Summer. Night. Car headlights pass. Sitting on the porch. Lighting the pipe. Lonesome in a way that reaches down to the bones. Seeing couples pass. Trees hang heavy and dark below streetlights. There’s yearning in the air, hard to explain. It pulls your head back and to the side. You squint against it. Somehow you can feel life in motion around you. Cars, sirens, voices, sound of feet. The hum. The sky orange black, no stars. And you wonder where you should go. Where you should be. No answers. You wonder how you got there. It all just seemed to happen. You wonder what will happen. You question whether you’re doing the right things and feel a certain danger in that you really only get one shot at it. In stasis, life flowing around you like a stream around a stone. You think of places you’ve yet to go. Feel the loss of places you’ve been. On a dark summer evening, alone.

And years later, the memory of an inconsequential night so piercing, so sharp. So sweet. Who can tell what you’ll remember?

I just created splattsights, a blog designed to showcase my photography. Ideally, I’d like to add a picture a day, but, of course, we’ll see how that goes.

Steve

Dith Pran, Photojournalist and Survivor of the Killing Fields, Dies at 65

It’s like slow-motion, the rest of the world passing ’round you, oblivious, in blurred color, you in black and white.

It’s a piece of a music like a razor, flashing out of nowhere, and you can’t stop bleeding memories.

It’s not being able to come down.

It’s not all right.

It’s aching with all your heart for a soft, warm summer night, sitting outside and drinking good wine with old friends, and all you see is snow on frozen ground. It’s slowly watching your friends lose interest.

It’s yearning for things that will never come again.

It’s not being sure, at any given time, whether or not you can really keep it together.

It’s everyone wanting things you can’t give.

It’s knowing things others never will and which you can never truly explain.

It’s like nothing anyone can really do or say, despite their best intentions.

It’s like silence.

It’s like this.

New poll has Bush at a 19% approval rating! Lower than Grant! Lower than Harding! Lower than Nixon when he quit! We knew you could do it!

So proud….

Original Works Publishing (publisher of, ahem, “Liberation” among other plays) has started a blog about the theatre biz. You can check it out at: Sink or Swim

Steve

“Dead of Winter” received kind of a nifty little review from The Pioneer Log, the student paper at Lewis & Clark College. I especially like the line “lo-fi theatre at its best.” It fits with Pavement Production’s unofficial motto “quality on a shoestring.” (As opposed to our offcial motto: “This’ll be great…if it works.”)

Dead of Winter delivers deliciously lo-fi spooks

As a completely unbiased source,* I must say, Portland readers do not want to miss this show….we run tonight, tomorrow and then for two more thursday/friday/saturdays. Please come join us…. And please pass on the good word.

Steve

*(i.e., more or less)

Followspot:
Three ghost-story style plays use familiar themes of séance, morgue, and clairvoyance. Still, tales presented from a different, often humorous, angle, making them intriguing and creepy. Sparse, specific design elements parallel style of show, leaving much to the imagination. Unusual location adds to haunting atmosphere. A fun and chilling evening.

An auience member:
Last night, I saw Dead of Winter, a collection of three short plays, ghost stories, really. It was like attending Le Grand Guignol in February. Each of the vignettes were short on gore and special effects, but still managed to be creepy as all hell and present a couple of good “jump” moments. I’d love to see this same crew put together something in a similar vein for Halloween. I’m a sucker for small-scale theater like this. I really enjoy seeing what can be done in a modest space, without a lot of flash to spend, with local playwrights and actors.

Oregonian:
“Dead of Winter” The Bluestockings (fresh off their invigorating “Spirits to Enforce”) team up with Pavement Productions to mount this trio of ghost stories by Portland playwright Steve Patterson. Opens 8 p.m. Friday, continues 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, through Feb. 23, Performance Works Northwest, 4625 S.E. 67th Ave.; $10-$12; http://www.theblustockings.com, 503-777-2771.

Portland Tribune:
Lurking behind this evening of ghost stories is local playwright Steve
Patterson, whose 2006 collaboration with actor Chris Harder led to a
Drammy-winning one-man show.

So you may have noticed that after midnight, the White Eagle posts stopped. Yes: we were all eaten by ghosts. The end.

Actually, around 1:30, it was kind of a like a taut stretch of twine snapped, and everyone became exhausted and called it a night. That’s no surprise: we’ve been in rehearsal until 11:00 PM almost every night for the last two weeks, and people were beat. When they left, they also took their laptops with them, hence no more blog posts.

And what about yours truly, dear reader? What happened when just the author and his lovely spouse were left in the White Eagle alone?

Sad to say…or maybe glad to say…nothing. That was because, even as blown-out tired as I was at that point, I suddenly realized something I hadn’t anticipated: I was never going to be able to sleep in this place. I’d lie there awake, listening for every stray sound. At one point, alone in the room, I could hear a bag of chips uncrinkling, so hypersensitive I had become. And it was like, hey, fun’s fun, but I have two more 80-hour weeks ahead of me. I have to crash.

So around 2:00 or 2:30, we said goodnight to the Eagle and its residents, transitory or permanent. In summation, we heard nothing except a rock’n’roll band coming up through the floorboards, saw nothing untoward, and experienced one (briefly) very cold restroom. We watched half of the “The Haunting” and told some good ghost stories. And we had some laughs and shared time with friends.

Is the Eagle haunted? Well…I’ll say this: there is a melancholy to that second floor, where so much history, some of it painful, went down. The McMenamins have lovingly restored it, with wit and a goofy charm, but there’s no hiding that sadness, that people spent their lives (and sometimes ended them) in those narrow, claustrophic rooms with tall ceilings that have weirdly ominous cracks. And I don’t know whether it’s the power of suggestion or a reality, but I couldn’t help but feel something’s going on there. What it is, I have no idea. But, honestly, I wasn’t sorry to leave. I was a little relieved, if for no other reason than I could soon sleep.

In short, if the White Eagle isn’t haunted, it ought to be.

Steve

P.S.: When we finally got home, I bundled up and went out back to have my customary pre-bedtime pipe of tobacco, a time I use to sort of mull over the day and sometimes write in my head. And I was sitting out there, sorting through the evening’s memories, when I thought: hell, it’s not that cold out here. I thought it’d be much worse. That’s when it hit me–bang: the cold I’d felt in the White Eagle’s restroom was far colder than the outside night air. And somewhere, I could feel someone…or something…snicker.See you at the show.

Quiet again. The band taking a break. We’ve been sharing ghost stories…personal ghost stories. Things that have happened to us or we’ve heard about. Some of them are quite good, such as…well, we don’t want to incriminate anybody. But it is notable that nearly everybody has a story, and the stories all sense of the veracity to it. An emotional truth.

Or maybe we’re all just good storytellers.

Reports are that restrooms are warm again. No clue what that’s about.

But it’s nice that it’s quiet. I think.

S