood what the photo actually depicted.

Alfred Stieglitz was on his way to Europe, aboard a steamship. Being a man of some means, he traveled first class. He soon tired of the company of first class passengers and wandered about the ship, eventually coming onto the scene of steerage passengers on deck. The scene struck him. He raced back to his cabin, desperately hoping that the passengers would not shift from their positions, the man in the straw hat in particular. Or so the story goes.

They had not shifted by the time Stieglitz returned, and therein lies the true poignancy of the image. It is not a photograph of immigrants enroute to the New World and new and exciting lives. It is an image of those Europeans for whom America had not worked out. They are traveling back to the Old World, defeated, and in their defeat, all but immobile.

Stieglitz presumably understood this reality. Part of the marvelous genius of his image is the bright gangplank slicing the scene. It has an executionary feel, as if to represent punishment for the passengers' transgression of believing that it should have been better in America.

I study the image and wonder who these people were. What language did they speak? What befell them on return to Europe? And those children appearing randomly: Did they understand the purpose of their voyage? Did they speak about it in later years? There is something in the image that suggests not, that this event was one of private sorrow.

Did Stieglitz understand that reality?

My Procedure

As I’m 50 this year, my body seems to know it’s time to speed up its degradation. No matter how hard or long I work out, my belly still flops out. My eyes have given up trying; I now have “progressive lenses,” formerly bifocals, and reading glasses to complement my contacts. Seems strange to have two sets of corrective lenses between my eyes and the monitor on which these words appear, but without the two, they wouldn’t appear.

50 also has meant the screening colonoscopy, what its providers call a “procedure.” Bad things often are called “procedures.” A “procedure” probably preceded Louis XVI’s beheading.

My internist, Dr. B, delivered the news at my recent physical that it was time for me to have a colonoscopy. “You don’t want colon cancer.” No, I don’t, although it was unclear to me throughout this process why I would go through one screening procedure but not a host of others. God knows how many illnesses Modern Medical Science can detect in their infancy, but I don’t get tested for those. More precisely, my insurance doesn’t pay for them. My insurance does pay for screening colonoscopies when unfortunates turn 50. Given that literature about My Procedure confided that one has about a five percent chance of getting colon cancer, and that for those with family histories, a large Why? loomed.

Now I understand. But later on that.

Dr. B referred me to Dr. T. Dr. T works for NW Gastroenterology Associates. This is a collective of MDs who specialize in colonoscopies. Let me rephrase that: This is a collective of MDs who specialize in sticking long tubes up people’s butts to scope ‘em out. So the other thing initially unclear to me was why anyone capable of acing the MCAT would want such a job. “How was your day, honey?” “Pretty good. Snagged a doozy of a polyp.”

Now I understand. And later on that too.

I called the clinic and made an appointment for My Procedure. A packet arrived in the mail a few days later. Several pages offered reasons to get a colonoscopy and why a full rooting through one’s intestines was preferable to a sissy sigmoidoscopy. A separate pamphlet invited me inside to learn about “bowel preparation.” Ah, I thought, that doesn’t sound so bad, “preparation” – like making a salad. I opened the pamphlet.

YOU WANT ME TO DO WHAT?!!! The pamphlet described a five-day process towards spiffy clean intestines so that Dr. T wouldn’t have poo – at least protopoo – obscuring his view. The process would start out gently enough, no aspirin and avoiding nuts and beans and other pokey things for a few days. But the day before My Procedure, I would consume only clear liquids while evacuating my bowels with help from a product weirdly called HafLytly. And THEN Dr. T would stick the long tube up my butt.

All week, I tossed and turned dreading the whole thing. My Procedure was midafternoon Friday. I got the HafLytly kit the Sunday before. It included an alarmingly large container that would hold a solution (“you have a choice of three flavors!”) I would consume early Thursday evening. The instructions said that I would drink an eight-ounce glass every 10 to 15 minutes. Soon I would have the first of several “watery bowel movements.”

Wait. I reread that. Yes, “watery bowel movements,” it actually said. Several.

Thursday came, finally. I hadn’t really appreciated how limiting a diet of clear liquids can be. I stocked up on chicken broth, apple juice, SoBe green tea, and gelatin, each of which I will not consume again this year. Out of a spirit of culinary adventure, I tried combining certain of these raw ingredients, achieving for lunch a rubbery concoction that reminded me of early childhood, when one chews things like glue, erasers, and cardboard also out of a spirit of culinary adventure.

Just after lunch, I took two pills that came with the HafLytly kit. “You will have a bowel movement within two or three hours.” I apparently am an ambitious sort. I was at the john 10 minutes later.

I spent a miserable afternoon as my stomach rebelled against this unforeseen onslaught. My body alternatively shivered with chills and flashed hot, sweat beading all over even as buried myself under a blanket.

I had mixed the HafLytly solution first thing that morning. The flavor choices were Orange Orange, Cherry Cherry, and Lemon Lime, the makers apparently unclear on the concept of species variation.

