Now, Portland is known for its toilets.

Upon arriving from San Francisco at the PDX airport (the place actually called PDX in an official way), I was delighted to find a rare bathroom fixture:  toilets that flush differently for numbers 1 and 2.

Yes, kid you not.  The evidence:

In the midst of a rather hectic time, after getting myself to the Oakland airport at 4:30 a.m. and then flying/stumbling into PDX, I felt it necessary to take this photograph.  When a sign affixed to the wall of each stall says “UP for #1, DOWN for #2,” innovation must be captured.

These dual-flush toilets — if people follow the directions — use less water for liquid waste, more for solid.  Granted, this different-direction flushing proves a bit difficult to maneuver early in the morning after a flight and using one’s foot, but the very sight of this opportunity almost brought sentimental Portland tears to my eyes.  Which tears I then had to wipe away in order to read the sign:

By installing this water-saving handle with dual-function flush, this facility has demonstrated its commitment to protect and preserve the environment.  For the system to work, we need your help.  Please take a look at the diagram above and push the handle in the direction which best suits your needs.  With your assistance, we can do our part to conserve this precious resource.

So:  how many people will Do The Right Flush?

Debatable.  There are certainly those who argue this initiative will not in fact prove very water-saving, because — as with many initiatives — success hinges on human behavior.

Still, the fact of it shows a lot about the place.  As people often have to go before or after a flight, a project such as this at the city’s airport bathroom provides passengers with a departing reminder, or first introduction, to the magic that is Portland.

In the City of Roses, sometimes you’ve just gotta stop and smell the toilets.

Well, luckily or perhaps unluckily for some, I am not really one of those people.  I feel much better, much more comfortable, saying sex; dead; We failed.  And so what has been making me uncomfortable, what has actually increased my feelings of squirm, is finding myself using euphemisms.

In particular, about being jobless.

Somehow, I have little trouble with “My dad died.”  Don’t get me wrong:  it is not a fun thing to say.  But I guess, in the spirit of my father himself, it feels disingenuous to say even “passed away.”  The prevailing notion, I suppose, being Tell it like it is.  So it seems shocking that, when it comes to my lack of employment — something far less sad, large, permanent — I can’t bring myself to state it clearly.  Not, anyway, in New York.

At every party, when the conversation turns to Career — and here, it always does — not only do I find myself beating around the bush — something I’m not wont to do — but touting one particular aspect of life in PDX.

“I’m just focusing on writing for now,” I would say at a party in Portland.  “Still settling in, taking a break from regular work for a few months, and starting to volunteer at this community-based acupuncture place.”  To which almost every single person in Portland would say “Great!” or Wow!” or “Tell me more!”  Followed, more often than not, by a story quite similar to mine.

It’s a very low-stress conversation, perhaps in part because of the understanding that Portland boasts no jobs to be had in the first place (see:  NY Times every two to three weeks), but also, to a large extent, because the culture is simply not one of career judgment.  People don’t feel that you “are” your job, or they theirs.  There is not the assumption that you “aren’t making it” if you’re not on some easily discernible career trajectory doing big impressive things.  People’s positive reactions to writing and volunteering (and — let’s be honest — sleeping in) are real.

But.  New York.

In New York, I do not readily say “taking a break.”  I do not breezily mention all this and expect an exclamatory reply, replete not only with words of support but a similar story as well.  I do not assume that my explanation of “what I do” is going to excite anyone, but rather leave them looking askance.  In truth, I’ve begun to dread the topic entirely.

Now, how much of of this is my own insecure projection, you might say.  Don’t we all tend to feel more scrutinized than we are?  Am I arriving at parties like that teenager who has one red pimple on his chin but is convinced that every single person will focus on that and nothing else?

