When I was a child I barked like a child
I bit like child
I have put away childish things
Except the squeky ball and chew rope
That was a desktop orphan, I probably thought it was funny at the time, now it’s just too silly and sad to delete. I’m surrounded by that sort of thing, years ago I went on a few year rail about the lost things. Now I look a bit like a horder. It doesn’t count.
I saw someone flick a cigerrette from a car window the other day. A strange and a familiar sight. You’ve never heard of forest fires in mid Michigan. It’s not from lack of forest. When I think of lost things I think of things under the bridges in Portland; not rubbish. Things carried for a ways or a time and left behind.
We have lost thing people too, I don’t know, I do. I’ve never had many casual relationships, perhaps that’s the joy of online journaling for me. Wait, that could be easily mistaken. I’ve had plenty of acquaintances, I mean with friends and lovers it’s never casual for me. But, too, when the course is run, I lay them beneath a metaphorical bridge with the lost things.
I told this story years ago and told it as a funny one. I mean it happened years ago and I wrote about it on OD. Sunny and I were taking a few days on the Oregon coast, we stopped into a popular coastal breakfast. From Suunys perspective she was following the hostess to the table, reached back for my hand and didn’t find it. She turned to see me being enveloped by a huge parka being worn by a giant black man. I think I told that part better before.
I introduced Sunny to Willy and he introduced me to whatever low-hanging fruit was with him. And in the minute we had before the crowd moved us along, Willy told me of the death of one of my friends and the poor health, near death of two others, and the disappearance of another. These weren’t just friends, they were my partners when I was in Juvenile corrections, the only people I ever needed to count on to have my back. That’s not a casual phrase. Willy was with the county and had stayed with the county when we all went to the other side of CSD. I saw him often at the court house. .
Sunny was giddy over the idea her husband got hugged by big black men in a part of Oregon where there aren’t many, and prattled on happily through breakfast. We paid, got two large coffees for the road and headed back to town. Me, I’m still processing it. The dead one, at the time, was a guy who kept in touch with me when we were broken up. He thinks I got him a better gig in the office I was sent too, truth is he got it on his own merit, they asked me about him, I said good things. Truth is I would have lied if I had too. They were all very close and I left them under a bridge with the lost things.
I guess people have done that to me too, I just don’t think about it that way. For all the different hats I’ve worn, my POV has always been autonomous. For better or worse that’s how I see it. My folks were having a hard time for a few years before I came out here. What got to me at last was the fear of them losing their autonomy. I kept my demented father in his home of sixty years a few months past his expiration date because of the value I place on autonomy. I’m not sure if it was ever a shared value, by the time he had to go into the dementia ward it was a meaningless idea to him.
It snowed most of the morning, then ice, freezing rain and now, I think, rain. Days become lost things. This journal is a bridge of types. I know, it’s more common to use bridge as an analogy for linking disparate halves, people, nations, river banks. When photographers with a good eye take pictures of bridges it’s for the architectural beauty, symmetry, geometry. I think of lost things.
There was this American poet grouped in with the merry expatriates in the roaring twenties by the name of Hart Crane. I assume he wrote more than one poem, though I’ve only heard of the one. It was about the Brooklyn Bridge. If I ever read it it must not struck me as memorable. I’m thinking I haven’t read it.
I wrote this poem about my sons birth and had sent my folks a copy. My mom sent it to the MSU literary magazine, I want to say it was called the Red Cedar Review. They published it. The editor put little tag lines in the table of contents. Mine was Perhaps the next great Crane? My dad was sure they were referring to him. I think they meant Hart Crane, Hart being a nickname for the exact same name as mine, except I use a different nickname myself. Not that anybody cares, my dad was better known and better received here than, I’m sure, hart crane ever was, perhaps I give the editor too much credit, but I think he was referring to Hart Crane. For what it’s worth Hart probably didn’t read that poem. He was probably dead by then.
