Back from Yelapa

In Yelapa you get the expected with the unexpected. I got to swim under that sunset. I got to marvel at the chicken bush.

Vacations are never perfect. There was a fair amount of climbing to get our amazing view. There was a lot of donkey dung to walk around to get to our delicious evening meals. But when I settled into my plane seat next to a retired Puerto Vallarta condo owner I was glad for the grit still clinging to my skin, the ache in my calves and the oompah oompah sound of Yelapa's post-rodeo party still echoing in my ears.

Sorry guys. This is the post-paella paunch. After eating so much damn food last night (thank you JHB & Josie) this is all we could do. Fondue and melon/proscuitto and paella and chocolate cake/ice cream. And wine. And wine. And port. And Kahlua.

For all the craziness that this band and their massage therapist girlfriends go through, we still know how to kick back, eat some good food and be friends. Such a simple thing. Funny how easy it is to forget.

Now, I am off, finally, to Mexico.
See ya . . .suckers.

We watched The Confederate States of America last night. It wasn't great, but it had its moments. It felt like it couldn't quite decide how outrageous it wanted to be, at times feeling way too dry and at others way too silly. I think maybe it was also a bit too real, as if with a few simple arguments (or maybe none at all)a whole host of people might jump at the chance at owning a few slaves.

This picture is of the Coon Chicken Inn that existed here in Portland from 1930 to 1950. Read more about it here.

In my mind, this is what was happening last night.

In reality, what was happening was this: Sean and I hung out for hours in the ER waiting for him to get a shot of antibiotics for an infection in his leg. The people I saw were mostly cute blonde girls behind the desk and chubby motherly nurses. There wasn't a single male doctor in scrubs, swarthy or not, in the whole damn place.

It was remarkably calm and remarkably uncomfortable. Why would a waiting room purposely have chairs you couldn't lie down across? Some airports do this too and it drives me nuts. What purpose does my discomfort serve in these venues? It's inexplicable. When we left at 4:30 AM there was a family with a sick kid trying to sleep in their seats that had been there for at least three hours. The guy that had been there for four and a half hours got nothing but a nod of thanks for his patience from the cute receptionist. Bummer.

The one bit of excitement was a hooker that was brought in who couldn't stop saying fuckin' and was spewing feathers from the coat the paramedics cut. She was livid. "I can't help it if you fuckin' shop at Ross," she said. "This is a fuckin' expensive french coat and you fucked it up!" Now, if I can't have George Clooney swinging me onto a gurney, then at least give me an irate hooker or two, right?

This, I believe, is the Stinky Ass Tree. Some call it the Cum Tree, but my friend says that's an insult to cum. So we'll call it the stinky ass, or butthole tree. That's an insult to buttholes, but they're used to it. These things can ruin a nice spring walk. There's one down the street from me that I have to hold my breath past. Why, oh why, would nature do this? And yet, I have to say, these nasty trees are in perfect harmony with my cranky mood.

I always come home cranky from the workshop I'm facilitating. I think last night I finally became the overwhelmed first year teacher sitting with her head on her desk while the rest of the class threw spit balls and talked shit. I try and reign them in but the off-topic, everyone-blathering-at-once nature of the group is largely uncontrollable. I feel badly for those trying to politely, and calmly get something out of it. I feel badly for me.

Good news is, next week in my absence, it will be in the hands of a professional, one of the directors at Write Around Portland who is wonderful and sweet and experienced with unruliness. I hope they give her all they've got and that she comes back at them with the perfect spell to keep them focused and calm. I will know when I get back whether it's just me or if I've simply been dealt a rough hand.

How very vernal.

Even the magnolias couldn't coax the grump and grind from my head today. Even the new silver paint on my toes left me indifferent. Sean came home from a few days away complaining of the same kind of sourness. I've never been so impervious to the powers of spring. Luckily, it feels like an ugly but temporary spell.

Last night's Frontline report on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Iraq vets left me sunk in that kind of vague weariness that comes with watching a lot of televised war. In the civil war they called this kind of trauma "Nostalgia" and then, of course, there was "battle fatigue." Such sweet words. As if the soldier was simply falling asleep on the chaise in a dreamy haze.

I think I said a few weeks ago that going on vacation was kind of funny for me since I work so few hours and love being a homebody. Well, I've changed my tune lately. I keep the above image, this view in my mind on a regular basis now as I manuever through the minor chaos of my days. It's nothing, really, compared to what most people have to juggle, but it's too much for me.

