Link to audio-visual album: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoouPS3wzmg&list=PLHK8orDtSUgYWkxvaAj7YLLpdVpgIxJlT

(Epilogue included with purchase of album.)
Chapter 1

Oregon City was a place I had passed through on the 205 highway a thousand times. My estranged lover wrote her masters thesis essay on the history of the town. According to her research, for a brief few decades, it was the technological peak of human civilization. First in the known universe to deliver electricity long range on a grid. And the first in the region to produce paper for the pacific northwest locally. When mentioned in conversation, I'd think in my head I was talking about a city I knew quite well. So it was a complete shock in the summer of 2019 when I actually laid eyes on the Willamette Falls and the Paper Mill for the first time.

The falls themselves were a spectacular sight. The second largest waterfall in the country. But no legal way to see them up close without trespassing. The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde bought their land back from the people who stole it in 2013 for 27 million dollars and have plans to open a public footpath to their sacred falls, but the false realities of capitalism have put several roadblocks in the path.

I could see the top half of falls from the highway. The horseshoe shaped mists flirted with drivers like a beautiful woman hiding behind a hand fan. The hill below the road obscured the Paper Mills themselves, which were just as exquisite as the falls, but in a different way; like a decaying moldy peach has it’s own type beauty. They were built into and around the falls, so that unmistakably it looked like an abandoned industrial Rivendell. With untold depths hidden below it's deep tunnels and crannies. Forgotten. The Mines of Moria dwarfed by the colossal volume taken up below the surface.

I've always had an interest in the form and composition of abandoned industrial complexes, and this one was a world class example. A place so vast with crevasses, you could hide an entire village inside and the public be none the wiser. My first instinct wasn't hiding a village though. I mainly wanted to hide my friend in it. My long lost friend Casper who I met living in the steam tunnels of the Evergreen state college (3 years before the student take over). Friend might not be the right word. I knew him. And he knew me. We shared a priority to create our own spaces in spots owned by others. Night missions.

Like a ferret or a rat with the mind of a classical philosopher, he would spend his days underground compulsively hoarding odds and ends from the buildings above, creating intricate shrines in nooks and crannies with stolen office supplies referencing esoteric Greek literature that no one living could possibly pick up on, while tutoring kids on calculus, teaching himself Latin. A modern day Diogenes. The moment I saw Willamette Falls, I was certain he would look at this site like a paradise on earth and never leave. It was my dream to see him work here.

I only had a fraction of a clue as to where Casper was at this time. The last time I saw him, 5 years ago, we were on Berkeley campus. He was talking philosophy with a philosophy graduate about Socrates or Nietzsche. I remember how he abruptly dropped the conversation, which he seemed to be winning, if such a thing can be winnable, to join in a swing dance with a group of female students in the middle of red square. I had no idea he could dance. And I’ve known him to be repulsive to the public at large for his infamous pranks. Women typically evaporate when they see the bearded balding man in pigtails with the thousand yard eyes wrapped up in a stick infested blanket. Yet on this particular occasion he managed to turn into the lead dancer and every one in the group instantly accepted him. After that he walked behind a group taking a photo for a wedding, and he put his hands in his pants and began pretending like he was jacking off. The photographer almost shot him in the face, but Casper was reluctant to leave or even recognize the danger he was in. Moments later we were sitting in the grass playing chess and a drug dealer approached us asking for money. Casper spat in his hand and tried to shake the guy's hand, which was met with threats of violence. Casper then pulled a butter knife out of his pocket and asked if he wanted to break bread. The guy was about to kill Casper. Casper was just joking, and didn't realize he'd put us in a life or death situation. I'd had my fill of Casper, and this situation, so I abruptly walked away. Said good bye.

That was the last time I saw Casper. He was hopping trains from Olympia, down to California, down to Florida and then I think somewhere up in Pennsylvania. Quaker Town, I believe. He doesn't really keep in contact. He won't return texts or email unless sending me random pictures of music study rooms at universities across the country, with an assortment of chicken eggs in the corner. Could be a coded message. But there’s not enough time in this world to figure it out. And that's fine by me. My theory is that he's not 100% human.

It was June 2019 that I first saw the Willamette Falls Paper Mill. And I would dream about it often. I would visit the McLoughlin Promenade, a footpath on a 100 foot cliff parallel to the factory overlooking the tallest buildings. In between the footpath and the factory was a road, and then a railroad, and then another cliff. About 30 feet. I would spend hours sitting on the ledge, theory crafting the best ways to enter. The front entrance to the factory was the Main street of Oregon City, far too visible. And guarded. The only two ways I could think of was swimming up the river, or walking up the train tracks and finding a way to climb down the cliff. Which seemed like the way to go.