Well, yes and no.  It’s true that people tend to worry about that blemish, even if nobody else is taking note.  (You don’t even have to be thirteen.)  But it’s also true that New Yorkers are taking note:  that there are, without question, people who stand next to you at a party and measure themselves against you and wonder about your career and how much your rent might cost or whether you own by now? and how many fellowships you’ve received and to which countries in Africa you’ve traveled and how much you’ve thought about your 401(k) or your 403(b) and whether you use your Master’s or it was for show.

And and and.  Ask you about Your Job.  It’s as if we’ve all been trained that this is the necessary and proper first step to any conversation in just about any social setting.

Well, in other places, it’s not.

In Portland, people might ask what you do but not even mean the thing for money; regardless, they certainly don’t mean to intimidate you.  If we were to conduct a survey, the majority of Portland conversations probably wouldn’t even enter the And what do you do?? phase for a while.  In the same vein, people never beat around the bush.  They will be very smart and very talented and one hundred percent unashamed of saying they bartend three nights a week and make music on Wednesdays, or work at a diner even though they have a Ph.D.  If and when the conversation reaches that point, the only stress I’ve perceived is when people are hard up for cash, when you can tell they’re worried not about how they’ll be judged but whether or not they can afford Thai food and a new drum set.  But nobody seems worried about what their job situation sounds like to others.

In New York, while tripping over my answer to someone’s income-related demand, I sound worried, maybe even defensive.  But lately, I’ve also started explaining:  If we were in Portland, we’d be talking about something else.

Sure, Fifth Avenue boasts the Met, the Park.  But farther east we’ve got the Intrepid Running Tranny,  and of that I am proud.

After years of going up and down Second Ave, his butt-cheek-showing, speedy running habit has rendered him a fixture — a mascot, if I may.  As he dashed by tonight, we sat outside our favorite Chinese place savoring brown sauce and greens.  Always fast, never sporting shorts, usually sporting sweaty eyeliner and a small black ponytail, the only difference this time was his lack of string stockings.  This is what my mother noticed.

“His cheeks are really flapping,” she said, as we watched his rear race toward 80th.  Not that fishnets are ever concealing, of course, but I suppose they can hold you in.

“. . .and we were just talking about him this afternoon,” said the woman at the next table over.  Her boyfriend nodded, reached for the General Tso’s.  I felt a bit of unexpected cameraderie — a sentiment I don’t tend to feel toward Upper East Siders on a typical Saturday night.

A few years ago we were dining at another local spot, a burrito joint with outdoor seating, decent guac.  Next to us was a bunch of friends, digging into black beans and chicken and watching passersby.  When our beloved I.R.T. shot past, my parents and I barely flinched.  He was wearing fishnets, after all; nothing seemed out of place.  The next table, however, erupted.

“Whaaatttttttt?!?!” approximates the reaction of one man.  “Was that a group hallucination?!?” said his wide-eyed pal.

In true you-must-not-be-from-these-parts style, I turned to coolly explain.  “Nah,” I said.  “He always wears that.”

The men went back to their Mexican food, chuckling but visibly shaken.  To some of us, anyhow, the Intrepid Running Tranny merely signals that we’re home.

And it is strange to begin settling into a place only to be whisked out of it; and it is strange to return to an old home in a new iteration, parent missing.

But writing is cathartic.  Even — or especially – when difficult.

And while Portland is far away for some yet-to-be-decided period of time, it seems a good opportunity, if not a happy one, to consider a few things.  And, even, to muster some snark, that old dependable friend.

First thing:  home.  How we come to feel at home in a place, be it a city, a building, a box.  How we measure, if we can measure, what it takes to feel that transition.  Simply put, how we know when a home’s become Home.

But before all that thinky stuff.  Here is what Portland looked like, all a-bloom, three weeks ago:

Some damn fine flowers, no?

It was the bright sight of them that was starting to make Portland feel welcoming.  Maybe that’s odd.  In a place known for its capital c Community, is it a bit strange that what I at least felt made the place more familiar was simply its flora-filled streets?  Is it possible that, regardless of people, all I needed was to see some cheery plant life to think that this town could “feel like home”?

