Entropy

I have always been fascinated by extreme wealth. Not necessarily the trappings and the “stuff” of rich people, but the thermodynamics of money when compared to poverty.

This is, I must admit, less of a social justice issue for me, and more of a state-of-matter concern. Yes, yes, my heart hurts for the destitute. The fallen, downtrodden poor. My family of origin – most of it – lived on the edge for many generations. I wept when I read Behind the Beautiful Forevers as much as the next gal. I am not heartless.

But when I say I’m fascinated by wealth, it’s a very physical response. And, lately, I’ve found myself on the hunt for data that will help lay the groundwork for my latest novel-in-progress – which is set in the West Hills of Portland and explores the vast consequences of the event we’re all anticipating: the Cascadia earthquake.

When I set out to write a book, I start with a combination of voice and geography. In the case of this latest novel, there is a third item. A central idea, I suppose. At first I thought I was writing about class, and I guess, to a large extent, I am, but “class” feels unwieldy to me without a basis in physical reality. In other words, I needed to find real things in the world to concretize the journey I’m going on with this made up person living a made up life.

The past few weeks has found me logging vertical miles on the SW Trail system up above my home. Sort of like Brady, in my debut novel, The Moment Before, I’ve taken to the streets where affluence, nature and poverty intersect. Object lessons unfolding at every bend. Every flight of stairs.

How precarious are those mansions perched upon fill! How extreme and extracted from good sense is a 7,000 square foot home built on stilts in service to the view of the volcanoes! The conical Hood. The flat-top St. Helens.

When the plates finally collide enough to jolt the earth under these lovely homes, there will be an intensely physical consequence that has nothing to do with money. This is what I want to explore: the fantastical ramifications of a reordering of great magnitude.

In the Pacific Northwest, we’ve seen micro-versions of this with the occasional mudslide. The earth. The powerful, always moving toward entropy, earth. When I walk, I take photographs of stairs that connects roadways and I’m struck by the evidence of homelessness tangled in the ivy and blackberries. At the base of these huge houses, under the signs that warn trespassers that they’re being observed (by whom?), and that they risk towing and/or imprisonment for occupying privately-owned land, I fall into a sort of novelist forensic high.

Who are these people? Whence did they hail? What compelled them to erect these houses and the signs? The sodden mattresses and missing bench lumber. The empty PBR cans. The carefully wrought graffiti. All the stories behind the intersection, rooted in the reality of thermodynamic law.

My protagonist – I don’t know too much about her yet. But with every walk, her role becomes clearer. She lives in both the worlds. The high and the low. And she carries a deep secret. And when the quake comes – my fictional version of Cascadia – the reordering will be such that her secret will be unearthed.