I’d be shocked if The Bridge was about lost things under the bridge. Usually when they use a shot of the Brooklyn bridge in a movie they are on the shitty bank pointed towards the city. For some unknown reason to me when they shoot the Santa Monica pier, which they do often in movies, Santa Monica and Giffith park, tourists must wonder where all the shit in between came from, um, shit. For some reason they usually shoot the pier from the north or, you know, if it’s part of the movie, and it often is, they shoot from the entrance to the east (there’s an ocean to the west, um, once you’re on the pier there’s an ocean to the north and south too).
If you stand on a bridge going into downtown Portland and look up or down the river, you see bridges. I had told myself when I left I had made my mind up to not live in Oregon again. It made it easier to leave. I also think it might be true. I left the entire west coast under the burnside bridge, by now someone is sure to have picked it up.
I was watching some movie and thinking about something else, it started with There are two kinds of people … There are not two kinds of people. If you ever find yourself wanting to write or say that, try thinking hard about what you really want to say. The movie was trying to make sentimental statements about sunsets. You have two hours to tell a story, it’s a common shortcut. Boy kisses girl at, say, sunset, and later when there is conflict the camera shows a sunset or some such shit.
People have millions of reasons for living where they live, but playing with idea of autonomy and actually choosing an Oceanside life, on some level some people are sunrise people and some are sunset people. Once when I was kid and staying on Mackinac Island I woke before the sunrise and rode to the eastern end of the Island to watch the sunrise, and that evening I rode to the western end. Only bikes and horses, no machine driven vehicles on the Island. I did that years later when I had hitched down to the Florida keys.
I have more nostalgia for sunsets because I am homesick for the West.
I miss my GF. We’ve been separated by not feeling well. I won’t speak for her, my back has been in spasm, which wouldn’t be worth mentioning if it weren’t for the disk. Getting around the past week has been by force of will. I’ve never had a girl friend for this long without sharing an address. Again, that’s just how I do things, for better or worse. I’m going to try hard not to go on a qualifying binge. I always write my opinion from my point of view and usually only qualify for clarity.
Like most everyone I am the hero of my own tales, or anti-hero sometimes, but, with all due humility, it should be noted even the opinions I hold near and dear or hold as core values, are opinions, and I am well aware of how fail able I am and how my opinions differ and are similar to yours. I just have this feeling lately that I come across as very judgmental. Wait, no, I don’t care how I come across, I just don’t want anyone to feel judged harshly by me. Um, it’s ok if you prefer sunrises. Sunrises are nice. We both know too that the sun doesn’t rise or set, it pretty much stays put, we turn around, and the sun still rises when you are in the west and it still sets when you are in the east, um, for something that neither rises or sets. We have a longer than two hours to tell our tales, but the reason the movie sunset works is that people are already prone to take those sort of shortcuts in their own personal narratives.
It’d suck if someone’s judgment of your narrative fucked up one single sunrise. I’ll confess to wanting to fuck up some peoples narratives during the course of my life. I’ll even confess to having succeeded, and it’s possible I’ve inadvertently done it too, but I sure don’t want to … randomly piss on your lost things. Wow, horrible, just horrible, but, that is what happens under the bridge. Not with malice, but the pee has to go somewhere. You’d think with all the wind that passes under bridges in New York and Portland both that the strong scent of urine would be swept away. Keep that illusion if you don’t need to go to New York or Portland. I find it impossible to escape the smell of Pee anywhere in NYC, in Portland it stays under the bridges, mostly. It’s not really all that offensive except the sharp tangy note of ammonia.
Stupid as it sounds (I’m not done typing yet, so I ramble) I kind of like the smell of horseshit and cow shit. Portland had a mounted police unit, I don’t know if they still do. When a mounted cop patrolled Saturday market the smell of horseshit took the sting out of the ammonia smell of piss. Of course during market so did the smell of elephant ears and kabobs and curry and hot sauce.
Yeah, I don’t know what all I just typed. One day I’ll wander back through. Perhaps in my dotage I’ll wonder if they didn’t have spell check way back in 2016. Editing is so easy makes you wonder if I’m just being a dick by refusing to edit.
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