The snail slinks along

The rain falls heavier

On his house.

                    This isn't a revelation.

This place isn't just this:

The best brunch spot on a Sunday, where to get your downward dog on and become utterly enlightened, the myriad of coffeehouses to lose yourself in, how organically "unique" the next recipe can be or how much money one can throw at a person's sign on Burnside in hopes of bridging the gap between poverty and perseverance of the 9 to 5. That hostile sentence stops me in my tracks. My destination is some place on Hawthorne I frequent for tea because I too am a consumer. I do not throw pennies but smiles in the direction of strangers in hopes someone might hear me thinking "I understand", to feel as though we have shared the same definition of connection, full of remorse at my fortune, at my own dealt hand, my own dominoed decisions. In the same breathe I don't carry the burden of 10,000 things or the world on my shoulders. I'm one being. I desire to snap photos of these moments that feel substantially bleak and real at once, to tell myself this is why I'm living, of the man on his bike with bungee cords around his house, or the young girl nodding off in weekly group, the sun slanting in a little too sharply, the murmurings of an elderly woman in an alleyway, the buildings lined with flowering vines, but theres no way to capture that, so I slip inside a coffeeshop to consume, plan, contradict, scheme for happiness, ask for more hot water.

Portland, while you are the City of Roses and rain and eclectic upbringings, and flourishing creativity, you are also this, caught not in still frame but hindsight:

Sharing dark chocolate outside of New Seasons with Elsa who says she's 20 and looking for a place to stay, and you share simply because it's your favorite and it might be hers too but maybe she doesn't know it and her sign and eyes and bruised face says she's homeless but maybe she's not really and you don't ask her life story, just where she's from, a question that leaves you yourself unsettled, and you're both sitting there cross-legged on the pavement watching the people come and go with their grocery bags full of food and hopping on their bikes with their babies and big grins, and the wind stands still somehow, and she says "Portland", and it all becomes too much to be uncomfortable and not know what to say, like you're somehow better than someone who threw money into her jar and so you leave and feel sickened and saddened all over again and get on the 14 back home.

The woman who says she just got her teeth fixed and she's sending her picture to a friend because it's been over 20 years since she's had teeth and she's telling you because she's nervous and spilling her life story and that she'll try to wait to get home to cry, and you simply say "do it when you gotta do it" and she tells you that's the nicest thing and you wonder and know the answer at once at how many people are holding that hurt in.

A homeless man

The sea

Inside his eyes.

To take a picture would be too consumeresque.

Even writing these words feels too cheaply easy.

Somebody said recently, "Don't forget to hug yo mama once in a while".

http://www.npr.org/2013/05/11/182898557/mini-memoirs-6-word-stories-to-honor-mom

I stumbled upon this article the other day and wondered what I too might say.

I tried to come up with six words, something catchy, humorous, a gut-wrenchingly memorable moment that forever changed who I am in relation to you or vice versa or both. "You're  my Mom, I love you". No, too cliche. "Short, photographer, goofy, serious, helpful." Too vague and void of meaning. So here I sit..... blank space.... NOT because those moments don't exist, but because they constantly are, WE are ever changing and because those moments exist as the mundane, not the grandiose. Six words wouldn't be enough, and still too many. I love who you are in any form standing next to me. Raw, exposed, vulnerable, be that always. Perhaps, those are my six words: 

Raw: I ate sushi with you at the age of 15 for the first time, slurped down sea urchin, and while I can't recall the taste, you instilled fresh perspective, the California coastline, how to paddle a kayak across a landscape, renewal.
Exposed: there's this photo of you when you were in your early teens, posing with a tether ball, twiggy arms, pigtails, sinewy legs, innocent grin. I wonder what it would be to know you then, in the sepia tones of your youth.
Vulnerable: what I think it might mean to become a parent, an open vessel for the skinned knees, the tears and trials, the laughter, the stillness when they've flown the coop, the calamity when they come crashing back in, speaking in tongues, to fill up and either sink or learn to interpret the feeling of floating. 
Be: cause breathing is enough, and maybe it's what you drummed on your belly right before birth began, and you're still tapping into the California wind sent my way, playing patty cake with my hands on the other side, "just be, just be".
That: do you feel what words cannot name? 
Always: loving you. 

Happy Mama Day 
Love, your Boobutt

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.

