Portland: #1 Best Smelling City in the North West

Roll on Columbia!!
I wander the streets of Portland. Half drunk on cheep champagne, found chilling in our hotel room, addressed to one Mr. Woolsey. My companion has a poor sense of direction. we navigate by smell, the scent of each street corner floods my limbic system with the vapors of recent memories. Sandalwood, the Hotel Monaco and its oriental rugs. We run through the labyrinth of Powells books. The aisle, the shelves, the pages. In the Purple room, and elderly gentleman overhears us talking. It is Carolyn's birthday, the stranger serenades her. Donut zombies, mill around Voodoo. Barbara wants tapas and Allen knows of a Peruvian place on NW Gilsan. We, the young ladies, sip our canary yellow Inca Cola, Peru's official national soft drink. It is flat and it tastes like Bazooka bubblegum. We are children lost in a gray city. On Nob hill we explore the boutiques, hat shops, curiosity shops, and galleries. In Cannibals I discover the dioramas. Miniature studio apartments arranged in the taxidermied heads of deer. Dark cherry wood furniture and a small window that overlook a bloodsplattered Mr. Potatohead. Portland simulates every sense. It leaves my neck sore and my eyelids heavy. On the drive back we count the MacDonald's. 14. There is so much to remember, as the Columbia rushes bellow us. So much to look forward to at home: the aroma of pulp mills, and low tide, our own gray city.

Head First

I am not a Vegetarian, but I do eat fish. People are sometimes confused by this. It is not uncommon to hear a person of the Vegetarian persuasion say that they wont eat anything with a face. I however, prefer food with faces. If I had my way I would just eat the face. Recently I had an unpleasant encounter with a large Sockeye salmon. This particular salmon was faceless and its lifeless body flipped and flopped as I carried it to the auxiliary freezer.
I have heard of sushi restaurants that serve live shrimp. The shrimp are stripped of their shells and it is the duty of patron to bite off the shrimp's head and kill it. This is the most noble way to eat an animal. To kill it with your own jaws. To acknowledge that this creature has given its life for your benefit. If I were a shrimp, that's how I'd want to go.

Midnight Peaches

Methinks it absurd that you businessmen and Beefeaters waste your night hours swaddled in sheets and blankies. Sleeping is for willows and I have no cat to nap with. For what is a pillow but a footrest rest for your head. A bed is but a coffin for the sleeping. What do I do when the sun goes to Tokyo? I spend my night hours with the Bob Cats and the fluffy foxes. A-HUNTIN'! Through yonder window I descend and make my way down the leaf covered footpaths of my suburban neighborhood.
It was by day that I first caught sight of my quarry, while pursuing the distant chimes of the Good Humor Man. Tripping over the golden orbs, which in my haste I mistook for sun-bleached tennis ball. Now, in night-dark, it is not the fuzzy skin of tennis balls to which I sink my sharpest mouth-teeth. No, the foxes have deceived you. Illuminated by the distant glow of lamp-light, I stand by the feet of a solitary tree, and devour the soft and dripping flesh of Midnight Peaches, Midnight Peaches.
Abloom through the last warm weeks of the summer. The lone tree bore its fruit in the depths of misty valleys and the shadows of pine boughs. I have been drawn from my bed; like a bee to nectar. I eat and eat and eat Midnight Peaches. They taste like moonlight, and loneliness, and peaches. Weeping, the sweet juices drip down my chin and stain my night shirt. By dawn, the foxes and I are buried alive in our beds. Bob Cats and Japanese children rub their tired eyes. But I never sleep. I wants me some Midnight Peaches.

Innovation

They make Snuggies for dogs now. Finally, your pup can use the remote or sip a hot beverage while still remaining warm and cozy. No more chilly paws! Think of how different the world would be if this had been invented 20 years earlier. The advancements. I probably would have come up with the idea for those wedges that you put between your toes when you paint them, if I had been born a few years earlier. I had a really vivid dream about them the other day. Maybe I'd make some dog ones. I don't know.

