Summer Epilogue: Swifts

        A few days before the Equinox, Robyn invites me to watch the swifts with a few of her friends. I don't live far from the elementary school whose brick chimney offers sanctuary for tens of thousands of the migrating birds every September. For an hour before sundown, the swifts congregate above the building, circling and circling before spiraling into the chimney to spend the night before continuing on their journey.

        I gingerly step between blankets and camping chairs as I make my way to where Robyn and her friends are sitting on the hill facing the school. The place is packed, and kids are running around chasing each other or sliding down the hill on sheets of cardboard. The sky is filled with what look like gnats, or flecks of ash, creating a cloud that swells and shrinks as it soars above us. Sometimes there are hawks, but tonight nothing with feathers is in danger. Robyn's friends chatter amongst themselves, making all the usual comments and quips -how can they all fit inside there, I'm glad it's not my job to clean it out, I remember this being more impressive. I'm too mesmerized to be annoyed as my eyes strain to focus on the ever-shifting mass. It's like the entire sky is alive, a churning mass of swirling, throbbing life. The moment the sun disappears completely behind the hills, the last swifts vanish as well. The throng on the ground applauds the end of Summer, then we all gather our blankets and chairs and trudge back to our cars, to drive back to our own chimneys. And though we all know better, though the same exact thing happens every year, we're still surprised by how sudden nightfall is, and how dark.

15 end

         By the following morning, the smoke has reached Portland. The sky is the color of pale charcoal and while the sun is out, its light is so weak you can stare right at it. A breeze intermittently all afternoon; when it stops, the air is stifling. The smell of smoke grows stronger as the day progresses.

        Despite this, I venture outside for a jaunt. When I started taking public transit to the outskirts of the Portland Metropolitan Area, one of the places I kept returning to was downtown Tigard. It's a seemingly endless bus ride down the mad rush of the Pacific Coast Highway, and at the end you are rewarded with a strange little strip filled with odd shops, half of which were shuttered even before the pandemic. It’s a pleasant area to stroll along once in a while, with a Value Village at one end and an antiques mall at the other, and in between a good little family run burger place. 

            I usually find something good at the Value Village but today I find myself picking up a lot of things only to put them down once I think of the clutter of my apartment. Maybe my hoarding days are finally starting to wane. Part of my indecisiveness could be because I’m very hungry, so I head towards the burger place, only to find that there is a street fair taking up most of the strip. 

            I saunter along between the corridor formed by the tents. I am quickly overwhelmed by all the people and colors and sounds. There are tents for pet food, tie dye shirts, woodworking, Jazzercize, realtors, and two different people running for mayor. You can get freeze dried candy or an estimate on hiring a professional de-clutterer. A troupe of kids dressed in karate gis with leis around their necks runs by, kicking and chopping. A dance instruction company turns on a boom box and begins to mamba in the middle of the street. It’s bright and festive and lively and I can't really handle it. 

            After some lunch and an iced coffee I feel up for another attempt. I look at the paintings of the local artists, think back on the street fairs I went to with Jasmine. We had talked about getting a booth and being like these hopeful schmoes sitting in their folding chairs. 

            There’s also a local author selling copies of his novels The Time Traveler’s Tale and Ghosts From the Mountains of Madness. He stands eagerly at a table unprotected by a tent and I walk past without making eye contact. I’m also trying not to look too closely at the girls walking around in their shorts. I'm get worn out quickly; avoiding things is more exhausting than paying attention to them. 

            A group of three elderly woman walk in front of me as I leave the main strip. One of them holds up a white balloon dog to show her friends. A sudden gust of wind snatches it from her hand and sends it flying across the street. It spins and bounces over the asphalt without popping. The women shriek and then start to laugh as the dog skitters away, dodging everyone’s attempts to grab it as it makes its escape and is finally lost from sight. 

14

        The world hurtles past outside the train window, a mild landscape of trees and fields and creeks interrupted by small towns. An enormous egg whizzes by so fast I can just make out the words “World’s Largest Egg” on the platform it rests on. Every one of these towns has its history, every street and every building. People live and go about their business and die here. People had an idea for that egg, planned and built it and no doubt held some sort of ceremony to christen it. I feel overwhelmed by it all. Even every rotting log lying in a ditch beside the tracks has its own story, of the tree it once was, of how that tree died and was transformed into a home for generation upon generation of insects and microbes who spent their lives working hard to break the log down to return it to the soil it sprang from. 