But I wouldn't break first ground on the property until the spring of 2020. Mid March. Just a few days before the entire planet locked down in a black swan global pandemic event. My best friend A.O. and his life partner Amalia had driven to Portland for a few nights to tour graduate programs for social work. I had booked a one way plane ticket to Portland from New Mexico the month prior. The plan was to drive back with them and fly back after a few weeks of south western adventure. I would only get one night with them. And I had to cancel the ticket.

Amalia was busy visiting personal friends she had in the area, so A.O. and I had a free night. Our tradition when he was in town was to throw rocks at trains on the train tracks along the river, near the Oregon science museum under the highway overpass. So when he called asking what we should do, I was pretty much already driving to the museum. The Paper Mill hadn't crossed my mind in several months, so I don't know what hit me when I decided we should drive there instead. But it was the best decision of the new decade.

We bought candles, plastic Easter eggs, and little Buddha statues from the dollar general. This was the last time I entered a store without fear of dying. With a backpack full of goodies, we followed a path along the train tracks, trying to follow an entrance to the factory I learned about from a Youtube video. But the metal staircase they had used had been cut away, leaving nothing but a 30 foot free fall. No good. We continued down the tracks for a half mile and found a break in the cliff, where there was an outcropping of rocks at a 70 degree angle that you could climb down.

6 hours of pure bliss. Of what would turn into an anchor point memory in a sea of muddy oblivion. We hid eggs in places I’d never find again. We discovered offices. Chemical labs. Workshops. Desks. Pamphlets. Control rooms. Business cards. Soviet style command modules with buttons and nobs. Skyways with rusty welds that would waver as you walked over them. Weathered Absetstos fused siding with water damaged state mandated paper warning signs. Fractals of concrete jungles fallen in on themselves, wrapped up like a Christmas present with rebar ribbons and columns and heaps of old chemicals and smokestacks and deep dark bottomless pits for little kids to fall into and their mothers never to find. With dew drop moss sprinkled on top.

The night ended as quick as it came. Excited to embark on a road trip with my friends the next day, I went to bed completely satisfied with life.

By the time the sun rose that morning, news broke to sheltered America that the rest of the world wasn't lying about corona virus pandemic they were experiencing, and everyone started taking it seriously with panic attacks and compulsive consumption of every day essentials. Toilet paper on shelves was a memory. For a solid 3 months. Before the police riots. But it was a long 3 months. A.O. and Amalia left early, and without me. It wasn't safe to travel anymore.

Like most Americans, I had lost both of my jobs. I was being stonewalled over unemployment. I was on the brink of homelessness. My immune system was compromised, so I couldn't go out anymore and lost contact with almost everyone as most of my social contacts refused to believe what was reality. Wearing a mask became a political statement. It was this sharp sense of grief, over the loss of a life that was never meant to be, that I drowned in for the first few months. I didn't leave my room once. The lack of purpose was ripping my personality in two. But with this, opened opportunities of their own.

April 1st 2020, Casper revealed himself to be living in Eugene Oregon, just 2 hours south of Oregon City. I had known Casper to be interested in Eugene for Ken Kesey and the merry pranksters, some of whom still lived there. But apparently he was there for the dancing scene and the easy access to the university campus. Which he slept in. All that was shutting down now, all over the country, so he didn't have a place to stay. Anywhere. He asked me what I think he should do with his life right now, and I told him about the Willamette Falls Paper Mills. He packed his bag and was driving north before I hung up the phone.

Chapter 2

The virus took its toll on everyone, but I was hit in a deeper way. For me, this wasn’t the beginning of a new way of life. This was a continuation of a sentence that I was given 2 years ago when my body ate the myelin sheath in every nerve in by body, paralyzed me. So any chance of getting the virus was a direct threat of reliving that trauma. I continued to be a shut in and put my life in a coma. There was only one escape from this dreamy hellscape purposelessness. The Willamette Falls Paper Mills.

Every other night for the next 9 months, Casper and I would go to the factory and haul in random stuff we would find during the day. I genuinely had nothing better to do. And it was the only thing in my life that gave me any sense of progress, or purpose. Employed or unemployed, the work must go on. There wasn't anyone at the factory. The security was loose, and aloof. A perfect pandemic pad.

