[story] Ames Link and the Waitron of Doom

3511.

And now, it's story time.

Ames Link walked up the streets of an average downtown of an average large American city, except it's Portland (which we're currently staging in Vancouver BC until the union and budget issues work out), brain-filled mind deep in thought.

Of all the things that The Agency had entrusted him through the years, this was perhaps the most monumental. On the least movement of the many that were to come, and soon, could fates of empires and powerful men depend. But he was the organization's top operative, and there was much risk, but also much confidence.

If #AmesLink were to mess up, it would be epic.

Ames Link approached Pioneer Courthouse Square (we worked the labor and budget issues out, this is really downtown Portland now) and felt a tension fill the air with a palpable palpation reminiscent of a much-anticipated yet dreaded medical exam, one which promised awkwardness yet would end in much diagnosis.

Ames Link decided that medical metaphors were useful but maybe not here.

Ames Link entered the Square from the 5th and Yamhill side, noticing - what was that? A flash? A flair? Something visually incidental that whose rubric began with the letters f and l? He wasn't sure. Just as he was going to remember a key aphorism taught him by his Tibetan Ti Kwan Leep instructor (well, he *looked* Tibetan), his adversary drew themselves out from behind one of the overwhelming number of trailer-based food conveyances that Portland, somewhat smugly, boasted about. His adversary was slender. His adversary was bearded (but still could be male or female, which we, I think, all agree, can be valid forms of expression). His adversary was polite.

"Ames Link. So we meet again."

A pause.

"May I take your ... order, sir."

Ames Link knew this was a barista, of course - a barista ... of menace and doom. A barista of malice and aforethought. A barista, in other words, that couldn't possibly have worked at Dutch Bros. And, suddenly, dropping all pretense of barista-like behavior (paging editorial, is that shipment of adjectives in yet? Let me know when they are, yeah, thanks) the silver of a finely-honed kitchen knife (bought at great expense from Sur le table, Kitchen Kaboodle being closed that day) flashed in the Portland afternoon sun, and the danse macabre was joined.

Ames Link dove left.

Ames LInk slid right.

Ames Link jumped, narrowly avoiding the tip of the toxic service employee's knife and reminisced, briefly, on when Portland AM radio was listenable.

Ames Link, of course, in the end, won the epic battle, doubling back and divesting the foe of his knife, and using a trick encoded in the second skit of the fourth episode of the third season of Portlandia, pinned the opponent to the bricks in such a way that any movement on his part would sever his cardiod .... carotid ... carotin ... that big artery in his neck utterly, completely and mostly into two pieces, and drew close to the aproned-one's ear (and yet, it just looked to the passers-by like two good friends finding a named brick, so sly was their style).

Ames Link breathed softly into his opponent's ear: "I know your secret. You are not the barista you claim to be.

"You are a diner cook.

"You never fooled me for a moment."

Ames Link's adversary slumped in defeat.

"May I," he said, in soft supplication, all arrogance gone from his voice, "take your order, sir"
Ames Link brought in his voice-tones of command.

"Reuben. Use real sauerkraut."

Ames Link paused again.

"Toast the bread."

AMES LINK WILL RETURN.

[writing] Jim Hardison: 7 Tips On How To Get Serious About Writing Silly Stuff

3357.

Anyone who writes comedy will tell you; at times, you have to be dead serious when creating the funny.

At The Writer's Dig blog, hosted at Writer's Digest, blogger Brian Klems steps aside and lets our own Jim Hardison name seven ways writing comedy is straight work. Don't despair too much: you take your comedy seriously when building your work, it'll crackle for everyone.

Read it at http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/humor-writing-filled-novel.

[creativity] A Look Into A Writer's Brain. DeNiro Knows.

3244.
The quote says quite a lot without saying all that many words.

What DeNiro is attributed to say here can probably felt to some degree by a great many of us who are artists, and the part of me that aspires to writing as well as that which aspires to drawing feels each one of those; moreover, perversely, it thinks that those things are actually my more charming points.

And that is on a good day.

Via A-Z Quotes.

[pdx] The Autumnal City, By Way Of SE Division Street

3082.

In another missive, I said that sometimes I find the theme, sometimes, the theme finds me. 

This is true, and relevant. Also, living in the most violently adorable photogenic city on the planet, sometimes you go out for great vistas, and sometimes, you just stumble and fall flat on your face in front of one.

This is true, and relevant, and what happened later in the evening after our visit to Piccolo Park (see missive 3081, just previous to this one).