And now I will rant:
I hate having more than a couple things on my plate each day. I hate leaving things up in the air. I hate having my weekend in the middle of the week. I hate having the voices of my workshop participants arguing in my head for days on end.

boo hoo. poor me.

This is one of many reasons why I can't have kids. How could I handle the daily chaos? It's one of the reasons I have so few close friends. How could I maintain a busy social schedule? And it is the reason that I will never work in a big group situation again with such a varied and unstable portion of the population. None of it's for me, I'm afraid. Good to know.

I don't know what this sign says or what it's for. It stands next to a house that doesn't seem to be a business of any sort. I'm tempted to drag Sean down there with his Chinese dictionary and have him translate it, though there is part of me that likes the weird mystery of it. It's probably an herbalist or acupuncturist or something routine like that, but it's fun to pretend it's something more magical or sinister.

It makes me think about taking down my own sign–the obvious one with my name and business hung in the front window–and building a stranger, more elaborate one that sits in my front yard, confusing everyone who passes.

After getting at least some of the bejesus scared out of me watching The Descent my friend went home and I settled in to some nice comforting programming on PBS. On a Best of Nature retrospective they were showing a story about a poor old New Orleans man searching for his cat left behind after Katrina. The man started crying about his lost cat which made me start crying. This was followed by the story of Shirley and Jenny, two abused circus elephants reuinted in a sanctuary after decades of being apart. I'd heard about this story, but it was still crazy to watch the black man who cared for Shirley in the zoo lead her to the sanctuary and start crying about being the person to finally free her. 'Free at last," he said. "Free at last." Of course, by the time the elephants were nuzzling each other, twisting the bars of the divider between them to get at each other I was all tear-soaked too.

I don't cry often but when I do it's almost always over something sweet and corny I've seen on tv, as if crying over anything greater would be too much to bear. There was a time in my early twenties when the stress was running HIGH and my only access to anything sweet and corny was the hour of Days of Our Lives I allowed myself while I ate lunch before returning to the self-imposed prison I'll call My First Business. I'd never watched soaps as a teen, but for those few horrible months I lived vicariously through Bo and Hope. This is all to say that I remember distinctly and with a little bit of shame how I would sit alone in my living room and cry over the melodramatic tragedies of those people. I guess it's a sign of my age that now it's kitty cats and elephants that get me weepy.

Funny, to be so drowned on such a glorious day.

Taylor St. is always the first tunnel of trees to turn pink. The arrival of this gauntlet of blossoms is an event I look forward to throughout the winter. I almost never go down this street except for the week or so that the plum trees (I think) are in bloom. The air here is barely sweet and incredibly delicious. I can't imagine I'm the only one who strolls this path this time of year, stopping every few feet to breath as much spring into my blood as possible.

Since I met him, Sean has told me horror stories of cord wood from his childhood. Apparently his folks thought it would be a good idea to have a wood-burning stove as their main (or only?) source of heat in the far reaches of Maine. That meant that much of Sean's free time was spent cutting and stacking loads and loads of wood. Today, he got to revisit his childhood nightmare and conquer it with vigour and a little bit of pride as we stacked a stash of logs for ourselves. The rest is up for the grabbing, lugging and hauling . . .building blocks for someone elses horror.

Love my new red sneaks. Wish I felt as laid back as this picture suggests. Things have been crazy lately. Lots of work, not enough writing, too much stress over how to make my workshop participants behave and also get the most out of the experience. Isn't that what teachers have to do every damn day? Praise be to those brave folks. Me? I think I've developed a nervous stomach over the whole thing. Silly, I know. Wait until they see my kick-ass red shoes. The sight alone will whip them into shape, right?

Here's proof that I don't kill every plant I own. Euphorbia and Rosemary. Nice couple.

After I finished work, I went out into the day and smelled the first girlish breath of spring, button candied and barely warm. This is the stuff that makes me swoon. The stuff that brings a bit of bliss. I want to eat the thumbprint-sized flowers growing in the grass, dropping each tiny white petal onto my tongue like a sweet mint. I want cherry blossom air pumped straight into my lungs.

Spring's fleeting nature is half its allure but every time it arrives I want to slow things down to five-year old time. I want an hour to seem enormous, a day to stretch the limits of my understanding. A week. . .impossible.

Looking at pictures of the Mexican village I'll be in 19 days from now can help take the edge off, but so can pictures of Portland from a few days ago. Spring blooms are busting out all over the place, thank god.