I had chosen Cherry Cherry. I drained my first eight-once glass. The liquid tasted like punishment for some past life transgression, and its glycerin-lite consistency made it feel uncomfortably comfortable going down. I didn’t make it to the second glass before the first watery bowel movement struck.

If I have learned anything, I have learned that watery bowel movements are demanding stepchildren. I spent the next three hours in the bathroom. The first hour and a half included 10 to 15 minute intervals before the next glass of HafLytly. Each tasted more sinister than the last. I kept looking at the container, thinking that the last glass was at hand, but like an endlessly refilling magic glass I had as a kid, there ever seemed another eight ounces of Cherry Cherry nausea in a glass.

Watery bowel movements. Watery bowel movements. Watery bowel movements. There was no God.

Toward the end, the watery stuff turned fluorescent yellow. Pure bile, I supposed. Now why would the body bother with so bright a color for something normally inside us? I mean, colors typically occasion warning or invitation. Assuming fluorescent yellow would strike Primitive Man as a warning, one must wonder what Primitive Man consumed.

I tossed and turned all night, images of Evil Dr. T snaking yet more and more of his infernal tube up my butt.

Friday morning arrived a year or so later. I spent the morning working, thinking how sad it was that working seemed preferable to living. Shortly after noon, David drove me over to the “facility” where My Procedure would occur.

The facility happened to be in the same doctor office building where Dr. B works. I had expected something more hospitallike, so it was a surprise to walk into a waiting room decorated like a spa. A cheerful receptionist greeted me. “Have a seat. Heather will be out shortly.” Ah, I thought, Heather. Scotland. Summer. My brother and me riding bikes around Loch Ness, the scent of heather sweeping down the hillsides. Heather.

The door to the “Procedure Area” opened. A nurse sheparded out a guy about my age. He was grinning goofily. An older man got up and went to him. The older guy slapped the patient on the back. “Welcome to the club!” He boomed. “Howya feeling?” The patient smiled goofily wider. “Heh, heh,” he said.

After distracting myself with an article about Buckminster Fuller (he was severely nearsighted and believed the world was fuzzy until he first got glasses), Heather appeared. She led me into the Procedure Area. The space had several nooks that could be curtained off surrounding a central desk area. Each nook had a rather narrow hospital bed, more a gurney, actually than a bed. Heather weighed me and led me to one of the nooks. She told me to undress and put on one of those infernal hospital gowns that only contortionists can tie.

Once appropriately unattired, I lay back on the bed while Heather quizzed me about my health. She was a remarkably nice lady. “Yesterday was pretty rough, huh?” I nodded. “This will be a much better day,” she said, warmly. I wanted to hug her.

Heather instructed me on what to expect. “When you’re done, you’ll have air inside your intestines. We actually encourage you to let it pass.” To a guy raised by a British mother, the prospect of permissible gas passing was heartening. “Don’t worry,” she added, “It’ll just be air. So it won't smell.” Wow!

Heather stuck something into my wrist and attached a tube that snaked up above the bed. “It’s a catheter,” she explained. “Liquids now, but we’ll use the same catheter for the sedative. No need for another poke,” she added. She winked. Really.

I sat/lay in the bed for about 15-20 minutes. A patient was wheeled out and set up in one of the nooks across the room. A gray-haired guy, the patient’s partner, it seemed, came in. He chatted with the nurses about his upcoming colonoscopy. A nurse said, “I’ll recognize your face.” “You’ll recognize more than that,” he said.

Soon enough, Heather wheeled me into a chamber off the central room. On one side was a large machine, presumably the apparatus that had ambitions on my intestines, but for the life of me I couldn’t make out which part would go up my butt. Dr. T was in the corner, typing away on a laptop. “He’s making notes about the last procedure,” Heather advised with the tone of voice Mother Theresa must of used when trying to calm distraught lepers.

Dr. T came over. He was strikingly good looking for a guy old enough to get a colonoscopy. He too spoke calmly and warmly. They all must go through the same training. Dr. T explained that I would be given a sedative. I would be awake, but I might not remember the procedure. Sounded like seventh grade.

Dr. T had me lie on my left side. I felt a cold sensation where the catheter was installed. Then a very comfortable state of being followed. I think I remember something going on at my bum, and I think I remember images of my colon on the monitor beside the bed, but, really, I think I only think I remember. This was one very nice sedative. Nothing hurt. Nothing seemed wrong. I’d have just as soon had Good Dr. T carry on for the rest of the day.

Then I found myself in a nook across the room from where I had started. The nook had a wide window that let in the afternoon sun. It felt really good. David materialized, it seemed, out of thin air. I tried passing gas. Pbubbbh. Ah. That felt good. Pbubbbh again. Then I became conscious that others post procedure were in my vicinity. Pbubbbh, they said. Pbubbbh I echoed. We were soulmates.

I understood then what had eluded me. First, we get colonoscopies partly because shamanism still is a part of medicine. The process leaves you ending up with the sense that something has been put right, even if nothing actually happened other than getting a tube stuck up your butt. And you get to join The Club, an adult version of treehouses, secret decoder rings. Insurance limitations assure that that The Club is an exclusive one.