Maybe I’m oversimplifying.  But speaking of Community, let me skip ahead, admit something.  I was surprised to come home — to New York City, that is — to a huge building filled with warmth.  That’s right, naysayers, I’m fessing up:  I’ve never quite felt that this big apartment building of little living spaces was all that friendly or warm.  It’s true, what everyone likes to point out:  you can live next door to someone and not even know her name.

Then again, one set of next door neighbors not only had names but gave me presents for major holidays, for years.  Really nice presents, often handcrafted.  Right this minute, these very neighbors are only a few feet to my right, past a not-so-thick wall of concrete.  A few feet to my left, in an old jewelry box, are some of the old bracelets made specially for my neighborly, ten-year-old wrist.

Still, it always seemed that, despite the occasional above-and-beyond resident, a stack of hundreds of people was little more than that.  Sure, I always found this setup warmer, and certainly more conducive to interaction than — you guessed it — the ‘burbs.  But once we moved from a tiny tenement to a big-tall-thing, the interactions felt more superficial.  For the most part, anyhow.

So I have been pleasantly surprised — truly pleasantly, and truly surprised — to find that everyone in this building has been exceedingly warm, kind.

My dad’s favorite doorman came to the funeral, as did five or six neighbors.  Neighbors whom we’ve known but not really Known over the years have called up with homemade soup, tear-jerk cards.  Even — and this is a funny one — the latest NY Times piece on Portland’s unemployment.  (Hope I remember correctly that you live there, read the note.)

Funny, that these neighbors have proved far more neighborly than even I — a New York yeasayer — would have thought.  And funny that, amidst a dazzle of New York support, it’s the flowers in Portland, more than community, that stand out from the other coast.

But as we meet each other from opposite sides, the guy on the left stops abruptly.  Smack in the middle of the crosswalk he stops talking to his friend, turns to me, and says: “Come on, I mean, you have to!”

Have to. . .what? I ask.  It goes without saying that I have NO idea what he’s talking about.

“High five!” he says.  Lifts his hand.  Looks at me pleadingly; waits.

When I ask what the occasion is for this mid-street high five he says, alarmed: “Because I’ll never see you again!”

I dunno, Portland’s pretty small, I tell him.  We’ll probably see each other again.  I mean, probably in a week, at some party or other.

“But who knows?” he says.  “Just in case!”

So I give him a half-assed five.  And then he goes right back to chatting with his pal, as if he hadn’t ever stopped.  And especially as if he hadn’t interrupted his own conversation to bizarrely interact with a stranger.

Now, I suppose this was a very Portland moment.  A “moment,” if you will.  Charming even! you might say.  (Or creepy.  It depends.)

But!  In this age of the Information Superhighway, who’s to say he wasn’t just tryin’ to get blogged??

“So are you a convert?” I asked.  Had he moved west and never looked back?

“Oh yes,” he told me.  “New York City is so. . . crowded. . . and dirty. . . and loud!”

I kinda like my cities crowded and dirty, I told him.  But the pace and serenity of a town like p.d.x. was the only suitable option for F.N.P., he said.

In that case, I told him, Don’t go to Istanbul.

Istanbul reminded me of all the reasons people like F.N.P. move to Portland — but also of all the reasons Portland can, in my mind, be a bit lacking sometimes.  Some neighborhoods in Istanbul were so crowded that even I — an intrepid New Yorker, a person happy amidst throngs of others! — wasn’t always thrilled.  Friends would get lost amidst all the hubbub and not resurface till twenty minutes later.  Elbows became things not to have, but to wield.  Certain streets felt — dare I say it — hectic.

Crowds in the day.

Crowds in the night.

But then, other streets were still lively without being overwhelming.  They were perhaps not as slow as Portland’s, but they were relatively peaceful.

