A Portal to Wildness

I resent Portland, Maine for being a conservative, repressed city parading as a magnanimous, exciting metropolis of open-minded, smart people. Sure, there are some things that deserve recognition, like the museum with its original Renoirs, Picassos, the cultural center that brings in great acts from out of town, and the library with its amazing collection of books and films, but overall there is a sense of grit here that hides in plain sight.   The place reminds of NYC in the 70s with its fashion of vintage and hippy dress; soundtrack of the Beatles and Dylan playing all over town; smells of pot and incense reeking from windows and passerby; a well-articulated dislike and distrust of the the police; vomit on pavements from late-night or early-morning drunks; homeless shelters for teenagers and adults; brick buildings; and a sort of wide-eyed innocent and tattooed population looking to get side-tracked, tempted or lost in some addiction to pot, heroin, alcohol, religion and a membership to its anonymous therapy groups (my friend told me that in Portland they offer over 200 meetings a year for Alcoholics Anonymous, the most in the country). 


In another place, such imperfections would be a blot on the city’s psychic landscape, a sort of “shit happens” type of thing, but in Portland, because it is so small, it looms in your face, trying to distract or pull you down with it to the very bottom until you can’t get up.  Even when it’s not really there, the “bad” seems to be imagined and hyperbole.  Just the other day, I met a woman on the ferry to Peak’s Island who told me that the block I lived on was known for prostitutes. What? Where? I thought. For the year I have lived here I have never seen a prostitute in all of Maine, and I have driven all over the state. But she said that she once saw a pubic hair while walking down one of my neighborhood streets. What? Where?  I can seriously now describe Portland as the first tier of hell, a place where you live with a love of devil and mortal fear of god. As a matter of fact, I have met several people who in their introductions include the fact that they are Catholics along with their names.  So when it comes to hard-core beliefs, you are either highly religious or highly feminist as I've met from some brilliant, angry women who are just chomping at the bit for me to disagree with their principles, to which I keep my mouth completely shut.

 It’s easy to get side-tracked here, to live a quiet life of what Walden termed “quiet desperation” because this group of New Englanders prefers to keep it quiet and sweep it all under the rug; that is until you end up on the news as a victim of violent robbery or domestic abuse. And even such news would best be left not broadcasted - if such events could be avoided all together.  But having said all that, Portland is not violent nor is it unsafe. Crime here mostly happens amongst peers.  For example, I met a woman at the Laundromat who said that the most vicious fights happened at the shelter every night, people fighting for their things, cots, etc.  Mostly, you are more in danger of doing yourself in, by overdosing on drugs or destroying your liver to alcohol, than by having someone else do you in. 

In Portland, the challenge is to rise above and not everyone does it, care to do it, or is too afraid to even try to do it. But I see it in the smiles of the few who have, in the focused ambition of even the most mediocre of painters, writers, musicians… Yes, Portland is a portal to wildness unlike any of the cities I have ever lived in the US, ie., New York, Miami, Biloxi,  Alexandria, Washington DC… And I realized this from watching the sea gulls the entire time I have been here. What’s strange is that down below the city is quiet, its prickly citizens covered head to toe in in LL Beane, keep guard of its secrets and silence.  Yet up above, the gulls fly at will, in the rain and snow. They squack, scream, and fight.  They are the size of small dogs and land where and when they want, fornicate at will (my massage therapy friend told me that it was once difficult to do her job when two gulls were going at it at the hotel window where she was working); shed their feathers on the sidewalks, and always make noise.

In Portland, it is possible to be as wild and free as you want. You just have to tap into your deepest darkness and fears, go beyond them and fly like the brash, obnoxious and constantly screaming gulls that lead you from the bottom to all the portals above. This is not easy, of course, and sometimes your darkness tries to win, but even so, you have to keep getting up and trying again. 

The irony is that once you reach those portals, you must leave the place; Portland becomes too small to contain you - as I have learned from friends I've met who have since moved to NYC, Boston, Cape May in Nova Scotia, Santa Fe, Baton Rouge, and Los Angeles.

 Yet when you leave, you are free.