Second, I understood why smart cowpokes become gastroenterologists. The ones who manipulate the scopes are diagnosticians. If they find something that requires further treatment, they refer the patient on. No relationship. No grief when darkness reigns. And, at the same time, the actual scoping is, compared to the “bowel preparation,” not so bad after all. Maybe not enjoyable, exactly, but, having been in a fraternity, more enjoyable than many Saturday nights I’ve spent. Only when the patient is high as a kite does the doctor get involved. Oh, and did I mention how good looking Dr. T was?

Hitched (Again)

The Oregon legislature passed a domestic partnership bill last year. The bill gives those who register as domestic partners the benefits the state offers married couples. Litigants held up the effective date of the act until the week before last. Then the registrations began.

In early March 2003, Multnomah County began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. David and I rushed over to the county office building and got married the third day of the process. Then, a large line of registrants snaked out the door and around the corner. We joyfully got married and stayed so until the state supreme court annulled us.

This year, we registered as domestic partners the third day the new act went into effect. There was no line. We parked in a 15 minute space in front of the county building and walked right up to a free window. We still had ten minutes left on the meter.

"We haven't had that many today," the cheerful lady said when we asked.

"How about the past two days?"

The lady learned forward, her voice lower. "It's been pretty thin, actually."

Apparently, the numbers have been way down all over the state. I have given a lot of thought to why so many married in 2003, while relatively few have registered as domestic partners, and I can't come up with a good explanation.

Perhaps a lot of people did not take marriage seriously in 2003. It was just a fun thing to do, something that did not seem all that legally consequential. By contrast, the word now is out that domestic partnership in Oregon is a serious legal commitment.

That, however, seems at best a partial explanation. A commission in New Jersey has concluded that domestic partnership is inferior to marriage because it makes same-sex couples feel inferior. There is indeed a bitter taste to partaking in latter-day version of separate but equal "equality." I recognize how we ended up with domestic partnership instead of marriage, public politics in Oregon not yet being free from the taint of raw bigotry. But, even so, I think I see another reason for the low numbers of registrants.

One aside: The new law applies only to same-sex couples. If you are of the opposite sex, well, get married. The new law also bars domestic partnerships between first cousins. Now, let me see, the prohibition of first cousin marriages, if I remember right, has to do with making babies. Last I checked, neither David nor I can make a baby by the other. I guess our domestic partnership had to track marriage in all the details, to hell with biology, so long as the state did not trip up and let us get married.

Anthropologists from Space

It seems to me that if anthropologists from another galaxy were to come study America, they could do their best field work watching TV. We do not watch much TV at home (lately, not any). The only exposure I get usually is at my gym. I realized this morning what I have been missing.

TVs constantly run at my gym, playing a mix of Fox News, sports, talk shows, TV movies, and sports. While I changed this morning, the "Today Show" blathered above me. The segment playing had to do with the finale last night of "Dancing with the Stars." David and I have not watched "Dancing with the Stars," but from talking with my colleagues at work, I gather that we are the only two people in America who have not. Anyway, there was something wonderfully complete about the "Today Show" segment, complete in the sense of capsulating much of what it means to be in America and be an American today. "Today" is not an accidental title.

The segment showed the winners, Helio Castroneves and Julianne Hough, and the losers, Spice Girl Melanie Brown and Maksim Chmerkovskiy, an "actor" per the internet. Castroneves is a race car driver. He won the Indy. He had his team mates there on the "Today Show", all dressed in race car outfits, some looking bemused, others confused. Then the camera shifted to the losers. They were cheerful, gracious in defeat, and (wink wink) probably better than the winners. Ms. Spice said, "I just heard that the judges changed their minds, and that we won." Ha Ha Ha. Okay, so there on screen was the weird quasi-sport of dancing packaged with Hollywood, race car driving, a Latino hero, and the classic, all-American underdogs. Could one possibly conflate more of the stuff of American culture?

Meanwhile, on the news bar at the bottom of the screen: "Coalition troops in Afghanistan accidentally kill 14 construction workers in air strike."

Unhealthy Interest

J.K. Rowling's recent outing of her character Dumbledore of "Harry Potter" fame surely delighted the comics and wags of the world. I have received several emails from friends joking about it, my favorite being a list of revised titles for "Harry Potter" books, e.g., "The Goblet of Fire Island" instead of "The Goblet of Fire."

Funning about this funny - and fictional! - old man suggests that the whole business is inconsequential fluff or at worst a distraction. But we are talking about books better known to many than the Bible. Jokes are fine, but the outing of Dumbledore as a wizardly poof warrants serious discussion.

Perhaps that discussion already is at hand. An article in the October 29, 2007 New York Times. accused Rowling of going "too far." The article dangles the matter of Dumbledore's interest in Harry Potter - an unhealthy, even sinister interest perhaps?

This got me to thinking about many things, my last posts being among them. It does seem that whenever an older gay man demonstrates interest in a young man, gay or straight or wizardly sexless, it is perceived as an unhealthy, even sinister interest. Why else??? The insinuations ooze.

