Where did this alternate reality come from, and how soon can it go away?

Today as I was holding a dinky flashlight over my landlord's shoulder so he could attempt to rewire the thermostat of my electric heater, I wondered what drives people to hate other people. All I can figure is, it's fear. A big burning hemorrhoid of fear, too horrible to even acknowledge, let alone deal with. Fear has plunged us into an alternate reality. I would like to wake up from this bizarre new world.

My landlord came over today to fix my thermostat, which went kapooey yesterday. I was on the phone last night, talking to a friend. I heard a hiss and a fizzle coming from the wall. I looked over at the thermostat and saw wisps of gray smoke floating away from the little box. I knew that probably wasn't good. I turned the heater knob all the way off and as I kept murmuring uh-huh and you don't say to my friend on the phone, I strolled into the kitchen and liberated my ancient fire extinguisher from its plastic holder on the wall by the back door.

No fire seemed imminent, but I took my important papers into the bedroom when I went to bed last night. I also took the fire extinguisher with me. I pictured myself putting my cat into a pillowcase and lowering him out the window to a neighbor below, before I jumped and brained myself on the concrete. I didn't sleep very well.

Today the landlord came over. He took the little box apart.

“Shouldn't we turn off the power?” I asked nervously.

“I'll turn it off at the breaker box,” he said and went to the basement. I heard some banging. He came back. We stood peering at the defunct thermostat. I wanted to tell him I knew he could get a lot more money if he evicted me and rented to someone else, but I kept my mouth shut. This didn't seem like the right time.

He pulled out a device and tapped the wires with it. Then he tapped a wire to a lamp plugged into another outlet. Nothing happened. He shook the device. Finally, a red light came on and the thing started beeping. He went back to the thermostat and tapped the wires. Nothing happened. We both heaved a sigh.

“Your wife would not forgive me if you turned into a crispy critter,” I said.

“I bet that box is older than you,” he said. I told him how old I was. “Well, darn near,” he added.

He fooled around with the wires for a bit. “Darn. I got the wrong thermostat,” he said. “I need one with four wires. I'll be back pretty soon.” He went out the door to his truck and drove away.

Three hours later, he came back.

“I had to go to six places to find the right one,” he said. He didn't sound angry.

I held the flashlight again while he worked some magic with a plier-like tool and some little yellow plastic cap-like thingies. He twisted the old wires with the new wires with the yellow caps. Then he shoved all the wires, old and new, back into the metal box in the wall and put the cover on.

“Okay, let's turn on the breaker,” he said. He went to the basement and came back. I was standing directly behind him as he turned the knob. A large bang ensued, followed by some sparks.

“Are you okay?” I said, imagining the worst.

“I'm okay.” He was clutching his hand to his chest, more out of shock than from injury. We looked at each other. I'm sure my eyes were as big as his.

“I'll call the electrician,” he said as he packed up his stuff.

So now I sit in a cold room with my feet ensconced in my dry-rice foot warmer, wondering why people are driven to hate. All I can figure is, it's our old friend, fear. We get so wrapped up in fear we can't even stop to ask what we are afraid of. Right now, I guess we're afraid of people who don't look like us, coming to kill us. It's irrational fear. We should fear our cars or our bathtubs—those are the real killers.

Sadly, you can't reason with someone who is afraid. Facts don't matter. You can't tell them, shut up, quit whining. You can't say, what's your problem, get over it. It does no good to say, your fear is irrational and you are behaving like idiots. People can't hear logic when they are mired in fear. I don't care what side you are on. Scared people are deaf people.

Of course, nobody wants to admit they are afraid, so they mask their fear with anger. That's what I do. I'm sure I'm not alone, judging by the number of angry people that seem to be out on the streets. I handle my anger and fear by hiding in my apartment and compulsively checking the news. Other people handle their fear and anger by yelling loud, nasty things about and at the people they don't like.

I'd like to say I'm on the side of the righteous, but I'm beginning to wonder what side that might be. Both sides seem to use similar tactics to express their fear and anger. We've lost our American mojo, that glue that held us together. Maybe unity was an illusion, like prosperity. Like a mirage. Now we're just tribes of monkeys, throwing rocks at each other because we've lost something we had or we didn't get something we wanted. And thus the human species regresses back to the mean. Thanks, Mr. Obama. I miss you terribly. It was great while it lasted.