        I’m on my way to Seattle to go to the art museums. I love the train but I don’t take it often, as it’s twice the price of the bus. But this is my last jaunt before summer officially ends, and I feel entitled to splurge.

        A guy a few seats ahead of me can’t stop talking loudly and excitedly. He enthuses about how much he loves Ziploc baggies, screams in disbelief that his traveling companion, who has just professed her love of romantic comedies, has never seen the film “Definitely Maybe.” He tries to restrain himself but he just can’t believe it. I can see his left arm as he waves and flutters his hand as he jabbers on. He wears an enormous digital watch.

        We pass through Centralia, a mecca for vine covered cars and abandoned easy chairs and backyard fences covered in lackluster graffiti. “Sara Raye Vanhausen” is spray painted on the back of an auto parts store. I wonder who she was, and what she did to become thus immortalized. The bedraggled outskirts suddenly give way to a charming downtown filled with shops and eateries and a bustling farmers market, before swiftly turning back into a testament of neglect.

        We arrive in Seattle 25 minutes late but I’m not in any hurry so I stroll leisurely through Pioneer Square, gradually making my way up 1st Street, towards the art museum. It’s a beautiful afternoon, and the streets are filled with people who seem to be either homeless people or tourists, which are homeless in their way. I have lunch across the street from the museum at a place called Von’s 1000 Spirits, which looks touristy but turns out to be really good, with a srver who calls me darlin'.

        I get into the museum for free with my employee badge and head up the escalators to see the big Giacometti retrospective. I saw a big show of his at the Modern exactly 20 years ago, and while he’s not an artist I think about much, I’ve gone months without seeing any art outside of where I work, and I’m hungry for it.

        The show proves to be incredibly nourishing. Many of the smaller pieces are arranged on large tables. The dark, rough busts and figures rise from the white tabletops like stones in a Zen garden. I’m reminded of how limited his repertoire was; for the most part, he only stuck to a few images, repeating them over and over again. While part of me thinks of this as a lack of vision, as I get deeper into the show it feels more like a beautiful quest to uncover some essential truth about human nature. I can feel his need to try to expose the soul- sometimes lonely and brittle, sometimes solid and monumental, but always rough and lumpy, whittled away and built back up one globule of clay at a time. I feel deeply moved by the results of his beautiful, quixotic undertaking. Is this what the soul looks like, when you strip everything else away?

            My day is altogether splendid. I fill myself with art and rest awhile and stuff myself with more, until finally I feel fat as a tick and need to stop before I pop. I wander around downtown some more then catch the train home. The setting sun is red and the sky is a strange orange-gray as the smoke from distant forest fires starts to blow in. 

            But when I arrive back in Portland, the night sky is clear and the moon is rising, clear and white and nearly full. I consider walking home from the station but decide to wait for the light rail. It’s a gorgeous Friday night and there are a lot of people downtown, mostly couples; guys in suits, women in heels. I see a man in a hooded sweatshirt and shorts standing completely still as a blond woman in a long, flowery dress touches his arms, then his shoulders,, then puts her arms around him and presses her head against his chest. He just stands there stiffly, never taking his hands out of his pockets. 

        A young man sits with his head beneath his knees. Nearby another does the same. People walk confidently in front of cars, scooters zip the wrong way along the streets. I step onto the train along with a couple wearing brand new punk outfits. They weren't even born yet when Green Day was big, much less the Sex Pistols. The spikes on his leather jacket are shiny, and her pink hair looks freshly dyed. She wears hot pants with the Misfits logo professionally printed across them. He keeps touching his slicked-back hair. 

        In the corner of the car, a woman squats in a nest of copies of the Asian Reporter, whose front page declares "Sick dolphin calf improves with tube-fed milk, helping hands." Across from her sits a person, possibly a man, with a brown puffy jacket pulled up over his head. His pants and sneakers are so heavily caked in wet mud I can only assume he just came from wading in the river. I think of Giacometti's lonely warriors striding across the wasteland, elegant and dignified in their isolation. They may personify existential angst and the capacity for human suffering, but this is not like that. The headless figure on the train more closely resembles another artist’s paintings I saw at the museum, Francis Bacon, whose smeared, twisted figures look like they are in the process of turning themselves inside out. The person inside the jacket twitches occasionally with a violent, jerking spasm, a chrysalis about to split and allow the being inside to burst free and spread its crumpled wings.

 

13

 I get a text from a friend saying her neighborhood is throwing a block party and that she’ll be hiding in the backyard if I want to swing by. I think about it, but the Oregon Symphony is having a free concert on the waterfront. The program sounds pretty pedestrian, as befits a free outdoor concert, but like I said it’s free, and there will be musical acts all day before the show, so I decide to go to that instead. 