But just what is the unhealthy part? Sex would be, but, I'm sorry, I just can't get there with a character like Dumbledore. That he even thinks about sex strikes me as more remarkable than that he has a sexuality. So if it is not sexual interest, what is it?

A likely candidate would be the elixer of youth any older person enjoys sharing the magic in life with a younger one. Parents ever tell me how their children reinvigorate them over and over. This elixer could be unhealthy, but not necessarily. Recast positively, it is mentorship, and very probably a social good unlike few others. If the older participant gains something, what's the problem? Would it not be weirder if the older person engaged in a mentoring relationship sacrificially?

So, enough of the "unhealthy interest" insinuations. If Dumbledore has been interested in Harry, well, it seems to me that has benefitted them both. And, I hope, many, many others.

Heard on the MAX Train

I board the MAX today and sit beside a tired-looking woman, probably younger than she looked. A bedraggeled young man boards at the next station. He has a box of candy. He ask for change, holding the box out as if to say, "Take some candy if you need to, but I'd rather you just give me change."

The guy sits across the aisle from the woman and me. He looks over to her, apparently recognizing a friend from the street.

"Where ya going?" he asks.

"South, see my kid, before they lock him up."

"That sucks."

They ride in silence for while.

"Hey, you got any Butternuts in there," the woman says, gesturing to the guy's backpack.

"Yeah."

"How much?"

"75."

"Let's see." The guy produces two different Butternut bars, both about the same size. The woman examines them a long time, as if selecting a wedding ring. She picks one and drops the quarters into the guy's hand. I notice that scratches criss-cross his palm. I look up into his eyes. He looks at me, but seems to look right through me.

The guy starts telling the woman about his legal problems. "Shit," he says, "I'm homeless, and they want me to fork over $160 just to tell them I'm a drug addict."

"Sucks," she says.

The guy gets off the train. The woman turns and watches him on the platform. I turn to look too. The guy is standing there, over and over scraping the sole of a shoe as if to remove dog poop. He lifts it to look. There's nothing but sole. He starts scraping again.

"He sells his candy and buys his dope. Stupid fuck," she says.

So Much for that Possibility

Well, it looks like Sam Adams will not have to run against Rob Ball after all. The papers reported last week that Ball shared with Randy Leonard, a city councilman, and Vera Katz, our former mayor, his suspicion that Adams had had a sexual affair with an intern when he was 17. The Oregonian flatly reported that there was one problem: It never happened.

Ball tried to justify reporting the matter to politicians on the ground that he, as a reserve police officer, had an obligation to report sexual abuse. An article at the end of the week characterized Ball as incredibly naive. If Ball is so naive not to realize that his actions would appear to all as the lowest form of sleaze, then he is far too naive to hold office. Leonard aptly told Ball that his political career is over.

There had been talk before last week that well-heeled gays and lesbians might have supported Ball over Adams. I went to a party Saturday where several such contributors attended. Of course, we all talked about the Adams-Ball matter. The prevailing sentiment: "Ball will never see any of my money." One pointed out that Ball himself, a 41 year old, has a 23 year old partner. He met him three years ago. There is that bit about glass houses....

Do I Cry or Jump for Joy?

Tom Potter, Portland's mayor, has announced that he will not run for another term. This raises the possibility that Commissioner Sam Adams might end up running against developer and volunteer cop Rob Ball. Both Adams and Ball are openly gay, and national PACs would be hard-pressed to chose between them. Both work hard. Both look good. Both probably would make fine mayors.

Adams probably is the hardest working politician in Oregon, but he has detractors, including powerful detractors in the gay community. At a party recently, I got an earful from some "Anyone But Sam" guys. They pledged their substantial resources to Ball. When I asked what nurtured their antipathy towards Adams, as these were guys who had supported him in the past, I got confused and circuitous answers. The gist, I ultimately gathered, was that Sam had not paid attention to their interests. Those interests were not public transportation or economic equality, enthusiasms of Sam's. They were the interests of the rich and the self-absorbed. Do I hear "Gay Republican"?

So do I bemoan or celebrate the fact that a major American city may end up with a gay vs. gay mayoral race, one that might pit a true liberal against a budding conservative? I guess celebration is in order. We need gays to run against each other as ordinary candidates. That is real equality. Still, the spector of two gay politicians going at each other rankles. I would say that we can look forward to interesting times, but there is that old Chinese proverb....

Speaking of Jon Bon Jovi...

Referring to his 1980s hair: "I feel guilty about the hole in the ozone layer my haircuts created."

Omnivore's Dilemma

I have been reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (thank you Todd for lending me the book). Pollan compares rapacious corn culture with the marvelous workings of the Polyface Farm in Virginia (http://www.polyfacefarms.com/index.html). At Polyface, Joel & Teresa Salatin grow a wonderous variety of meat and vegetables using sustainable agriculture techniques. I was thinking about those techniques while touring the "B" Street Farm in Forest Grove, Oregon yesterday. That farm too strives towards sustainability and permaculture. Both farms offer hope for a future agriculture that brings health both to us consumers and to the environment.

