CLINTON ST. QUARTERLY PASSING THROUGH PORTLAND Portland has been slandered a n d /o r complimented for being one of the most livable cities in the United States. There have been numerous attempts to define this “ livability” and then see if Portland meets such criteria; non-native Portlanders can offer their reasons for staying and an outsider’s vision of what is unique to Portland. Meanwhile the first heavy rains and cold nights come, and they will keep coming in over-the West Hills and down the Gorge until spring. Locals remember wool socks and the chores of keeping a warm house, weekend trips become Sunday afternoon strolls, and there is sunrise at seven and darkness by four-thirty. We are digging in for the winter, residents at least temporarily. There are others that wander through our city, asking for directions or small change, here only in passing. What is it that distinguishes a long visit from a stay, why pass through Portland just as the winter is settling in? And more personal questions: Where are you from? Why did you leave? Will you go back? Are you always on the road? Thinking on these things, thinking that travel concerns “ other” places, the places that are not home, 1 went seeking travelers in Portland. Portland’s Greyhound Station, midafternoon on a weekday. Long lines of people with scattered baggage going to Eugene and points south, a shorter line growing for Seattle and points north. Others doze in their plastic seats, maybe watch TV for a dollar an hour, they read paperbacks or magazines and shuffle stray luggage with their feet. I hesitate and watch the slow moving scene, then pick the only seat that isn’t elbow to elbow already, wondering whose suitcase has been left beneath it. A few minutes later a sallow skinned man, maybe forty-five, maybe fifty, black and white bristles on his face, enters the station and heads over to sit beside me, cradling a small grocery bag on his lap. He asks if 1could move for a bit so he can get at his suitcase; we get to talking. No name please, just call me Johnny, like my friends do. Then he shows me what he has just purchased: a quart of milk and a pack of Camel straights. He cracks the vitamin D homogenized and takes a good swig. I sure do like this milk when I’m traveling, yes siree. Where from? Well, I got back in the middle of last week from Vegas, I been out at the track betting horses since 1got in. Originally hailed from Victoria, B.C., you know where that is? Well, I was born and raised there, still go back a couple of times during the year to visit my mother. I lived up there until I took to drinking, a bottle of whiskey a day, everyday, had to drink a good bit more if I was celebrating. 1 did that everyday for sixteen years and then I gave it up. Don’t touch a drop. I’m a gambler now, as bad as a junkie with his dope. Never as happy as 1 am when I’m betting. In about five hours I’ll be leaving here for Reno, let’s see, I should be in by about 5:30 tomorrow morning and I know just where to get a room, thirty bucks a night. Thirty bucks a night 1 chalk up to expenses, I’ll make that and a little more. He drinks some more milk, opens the carton of smokes and takes out a pack; we both light up. What do I bet in Reno? Always the horses, and sometimes the dogs. No sir, I don’t mess around with blackjack and those other games. They have the dog races set up there where you can bet close to twenty-five races a day, if you time it right. Even have a little time to eat and rest. What 1 like to do is start up in Victoria when it gets hot, stay there until it rains. Then come down here to Portland, it’s a pretty track while it’s dry. One of my favorites. But when the rains and cold come, you’ll be miserable and you won’t even see very many races in a whole day of standing out there. No sir, I keep my visits short when the horses have to slog through the mud just to be a winner. I go down to Reno then and dry out in the sun for a few days, then to Phoenix, they have some mighty pretty horses there. When my luck starts to get a little old I’ll head back I'M A GAMBLER NOW, AS BAD AS A JUNKIE WITH HIS DOPE. NEVER AS HAPPY AS I AM WHEN I'M BETTING over to Vegas for another try. I know these cities by their tracks, and I know how to travel in between, and every place I like to stay. Look here, look here now. He opens his plastic zippered suitcase. Inside, an economy size jar of instant creamer, another of instant coffee, a Greyhound thermos, maybe a few clothes underneath. This is the kind of thermos they’ll fill with hot water for free at every stop, and then I’ve got all the coffee I want. He puts the carton of cigarettes and what’s left of the milk (the end of the carton crimped and held shut with a paper clip), he puts everything but his raincoat in the suitcase. Zips it up. Yes sir, a man could travel the world with what I got here. I hey stand very close together, almost touching. He wears an odd breed of high fashion open-toed sandals and tailored denim slacks, she is in a mid-shin wraparound skirt and bulky sweater, both of them with their passports in leather bags around their necks. They are a few people ahead of me in a slow moving line at the main post office, Monday morning. The closer they get to the counter, the more they step back and forth to speak to each other, taking out and putting away their passports. When it is their turn they step up to one of the clerks and both present passports. The clerk takes them one at a time and goes back to a hidden shelf. He returns with the first passport and a shurg. The couple lean together into the clerk’s alcove as he leaves with the second. He returns smiling with a pale blue manystamped envelope and has the woman sign for it. When the envelope is in her hands she immediately flips it for a return address, showing what is written there to her companion, almost forgetting her passport in the excitement. They walk outside and sit close together under the American flag, reading the letter through and through. No check or money order did 1see, only a handful of pages they traded between them. They left just before I got to the counter, walking down Broadway with their hands together and swinging between them, the letter fluttering in her outside hand. We meet in her campus studio. I wait outside the building, banging on the door, another student comes and lets me in, Zahra and I decide to eat something out and talk of travel. She is twenty-one, a citizen of Iran until this year when she was granted French citizenship as well, based on her family’s residency in Paris. Where is her home? Right now she doesn’t have one, she is trying to make do with her studio space, keep painting, and try to find a place off campus before a friend arrives from points east. It’s not that she feels herself to be in exile from Iran, nor can she ignorezhaving lived in Portland for the last four years while going to school. It is more that she and her family have lived in several countries in much the same way an American executive’s family might have several residences it alternately sublets and resides in, keeping the children in boarding schools during periods of high mobility. Zahra orders a burger with everything and I stick with milk and coffee, we watch the early Sunday afternoon crowd come and go. Travel is an illusive subject: she has lived in Tehran and Paris, her first “ travels” were family visits to locations her father was working as a journalist, places considered exotic and worth visiting, like Thailand. The first journey she herself considers travel was to leave on a train from Iran, alone, five or six years old, sent to pick up her younger brother in Brussels and then travel with him to Valenciennes, France where they met their “ new” grandparents for the first time; her father was marrying again. The difference she sees between nontravel and travel is the difference between security and “ no sure thing.” To be on the move is to subject yourself to more rapid change rather than weathering change in one PORTMXND HAS BEEN A PLACE SHE CAN STEP BACK AND THINK, A REFUGE. place. She asks me if I have ever seen a Cuban movie called Memories o f Underdevelopment. There is a line she remembers describing the people of Third World countries today: “ the men rot earlier, the women are most changeable.” But this accelerated change within a volatile country, within Iran, is part of Zahra’s life whether she returns to a house in Tehran her family still presumably owns (although she doesn’t know who is staying in it now), whether she lives in the cities her father works, or whether she joins some members of her family in Paris. How did she come to Portland? She was old enough to start applying for college, her father encouraged her to apply in the U.S. She applied to a number of small liberal arts colleges. Her own preference was to get as far away as possible; she had never been to the U.S. Portland has a reputable school or two and is far from Paris, 20 Illustrations by Mark Norseth
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