The chronic malcontent marches to a different drum

Yesterday was the historic women's march in downtown Portland. I wanted to go, but I had meetings in NW Portland, 2 miles away from the action. The march was supposed to last until 4:00 pm, and my last meeting ended at 2:00 pm. I thought, hey, I'll just leave my car here and take the bus over to the route, maybe walk the last leg with the crowd. What could possibly go wrong?

After waiting impatiently at the bus stop for about 10 minutes, no buses in sight, I thought, hey, I'll just walk down and intercept the protesters somewhere near the waterfront at the end of the route. Action is the magic word, after all. I like to walk.

I'm not much of a joiner, but I wasn't going to miss out on history in the making, even if I only caught 500 yards of the route, skulking at the end of the pack. So I trudged on down to the river, equipped with hiking boots, a long hooded raincoat, an umbrella, and my old intermittently functioning Sony Cybershot digital camera. The rain was steady but not terribly cold, just a typical winter day in Portland. After the snow, ice, and 20-degree days we had last week, the air felt almost balmy. I was glad to be on the move toward something.

As I got closer to the route, I saw groups of people and families coming toward me, dragging waterlogged signs and wearing funny pink hats. They were talking and laughing, clearly done marching, signs forgotten. I crossed under the Burnside Bridge in Old Town, at the site of the Saturday Market, now vacant for the winter season. On one side of the MAX rail line, a horde of people were lined up to catch the train. On the other side, sheltered by the bridge overpass, was a line of sleeping bags and makeshift tents: a small contingent of our very large homeless population, wrapped like mummies, most likely too exhausted and demoralized to protest for better lives.

I caught up to the marchers as they walked east on Pine, a couple blocks from the river. I found some vantage points off to the side to take some photos. Then I walked with some other loners through parking lots, not of the crowd but with the crowd, so to speak. Moving in the same direction, anyway. I carried no signs. As I stopped for a light at a street corner, a young girl with blonde wisps poking out from under her hood gave me a wide grin and said "Hi!" Somewhat surprised and not a little bemused, I returned her greeting and crossed Naito Parkway to the Tom McCall Waterfront Park.

The fast-moving Willamette River was the color of a day-old McDonald's latte, punctuated with floating branches and logs. By now I was pretty done with crowds, and my feet were killing me. I took some pictures to prove I was there. Marchers milled around in clumps, proudly displaying their signs: Women's rights are human rights, Not my president, and my favorite, Viva la vulva. Some marchers were still on the move, headed south toward the Morrison Bridge, where some kind of stage was set up. Music and voices boomed over a sound system. I skirted all that by walking along the river front, heading toward the bus line that would take me back to NW Portland and my car.

At the bus stop, I commandeered the butt-sized bus bench to rest my aching legs and feet. I would have given up the seat to someone else who needed it. A woman with a walker joined us, but her walker had a built-in seat, so I stayed put. Someone with a smartphone said buses were delayed because of heavy loads. I waited a few minutes. Then I thought, I could be here all day. Maybe the streetcar would be a better bet.

I heaved myself up and started walking away from the river, toward 10th Avenue, where I knew I could catch the streetcar to NW Portland. The rain slowed. I heard a drum beat and realized I was watching the end of the marchers, the last walkers moving slowly north on 4th Avenue. I took some photos of overflowing garbage cans and piles of discarded protest signs and kept moving. By now my right ankle was bruised from the unforgiving ankle support of my right boot. My left heel burned with a blister. My step was neither lively nor steady at this point.

At 10th Avenue, I found the streetcar stop flooded with hopeful wanna-be riders and no streetcar in sight. I walked slowly along 10th (downhill, thank god). I contemplated going into Powell's Books to see if the giftcard I'd carried in my wallet for two years was still good, but I feared if I stopped moving, I'd not be able to start again. By this time, I knew that my chances of catching the streetcar were slim to none, so I put my head down and decided to power on through.

The rain stopped. The wind came up, but the breeze refreshed me. As I trudged over to Johnson and turned uphill to head back to 24th Avenue, I wondered what if anything I had learned about marching, protesting, and political grievances. If I were a truly evolved human being, probably I could have transcended the murderous pains in my legs and feet and focused on the meaning of life and the pendulum that swings us from love to hate to love to hate. But the untrained human mind is easily distracted by pain. Nothing much came to me except... shoes. I need better walking shoes.