Except for this one nagging comment buried in Pollan's book. He points out that a No. 2 field corn farmer in Middle America can tend vast crops with heavy farm equipment doing all the work, so much so that the farmer can winter in Florida (if the farmer, rather than the agricultural industrial complex, somehow would wrest a living from corn agriculture). By comparison, the Salatins and the operaters of "B" Street Farm work constantly. Yes, they may be emotionally healthier in the long run, but few people can grasp that concept when offered up front the choice between long hours of heavy farm labor and a relative handful driving an airconditioned tractor while listening to Bon Jovi on the in-cab sound system.

Interrogation

The British sailors and marines held by Iran after the country accused them of trespassing into territorial waters have said that the Iranians blindfolded and bound them and threatened them with prison if they did not say that they had strayed into Iranian waters. Lt. Felix Carman said today, "We were blindfolded, our hands were bound and we were forced up against a wall. Throughout our ordeal we faced constant psychological pressure." He continued, "All of us were kept in isolation. We were interrogated most nights and presented with two options. If we admitted that we'd strayed, we'd be on a plane to (Britain) pretty soon. If we didn't, we faced up to seven years in prison."

The Iranians last week paraded their captives before the world admitting that they had strayed into territorial waters. Those admissions now will count for little or nothing in the West. So that raises a question: Given that the Americans have used far worse tactics in Guantanamo, what are we to believe when Gitmo captives speak?

McDonald's Iced Coffee

I see billboards around town touting McDonald's latest offering: iced coffee. I mean really iced coffee. Soon a guy will spill a cup in his lap and sue for shrinkage.

Shalikashvili's Second Thoughts

In an opinion piece in the January 2, 2007 New York Times, John Shalikashvili, former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced that he had changed his mind about gays and lesbians in the military. The time has come to let queers serve openly.

The retired general reasoned that the armed services needs personnel. He also wrote that he had spoken with gay and lesbian servicefolk. His conversations led him to realize "just how much the military has changed, and that gays and lesbians can be accepted by their peers."

Still, Shalikashvili added, the "don't ask, don't tell" policy was right when it was adopted. Back then in the antedeluvian 1990s, gays and lesbians serving openly would have hurt troop morale and recruitment and undermined the cohesion of combat units. Blah blah blah.

Now, let's see, the policy should be changed because the armed forces need more bodies. What with the ongoing waste of bodies in Iraq, no surprise there. I guess I should be heartened that it may not be long before our government wastes bodies nondiscriminatorily.

And this idea about conversations opening Shalikashvili's eyes... Um, would it have been so hard to talk with lesbian and gay service folk back when the Joint Chiefs urged the "don't ask, don't tell" policy? I mean, it's not like there weren't any to chat with. In the late 1980s, I did pro bono work for sailors brought to Portsmith, Virginia, because they had HIV. The naval hospital there set up a special HIV treatment unit. Suffice to say, there was no mystery about the sexuality of most of the sailors there. Or perhaps we might recall Winston Churchill's observation: "The real traditions of the British Navy are rum, buggery, and the lash."

The flaws in Shalikashvili's rationale for letting gays and lesbians serve seem to have been lost on him. Would it have been so hard for him to simply say that discrimination was wrong then as it is wrong now and that he made a mistake? Had the good ex-general looked farther back in history, he would have realized that racial integration of the armed services advanced integration nationwide. There was a time when, to an extent at least, the armed services led the way in equal treatment. At the guidance of officers like Shalikashvili, the armed services so lost that way.

Everything to Those Who Wait

Years ago I heard the song "I want to be Jackie Onassis" ("I want to be Jackie Onassis. I want to wear a pair of dark sunglasses. I want to be Jackie Onassis. Oh yeah. O yeah."). I didn't hear it again. Over the years, I've asked friends if they know the song. Some have remembered it, but none have recalled the band. As time has gone on, I've become inceasingly curious.

So today I perused the New York Times over breakfast and ended up in the House and Home section by the last sip of coffee. There was the answer: The band was called "Human Sexual Response." The context of the answer, however, offered a delicious commentary about aging, experience, and the delightful comedy that is life.

You see, a couple, Dini Lamot and Windle Davis, together for 32 years, have bought and refurbished to run as a B&B a Hudson River mansion. The mansion most recently was used as a nursing home. The two sang in Human Sexual Response. The band broke up in 1982. Pictures in the article showed a determinably staid interior, rich with wooden paneling and polite prints on the walls. One could not distinguish these former New Wave musicians from former NASA engineers or garden supply salespersons, former occupations of local B&B owners I know.

To those who wait come answers.

To those who wait come human connections.

Heard on the MAX Train

A guy on the train. He seemed under the influence. Or perhaps that was just because he looked like Matt Dillon in "Drugstore Cowboy."

"How'ya doing?" he said to me.

"Good. You?"

"I'm not doing so well." He paused, I looking at him, he looking at me. "It's Thanksgiving soon."

"Yes," I said.

"My Thanksgiving is a solo separation."

Now, I can't help thinking that this actually meant something.

