Belmont District

I walk. It's sunny and 65 out. I walk SE Belmont after a run up 60th. I walk to Laurelhurst Park via 37th, it's 10:30ish a.m. and I tell myself I'll lay in the grass staring up at the sky until my legs get itchy but they never do so I eventually get up and sit on a bench and listen to a man playing the violin across the pond and I can't get it out of my head that all things Italian seem to be sprouting up and I'm wondering if it's some kind of sign and then remind myself that everything I see somehow becomes a jigsawed sign I weave together piecemeal and so I continue staring at the pond and it starts to sprinkle and then stops and the sun stops shying away and stays out for a while, for the rest of the day and I go back down 37th and stop in at Sound Grounds and order honey tea and smile at the girl behind the counter who is not smiling back and I smile again at her tenacity and individual conviction to not smile still when I stop back by some five hours later for more hot water and so I add more honey to my cup and wander down Belmont somemore to 20th, to Yamhill, to Colonel Summers Park, past a community garden, past a dilapitated Buddhist Temple, past three men cleaning up their mother's burnt down trailer, past balconied apartments, past the interwined layers of modern architecture merged with houses from the 1800's and the Japanese Maples and past Anansi Beat, an african drum store that I will stop into an hour later, where the first question will be, "what is your name?" and I will sit down with the owner and talk for two hours as I watch him tighten the ropes on a Djembe and skin the hair from the top of the drum, and see random youtube clips streaming from the computer in the background and realize the culmination of then and now and yesterday and tomorrow, like a messy braid we secure at the end, and I'll listen about Ghana and then I'll decide to walk the long way back to my brother's house, because returning there isn't quite like returning home and I walk up and through Mount Tabor where I'll want to capture the 360 degree view of layered mountains and downtown and Mt Hood out there tiptoing in the clouds but my phone will have died a few hours before and I'll know it's because you can't possibly take a picture like an x-ray and capture what sinks into your bones and so I cried instead and smiled and walked the descent of a dirt trail down to 67thish and asked a stranger for a pen and sat on the sidewalk as I transcribed some version of my inner layers out onto the canvas of my arms, wrapping the words around my thumb, and up next to the shoulder of a tattoed female on my forearm and I got up and knew I wasn't smiling because I had somehow learned to praise every physicality of myself, every bone or scratch or freckle or scar or stretch of skin, or every undulated emotion pouring forth or accepted every time I didn't stop myself when I spoke or everytime I did and regretted it and I walked on down 67th to Powell and to sort of steal from Emerson as good art is mostly stolen smartly, my emotions centipeding along the sidewalk, my sympathies somewhere else or everywhere at once, I smiled at the unfurling and hurling of myself at myself and it is hard hitting and I keep walking down 67th and it's somewhere around 5 p.m. and I'm falling in love all over the city.