It’s a gorgeous day and there are people everywhere, and they all seem to be getting along. I walk past the new courthouse. Stark black and white slogans hang along its length. Defund Hate. Seek Justice. The building is right around the corner from the much-beleaguered justice center. Armored cop cars are everywhere. Though construction is finished, the courthouse sports a set of scaffolding out front, from which hangs a printed mural of a courtroom with benches filled with figures painted by kids. One of the figures wears a toque. Across his chest are lettered the words “Chef Boyardee.” Whether he’s part of the jury or on the stand or just watching the proceedings is unclear.

I stroll along the promenade, reminiscing pleasantly about all the times I’ve spent here. At the base of the Hawthorne Bridge are a number of men in full camo gear, trying to recruit people for the Army Reserve. Four enormous cannons loom beside their table, barrels pointing at the river. I ask one of the soldiers if they’re expecting invaders from Gresham. His eyes stare through me as if I wasn’t there.

I walk beneath the bridge, listening to the sound of the tires on the metal grating overhead. A couple of stages are set up on the other side, and a band is doing its sound check on the smaller of the two. Most of the crowd is made up of families and elderly couples sitting on blankets or camping chairs arranged across the field. Boats bob close to shore; you can see the faces of the people partying on board. The ground is muddy and there is a faint scent of goose droppings in the air.

The band launches into their set, and they sound pretty tight. The lead singer is a broad Black man with a full head of dreadlocks and a pleasant but not powerful voice. The sound system is amazing, and there is a huge screen so those in back can see. The band plays a couple of James Brown numbers, which are fine, followed by a rendition of The Beatles’ Come Together, which is somewhat less fine.

Then they launch into Journey's 1981 classic soft rock power anthem Don’t Stop Believin'.

I text my friend to see what time that block party is, and without waiting for an answer I walk toward the bus stop, slowly at first, then speeding up and breaking into a run.

 

12

 I attend a performance of a monologue by Wallace Shawn called The Fever at a bookstore I used to frequent. I hadn’t been there in a while, mostly because I think the owner is kind of an asshole. The website did not make it clear whether you needed to buy tickets or not, but I decide to just show up and find out. I walk in and no one says anything so I check out the poetry section until a very attractive woman approaches me and asks if I’m there for the performance, and if so, do I have a ticket? I tell herer I am but I don’t, and she looks frustrated and asks me my name, which I can’t see mattering if I don’t have a ticket. Then she asks to see my vaccination card and tells me that most likely not everyone will show up and that I can just take a seat, which I do. Eventually the woman sits right in front of me and crosses her legs, one of which sticks out of the slit in her dress. It is a perfect leg, and it glows against the black fabric like it is floating in space.

The play presents a thorny, scathing indictment of capitalism, delivered by a character struggling coming to come to terms with his complicity in a system of murderous inequality. It’s deeply uncomfortable but, fortunately, also very funny. The actor gives an intense performance I find mesmerizing.

After the show I stop up the street for a beer at a place I used to frequent called Creepy’s. I wasn’t sure they were even still open, but I’m relieved to find that everything inside looked the same. Behind the bar are hundreds of stuffed clowns and dolls, some of which are rigged to move or speak occasionally. The walls are covered with kitschy velvet paintings of clowns and big-eyed puppies and sea captains. It reminds me of Velveteria, a gallery of velvet art which sadly closed years ago.   

As I’m waiting for the bus, an old man I had glimpsed at the play approaches the bus stop. He wears a wide-brimmed hat and it’s only when he’s standing beside me that I recognize that he’s none other than the infamous Walt Curtis, local author and unreformed reprobate. I ask him what he thought of the show. As usual, he doesn’t recognize me, though we’ve been introduced multiple times over the years; we even both participated in a poetry reading at Lone Fir cemetery at the height of the pandemic. I don’t take it personally; Walt is a notorious drunk and blowhard, as well as a very bad writer, but he possesses a mysterious charm that seems to have protected him from getting the shit beat out of him over the years. I have never once seen him sober, though tonight he seems slightly more lucid than usual.

He tells me he enjoyed the play, though he doesn’t think the actor really knew how to properly read Wallace Shawn at all. I don’t agree, but before I can tell him this the bus arrives. I help him lug the gigantic roll on suitcase he’s dragging behind him and he launches into a rambling monologue about the brilliance of Shakespeare and the stupidity of those obsessed with unmasking out who he actually was. “I’ll tell you who he fucking was. He was fucking Shakespeare!” he proclaims. We get off at the same stop, or rather I get off and he follows me.