Eventually I spotted my car halfway up the block. I plodded to it, opened the door, and sank wearily into the driver's seat, wondering if my feet would ever forgive me.

Today I looked up my route on Google maps to see how far I actually walked. I'm embarrassed to report, my route was two miles long from my car to the waterfront. I walked another half a mile south to the Hawthorne Bridge. Then I walked back to NW Portland, more or less along the same route. All together, my trek was easily five miles long. The march itself was only 1.3 miles.

I'm ready to go Donner Party on my cat

Today is Day 6 of the... what are we calling this? Snowpocalyse? Snowmageddon? I don't know what people are calling it, but I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting it to be over.

The snow, once fluffy and pristine, has melted and been packed down multiple times, every day and every night as the temperature hovers between 20° and 35°F. The mush in the road is a grimy, rutted, whipped-up mess of snow, ice, gravel, and de-icing chemicals (which as far as I can tell, didn't work). I want out of here, but not into that.

Weak sunshine looks festive from my window, but the air outside is dry, brittle, and frigid. The roads are too slick for my little tin can Ford Focus—I fear gravity would take over if I tried to get down off this hill. It's too cold and slippery to walk down, a recipe for a broken hip. The good news: buses are running, albeit infrequently, because today is a holiday. But they are running. And that's a relief, because I am running out of food.

I wasn't built for this weather. I was made for warm, dry, sunny climes. I was made for California chaparral, Arizona cacti, dusty yards made of decorative rocks and desert flowers, blue skies and sunshine. My bones are rotting as I sit here with my feet buried inside a homemade foot warmer made of uncooked rice packed inside runnels sewed into an old pillowcase. After being microwaved umpteen times, the cotton is scorched. Today one of those scorched areas sprung a leak and a shower of tiny broken pieces of rice scattered across my desk and floor. I guess four minutes on high, every hour, is too much. I'll sew up the hole and try three and a half minutes, see how that goes.

I visited my car a couple days ago, just to make sure it was still there. It was, buried under a foot of snow, a car Popsicle. My brother warned me I should try to get the door open and start up the engine. Apparently batteries don't like cold weather any more than I do.

People in other parts of the country think we Portlanders are wimps and whiners. They are not wrong. Winter here rarely consists of more than rain, rain, and more rain. This big Arctic air bubble sitting over us happens from time to time, but it is rarely accompanied by a firehose of moisture. The last time I remember this much snow was almost ten years ago. I bought snowboots after that horrific experience. I dug them out of the back of the closet. That is how I blazed a path to my car.

I thought the weather would shift during the early morning hours tonight, but the NWS forecasters are now predicting freezing rain tonight and all day tomorrow. That means if I want to go get food, I will have to hike out or take the bus today, because once the freezing rain starts, the buses will stop running up here on the hill. My refrigerator is looking a bit bare, and my cat is starting to look oddly tasty.

When it starts raining, it is not expected to stop. In fact, temperatures may rise into the mid 40s on Wednesday. You know what that means, right? Oh, you don't? Well, it means that some of that snowpack in the mountains will start to melt, filling our local rivers and streams with a whole lot of water. Add to that the snow on the ground in Portland, clogged sewer grates, and saturated thawing ground and you get flooding and mudslides. The NWS has issued a flood watch. Luckily, I live on the shoulder of a hill. I am sure I won't get flooded. I am less sure that the road down the hill won't be subject to a small landslide or two. Unlikely. The trees that might have slid are mostly still lying in pieces in the parking strip after the previous ice storm.

I'm resenting weather today. I was hoping I would get out of here today (meaning, get my car out, drive to the store, see what is happening in the neighborhood), but it looks like that might not happen until Wednesday. I rarely am called to interact with this much weather. In an attempt to be grateful for my first-world problems, I tried to imagine what it would have felt like to be snowbound under nine feet of snow in Donner Pass. I'm sure I would not have survived. My ancestors who came from South Dakota and Wisconsin weren't wimps, but somehow over the generations, my ancestors' genes produced me, a hothouse flower with a built-in resentment against inclement weather. I'm so over winter.