Of course, there might be no fair way to compare these places.  They are two very different kinds of small round fruits, I know.  But one thing Istanbul boasts that Portland simply cannot is that scrambled feeling — the aforementioned people-thrown-together whir.  You can feel it in Istanbul even when ambling down the quietest of streets — or lounging on cushions and carpets overlooking the Bosphorus.

Carpets by the sea.

And, especially if you dig that feeling, it throws the homogeny of a place like Portland into sharp relief.

Now, my two cents about the overwhelming whiteness of Portland have already been logged; that’s not what I mean here.  It’s just that some cities are, for lack of a better term, action-packed.  There are enough types of people, types of struggles, types of transactions and just types of Things, that watching can be an enthralling, all-consuming practice.  And then there are places like p.d.x.  Don’t get me wrong, I support people-watching everywhere and anywhere! — but there’s just not that buzz in the air.

Still, coming back to Portland in springtime:  definitely not a bad thing.  Everything is budding, blooming, brightening.  But the price I pay for F.N.P.’s clean+quiet city?  An accompanying lack of whir.

After a recent discussion with director Ramin Bahrani about New York, A.O. Scott writes that the filmmaker was “amazed by the complexity and energy of the city, the way it scrambled all different types of people together and forced them to deal with one another.”  Scott tells us that the comment refers less to the “demographic particulars” of the city and more to the “hectic, patchwork ambience of work and idleness, affluence and hardship.”

Bahrani, whose works include “Man Push Cart,” also compares New York’s scrambledness to that of Tehran.  Both cities, he feels, boast a kind of energy, an overwhelming jumble of human interaction that he loves, and tries to capture in his films.

Reading Scott’s article on “Neo Neo Realism,” it’s pretty clear that neither filmmaker nor critic brought up Portland, Oregon.  Call it a hunch, but I doubt it entered the conversation.

Portland simply doesn’t feel scrambled.  Sure, in any city people are forced to deal with one another more than, say, in the quintessential manicured suburb, where each family sits in its house bubble, which sits in its cul-de-sac bubble, which is sometimes traveled to and from in a gas-powered car bubble.  The quintessential (or stereotypical? though I’ve sure seen it in plenty of places) suburb does not require one to interact much with others, to smush alongside them on buses, on trains.

So compared with this, Portland looks like more of a “patchwork,” and certainly more of a “hectic patchwork,” than the suburbs on most days.  But the idea of a “scrambled” city, which seems an apt description of New York and is, I assume, also apt for Tehran, doesn’t really work for p.d.x.

It’s not that Portland doesn’t have any variety within its population, and it’s certainly not that everyone is rich.  (See “The Economy Has Gone to Hell” in any major newspaper — those still in the black, that is.)  But Portland is just not all a-jumble.  People are not “forced” to deal with one another in the ways they are in New York, Tehran, and — now that I’ve been here a few days — Istanbul.  Perhaps this is why p.d.x. is known as such a relaxing town — and, why I keep catching myself calling it a “town.”  Yes, I may be a jerk to some – certainly, I’ve inadvertently elicited the “Hey!  We’re a city too!” reaction from a few Portlanders.  But the ease with which Portland moves, the calmness with which people interact, and the fact that there is, in fact, a relatively homogeneous population as compared to other cities, renders Portland a different kind of place.

If A.O. Scott categorizes certain New York- and Tehran-infused films as “Neo Neo Realist,” does it follow that Portland, an idyllic bubble in comparison, isn’t exactly real?

Well, for now:  if New York, Tehran, and Istanbul are scrambled, p.d.x. is sunny side up.

Tune in next time for more on Istanbul!  It’s feeling pretty scrambly — and I’m feeling right at home.

Cisneros's home.

In 1997 Sandra Cisneros, known best for The House on Mango Street, decided to paint her San Antonio house periwinkle.  She chose the color from the Tejano palette — something with which she was familiar, and which represented a connection to her roots.

