A personal project

Almost eight years to the day after meeting this guy we finally made it official.

(Those last three pictures are taken by the incredible Savanah Loftus, who is a professional and you can tell by the way she waited for that perfect golden light. She not long ago took great pictures of us in a park, the kind of pictures that you can be really proud of. Not overly sappy, but tender, and still sane enough to send to the grandparents.

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My mother gave us a membership to the Oregon Zoo for Christmas this year. We have been three times already, often on a Saturday because that's our shared day off. This morning we went early to catch the feeding of the African Slender-Nosed Crocodiles.

I've been looking forward to it all week. Anthony and I would ask each other what it might be that they fed the crocodiles. Spaghetti and meatballs? Children who tap on the glass of the primate exhibits?



It turns out they are quite sensibly fed bits and pieces of rather large fish, served on the end of a very, very long stick with a little grabby hand on the end.

Evidently it takes at least two people. One to feed and one to stand at the ready with what looked like a mop handle ready to poke the crocodile in a special place just at the base of his skull just in case the crocodile got greedy.

I was very delighted to see that the bucket they use to keep the fish in is EXACTLY the same brand and color bucket that I use to cart around my cleaning supplies when I clean houses.

I made lots of quick on-site sketches of the beast as it waited, then drew this value study that I hope to turn into a painting here in the coming week or so. I find crocodiles (especially big ones) creepy on a deep, primal level. Something about that tail I think. I hadn't noticed before, but the tail spikes converge at a point and then the tail becomes flat like a rudder (the better to chase you with my dear), and so it folds over in an unnerving way.

One of the many interesting things on my desk is a little orange box filled with even litter wooden blocks. I got them initially thinking they'd be fun to play with -- because who doesn't love blocks -- but for most of their time here they've just sat in the little orange box. Then last weekend I learned that this box was the only thing I had that fit my new business cards. (Sorry blocks, we can't be going around handing out business cards all bent and bag-linty.) For a week now the blocks have been floating around my desk, and I'm lucky they have been becuase tonight I learned that they are the BEST thing you could ask for if you are trying to assemble a huge papercut piece.



Once you get much bigger than a single element putting something together like this is a bit daunting. This is a huge non-canvas piece for me -- almost 20" square -- and most of the things were just floating around on the desk. It was incredible comforting to have marks at the edges of where things needed to go, becuase once you start picking things up, layer by layer, once you get to the bottom things look very spare indeed.



But the blocks are there! And by and large you can place things back to where they're supposed to go. Excellent. Thank you, blocks!



And while I have you here, a little about this piece: it is essentially a take on the already complicated omnivore's dilemma. This is actually my personal beef with the movement. I love going into those natural markets becuase they are set up more like art galleries than like grocery stores. I love looking at the food and dreaming. But there is a weird undercurrent of these things are only for the rich when you go to those places. I can get brown rice for $2.99/lb at a boutique market, or I can get brown rice for $0.89/lb at my nearby supermarket. I'm not sure if there's a difference between those rices, they seem like the same quality of rice if you examine the kernels. It seems like it's just more expensive, as if purchasing rice for a dollar more a pound you are somehow fixing the universe with the power of your money.

I should also mention that I think it is totally possible to eat healthy while living under the poverty line. It is not easy to do it if you eat the way Americans are "supposed" to eat, meat-and-three-veg, but if you eat the way most of the world eats (stuff all mixed up in a bowl, legume+grain=a complete protein) then your dollar can get you pretty far. I talk sort of haphazardly about it over here. It takes a population willing to educate the portion of the population who is not fed this information constantly. It's hard work but worth doing. Because otherwise we are just stuck here, with the haves and the have-nots.

OCF: recycle crew

Monday mornings are marked at Chez Kumquat by the recycling truck’s arrival. There’s a lot of truck noises as it maneuvers in between our building and the parked cars, and then a tremendous crash as the items in the blue bins get hoisted then dumped into the truck -- particularly the glass, which is a bright, unmistakable sound.



It’s the same sound one hears in the early morning at the Oregon Country Fair. The recycling crew starts collecting from the recycling kiosks at six in the morning, but they usually don’t make it back to the dock until the public starts to arrive. The first trickle of people at nine increases to a steady stream by eleven, and all the while that familiar sound of glass crashing can be heard echoing through the trees.

Because it’s the same sound I think people assume that a machine is doing all the work, despite the rustic nature of the fairgrounds. It’s what that sound makes us think of. There’s nothing in that sound to suggest otherwise. I think they picture big truck lifters, conveyors, and automated sorting by weight. Neat boxes ready for the reprocessing center.

But don’t you believe it.



What sounds like objects heading to a sorting-machine on a conveyor is in fact two people dumping a barrel full of cans, glass and plastic bottles onto a slanted grid. This grid sits over a channel, designed to catch all the wet and broken debris. (That’s the idea anyway.) This great pile is then pushed with a rake towards the waiting arms of the sorters, who stand along the sides of wooden chutes. And, armed with not much else besides earplugs and eyeglasses, the sorters pick through the mess and sort everything, one by one.