Heard on the MAX Train

Mother with her young son, probably about five or six:

Mother: Get back up on that seat, right now!

Son: Why?

Mother: Because you've got to do what I say until you're 18.

Son: 18? Really?! That's not too old.

Mother: Well, it's older than you. [pause] And after 18, you've got to do what the State says.

Son: Aww...

Mother: They say America's free, but it ain't.

Wednesday Night, 9/20/06

My massage had been scheduled some time ago, but we had decided in the meantime to get a featherbed. David and I wanted to mediate a problem inherent in urban living: We like cool, fresh air at night. That is heaven at our cabin, purgatory at home. The abrading sounds of the city gnaw through our window. The sounds continue past when we fall asleep and begin again before we wake. This circumstance is a consideration every time I run the dynamic calculus of the advantages of city life over its disadvantages.

So I arranged my day to drop off a wedding gift at the UPS store, pick up birthday gift from Mother Boyle, and venture into Macy’s at Meier and Frank Square to buy a featherbed. The store name bears some explaining. Macy’s bought Meier and Frank last year. The downtown store remained Meier and Frank by name until the beginning of this month. On the pretext that Macy’s was honoring Portland’s “heritage,” the company decided to call the store Macy’s at Meier and Frank Square. The marketing genius of Macy’s runs deep: The name “Macy’s” no longer identifies a place. It signifies an identity.

Meier and Frank Square, mind you, is a building, not a square.

The building is under reconstruction and seismic upgrading. When I walked in the entrance across from Pioneer Square (that’s a real square), I saw floor-to-ceiling sheetrock slicing the store in half. It was unsettling. The effect suggested that the vital half of the store was being drawn into a dull void.

The escalators were shut down. I had to ride one of two working elevators to the sixth floor. The door of an elevator was closing just as I rounded the corner. Ahead of me, a Macy’s “sales associate” lunged, grabbed he door, and hung on keep it from closing. She and I entered, and another Macy’s employee followed. I genially complimented the first sales associate for her heroics. She replied that she wasn’t going to wait for the next elevator lest she retire and die in the meantime. At that comment, the other sales associate turned her head and summoned a look, one that said, “I will report you.” I glanced at the woman. She was dressed in a plain navy suit. Her nametag identified her as an assistant manager. Ah, the New Regime had arrived.

Well, not yet to the sixth floor. There, in the house wares and bedding department, good old Portland still reigned in the form of the Three Graces, a trio of sales women sales associates I had seen there before. One was old. She busied herself in a way that suggested I approach the other two. The second was young, and I knew from past experience that she was clueless. The third was aged in between. In the spirit of Goldilocks, I approached her.

“I’m interested in a feather bed.”

“Of course,” she said, smiling. “Follow me.” She took me to racks holding three feather beds, one $199.99, one $149.99, and one $99.99.

“What’s the difference among them?”

“This one [the $199.99] is superior.” She said this while looking me frankly in the eyes. She said this simply, without emphasis. She was oddly shaped and plainly dressed. She wore wire rim glasses. You wanted this lady for your homeroom teacher when you were 11. Or your mom.

The sales woman showed me the relative merits of the best and second best. The price difference mainly had to do with the loft of the goose down on the top layer. I ended up choosing the $199.99 model as if there never had been a question. The higher price meant higher loft. That meant I had to purchase a new mattress pad, as our existing one could not accommodate both the mattress and featherbed. I nonetheless hesitated at the additional expense.

“How old is your existing mattress pad?” the sales woman asked.

“Oh, about ten years.”

“Ten years! Oh, my. Dear, you need a new mattress pad. Mattress pads only are meant to have a life expectancy of five or six years. You don’t want to sleep on a ten-year-old mattress pad.” She paused and dropped her voice. “It’s full of carcasses of bed lice.”

“Oh,” I said. I selected a mattress pad.

When the woman rang me up, she convinced me to open a Macy’s credit account, there being a 25 percent discount for doing so. We chatted amicably as she did the paperwork. Near the end, she confided that the department was about to receive an inspection visit from an uppity-up out of Manhattan. “That’s why we’re dressed so nicely,” she said, sweeping her hand towards the adjacent old and young sales associates, now gathered around the register because something was happening. It hit me that she had just scored triple bars: A big sale and a credit application 15 minutes before the New Regime determined her future.

A featherbed, a $199.99 featherbed at least, occupies a good deal of space. The featherbed was encased in a zippered plastic case that measured nearly three foot square by one and a half feet wide. My sales associate affixed handles to the case. She put the mattress pad, nearly as large, in a plastic bag and also affixed handles. “You’ll be balanced,” she observed, helpfully.

I lumbered out of the store and to my massage. While on the table, Jim, my LMT, and I talked about a mutual friend. Jim posed a question about the friend, a question that framed for me whether I really know my friend. I love my friend, but I know only so much about him. It occurred to me that good relationships dance at that place where knowledge meets doubt.

The massage ended as I grasped the reality of having to walk a mile home with the two immense packages under arm. I contemplated calling a cab, but, no, that wouldn’t do. Not here. Not in Portland. I summoned pioneer spirit and ventured out.