We stand there for a while and he pontificates further, swaying slightly. He discusses his recent cataract surgery, talks about living with his mother for 45 years. I mention a mutual friend, the one who invited me to the Phillip Glass opera, and he lights up and sings his praises. Without pausing in his accolades, he pulls a bottle a third full of white wine out of his suitcase, shows me the label, then slips it back in. I feel for him; he’s a lonely old drunk whose days of hedonism are long past. I ask if he still writes, and he says, “I’ve written half a million words. I think that might be enough.”  I know he lives on the other side of town, in some sort of boarding house, and I ask if he’ll be able to get home okay. “I’m 81 years old and I’m at the age where if anyone gives me trouble, I’ll just hand it right back to them. I don’t give a fuck anymore.” I tell him I’m more worried that he’ll be the one starting the trouble. He laughs and I leave him there, and duck into the convenience store across the street for a bottle of my own.

 

11

 I plan on going to the Hawthorne Street Fair, even though I don’t really enjoy street fairs all that much unless I have company. I’m already feeling kind of off; I’m on the last day of my five day weekend, and while every one of these days has been pretty great, I feel the dread starting to creep back in.

The bus route is all screwed up because of the fair. While I’m waiting at the bus stop, I get a text from a friend saying he has free tickets to a play that afternoon. The play is a new production of Philip Glass’s retelling of The Fall of the House of Usher. I walk away just as the bus pulls up.

I meet him outside Lincoln Hall, where I’ve been fortunate enough to see many great chamber music concerts over the years. It’s a modest-sized theater and our seats are very good.

            I don’t always love Philip Glass’s music, and I’m pretty ambivalent about Poe, but the show is very good. The director chose to set the opera in Palm Springs in the 60s and Usher is a closeted movie star, kind of a cross between Rock Hudson and Monty Clift. The set looks like a David Hockney painting (strangely, the only other opera I’d seen was the Rake’s Progress, which featured set designs by Hockney. I’d hated it) and features projections of old film clips at certain key points in the story, which is really all mood and atmosphere, with very little actually happening. It’s all really well done, and Glass’s music is warmer and less repetitious than it sometimes is.

            Afterwards we meet my friend’s parents for a quick supper at a brewpub before the three of them dash off to see another show, broadcast live from London. They invite me along but I’ve had enough culture for one day. Besides, everything’s been going so well this weekend, I don’t want to push my luck.

10

 I attend a poetry reading in a tiny community orchard deep in the small intestine of Lents. Lents is one of those neighborhoods that has been up-and-coming for as long as I can remember. The orchard is charming though, tucked down an alley behind a trailer park. I know most of the readers though they’re from a couple of different poetry circles I’ve never seen overlap before. The sun blazes directly overhead and during the more timid readings, which I can’t quite hear, I allow myself to space out and watch the bees bobbing in the dense clumps of oregano. Kids run and yell-whisper to each other between the fruit trees. Off to one side stands a table covered with chapbooks and grapes. I’ve never seen so many damn bees. I can’t keep my eyes off them.

After the reading, I walk with two women I know up 82nd Avenue a ways. While it has gotten tamer than it was, 82nd is still pretty sketchy, lined with unlicensed strip clubs and chop shops and Chinese restaurants that look like they’ve been closed since the sixties. Considering how generic and bland everything in town is becoming, I find the scuzz refreshing. There’s a certain unsavory charm out here, though I find it best not to linger in one place for too long. People sometimes yell things, throw stuff from their car windows. There’s a lot of honking. Best to keep walking.

9

 I take the bus to Seaside, as a kind of bookend to the trip I took there in January. I’d like to stay overnight but room prices are astronomical, partly because it’s peak vacation season and partly because I unwittingly happened to pick the weekend of the Hood to Coast Relay. As the name suggests, the relay starts at Mt. Hood and ends right here, a distance of 200 miles. Huge tents and stages are being set up on the beach, and the town is packed with tourists. I visit the junk shops then wade in the surf for a while before setting to visit the Salt Works.

In early 1806, while the Lewis and Clark expedition rested for the winter nearby, five of the men traipsed out to the coast to make salt for their journey back east. These men built a stone oven with kettles on top to boil away the seawater. No one knows exactly where this happened; the heritage site stands in a spot pointed out by an 85-year-old Clatsop woman in 1900. She said that when she was a girl, her father had pointed to a pile of rocks and told her he had once seen white men boiling water there, years before she was born.

