Durham, NYC, Philadelphia

On the gray spring days in Portland, it’s common to see windows with the curtains open and warm electric light revealing the wall colors and pictures hanging inside. On this gray afternoon, my memories of the trip to NC, NYC, and Philadelphia seem the same – bright windows: framed, luminous interior scenes; pictures within pictures, places within places. In Durham, boutiques and restaurants do business in redecorated cigarette factories and the few remaining blue collar shops sit between rows of empty storefronts. In a bright hotel lobby there is serious film talk, drunken film chatter. In the ballrooms there are giant screens flickering with images from around the world. In Burma monks are battered by clubs, a man is shot in the street - the slow arc of his death shown from multiple angles. In Afghanistan a father weeps, prisoners are beheaded behind a square of black, hanging mid-frame, that blocks the sight of their necks but not their twitching limbs or the blood flowing into the dry earth. In India, a Muslim video-store owner remakes Superman – our skinny hero flies, fights, dances. In Russia, sleeping passengers on the Trans Siberian tell their prophetic dreams…

In Raleigh, miss Pork Chop opens the show by calling the audience a “pack of redneck cocksuckers, cuntslurpers, and white trash sons of bitches.” The audience agrees. In a park filled with blooming dogwood, I catch a trace scent of drying tobacco –imagined maybe, but with it comes the North Carolina I remember -– honeysuckle and chicken shit, the hot metal and asphalt of a trailer park, a dirt road and a dusty school bus, a black eye, a bloody nose, the word FAGGOT again and again, furtive sex in a shack in the woods, a girl I can’t believe loves me and we are running off to New York City together, we’re never coming back…

In New York and Philadelphia flowers bloom everywhere, bright and soft in contrast to the brick, concrete, and metal around them. The clouds break for a moment. A chill wind shakes a cherry tree. Petals fill the air, flickering like movie images in the sun. As the light fades, they land, clinging and trembling on the city’s hard-scrubbed surfaces.