Rain was falling. We haven’t had much rain for ever so long. I’d forgotten about rain. I’d forgotten that it’s wet, that it’s cold. I pulled the hood of my parka up. I imagined myself as seen by others, an apparition dressed gracelessly, hunched against the elements, a featherbed and mattress pad under arm. The image seemed rather absurd.

The first few blocks passed with only modest discomfort. I stopped once to shift the heavier featherbed to the opposite arm. A guy standing near me said, “Looks heavy.”

“It is,” I said.

“Bummer,” he said.

I reached the South Park Blocks. The rain fell most insistently. I remembered a chocolate in my parka pocket, a Mon Cheri . I stopped at the north end of the park to unwrap it, a process involving some degree of frustration with the thin foil cover. I considered the unwrapped candy in my hand. Milk chocolate encased a brandied cherry filling. The chocolate had a plastic sheen. Unloved pieces from a Whitman's Sampler would've looked more appetizing. But I had only this source of needed energy. I put it in my mouth and chomped.

I'd eaten Mon Cheri's before, ones sent from Europe. They tasted good. We must get different Mon Cheris in the States. As I chewed, I felt, not tasted, a maw of cheap chocolate, cloying cherry flavor, and cheap chocolate. I focused, telling myself that I soon would enjoy the experience. But, you know, life is like this: I ended up feeling satisfied and dissatisfied, or vice versa. I was not sure which.

I reached the first cross street in the South Park blocks. I turned to look for traffic. I remembered, then, a recurrent problem with my parka. I usually don’t cinch down the hood. This means that my head turns freely within the hood. This means that when I turn to look for oncoming vehicles, I see the hood, not the vehicles. I pulled hood off. The rain immediately soaked my head.

A single car urged steadily up the street. I decided to wait, considering that a pedestrian-vehicle encounter that would leave me sprawled on wet pavement, rain dribbling down, would be unpleasant. The car slowed, expecting me to step out. I waited. Then a guy walked right into me. I mean, right into me.

“Whoa. Sorry dude,” he said. He was 20 something. A woman caught up, 20 something, well dressed. “I didn’t see you,” the guy said.

Now this seemed improbable. I was, after all, standing under a streetlight, holding two large white semaphores beneath each arm. Seeing me would have involved no greater effort than breathing.

“That’s okay,” I replied. The guy smiled shyly. He turned to the woman.

“I should’ve seen him,” he told her.

“Yeah, you're an idiot,” she said to him. "I'm sorry," she said to me. She then gave me a dollar.

Now, I presumed that the woman gave me a dollar because she felt sorry for this bedraggled wet thing with large things at each side seemingly en route to night’s lodging of the sort exposed to the elements. But it occurred to me that she saw me as just what I was. That thought made her gesture all the more confusing.

An empirical spirit seized me. I walked further up the park, still unhooded, holding the dollar in the hand carrying the lighter mattress pad. I tried to give it to three people I passed. Each declined, eyeing me suscpiciously or, in one case, fearfully. Then I reached the last park block before I turned towards our apartment. A 30ish guy approached. He wore an expensive raincoat over a well-tailored suit, spread collar, baby blue silk tie. His umbrella was huge. I set the bags down.

“Excuse me,” I said. The guy stopped. “Would you like this dollar?” The guy took it.

“Thanks he said.” He eyed my loads. “Hey, a featherbed. I have one of those. They’re great.” We looked at each other a moment. “Have a good one,” he said cheerily. He then walked on. He kept the dollar.

© Geoffrey Wren 2006

So what if

Jesus were around today, and, as one might expect, few realized? He'd die, arms outstretched. And a 1,000 years from now the self-righteous would wear little syringes around their necks.

It's Sirius

I woke up this morning (the first morning of a backpacking vacation) to see clouds. I'd rather forgotten what Portland looks like domed by grey. We've had sunny day after sunny day. A woman in my office told me that she now plans summer events in July. In previous years, she had counted on rain interfering.

All this sounds fine until ... Well, there were the two heat waves, the last a couple weeks ago. I stumbled through a week with little sleep (we moved to Oregon from Virginia in part to escape the sleep-denying heat). Vegetation around town looks stressed, parched. I saw Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth" (www.climatecrisis.net) recently. Gore shows pictures of receeding glaciers around the world. Now I look at Mt. Hood and wince. Hood's glaciers have receeded so much in just the short time we've lived in Oregon.

Gore also talks about mosquitoes moving up the mountains as the climate warms. The past few backpacking seasons I've been surprised to find few, if any, bugs. A backpack really is rather more enjoyable without mosquitoes, and that fact brings me to my deepest fear about global warming: We'll just get used to it rather than stop it. When New York had a heat wave a week or so ago, the New York Times editorialized that there's no way to say a particular heat wave is due to global warming. Irresponsible journalism, that seemed to me, but not unusual. Heck, even Backpacker Magazine (www.backpacker.com) now touts the "advantages" of global warming ("Yay! new terrain to explore now that those glaciers are gone!").