A week in pictures.

With a little hiccup in my journey this week, a detour of sorts, I have found myself exploring Portland for a bit, job hunting and selling my car, learning the ins and outs of Portland via bike, bus and foot, seeing the city from a new perspective. I have been writing things down in piecemeal, haphazardly, so here are some photos from the last week, some of which speak for themselves, reminding me of friends and the interesting things I am finding along the way. Keep Portland weird.

A picture for Preston... a little Cowboy counterpart I drove past before getting into Portland.

Mt. Tabor sunrise.

Sunset walks.

Portland's recycling extravaganza.

Tea at Pieper Cafe on Foster. 80's music always playing.

Trust the process.

Sunset on my drive from Logan to Portland.

Siblings.

A book I first came across at a b&b in Mt. Shasta when I was ten or so, came across it at Powell's.

Food Pods.

Vietnamese bakery. Banh mi.

Bike Portland.

Powell's on Hawthorne.

Thai food cart.

Toto in downtown.

Sunset on a walk by my brother's place.

Tom Yum Soup.

Cozy cafe on Division and 60th: mason jar water cups, mismatched furniture, Thursday night readings, darling gals slinging coffee.

Coffee at Powell's downtown, which takes up two blocks of Burnside... books, books, books.

Food pods all over Portland.

Cathedral Bridge.

Eva's cookin'... traditional Chinese food.

Cheese and crack! A little alley stand tucked along shops on Hawthorne.

"A self-observation-operation".

How can we know what freedom feels like unless we've been unshackled from our own devices?

Brother and Eva at the Cathedral Bridge along the Colombia River.

Lebanese food! Yum!

Stimulation Ova-Ova-ovaload.

Got Multnomah County library card, found humor in the man allowing me one if I didn't mind signing my life away, learning the Trimet, getting lost on bike on the backstreets behind Hawthorne, nausea, ass wet without fenders, (who doesn't have fenders in Portland?, this girl), learning Portland's recycling system, composting, sleeping 9 hours straight to wake exhausted, drinking more water, herbal tea, Eva's humor, the thought of a spider going for a stroll,(why wouldn't spiders go for walks as well?), blindsided humility. Eclectic coffee shop on SE Division. Rain or Shine.

Stimulation Overload

Powell books on Hawthorne, a drive through Old Town, on up to northwest heights, Forest Park, moss covered trees, or as Eva calls it, "green body hair", on around skyline peering in at million dollar homes tucked into the side of the mountain, Mt. Hood at eye level, Carts on Foster, food pods, freedom, Cathedral park on the Colombia river, finding "the beach" among the industrialization and beer cans waiting to be plucked up for recycling, the affirmation of cliche that Portland is, not knowing if I just saw the same girl twice, looking slightly similar to that very cliche, Men at Work playing again in the Oriental market, Lebanese dinner, Cheese and Crack, crack box, art, half a heart in Utah, caffeine crashing, learning to love me.

Portlandia

11 hours, 715 miles, 3 tanks of gas, 90 something dollars, 80 on the 84, watching the sunset with Buddha on the dashboard as Bob FM plays Pat Benetar and Men at Work and Huey Lewis and the News, a PBR sighting on Montello Ave, and two states later I find myself in Portland, Oregon, where the streets are appropriately far from "neat", and just how everyone likes it. Most of the drive yesterday was spent thinking how all things are inevitably connected. I pondered where I am now in relation to the people in my life, how I would not have been in Utah had so many other events not occurred. I would not have arrived in Portland today, most likely putting it off another couple weeks, had I not gone out into the white nothingness of Benson Marina with Preston back in Utah, and saw a bird thriving, flying, having survived winter, and then moments later witnessed the contrast of black feathers and blood on snow from another who was not so fortunate. Why I decided that day to leave sooner I'm not quite certain other than it was just time, but I found myself waking at 7 this morning for a sunrise run, weaving through the quirky neighborhoods of SE Portland and meandering Mt. Tabor Park with my brother to see an exquisite view of Mt. Hood, eating Banh Mi for lunch from a place off Foster and 54th, and riding my bike down to Fred Meyer's to buy razors, because as I still won't be wearing a bra, I do choose to keep grooming... Pictures to come when I get a better hang of this blogging shtuff, or ever just get organized.