G.C. & the R.B.B.

Goldilocks City  &  THE RED BRICK BIRDS

They returned from busy Los Angeles having been politely turned away from overcrowded DISNEYLAND after many hours on the overcrowded freeways to Anaheim. 

 

The theme parks were bulging with parents and grandparents taking their children and grandchildren to enjoy this brand of Americana during the Holiday vacation time.  He and she, however, were still able to enjoy some of the uniquely interesting aspects of SOCAL  (Southern California) during their few days there, visiting in L.A. with his oldest son and fiancée. 

 

   

 

A good trip was had and they returned HOME to Portland afterward. 

With the moist cold of the northwest outside, they dressed up

as they had for the annual company HOLIDAY Party. 

 

Off and on there were moments of real winter cold, even there in the warmer Pacific North West of Oregon. 

The snows and ice even came, briefly.

 

After visiting L.A. again and moving about the USA again, there was something about all the recent events that pushed his mind all the way back to his real HOME in the USA.

Detroit. 

 

The home he had left all those years ago. That poor town just would not, could not, ever be the same again.

 

 

He had good and loving family members still living outside the sad city of Detroit. 

   

The further outside one drove from Detroit City the better the quality of Life seemed to be in this century.  He had been fortunate to have experienced Old Detroit back when there was still fun and excitement and optimism and achievement in the air.  It had not lasted long for him either though,  and by 1968 when he drove west from Michigan to California  ( an eventful year all around ), the fun and optimism and achievement were all being replaced by a sadder sort of excitement.

These days….…… the graffiti-tagging that had come to fascinate him in every other city he lived and worked in after leaving home was tightening its stranglehold on Detroit in a vengeful , wounded, and hateful way. 

 

Much of this corruption and degeneration of Detroit in this century he had already experienced in all the other North American cities ( including the once Good Toronto ), leading him to greatly respect and appreciate the new city in Oregon he had stumbled and fumbled and found himself standing  in for the last two years.PORTLAND, OREGON.       

He still had a hard time believing what a mix of new & old and good & better existed up here in the misty Pacific North West,  hidden away from most of the residents of North America.  It really was very much like the old Goldilocks tale. 

 

Not too big,  not too small,

but y’KNOW …………….. Just Right.

This town of PORTLAND amused and educated and pleased at every turn. 

From the valued sunbreak glare on their new building

to the history of the new ( old ) coffee place he started going to after he swore off STARBUCKS at the end of  2007. 

Even the staid brick medical blocks, where he went for his yearly physical,

those and all of the people and the buildings and goings-on…………………..all friendly and pleasant in some futuristic time-warped way. 

There was the charming eccentricity, valued locally at all levels of the Portland society.

The golden “deer” in the Holiday window,

 

the lone eagle flying over the enormously renovated 1930’s MONTGOMERY  WARDS building,

the obsolete and vanishing mailboxes and phone booths,

 

and even the giant 3 storey Martini glass illuminated nightly so that  they could see it from their window over the holiday season…………………

 

all these things attempted to cumulatively define the truly undefinable new home-city for he and his new wife.Portland, Oregon had won them over completely…….all of it……  

T  I  M  E  .  

TIME  is what keeps things from happening all at once . . . . . or at least, it is supposed to.             

And LIFE . . . . . well,  Life was just too complicated in the mornings.

This cool, damp morning he spotted the small Red Brick Birds sitting on the top edge of their nine storey brick building, one block away from his “home” on the 10^th floor of the still-new metal, concrete, and glass Benson Tower.

There was a BLOCKBUSTER VIDEO rental store on the main floor of the brick building.  He had been watching that store go idle, much like the “record” stores . . . and the newspapers. 

As the kids all migrated quickly to their cell phone screens with movies and integrated mp3 music, typing and texting each other,  and all in the newest slang shorthand.  The old ways, HIS old ways, were slowing, going idle, then vanishing. 

As he read about  keitai shousetsu. . . . http://relaxedparents.com/2008/01/20/mobile-phone-novels-in-japan/http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2007/01/72329. . . . he began to realize, again,  just how fast the CURVE-0-CHANGE was climbing.

Still,  it did make him wonder why abbreviation was always such a long word. http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/textmessageabbreviations.asphttp://searchcrm.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid11_gci211776,00.htmlhttp://www.netlingo.com/emailsh.cfm

4COL  AFAIUI  AFGO   equals 

for crying out loud, as far as i understand it, another  f*cking  growth opportunity! 

……………………………………………………………………………………………………….

No one spoke in this new evolving language at the small wine and cheese affair in the lobby of their new residence building.

The local residents gathered for their own wine and cheese socializing in this Today form of a vertical block-party. 

All of these stimulating streams of people, places, things, and even the young history of this area led him to feeling more alive than he had for a long time. Even the prep work for the never-ending tax struggles he seem to have could not extinguish the invigorating flames of discovery he felt each day.

Maybe it was because they walked more now that they lived right in the city, but stimulus came from all sides and everywhere. 

People smiling and saying hello while looking him in the eyes as they walked toward each other on the side-walked streets……………………….amazing.

And churches ………………. walking past churches built downtown a long time ago ……………..  1800’s.      

Most still with happy living congregations worshipping ( and on Sundays singing loudly from inside the old buildings ).

There was a brief time, long ago, when he had most informally, mistakenly belonged to that old non-prophet organization of Atheism.  But now, outside the “Old Church” across from his new home in the new BENSON TOWER building, he was handed a “circular”, a single page printed for circulation.  It told of the formal announcing of the Formation of China Interim Government.  A new government that was meant to do away with the CCP ( Chinese Community Party ).  http://www.ninecommentaries.com/The world was swinging back and forth again.  While Europe seemed more secular by the decade,  much of the rest of us across the world seemed pulled ( and sometimes devoured ) by either Spiritual or Religious efforts.  He was still searching for the ‘perfect’ church.  One something like the one he had found on the south side of Chicago, ST.SABINA’s.  http://www.saintsabina.org/legacywebsite.html 

No luck yet, it might be actually be true that one does not know a good thing until it is gone.  But he was still happy nonetheless. 

His younger son sent images of he and his fiancée as they prepared for their wedding in Wisconsin. 

The same Wisconsin that seemed to making news lately for its hidden woods containing the almost always hidden “Dog Men”?  http://www.cnb-scene.com/braybearwolf.html

 He hoped that their wedding out on the lake would be too wet to involve the Dog Men. 

Wisconsin was far away from he and his new wife in their Portland Oregon home, ten floors off the pavement below, in the southernmost part of the city.  Where they lived directly across from the collection of RED BRICK BIRDS that called the top of the neighboring building home.  While gulls floated out and upward from the river only eleven blocks away, these smaller darker birds,  the RED BRICK BIRDS, lived on the very top of the building directly across from his window, up against the west hills of Portland.  

Portland held so many things that caught his attention.  Things as simple as the PINK MINK worn by the grandaughter of his neighbor down the hall as they strolled through the Sculpture Court of the PAM ( PORTLAND ART MUSEUM ) just blocks away from their home. 

Or things like the LOVEJOY COLUMNS, remnants of the more industrial days of this city of Portland……………

…………….or even the odds and ends that had tumble-weeded their way back into his life again in his studio on the 10^th floor. 

 

He was *still* happy…………………………no way around it…………………….he had been happy for 4 years in a row now ?

Maybe it was the statue of Ganesh given to them during their wedding in Toronto? 

Portland Oregon really was very much like the old Goldilocks tale. 

Not too big,  not too small, but y’know …………….. Just Right.

(end)