beautiful, funny, sad & true

My friend B and I are sitting in his gray Mazda pickup truck in the parking lot of my old apartment building in northeast Portland.  The two of us are getting ready to go somewhere.  It’s twilight; the sun has gone down, and the sky is still light, but it’s quickly darkening and a few bright stars are clearly visible.

He turns and looks out the rear window at the bed of his truck, and at the smallish grassy area just beyond the parking lot, on the edge of the hillside.  “I wish those guys wouldn’t do that,” B says.  “I wish they wouldn’t leave their outdoor gas burners on all night.  I’ve talked to them about it before, but they keep doing it.”  I turn and look then.  The back of his truck is completely blackened and burned away, and the tailgate is missing.  He always backs into the parking spot, because the front of the truck is where the engine is, thereby making the front much more important, and it probably won’t run anymore if it gets burned the way the back of the truck is.

“Look,” I say, facing to our left and pointing in the direction of downtown.  “Look at all the buildings that are on fire.”

“You’ve never said that before,” he says.

“I know,” I say, nonchalantly.  “I thought maybe I had, but then I realized I hadn’t.”  We look at the burning buildings, multiple blocks apart from each other, from downtown clear out to my neighborhood, all burning in the same way.  I point out the buildings and count them.  “How many are there?  Let’s see. . .three. . .four. . .five. . .six?  It looks like they’re all along Broadway [Street].”

Suddenly I notice some flames flickering at the tops of the bamboo trees next to the parking lot, and the little sandwich board sign advertising ‘apartment for rent’ is burning too.  “Look at that!” I say.  “It’s getting closer now.  We should tell somebody about this.”

We sit in silence and watch the flames for an incredibly uncomfortable amount of time.

* * * * *

My alarm clock went off just then, and I almost had a heart attack.

While writing this, I was struck by the way we decided, ‘We should tell somebody about this,’ and then just sat and watched for such a long time.  It had an almost Waiting-For-Godot aspect about it; in fact the entire dream sorta did.

VLADIMIR:  We can still part, if you think it would be better.

ESTRAGON:   It’s not worthwhile now.
Silence.

VLADIMIR:   No, it’s not worthwhile now.
Silence.

ESTRAGON:   Well, shall we go?

VLADIMIR:   Yes, let’s go.
They do not move.

Tonight was supposed to be a rehearsal for my gig tomorrow, but the rehearsal got cancelled.  So naturally, instead of sitting at home doing the things I should be doing – such as laundry – I looked for something fun to do, and tonight it was the Blue Cranes.

I called and texted and e-mailed, trying to get some friends to come to the show, but the overall concensus was that it was too short notice, so I ended up going by myself.  I did see some musician friends there, however, which I had a feeling might be the case.

My friend Keith is the bass player in this very swanky and melodic jazz group.  I’ve seen them before, but tonight was the release party for their new album (at one of my favorite venues), so I had no choice but to go.  And yes, I bought a CD.

Super good times.

You’ll also be interested to know that I checked in on yesterday’s fire twice today – once on my lunch break and once on the way home from work – and both times, there was still smoke coming up from the basement of the building.  I didn’t get a chance to watch the news, but I do know that at 5:30 this evening, the site was still smoking noticeably, and there were plenty of fire trucks and camera crews on the scene.

But right now, it’s time to chill out and listen to my new Blue Cranes CD.

Northeast Broadway in Portland was quite the happening place today.

When I came home for lunch–I live off Broadway, in the Irvington neighborhood–I stopped at the grocery store on 30th and Broadway first. As I was leaving, there were police cars blocking off Broadway, because a car had driven up onto the median and ripped out its transmission, sending pieces of metal skittering out all over the roadway.

At about 4:30 this afternoon, the old Albina Fuel building caught fire, and it’s still burning strongly as I’m writing this. I drive not too far from there on my way home from work, so I decided to take a smallish detour to hopefully get a closer look, or possibly even a picture – yes, I was one of THOSE people today – but the road was closed off, and all of the drivers were being diverted into the surrounding neighborhoods. The black smoke and occasional flames were clearly visible, even from many blocks away. There isn’t much wind, luckily, so the firefighters are already starting to get the fire under control.

Tonight I’m going to see a documentary about the closing of a famous record store in Northwest Portland, which has been a neighborhood mainstay for thirty years. It’s going to be a bit surreal, because the filmmaker is a woman I actually kinda know. I came across her profile on MySpace, on a page dedicated to a recent Japanese movie that I really enjoyed. “Wow,” I wrote to her, “we have enough in common that it seems like we’d make really great friends, at the very least. Take a look and see what you think.” So we met for coffee, and talked for over three hours. We went for a walk up and down Northwest 23rd, and even went to that record store for a while, before we had any idea that it was going to be closing its doors. We had a really great time, but I haven’t seen her since. Which is kinda weird, and I don’t have a good answer for why we aren’t closer than we are. I thought for sure that we would be. Just another instance, I suppose, to illustrate that sometimes things don’t work out in quite the way you think they’re going to. She’s tried to come to some of the things I’ve been involved with, and I’ve tried to come to some of the things that she’s involved with, but we both have fairly crazy schedules, so it hasn’t happened yet. Tonight may very well be the first time that we run into each other.

Weird.

Should be cool, though.

I gotta go. Sort of nowish.

This morning, I had a short–but interesting–dream. I always set my clock for 6:45 (too early) every day, and then hit the snooze button three or four times, until it’s 7:20 or so (too late). During one of those snooze sessions is when this dream happened.

* * * * * * *

I’m in my room at my childhood home on 55th Avenue in Yakima. It’s the middle of the night, and I’m in bed. The curtains are open, and the moon is shining brightly into the room. It’s bright enough that I actually think, ‘I bet I could probably read in bed if I wanted to.’ I reach for a book on my bedside table, when suddenly I see a bright orange flash coming from the end of the street. One of the houses at the Summitview end [that's a street in Yakima] of the street has just exploded into a thirty-foot wall of fire.

A fire truck races by with all its lights flashing, but the engine is silent. I get up and walk to the window to look, when suddenly about eight or ten pieces of flaming debris start to land in our yard, and on our house. The house up the street explodes a second time, with an even larger wall of fire. I run to wake up my mom and my brother, and then I see that in our front yard, there are lots of small fires burning.

I pull on a pair of jeans and quickly try to decide which of my instruments to take out to my car. I decide on the cello, the accordion and my ancient white Guild electric guitar. Interesting that the instruments were all the ones that I have now, and that the car was the red Honda that I have now.

* * * * *

That’s the point at which I woke up, one minute before the next snooze alarm went off.

Also interesting that today is the day I’m going to visit my dad. Hunh. I’m sure that fact and this dream don’t have the merest possibility of a hint at a suggestion of a connection.

Maybe it’s not that at all. Maybe I’m like the main character in the book The Lathe of Heaven, whose dreams change the real world–and he’s the only one who remembers the way things were before he dreamed the changes–and that maybe I’m nocturnally bound and determined to destroy Yakima once and for all, via my dreams.