The good ol' boys (and girls) of Portland Maine
We arrived in Portland talking to a girl named Elaina who was reading Proust and seemed like a honeybird. As we pulled into the train station, the conductor got on, saying "Welcome to Portland, home of the B&M factory. Technically, Boston does not have a bean factory anymore. So i suggest Portland should be called--Bean Town." Here here, conductor man! Elaina offered us a ride from her dad, who thought the situation was kind of awkward until he realized we were good ol' boys and meant no harm at all. Phew!
Portland, Maine! What a town, a real old shipping community. I bet there are little sailor towns like this all up the east coast. It has its fair share of gentrification, yes. I went into the "market," a fine wine and cheese shop, bought a $4 sliver (practically) of cheese, ate it with the sourdough and some wine--though it made a divine lunch, really. There's a big statue dedicated to those who fought in the Civil War right in the middle of the town
square, where skateboarders in hoodies idle around with the pigeons. You don't see many statues dedicated to civil war veterans. It was a pretty impressive statue, too. The square is really wide open, the type of square you'd want to play 4-square in, or a game of dodgeball. All concrete, all bare. But right in the middle this giant statue. I liked the space of it. I guess there's also this statue too, of a lobsterman. Portland's known for it's lobster-fishing, i guess. I found this when i did an image search for the other statue. That's the thing: Mark was the photographer on this trip, so i naively trusted him to take all the pictures. Now, he's in Cuba smuggling goodtimes and all i have is a bunch of pictures that I knew he wouldn't take, like of transformers and my hand and all sorts of crap--none of the monumental stuff. So anyway, that's why my pictures might be screwy; it's all his fault. Anyway, this sums up the town of Portland.
Oh yeah, except we stayed with these tubular people. We had no place to go in Portland, so i went on couchsurfing.com and i found someone within hours. This guy Greg lived in a house with ten other roommates. The place was real raucous and all-together the cast of characters was this semi-anarchic Sesame street's retarded brother, people coming in and out, with entertaining baggage strewn left and right.
Three of the guys were in a band, a blonde kid with a soft-spoken voice and dry humor who looked anywhere from 14-40, the way a face continues to ask question despite bags under the eyes. He was pretty friendly, showed us around, made some spaghettios. Counter-culture kids are amazing: poor, artistic and opinionated they can turn over depravity until it's romance; "I love ketchup sandwiches," I heard him say. He had a fantastic dry wit and seemed to just wonder, a third party, a fly on the wall. It makes sense he was the drummer. The guitarist had huge eyes and huge gauges in his ears. He was a vegan. Mark has said to me before, "look out for the vegan in the house of meat-eaters. Always a vicious type," but he seemed friendly, or did he? Later when we were playing the question game, "What would your spirit animal be?" He said he'd be a lion, and so i asked him, "Would you be a lion, or do you just want to be a lion?" Then he looked at me with fierce prowling eyes, and i knew, i knew.
There was a girl there named Rihannan for the Welsh goddess. It has now been stuck in my mind that that is what a goddess would look like. Because of Renaissance paintings, i've always put the image on a pedestal, what with the marble-mixed paint for sheen and the cherubim face, it always seemed so distant from "made in man's image." Turns out
goddesses are (as US magazine would say it:) Just like US! She had short red hair and sharp blue eyes, and an intimidating walk--but she wasn't glowing. I mean, if i touched her, i wouldn't explode. Perhaps it's audacious to hold the stature of gods up to one girl with a god-like name, but i'm sorry, the damage has been done. Rihannan from Portland Maine, you are how i know goddesses to look now. Stay fresh! (Fun Fact: For an excellent description of real-life witches, read Reinaldo Arenas' 'Before Night Falls')
One of my favorite characters from the house was this man, Dylan Bredeau. I use his full name because it was employed
so much while we were there. The name of the band is Dylan Bredeau (www.myspace.com/dylanbredeau), named in memorium after said Bredeau moved away, but then he moved back and enjoys the fame without having to play an instrument. He was a charming young French-Canadian man who with his witty intellect rivaled the other alpha-conversationalist of the house: a spry, mad-witted young fiend named Dave. Dave sat back, reclining in a discarded office chair making comments on the whole scene. Somehow the conversation turned towards the impotent war between Maine and Canada called the Aroostok War, where farmers in Maine had to defend themselves from invading shoulders. Bredeaux made it out to be an awful, mad war; but i found out later it was bloodless--only one casualty, and that was from heart failure. The idea of it, he made seem, was repressed. Which got us into conspiracy, where Dave got heatedly argumentative about the Kurt Cobain conspiracy, insisting on the facts, jack. The last paragraph in the note was not his, the shotgun wasn't tested for prints, the door had to be locked from the inside. I tried to make light of the conversation by insisting that without Cobain's death we would have never had Hole. He did not find this funny. All I can remember after that is a debate on the existence of Bigfoot which prompted Dylan Bredeaux to ponder the famous beasts hidden package: "Big feet...Big hands...Big mystery."
We went to sleep too late, after a multitude of Pabsts, woke up in the morning, saw that they had grown the biggest pumpkin i had ever seen (that is, until Nova Scotia!). We ended up getting lost going to the ferry that would take us to Canada. Some woman gave us directions that put us a mile out of the way--with our heavy packs and no time, that was far! We ended up having to run there and getting on at the last possible moment. We had to board the CAT ferry with the automobiles underneath in the cargo hold.
When we emerged on the deck, i was amazed.
A woman said to me, "I bet you've never seen so many old people?"
She was right. Even she was old.
The ferry was crawling with seniors, which made me feel like we had somehow made a big mistake. I have never been able to justify this emotion, but it still seems right. I was tired. We had got like four hours of sleep, so i tried to take a nap. Mark like a happy dog rushed to the bak deck to watch the boat in action, talking up WWII veterans about the propulsion, the engine and other logistical nonsense. I wanted sleep! Unfortunately, the maritime winds were blowing their mess and the waves were tumultuous. I couldn't sleep. I sat in a chair rocking from one edge to another. And you can imagine the people on the boat. At first it was a tight little joke, people with sea legs--har har! Then the vomiting started. At first it was an insignificant problem. People that normally get seasick. Then people started tripping over themselves on the way to the restroom. It was a total disaster. One man was cradled in his hands for a solid three hours. I would have felt bad for him, but he was so rigid he looked like a statue. Anyone that still must be reserved, on hold, somewhere else. Although being rocked on a solid piece of machinery like that did give me a scope of the mayhem that lies at the helm of the ocean. A whole other world within our world of power and unforgiving. I thought a few times this trip about becoming a sailor, but every time i get to sea i remember--the ocean is a fucking monster!
The beast we were riding was called the CAT, a catamaran, designed with wave piercing hulls that cut through the waves rather than ride on top, unlike traditional ships. It had four 9,500 horsepower diesel engines propelled by four water jets--each pumping the equivalent of an Olympic size pool full of water through each jet every three second. I got a nifty fact sheet from the Cat desk on the way out!
Here's what it looked and sounded like, just wicked!:
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