It’s a lot of material to go through. Material that has been sloshing around with leftover contents and whatever else ends up in the barrels. Soon the dock itself is covered in a wet sheen of “sloosh”, and it is for this reason sorters are outfitted with aprons, to keep at least some of it at bay. (Honestly I found working in a raincoat to be the most successful.)

Each kind of object that is sorted follows different rules. Cans are done by size, roughly, and until you memorize which cans are redeemable and which are not, you must read those little letters on the side. Glass is done by size, one box for this size, one box for that, a special box for sessions and a special box for corona and other Mexican style bottles. These boxes, when full, are closed up and handed off to the people standing up on the dock, who load them into the great big truck bed, to be hauled away at the end of the week.

All this while the surge of cans and glass is pushed towards you. More and more all the time. If you do not help and push the pile down the line things get backed up and crash to the floor, or roll under the dock to the dark inaccessible places -- later to be picked up by diligent individuals with buckets.



Meanwhile, plastics are sorted on the other end of the dock. Plastics are the least uniform and most incomprehensible of the sorted items. Sorted mostly by size (which is difficult to judge at a glance, for all the different shapes), but always driven by whether it is redeemable or not. Just about everything aside from plastic water bottles and soda bottles are not redeemable, with a few maddening exceptions. And until you've a sense for it, each item must be examined. And then thrown to the appropriate bag.

Aside from a few dedicated souls there is no specific crew for sorting. Everyone takes a turn. As each truck backs towards the dock, members of the truck’s team hop out to either dump barrels, rake things, or don glasses and earplugs and take their place in the sort line and get to work.

It is the most chaotic, effective little operation I have ever experienced. In a way it’s indicative of how the entire fair works. Very analogue. We may have several powerstrips at the dock for cell phones -- and many of those are future-phones -- but all the real work is done the old fashioned way. With hands and arms and good music and camaraderie.

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I had the blissful pleasure of attending a work party at the Gabriel Community Garden Demonstration Orchard yesterday morning. It meant picking apples and pressing apple cider, right there in the parking lot.



Apple cider. Fall. It's coming. I have so many warm things to say about September and autumn and apple and golden light. For now I will let the memory of apple pieces stuck in my hair and the sticky sweet smell of the juice fill me.

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There's something about lots of people working together that I really find compelling. They're all doing different things, but it's all part of the bigger picture. If each were working on his own it would take much longer. And each can work according to his abilities: farm stock can lift the slabs of concrete, anemic bookworms can scoot stones, can plant the vegetables. Can paint signs.

This is my last submission for the cyborg book, and it's bittersweet. Truthfully I could have worked for several more (full) days on this picture and would have liked to. But it's also been a long time (a couple months longer than it was originally), and it was time. Things were delivered, paperwork was signed, last minute tensions were graciously ignored, and another piece of this chapter comes to a close.

Weirdly: the end of this project, much like the end of the last project, does not feel like a completion so much as a surrender. That's not the most satisfying of feelings. Anthony was doing happy dances for me and all I can feel right now is drained. I wonder if that feeling ever goes away, or if it's the mark of a brave artist to keep slogging through those feelings and carry on.

In any case, if this becomes a regular thing with me it would behoove me to have an exit strategy. When you fall and skin your knee you have a method, right? You check for debris, swab, apply pressure, disinfect, affix a bandage. External things we have down pat. What about internal things? That's harder. If I get overwhelmed with anxiousness or frustration, I usually try and get outside and bring nothing with me. Or play with blocks. Or watch something light and silly. Revisit the children's book shelf here on the floor with a quilt. There are many things I do. This isn't a fix the sad situation though, this is a you finished! feeling that I'm just not having yet. I need a ritual to signal the switching of gears. A new playlist, for sure. I am embarrassed to admit how important playlists become for some of my activities, though maybe you'll remember my day job is housecleaning, and I spend a LOT of time with my iPod. I have a "to battle" playlist, to get hyped up for big houses (and, originally, to get myself psyched up for a job interview). I have a "down and out in Portland" playlist, with the Hobbit theme and the Happiness Hotel and old songs about how money doesn't by the clear blue sky -- a playlist I play when I'm feeling broke and need to not feel down about it. Light driving, (for Sundays), heavy driving (for blowing-off-steam times), an hour of really energetic stuff called "Clean up this mess". But I don't have anything for a victory lap. So probably my finishing ritual can start there.

In small ways I have tried to signal that we are back to a clean slate: the huge stack of sketches has been moved from my desk to a sorting pile near my desk. The interminable checklist is gone and in it's place a lovely blank sheet of paper waits patiently for instructions.

And of course this time I have a very clear pallet-cleanser: we are as I speak packing up for the Oregon Country Fair, and for the next week will be in the forest with all the other muppets having a grand old time. I think nothing will wash the dear robots out of my head like a week of port-a-potties and forest time.

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