91104 Where is the refuge? BY CAITLIN SHETTERLY

It is finally September. It arrives for me with a lump in my throat and a feeling of danger I may never be able to replace, as my body associates clear, dry, blue-skied days with the end of everything I knew in New York City and a world forever changed. Last week, the skirt of hurricane Frances washed over Portland with a balmy tropical depression that seemed to foreshadow the gloom of winter coming and nature taking over, despite how hard I might will it to give me a few more days at the beach.

I mean, let’s face it, I still need to work on my tan.

I spent Labor Day weekend moving to my new apartment with two Johns’ and Aliya’s help. Pulling up to my storage facility, we got out with our Coffee by Design hangover rescue (it turns out none of us had taken moving boxes on Saturday morning very seriously when we were out Friday night) and unlocked the cavern of my stuff-vice to survey the situation. I felt an immediate depression.

After 9/11, Bush and his cohorts took up a lot of air time telling us to go out and buy things galore so that we could not only keep the American economy up, but also, he seemed to be telling us, let that stuff in its stuffiness somehow protect us from what we were feeling. Giuliani, at least, had the good sense to abandon the "buy stuff" approach almost as soon as it came out of his mouth.

Well, folks, I’m here to tell you that opening the door to a storage unit made me want to throw myself in front of my U-Haul. Here, in a five-by-eight room, was all my unnecessary necessary stuff. The guys protested carrying boxes of books and my crates of saved New Yorkers and O magazines (every man in my life who has ever helped me move has tried to get me to throw away not only my books because he didn’t want to carry them but also my New Yorker magazines, which I hold on to for who knows what weird reason — my mother has since informed me that this is an actual disease that usually women get after 65). New Yorkers were almost acceptable to John squared but O magazines — are you fucking kidding me?

My place was almost clean but not really, so I spent most of Labor Day weekend scrubbing in particular the toilet which had this stain in it that looked like melted sugar-daddy candies snaking down into its bowels, as if skid marks had been left time after time after time. I tried a full bottle of bleach. I tried Comet, Ajax, SOS pads (with gloves of course) — nothing worked. Finally, in desperation, I tried a combination of something called CLR and a butter knife, chipping away at the taffy-shit that would have made it impossible for me ever to have anyone at my house.

At night I felt profoundly alone. Cleaning up the detritus of another human being and arranging stuff in a space that will be yours for a time in the transience we call life is an alienating and lonely experience. Finally, my mother, after hearing my voice thin and tired, came to help me.

When she returned home, she found that her cat — our family cat, Oscar — had strayed too far from the house and never come home. My mother lives in the woods; there is wildness all around her: coyotes, fishers, raccoons, foxes. It was a gamble letting Oscar out at all, but he always stayed close by the gardens watching the hummingbirds and chipmunks next to the porch. This one evening, Oscar didn’t return and it was (his keeper) my brother’s job to tell my mother.

Here, right at the anniversary of so much personal loss for me and many in NYC, and the collateral loss of Afghanistan and Iraq — the loss of those children in Russia — now this loss of a cat who looked like a baby Puma, who loved the porch and the sun and drinking anyone’s water but his own. On the phone my mother’s voice is husky and tight much like that year after my parents’ marriage fell apart and I tried to do a first year of college aided by lots of pizza and marijuana.

I don’t know what to say. I’ve lived in cities ever since I left home at 18, but I grew up in the sticks and my mother still lives there. People intentionally try to hurt other people with terror and bombs and policy aimed to starve an entire population. But a coyote didn’t mean harm; it just meant life when it took our Oscar.

Here, in my new apartment — alone with my own blissful cat — I feel afraid. Afraid of what might come next in a world that seems increasingly dangerous. Where is the refuge, I wonder, as I imagine my mother walking in the woods, the hurricane dumping water on her, a flashlight in her hand, calling, searching, hoping for some sign, or at least some remains to bury. And this, maybe, is how we commemorate loss — not with stuff which anyone who has lost someone dear to them would burn in an instant to have that person, cat, parakeet back — but again losing, and again searching for something to bury.

Caitlin Shetterly cannot seem to find 10 sexy men in Portland. What the hell is wrong with this place? She can be reached at bramhallsquare@yahoo.com