The community threw a fit.  Her new neighborhood was of the Tasteful Historic variety; periwinkle was not on the list of “approved” historic colors.  As Cisneros wrote in an appeal to others to substantiate her claim that purple was indeed “historic” for the Tejano inhabitants of yore:

“My life is such a telenovela! One day I painted my house tejano colors; the next day, my house is in all the news, cars swarming by, families having their photos taken in front of my purple casita as if it were the Alamo. The neighbors put up an iced-tea stand and made 10 dollars!”

Opportunistic tea-sellers aside, Cisneros had to duke it out with the local Powers That Be.  It was a battle, but ultimately she won the right to maintain her chosen hue.

This story, which I learned through an interview with the author about a decade ago, sprang to mind the other day on a walk past some of Portland’s more brightly-colored homes.  Remembering that it’s not everywhere one may choose any hue for one’s house, I further appreciated the fact that PDX is bright.

Sure, one could interpret the high concentration as a sort of “Look!  We Portlanders are just wacky!” type cry; but in a rare moment of non-overanalyzing, and resisting all snarkiness: I do declare that these houses are just plain Great.

The Salvation Army Thrift Shop on SE Grand seemed a promising destination.

Turns out, it’s closed.  The sign could have simply read “This location closed.  Please visit our other location” etc. — but significantly, the reason behind its closing is emphasized, perched at the top.¹

There are several store-closing signs I’ve walked by in the past few weeks, though this one was most overtly Recession.  Just about everyone I meet in all the miscellaneous people-meeting ways has been laid off.  In a grocery store the other day, the cashier apologized for taking a while with the guy in line ahead of me:  turns out she was trying to get her buddy a job there, as he was just laid off by “you know, one of those big fancy hotels downtown?” where he had been making “a lot.”  As she rang up my cheese, the cashier told me that her friend was Not going to be able to maintain his lifestyle.  She wasn’t sure, she said, what exactly he was going to do, but it wasn’t looking good.  It sounded like pretty soon he might not be able to pay rent.

Then there are the people from whom I’ve gotten Craigslist furniture.  The first, a girl who sold me a superb antique lamp, then threw in the several-weeks-ago-mentioned green blender.  She was moving out of Portland because nothing, Nothing was turning up.  She had sent out at least fifty resumes, she said, only to find that just one of the fifty places had something to offer — and it was a porn shop.  She wasn’t above that or anything, she assured me, but, hell, it made her realize it was time to head back to California and move in with her mother — even though she hadn’t lived there since age fifteen.  She had a lot of experience, she told me, but it didn’t seem to matter.  Portland wasn’t letting her live here.

Then there was the chick from whom I got a bookcase, some odds+ends.  She said she was laid off from her last job and hadn’t been able to find anything since.  After a few months of traveling along the west coast, she said, maybe, just maybe! she’d come back to a Portland with jobs.

The one from which she’d been laid off?  Of all things:  a bike shop.

Nothing could be sadder, I think, than someone in Portland being laid off by a bike shop.  There are thousands of bikes here.  She’s a mechanic.  The idea that a bike shop was suffering enough to let go of a mechanic seems the least “Portland” thing imaginable.

Finally, there’s the girl I’m now friends with from the plane ride here.  Sitting next to me at JFK, my Plane-Friend-Turned-Real-Friend asked whether I wouldn’t mind chatting, as she was afraid of flying.  (Just her luck:  so am I. . . .)  We ended up talking for a long time.  Since returning to Portland after a year on a Fulbright, she had found zero employment over the course of four months.

Seriously.  A Fulbright!  The girl’s got something on her resume that (a) at the very least, looks good and makes it seem that one is smart, and (b) in this case, is in fact related to her being very smart — and yet she’s been turned away by everyone.  A year ago, she said, she had no problem getting job offers — so many, she had her pick.  Now, with a prestigious scholarship under her belt, she had nothing lined up.  And not for lack of trying.