SE Division Street is one of those infinitely-long east-west straight (well, mostly) streets that give Portland's east side its structure, its intent, and its character. It's a sweet character, and remains so even though the rents on the inner portion have become, in some areas, precipitously lofty. The lowest end is a little tricky, though. Division Street from its true beginning … SE 3rd Avenue just south of Caruthers … runs diagonally, along the rail lines that have gone through the area since it was all industrial.

It's still mostly industrial, but it's changing, slowly. Good sides and bad sides to that. That's for another program however. While travelling west on Division, with no specific agenda except to get to Powell's Books ultimately and enjoy our time there, just west of SE 11th Avenue, where the street doglegs northwestward (actually, the line of the street continues as SE Division Place until it gets as close to the Willamette as it can) we're presented with this undeniable photo opp:

BAM, as they say. There's this thing about sunsets; while there are, statistically and practically speaking, infinitely more sunsets than I'll be able to biologically endure, each one is, like the notional snowflake, never to be duplicated. The mood that each one generates is as individual as possible. Never to be synthesized, and in the end, ineffable.

Very Taoist.

The funny thing is, I immediately put  my hand out the window and pointed the camera that way, and in adjusting my grip I fired the camera three or four times. I cursed loudly, thinking I had really got some unusable photos (well, at least for this wise). Turned out perfect.

The view that is named is not the view.

The amber tone, in retrospect, makes me think of the opening lines of the Samuel R. Delany epic Dhalgren. Maybe he wrote that because every big American town is something that consumes itself from within, at the same time replenishing itself from within, borning anew constantly, and will continue to do so until it eventually collapses from within because no fuel, no matter how regenerative, would regenerate forever.

It's a an echo of majestic ruin, while still being astoundingly vital. Kind of like people.  And humanity. We contain our salvation and our ruin in one, I think.

The area, as I said, is still very industrial. If you buy anything Darigold, it came, as likely as anything, from this dairy plant between Division and Powell between SE 8th Avenue and the river. That dairy complex has been there forever. On the left there, supporting the trademark Darigold sign, is a tall column which is limned in red neon. When we lived on SE 8th near here, we would most often come in on the Ross Island Bridge. The Darigold sign was a big nightline showing us the way home. Most reassuring. 

A big old building wedged (literally, that's its shape) between Division, 11th, and the tracks is the Ford Building. That's what it started out at … a place that sold Ford automobiles back when the most popular car in the world was the Model T. These days, it's been gentrified, which means that anything in the building currently is either so cute it's uninteresting or overpriced but I guess it beats decay.

Not decay, decadence actually. But I carp.

The area has seen massive remodelling as a result of the extension of the MAX into Milwaukie. The Tilikum Crossing is just one thing. Streets have been spruced, realigned (you used to be able transition straight east from Division Place onto Division Street, now that link is gone) and, as is our adorable wont, enigmatic public art has been installed. Just this one square of the new sidewalk pavement reads:

TO READ / THE TRACKS / TO NEED TO KNOW.

I was unable to deduce what the theme here was or the intended meaning, indeed, I couldn't find any other squares so adorned, so I was left wondering. Of course, given the verbiage … maybe that was the point.

The cloud above the railroad crossing here, The Wife™ called the "greater than" cloud. Why should be obvious.

The opening lines to Dhalgren look something like this:

to wound the autumnal city.
So howled out the world to give him a name.
The in-dark answered with wind.
All you know I know:
 

It's our city, but I know it differently than you. I see shining possibility and incipient decay; I see Portland triumphant over the ages and Portland deserted and ruined; you see a group of tall buildings against a setting sun and no more.

Each view is equally valid and invalid in the human heart.

The new MAX line, looking toward Milwaukie

SE 8th Avenue and Division Place. This is a new signal.

Day is ending; night is beginning. One death is another birth,
only to eventually die and cause rebirth in return.

The autumnal city. So howled out for the world to give him a name.

Putting ones' back to the above moody scene, growing in a vacant lot at 8th and Division, beginning to blossom because of or in spite of or both, this. The in-dark answered with wind.

All you know, I know.

The hack poet and blog author finally did make it to Powells, and just to prove that all is not darkling self-absorbed poetry, a sparkling view of NW Couch Street between NW 10th and 11th Avenues, where the upside is that, for better or worse, we're still here, there's grim news abounding but the world still seems to work, and a life where you can see things like this certainly isn't entirely broken.