The stone oven standing there now was built in the fifties, using that same pile of rocks, It’s situated a block from the beach, in a residential neighborhood. As historical monuments go, it’s extremely modest. The oven is rounded and open at both ends, like a little tunnel, with five metal pots on top. A low wall topped by an iron fence surrounds it. The whole thing resembles a cemetery plot. Maybe that’s what drives me to visit it: to pay my respects, though I’m not sure to whom or what I’m paying my respects to. Like the sign on the promenade reads, this is the end of the trail. There is no Northwest Passage. Having made their salt, Lewis and Clark packed their things and headed back east. More and more these days, especially as my folks get older, I find myself wondering if I should do the same.

Before I catch the bus back, I stop for an early at a place I had a good meal at during my last visit. The dining room is empty, but I can hear shouts and loud music from the bar in the back. I slide into a booth and order. A couple lumbers in followed by their two large daughters and they all head back to the bar. Ten minutes later they all file out. One of the daughters hollers behind her, “Guess it’s too much to ask for a fucking drink around here! It is supposed to be a bar.”

“They’re not worth it, honey,” says the mother.

“Oh I know they’re not fucking worth it!” the daughter screams. “They won’t stay in business long with fucking service like that!” She slams the door and the glass rattles.

“We’ve been here for twenty five years,” my server says. She disappears and another server comes by and asks me if I’m ready for my check. I tell her I’m still waiting for my food. Her eyes get wide and she runs off without another word.

Twenty minutes pass and though I still have time, I’m getting a little nervous about catching my bus.  Finally my food arrives, brought by yet another server. She seems stoned out of her mind, or maybe just somewhat dim, but she apologizes for the delay and touches my shoulder in a way which I find endearing. There’s an extra hunk of fish hidden beneath the others.

Despite my hunger, I chew slowly and methodically. The stoned server comes back and asks if everything is okay and if I need more lemon, and I tell her everything is great and no I don’t need more lemon. Without being prompted, she starts to tell me about her three kids and how all they want to eat is Go-Gurt. She wonders aloud what mothers did before they invented Go-Gurt. Her oldest is 16 and works at the restaurant on weekends. Her own family moved around a lot when she was a kid, she says; she was an army brat. She’s so sweet and slow or maybe just very high, and I tell her that the fish is utterly delectable, which it is. She tells me they just added fish tacos to the menu and that they’re really good but a little different from how other places make them and that they also serve the best breakfast in town but not many people realize that so it’s never really busy. She keeps touching me on the shoulder in a way that seems calculated to get her a decent tip, and you know what, it does.

 

8

     I haven’t had much time off since the beginning of the summer, so I treat myself to a five day weekend.

    On the first day, my ex takes a day off work and drives us to Short Sand, where a hike through old growth forest ends at a sheltered cove formed by tree-topped cliffs. The place is stunning. Roots of fallen trees snake everywhere, and new trees grow from the trunks. It looks like a fairyland. The weather is perfect and we spend the afternoon basking in the sun with a cooler of snacks. I feel my anxiety eroded by gently lapping waves of contentment. I could stay there all day but she wants to get back early to go to a show with her new boyfriend. On the way home, we listen to Lucia Berlin stories as we speed along between the pines, eventually slowing to a crawl as the traffic coagulates and oozes sluggishly into Portland.

I go to two shows at a tiny venue called Turn! Turn! Turn! that I’m both pleased and surprised to find still in business. The first show features The Space Lady, who I’ve wanted to see for a while. She’s an outsider artist who wears a winged helmet with a blinking red light on top as she sings and plays synthesizer. She’s used to be a street musician in San Francisco and is now in her seventies but still sounds great. She croons a few originals as well as covers such as Ghost Riders in the Sky and Major Tom. She certainly has a shtick, but the shtick is delightful. Her songs are gently mournful, and she fills the room with playful tenderness.

The second show is RLLRBLL, my favorite local band. They were born out of Portland’s legendary DIY scene of the 90s and are somehow, miraculously, still around, writing and performing great music. Their sound has changed more dramatically over the years than any band I know. Maybe this stylistic restlessness is why they never made it big. Or maybe they just never wanted it enough. They’re amazing live, and I try to catch them whenever possible, but because of the pandemic it’s been nearly three years since I’ve seen them. I feel my heart nearly bursting with joy as it once again gets tangled up in their exquisite cacophony.