I need to remember what temperate weather feels like. I need to remember now.

Israel

I lived in Boston when I was a kid. I grew up believing in Zionism. Like my friends, I aspired to a stint working on a kibbutz. I believed that Israel was or at least would become the promised land.

I won't make excuses for Hezbollah. I deplore the cowardly tactic of hiding among civilians. But it bears noting that Hezbollah is anything but naive. Hezbollah seized Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid to draw out Israel in a fight Israel could not win. Suckers obviously govern Israel. They took the bait and blundered into Lebanon.

Israel's invasion of Lebanon and its actions in Gaza reveal an attitude towards Arabs that can go by no other name than "racism." Racism is implicit in Israel's assumption that it could whack Hezbollah and go home in a week or two. Racism is explicit in Israel's murder of innocent Lebanese and Palestinians, as if Arabs are simply expendable regardless who they are or what they believe. Whole families have died under the rain of Israeli weaponry (much presumably provided by the USA). Israel claims it warns civilians before its bombing strikes, but many civilians must stay put either because they can't afford to leave or because Israel has blasted trucks full of fleeing civilians.

The images from Beruit are horrific. Dead children. Whole neighborhoods demolished. Pristine beaches black with oil sludge. Now we have the slaughter in Qana. It's said that Israel's response is "disproportionate." I'm sorry. This is not just "disproportionate," unless that's the new code word for genocide.

Promised land. I once thought God made the promise. It turns out to have been the Devil.

It's April

Nothing like stomping through pollen with a shitload of weight on your back. I walked home through the South Park Blocks tonight. As with so much in life, it seemed a good idea beforehand. I mean, it’s April. It’s warm. It's not raining. But once in the park, eyes started watering. My nose did the hydrant metaphor. The first sneeze. It occurred to me: It’s warm. It's not raining.

But, then, it’s April! I stopped off at Rich's Cigar Shop, magazine heaven (gratuitous product placement), bought a copy of Blind Spot issue 32 (memorial to its founder and perhaps the best yet), and fueled myself with point-of-sale chocolates. I headed south into the park.

A few blocks in, I looked ahead to the small plaza where Abe Lincoln stands. His statute, I mean. Abe stares down, weighted by Weltschmertz. I took in the scene as I neared: The last fingers of sun reached through the new greenery on the trees. One ray glanced Abe’s brow. Behind him, across the street, I saw a Slippery-While-Wet road sign, a yellow diamond with a squiggly arrow. The sign was hanging downwards. A little Japanese girl bundled as if for snow stood under the arrow’s tip.

“Why is a Slippery-While-Wet sign in a city park?” I wondered.

I thought about Henri Cartier-Bresson, he of the "decisive moment." What would he have done? Would he have lifted an ever-ready Leica and captured the scene the moment before its loss? Or would he have recreated it later, controlled circumstances and whatnot? And I wondered: “Which would be more impressive?”

Engaged by no more than this passing thought about photography, I got to thinking about Bernd and Hilla Becher. They are German photographers. They’ve taken a lot of images of German industrial structures. A lot. The images confound by objectifying difference amidst seeming sameness. Bernd Becher taught at the Kunstakademie in Duesseldorf. The Bechers and their work influenced several photographers I admire: Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, and Candida Hoefer.

Jupp and I saw a pair of works by Candida Hoefer at the Cooley Gallery (Reed College) this past weekend (good weather then too; we biked). The two images showed commercial interiors sterilized of any humanity. They hung behind a wall at an exhibition of seven large pieces by Gregory Crewdson. Crewdson elaborately stages his images, using actors and klieg lights and numerous helpers. One, for instance, depicted a dark, rainy street, a figure Hopperesque in his loneliness yet theatrical in his depiction. Crewdson’s images read and unfold cinemagraphically. The contrast between Crewdson’s human stories and Hoefer’s lifeless commercial interiors was striking. Subjective. Objective.

But as I looked between the two sets of pictures, a curious transformation occurred. Hoefer’s images started to tell stories. Mystery stories. Tragic stories. Comic stories. And I paid attention to the intensely personal craft she lavishes on her work. Meanwhile, Crewdson’s images increasingly insisted on a single story – a script. Objective. Subjective.

Such thoughts ebbed. I passed Abe and the Japanese girl (where were her parents?!). I saw a woman sitting on a bench. She had yellowed Phyllis Diller hair and an idiosyncratic white dress set off by pink lacy things and a lot of necklasses. She was smoking a cigarette and talking to herself. As I passed, I turned to say a good evening. She looked up at me, saying nothing. She ate her cigarette.

Further on, I passed three teenage guys dressed in what I guess would be described as Scottish Goth. Kilts. Boots. All black. Lots of metal. They glanced around for admirers and to each other for support. They marched with the ambiguous postures of teenagers uncertain how far envelopes can be pushed. As I got closer, I could see that everything they wore smacked of recent and costly acquisition. They were talking excitedly - and loudly.

“I don’t give a fuck,” I heard one say. “I think we look cool.”

© Geoffrey Wren 2006