Our first creation was The Joy Room. A room with wrapping paper decorated walls, table cloth covered ceiling mosaics, shoes hanging from the rafters, spongebob and an army of friends, fake trees, a sign that said “JOY”, and a bunch of fake plants and barbie dolls. It took what felt like forever to create this room, hundreds and hundreds of pounds and dozens of trips; but knowing what came later, it feels like this stage took one day. Such a small percentage of what we ended up building. At this time, the other rooms in the office were totally empty. But soon every room was to be filled completely, with their own themes and character. A literal thrift store sized pile of stuff organized around the shell of the abandoned office building with the main lobby in the center, waiting for a 20 foot desk tower to rise above the fray. The ruined body of a car mixed in with the cacophony of office supplies scattered around the room like a volcanic explosion frozen in time.

A second room was developing. What we would call the processing room. A room full of boxes of things we hadn’t processed yet. Items yet to find a theme. A home. Waiting for the months into the future when enough new things would be piled up that patterns and themes would exist that weren’t possible to imagine before. New words in a language previously unable to express a certain thought.

So many boxes. Each 2 – 5 boxes equals an entire night of work. Hot nights walking along 3 miles of train tracks. Like the ol’ 9-5 commute. Watching the power company lights dance upon the river before the waterfall ate the water into a void. Sweating, struggling to hold up the boxes as our legs were too long to walk along the natural rhythm of railroad ties. So we would get a syncopated pattern, railroad tie, tie, gravel, tie tie tie, gravel, tie, gravel. And so on. Nights where it was so hot I would overheat, needing to take breaks along the railroad tracks with my shirt off to exhaust the heat. Hiding behind shadows when those above would walk passed on the cross walk, ready to call the authorities at any hint of our presence.

Chapter 3

The pandemic continued to worsen. My days turned into waking nightmares. Where my past self screamed for me to please fall awake from my dream-like quarantine coma and do something. Anything! But there was nothing to do. Months of the same pattern repeated – days heavy with nothing. Contrasted with every other night, where we would offload all the free stuff we’d find and do a factory run. This progressed into a hoard that was truly shocking. Such excess could hardly even be comprehended. Likely 2 tons of material. Each box was almost an entire night of work, and there were now hundreds of boxes. Not only was there the joy room, but we had the windowless room, the mandala room, the tabernacle, the processing room, the Easter room, the school room, the doctors office. Not to mention the candle shrine I made with A.O before he disappeared to New Mexico. But there was more work yet to be done. Casper would not take a single photograph yet because he insisted the work was not yet done. Unworthy of documentation. We were midway through creating the tower – a 20ft pile of desks that were topped off with an old CRC computer monitor with the words ‘tune out’ spray painted onto it as the cherry on top. More rooms to be filled with themes yet to be defined. The themes themselves originating out of the living definition of excess itself.

This particular night we entered, we’d be greeted with a new round of our rooms vandalized. The ‘tune out’ monitor had been thrown to the ground and cracked. Several Teepees were missing. Many stuffed animals had their faces spray painted black. Tags were layered over our intricate geometries of colored wrapping paper. The picture list of students we had amassed in the school room was defaced. And the snowman was gone from the operating table. This was about the 4th time we arrived to face the destruction of our progress. It never stopped us from continuing, but we both agreed it was in poor taste. Casper especially. He hated these people.

Which fascinated with me, because of where he sourced all of his material. I would get all my stuff from the Craigslist free section, or free piles around town, or items near dumpsters. Which had problems of it’s own. These were Christmas trees, toys and play things, sometimes unexpired medical equipment, all of which I was depriving of someone else who may have actually had a real life use for. Only to be stored in an inert location never to be used again by its intended audience. Like phosphorous leaking from agricultural fields to the bottom of the ocean. Or precious helium shooting into outer space after being used for a birthday balloon. Casper would take from thrift shop donation piles, people’s yards, and at times, George Floyd candlelight memorial vigils. “Let the dead bury their dead, the living may come with me”, he would say. If it was anyone else who had done that I would have broke contact, but his thought process was so different, the intellectual lineage so far removed from the cultural context he exists in, it was difficult to take offense for too long. It was just one of his thousand yard stare juxtapositions.

All the same, I started thinking about all the time I was putting in here. If it was worth it. How much of my life force was being invested in taking free stuff that could be used elsewhere and putting it in this blackhole deadend of vandalism. And who my audience was. The company I was keeping. The people visiting this place had no reverence for what was being created. Only had destruction to give as tribute to our work. Anyone who might be interested the spot would probably never come here. So it was really about the work itself. And as the days continued on, as my thoughts grew aloof, day after day of quarantine, the factory was the only respite. This project was something to do, and someone to do it with. Casper lived in his car at a park not too far from the factory. He spent all day in a park playing chess by himself preparing for a try at a chess title. He never entered a store. Never went to a bar. And rarely talked to people unless it was outside. Which to me, ended up being enough.