Finally, two weeks ago, she emailed to tell me she had a bite.  The place that bit?  Abercrombie, in the mall.

Striving to do anything in the way of employment, she scurried over, despite the dread.  As she’d feared, they had her work alongside “dumb high school kids,” then snapped at her for measuring a mannequin “incorrectly” (um, she studied neuroscience), and gave her a measly THREE hours for the whole week.  They really did.  They hired her to work just three hours over the course of seven days.

None of this is uplifting, I know.  And I also know that talking about the economy right now is much like talking about the weather.  It’s there.  It’s obvious.  You can open your window or walk down the street and see it almost immediately.  Some might say, “Why bother talking about the [weather] [economy]?  We know already!”  But the unemployment rate in pdx is now almost three points higher than the national (and of course both rates don’t account for the many thousands of unemployed people who aren’t caught by the rate calculation, including yours truly).  Yes, Portland has for a long time now been notorious for job problems:  too many overqualified types vying for the same positions.  But although they’re anecdotal, the stories of the people I’ve met in just a few weeks here make it pretty clear that it’s getting worse.  For a lot of people, it’s not just hard:  it’s gotten downright ridiculous.

In sum:  this shit ain’t good.
____

1.  Searching to make sure I had the SE Grand address right yielded this funny/sad coincidence:  the Portland Mercury noted the closing of this selfsame store on its blog, using a photograph nearly identical to the one above, which I took a few weeks ago.  It’s clear from comparing the two that sometime between January and March the sign was ripped down and re-posted on the thrift shop’s door.  In addition, beneath the Mercury’s image is the following:
Send your recession pics to news@portlandmercury.com.

Recession pics.  Almost sounds nice that way!
But nope:  still terrible.

A few weeks ago I tried out for a short film.  (Oddly enough, I was chosen as female lead(!).)  So we’re meeting the other night, going over the schedule.  One of the crew says something to the writer/director about a party he’d recently thrown — a party at which people had yearbook-esque photos taken that were then compiled into a yearbook-esque yearbook.  Realizing that I had heard, from one of the three people I know in Portland, about this very party, I casually asked the director about it.  Turns out, he’s good friends with one of the aforementioned Three.

Coincidence #1!  But okay, fine.  A coincidence was bound to happen eventually, with someone new knowing someone I already knew.  But then.

We meet again to go over the script.  Director Who’s Friends With My Friend talks about the digs he’s had in the past, then asks about mine.  I tell him my cross streets, that I’m in this ugly apartment complex that looks like a crappy motel.

“Washington Towers?” he says.  “I used to live there!”

Not only did he used to live in the glorious Washington Towers — which name, by the way, is quite the misnomer, as the building is about as un-”tower” as can be — but Director Who’s Friends With My Friend lived in the apartment directly below mine!  Even remembers the older woman who lives above me — the one constantly, I mean constantly, doing laundry.

So yes, Portland:  you are a small place.  However.  This is reminiscent of a time in. . . you guessed it, New York.  A few years ago I was apartment-hunting via Your Friend & Mine (a.k.a., Craigslist), and went to Astoria to check out a room.  Two chicks there interviewed me for a while, showed me the spot that was about to be vacated.  When they asked where I worked, something rather improbable came to light.  The very room I was looking to move into was the about-to-be-erstwhile room of a coworker!

Meaning:  out of the several million rooms in the vast and overpopulated city, and the thousands listed each week on the behemoth that is Craigslist NYC, it was her room I had gone to see.

Now that, that was Something.  It cried out for some math person or other to do some ‘rithmetic, to create a formula to show just How improbable this improbable occurrence had been.

Then again, human circles overlap.  Then again Part II:  human circles especially overlap in places filled with people of the same ilk.  And Portland — have I mentioned this yet? — is as homogeneous in the Ilk category as the Ilk category can get.

Still, in the end — perhaps every place is small?