Aeroship Over the Sea

As of 2:37 pm Pacific standard time, I, Gabigail P. Littlefoote, do solemnly swear to devote my life to the furtherment of dirigibles, zeppelins, hot air balloons, and lighter-than-air-crafts of all kinds. I know this is a formidable undertaking and I am prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to see my dream, and the dreams of my esteemed colleagues, come to fruition. To live in a world where personal lighter-than-air-crafts in every American home is a reality. To live in a world where the Stratosphere is the limit.

Sweet William and Fiair Margret

William died in the night. We cremated him on a parakeet sized funeral pyre, sprinkled his remains on the living room carpet, and vacuumed them up.

Sweet William, He dreamed a dream, and he said
I know they mean no good;
for I dreamed my bower was full of red swine
and my bride-bed full of blood

Peg left us in a bit of a pickle. We would have gladly released her body into the Ganges, had time allowed, we had no choice but to flush her down the toilet. Her scales glistened with a radiance that she had never shown in life. The water gurgled and babbled and swirled with a gaiety that I found completely inappropriate for a dirge.

Day passed away and night came on
most of the men were asleep
then he espied Lady Margret's ghost
A-standing at his bed feet

Air Raid

Do you remember how in a state of paranoia I accused a 747 of spying on us. And you said it would be ironic if a commercial jet were dispatched to catch two teenagers smoking in their backyard. and I envisioned 366 pair of binoculars peering out of the oval windows of the aeroplane. Waiting to bust us. This image reminded me of a reoccurring dream that I have. In said dream, I find a dirigible in Wright Park and the members of my American history 148 class sing on the hillside. "Bridges and Balloons" by Johanna Newsom. And my airship ascends higher and higher and i wave to the people in park who have turned into collections of individual points of color like the Seurat painting. However, looking back, your observation wasn't very astute. It would not be ironic if we were spotted from the air. from the air we'd look like smears.

Attila's Requiem


When Andrew had his tonsil removed

The doctors let him eat as much orange sherbet as he wanted

so he wouldn’t cough up blood.

Mom says you went to the Hamster Hospital

even though hamsters don’t have tonsils and don’t eat orange sherbet
When I got back from camp
 you were gone

Nothing but pellets of poo littering the cage

When I left, the cedar chips were clean
smelling fresh and sharp
 with you, nuzzled in the toilet paper tube

napping?

you didn’t stir when I said goodbye
You’ve always been ungrateful

Rolling your pink hamster ball away from me

Tease!!! 
Stupid too!

So you figured out how to climb out of your cage!?

A raccoon could do that! Even a rabid one!

Only a foolish hamster would eat 8 birthday candles

but what can you expect from an animal that eats its own poo

Gluttony is a sin, Attila, 
they don’t want your kind in hamster heaven
I’ve moved on

did you expect me to wait for you?

she is lilly white, warm
her velvety ears flop over her good eye

I don’t want another hamster, Attila!
Marcus says you died cause’
I didn’t love you

was too scared to hold you

I couldn’t if I wanted

Allergies
(it wasn’t pink eye, like I told you that one time)

If you came back now
I would hold you until my eyes crusted over

until my nose dripped, like your neglected water bottle

until my lungs filled with love

When I got back from camp 
you were gone

along with a tin of Altoids, 2 pennies, half a pencil, a bottle of White Out, 

and 8 birthday candles

You have left me with nothing

nothing but a blind white rabbit, 16 birthday candles
 and an empty hamster cage


I am not mad that you ate the candles

I bought them for you

8 months old 
you were always so smart

Do they have orange sherbet in hamster heaven?

I bet you could eat it
 if you really wanted to

I don’t want another hamster, Atilla

Better Than Ranch

Kelly,

Why did you lock the back door yesterday afternoon? I assume you were taking a nap. I let myself in through the basement (you really should lock that door, anyone could get in!). The usual fried egg sandwiches were prepared, followed by 45 minutes of Groundhog's Day. After dusting the ceiling fans, I proceeded to take a quick nap (don't worry I remade your mother's bed). Finally I caught the 16 back to school, but not before grabbing a small container of your dill butter-milk dipping sauce. There was nothing to dip in it so I borrowed a handful of baby-carrots from Rosemary.

Ps. I may have left the kitchen window open. The room was developing a strange musk.