(Editor’s note: More than a multilevel aspirational image, today’s cover is a promo for water mirror echo author Jeff Chang’s upcoming appearance on the WCS podcast. My guy from 90s Northern Cali hip hop had a copy of his biography sent my way. Fans of both Jeff and Bruce are going to be feeling this work.)
Only from the differently horrified expressions on the tourists’s faces did I get a grip on how fucked up I was.
There were three of them, a middle-age couple and what I assumed was their adolescent grandson, looking down at me with eyes wide and the mouths even wider. I was giving them spectacle, the kind wouldn’t likely see out in Salem. Or Spokane, or wherever. “Are you okay?” the grandpa asked.
It was Tuesday morning in Portland’s Pearl District.
“I don’t—” I started to say. Only, it was unclear what the object of that verb might ever be.
The view up to the trio was wobbly, like when a filmmaker brings in the hand-held camera, to impart danger. My headlights were on, and then they out. And now the grandfather is unspooling for me loads of white tissue that’s increasing full of my blood.
“I don’t… think so?” I said. And then the scene went dark again.
The aperture reopened and now a young-ish Black security guard was looking upon me with fear in his eyes.
“Stay down. I’ll be right back.”
On the Green Line train toward Clackamas I am a bloody mess. The sole imperative: Getting to my sister’s place in The Numbers. Just a single, fuzzy-minded bus transfer and a short walk from the Powell Street Green Line stop. I got this.
Myself on this train is a bloody and dazed stack of humanity, a swaying humanity stack loaded down with two backpacks. After downtown security had more or less staunched the bleeding, the thought of pouring myself into a Lyft had surfaced—as though this morning’s breakdown were some random night of drinking—but the app proved too complicated to operate.
Venmo a tip my way and I’ll treasure that a gesture of gratitude.
Portland public transit though? I knew that shit by rote. Going for it made sense, and that is how I became that poor fucked guy on the train visibly having one of his shittiest days
Sactown itself had been no Sunday afternoon in the garden with grandma.
At the writing trip’s late June beginning came an intense allergic reaction whose origin is much too convoluted and uninteresting to revisit. Let’s just say that I got caught up cosplaying as a person in their 40s and leave the Sactown sickness backstory to that.
Retooling the presentation so that more and different entities might improve their relationship to their narratives sits high on my list of things to do.
Here is where the gutting out of things had initially commenced. As my skin discomfort was escalating, I hung on to record this Saturday’s podcast episode with “Dave Johnson,” a friend from Lev Anderson’s midwestern college days.
Dave’s spent over two decades working for various government agencies including Border Patrol, Homeland Security, and departments of Defense and State. He said a few things that probably shouldn’t have linked to him. So, we have obscured the identity of “Dave.”
You are reading this today rather than listening to our cybersecurity expert because of the cumulative physical hurdles that have weirdly landed upon me. Sit tight though. We had a fun exchange.
I was unwell for Lev’s guy the Monday before last. The screenwriting work that brought me here took the collateral damage’s worst. My friend who hosted me for the east side Sacramento portion of this writing trip suggested I staved off the infection’s ultimate impact so that I could present this Powerpoint last Wednesday night.
He’s probably correct. Going into that Wednesday online session, the allergic reaction had only been skin discomfort and weakness. My upper-lip was swollen, but my articulation unimpeded and the wide-ranging education session went extremely well. Retooling the presentation so that more and different entities might improve their relationship to their narratives sits high on my list of things to do.
The next day my infection absolutely floored me. I was listless and itchy and in and out of sleep for 18 hours. Multiple prayers for death. Anyhow, I managed to put in my first session with a podcasting coach and pull down a print assignment in the midst of the agony.
It’s hard to think of a day in which I’ve gutted it out more, incrementally moving the projects forward. (They are there, but right now are eluding me.)
By Monday night the illness was invisible enough to believe normality had returned. I lucked into a pair of Oregon-bound Greyhound bus seats by myself and across the night slept all over them. (Or did I actually sleep a lot?) At 4 am I awakened, downed an energy beverage and scarfed 30 mg of edibles before cracking Jeff Chang’s forthcoming biography of Bruce Lee.
In and out of consciousness before sunrise, my dreams were psychedelic and fleeting. Amazing.
And only hours away from home.
“Keep talking to me! Keep talking to me!”
This is what they say in cheap TV shows, before an expendable character dies. A pretty, young and deeply serious Tri-Met employ is imploring the character, direct to camera.
Oh, god. That character is me.
“I’m at the Hollywood Tri-Met Station. Portland, Oregon.”
A Green Line security guard had escorted me off the train after only a few stops; making it home was an unrealistic dream. He escorted me off and I passed out, again.
The sky and the time of arriving trains are the pretty and young Tri-Met worker’s backdrop. An ambulance is on the way.
In this moment of typing, I am an hour out from seeing the nurse practitioner. While clearly my head is right enough to to share this news with you—and with a mid-compelling structure—I need to figure out what’s going on with my body. So much more madness to get into, and I don’t want to miss a second.
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