One day Casper told me a man who feeds the ducks in the park, who had begun feeding him as well, offered him a job fixing golf carts that pays $75 an hour, provides housing, and pays over 100,000 a year. He turned it down. Said it would detract from his chess studies.

Chapter 4

We were in the joy room, and we saw 5 shadowy figures cloaked behind an orb of flashlights climbing shuffling around the fence onto the dam walkway below us. More and more hooligans had been visiting the spot, as word of mouth got out something magical was being created. Or, more likely, “some creepy ass shit going on here” according to a couple tags in our rooms. They kept the flashlights on as they walked along the dam to the falls. Casper and I hated this. They’re going to blow up the spot, but what can you do. I wanted to assemble two Christmas trees we had brought in a few weeks ago. But Casper wanted to prank the figures. Teach them a lesson. With the power of pranks.

Naturally, the best thing to do, Casper insisted, was to put on a fury horse head helmet (not the rubber meme horse heads of 2013, but a plush one with a more dynamic 1960’s sinister quality to it), a silver silk dress, and hold onto a children light up toy keyboard that made animal noises. The battery was dying, and so were the animals. He asked if I wanted to join. I respectfully declined. But I put the Christmas trees on pause. I told Casper I would scout for him. I posted up on the abandoned rooftop of Mill H, which overlooked the dam.

He didn’t have a phone though. So my role was pointless. The 5 figures were walking back from the falls by the time Casper had worked out in his costume. They had scaled the fence and were walking down the corridor as horse head Casper was halfway down. As soon as the moon light of his silkin silver dress caught their eyes, they were going 100mph in the other direction. Their lizard brains betrayed them though, so they went left instead of right, back around the fence into the dam, instead of deeper into the factory complex of the reject refining building. A mistake. That was a dead end.

Casper followed them and climbed around the barbed wire fence. They were hiding at the end, waiting to ambush whatever ghostly figure was pursuing them. I scaled a staircase and watched from the corner as I rest my body on the masonry capped rooftop.

There wasn’t much to see for a while. Just fog. But around the bend, 5 lights turned on simultaneously. The lights surrounded a figure in a dress, with a furry horse head. 15 minutes passed and they started walking back. I figured he had broken character by now, but when he ran into the fence and kept running into it, I knew he was in his classic Casper mode and unable to realize it’s time to act normal. Another stand off. The crew eventually left, and escaped via the same stairway I used to get up to the roof I was spying on them with. They asked me if I knew who friends with that crazy guy down there. I said I knew of him. They said they were seconds away from killing him. They were just silhouettes, but in the ghostly twilight, they looked to be about 8 feet tall. I believed them, and told them to watch the flashlights. And the night ended like any other night. But there was never to be another.

Chapter 5

I got a text from Casper 20 minutes before we were going to meet for a factory run.
“The factory is on fire.”
And then another,
“It’s all gone.”

I was out the door in an instant. I was in a fevered rush to get there, but was numb to the loss. Maybe it was a different part of the factory. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. When I entered Oregon City there was a blockade. The road was closed. I had to drive up the hill and park around the cliff along the park. I looked over the cliff. Looked at the South West corner. I knew exactly where the fire started. There was no question. It was our place. And it must have been on purpose. The same hooligans that have been fucking our shit up this whole time, most likely.

As we watched, a 3 alarm fire amount of fire trucks lined in a defensive position sprayed water onto our paradise turned blackened crater. Casper wondered what the cops were doing. He said now that the building was charred black, they could enter the building and beat it up.

The whole town was there. As I walked past the giant audience, none of them were wearing masks. Like the hooligans, their recklessness has caused the whole world to bust into flames. Instead of just an abandoned corner of a factory, it was a global pandemic. But it’s all connected. I wouldn't have even been doing any of this the past year if people had worn masks. I thought about how much more I know about what’s happening right now than them. How they know nothing of what’s on fire right now, what fueled this fire. A year of tireless work by two people desperate to throw their work at something to make the world a more joyous place. I heard one guy say “I used to work in that office building. My office was the second story down next to the south west corner.”. The Joy Room, I thought to myself, he used to work in the joy room. I wanted to tell him, and the others around him. This was the first time I felt sad about it. And the mourning set in. A silence crept into my life that terrified me. What am I going to do with my life now?