The Willamette River splits Portland in two, giving ‘Bridge City’ its moniker, and hosting a stretch of park named after a governor from the 70’s. My mind is on east coast time, so at 7am I’m fully awake and strolling Tom McCall Waterfront Park, the river a flat shade of gray reflecting the morning clouds of the Pacific Northwest. I am the only tourist on this stretch, but not the only human. A few joggers, a cyclist on his way to work. But we are far outnumbered by people dressed differently from us. People who slept here.

The giant garbage bags. The blankets draped like capes. The mobile shower units up the way, idling like school buses. A volunteer steps out of one, a bag of clothes in hand — someone’s old ones, I assume, exchanged for fresh. Another man is still asleep on a bench, his worldly belongings arranged around him in a tidy grouping.

I hug the riverside of the path and keep walking.

I am fine, I tell myself.

Except my body doesn’t believe me.

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Here’s the thing about me and travel: I’ve been a lot of places. Chile. China. Greenland. Kuwait at least ten times. The UAE a handful. I’ve navigated airports where I couldn’t read the signs, roads where I wasn’t sure of the rules, places where the culture was so different from mine that I was essentially operating on instinct. I might have been wary, but I was never afraid. Generally speaking, I was energized, curious, aware.

In other words, I am not a nervous traveler. I have a well-worn internal compass, pattern recognition engine, and street smarts seeded in 1980’s London when I would walk back to my study-abroad dorm across Waterloo Bridge at 3am. I know when to make eye contact and when to look away. I know when to broaden my shoulders and assume a ‘don’t mess with me’ glare. I know when the other side of the street is the right side of the street.

All of which was completely useless in Portland, Oregon.

I stayed at the iconic Heathman, a historic Portland landmark with a library on the mezzanine, stacked floor-to-ceiling with books all signed by their authors. It was a leather chair, quiet nook heaven. Evidently this is where writers stay when they come to town, and this newbie author wanted a piece of that. I loved it straight away.

That afternoon I visited the Portland Art Museum. It reminded me immediately of the National Gallery of Art back home — the same combination of an old-school, regal-bricked wing sidled up to a glass-enclosed, modern one. The best of both worlds, Portland’s heritage and its reach toward something new. The shiny Rothko Pavilion had opened just a few months before. This was news to me: Oregon was Rothko’s home. I’ve chased this abstract painter around the world from NYC to Norfolk to London, never realizing his origin story began in the Pacific Northwest. The museum holds a concise collection not only of Rothkos, but artists he influenced: Frankenthaler, Calder, Truitt and more.

I stood in front of a Rothko for a long time, letting it do what Rothkos do. My heart rate had finally settled.

Then I walked outside.

A man was lying on the sidewalk. Not sitting. Lying. His belongings in a bag beside him, one arm over his eyes against the afternoon light.

And just like that, I was fibrillating again.

The next morning I made coffee and sat next to the window. My 6th floor room looked out over Salmon Street: A jogger. Another jogger. A woman walking a dog with the brisk pace of someone who has places to be. Normal. Fine.

Then I noticed him. A man in a wheelchair, positioned at the corner as if patiently waiting for something... And sure enough, a woman appeared from the apartment building across the street, walking towards him. She handed him something I could not quite see from my vantage through the unfurling spring leaves of the sidewalk tree. But I could guess: breakfast. They exchanged a few words. He nodded. She went back inside.

I stood at my window for a long time after that. What struck me wasn’t just that he was there. It was that everyone had adjusted. The woman with her breakfast. The joggers who ran past without breaking stride. A city that had simply incorporated this. To everyone, it seemed perfectly normal.

While I fibrillated.

I feel bad even writing about this. Somehow I’m defensive and protective of Portland, a city I’d never been to before, know no one in, and to which I will likely never return. I also know I’m walking a delicate line: trying to talk about an inherently political issue without getting political. But seriously, that is exactly what I’m trying to do here. Because it’s what I do at The Luminist in general: notice. The goal of writing about this experience isn’t to judge or cast blame or shout about policies or even search for a solution. I’m writing about it because I can’t stop thinking about it, and I left Portland a week ago.

So to be clear, I was never in danger. No one approached me, threatened me, asked me for anything. Portland was not Kuwait, where the insane drivers alone could kill you. It was not Jordan, where face-covered police check your taxi for explosives as you enter the airport gates. But the situation in Portland got under my skin in a way none of those places had. I think what I can’t get over is the contrast. The relentlessness of it. Beautiful hotel, man in a wheelchair. Soaring museum, man lying on the sidewalk. Joggers with their dogs, blankets on benches. Back and forth, back and forth. In Kuwait I knew what I was dealing with. In Portland, I couldn’t figure out what to expect next.

And maybe that’s it. Maybe what rattled me wasn’t danger. It was the not knowing what to make of any of it:

Am I supposed to make eye contact or not? Do the people living here want me to acknowledge them or politely look away? Are they happy? Are they here by choice? Or are they struggling everyday, exhausted and desperate? How are there so many of them? Where did they all come from? Did they all come to Portland because of the acceptance and community here, or did they start with a house in Portland then lose it? Is this better than any other options they might have had? Beyond the breakfast lady and shower guy, is someone helping them? Do they need help? Do they want it?

And maybe the loudest question of all in my head: how did this become normal??

I flew home to DC with a singular focus: I needed to swim. I needed sensory deprivation. Water over my head, the world muffled, my body finally getting to just... stop receiving. I watched my bubbles float upward as I dolphin kicked on my back four feet below the surface, far removed from the confusing real world for a few relieving minutes.

I don’t have a conclusion to offer you here. You don’t need my verdict, and neither does Portland. I’m far from qualified to give one either way.

I do know that some of the rhetorical questions I asked above actually have answers. I have been doing a deep dive into Portland’s homeless (unhoused??) situation since I got home. But again, a solution or even an opinion is not my goal with this post. It just feels important to write about. And a little risky, but that comes with my chosen territory. I talk about loss for a living after all, a topic that most people, God bless them, would like to pretend doesn’t exist. Whether by nature or nurture, at this point in my life I’m constitutionally incapable of looking away from the hard, confusing stuff, even when it rattles me to my core.

So that’s what I’m doing here: looking closely, noticing what I feel, examining my thoughts as they rush through my head, and then laying out all of my chicken-scratch notes and journaling pages on my kitchen island. Sometimes the pieces click into place, so the initial jumble becomes a completed puzzle.

But sometimes things don’t fit into a neat picture. Sometimes things just stay messy.

To looking anyway,

Sue

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P.S. I’ve made another video for the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through.

If you’re into books and/or videos, you can watch it right here.

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