I don't believe in astrology, but there are days like today and yesterday when everything feels off, not just for me but for Sean and everyone else I come in contact with. Someone today will shout "Mercury Retrograde" at me the way they do whenever things get a little twitchy. Or maybe it will be something about the Year of the Pig. Who knows. It does feel like bigger forces are at work. A collective, exhausted shrug of the shoulders. I can't quite make the leap to believe it's my Libran destiny to be in this mood. So maybe I'll blame it on the weather and go back to looking at pretty pink blossoms.

Belmont at sunset.

This is the Dixie Mattress Company. I have lived in this neighborhood for over thirteen years and it has always been there with its weird junk sitting behind its dusty windows. I've only seen people inside there once in all those years and that was a few weeks ago. The door was open and there were two people sitting in the dimly lit chaos of the shop on folding chairs not doing anything that looked related to making a mattress. Apparently, there was some chatter about this place on blogs about town and The Oregonian ran this article, which is the first bit of real info about the business I'd ever read.

Personally, I find the shop ugly and its Union Jack flags offensive but I also love that it's still there. It's a weird and largely inexplicable local business. It is my theory that it is one of the last remaining elements that keep this section of Belmont from being entirely overthrown by painful hipness. That, and the shootings. Sean confirmed that there was not only one, but two shootings behind Belmont's, the corner bar. One was after a Tree Frog's show (Sean's old band). The bartender was killed. The other was after a hip-hop show and while remaining unconfirmed, ended live music at this bar. That was all a decade or so ago. Sadly, the convenience store has now taken up the slack in gun violence along the street. I joke about it being the Dixie Mattress Company's fault, but really, I'd be sad if I walked by one day and found a high-priced t-shirt shop had replaced the dusty relics and stained mattresses.

This is the Belmont Market, once known as the 365. One of the clerks here was shot yesterday. He's in critical condition. I guess when you need the money, you need the money and if it happens to be 3:45 on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, then so be it. You pull out your gun and rob a store. And if the robbery goes wrong you shoot and dash away in your not-so-low-profile orange sports car. Fuck.

I know this shit goes on all the time, but it's weird when it happens on a corner that I pass by almost daily. There must have been tons of hipsters hanging out at Stumptown across the street. It's such a neighborhood-y area that this kind of violence feels particularly violating. Though, it seems as if there have been a few shootings in this neighborhood since I moved here. Didn't someone get shot behind the bar across the street many years ago? I'm not sure. I blame it all, everything, on The Dixie Mattress Company which is still "open" down the block. More on that tomorrow. Damn . . .

My client was just telling me about her friend's new house. The yard had a few rose bushes in it, but other than that, the whole thing was covered in half a foot of rocks. This reminded me of my old rental, the cake house, where the landlady randomly came in one day, pulled out a dormant vegetable bed and put down a 5' x 5' square of concrete, the world's tiniest and ugliest patio. The things people do. . .

With the tree gone, I now have a clear view of the weirdness that is the trio of fences between me and my neighbor. 1. Picket fence bolted to some posts sunk in a low concrete wall. 2. Wind tattered bamboo fencing smashed in the middle (this is the most inexplicable layer) and 3. The relatively normal though not particularly beautiful fence of my neighbor.

I can't wait to pull out all this crap and plant some of this:

sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry

They look like giant vertebrae knocked loose across my yard, these peices of killed tree. The delays in getting the rest of it cut down have made it only slightly easier to finally see it go, only because the skeleton that was left for over a week simply sat there like a torture victim stripped of all dignity. I'm not exactly sad, but I am extremely sorry.

Of course, now I can start asking all my friends if they need some of my wood–– hiLARious . . .

Funny how I can find so many ways to procrastinate and still live in such a pit. I'm not nearly the worst culprit as far as filth goes, but my best friend is a gay designer and so. . .there is, at times, some shame involved. He doesn't care, but I still try to make piles of my messiness to give it all some kind of order, frame it in a photo in a way that makes it look more artsy than fartsy. And anyway, I don't care today because I got my 1,000 words down, all brand new. Aaah.

Behind this fence lurks the urban chicken. Sometimes the chickens lurk on the wrong side of the fence, the sight of which delights me. Either way, I'm a big fan of this big yard and these big chickens.

This also reminded me of a video my old college friend, Chuck "Chucky Sparkles" Jones, made a long time ago with two other people I went to college with. It's called Nobody Here But Us Chickens. Is it funny to me because laughter is infectious? Because chickens are inherently funny? Is it because I once had crushes on the people involved in this silliness? Oh, that's it probably . . .but still I wonder why.

I will be looking at this view, palm trees and distant Puerto Vallarta lights, in thirty days.
Going on vacation for me is a funny thing. I love to see new places, get out of the cold rain, read a book and relax with my friends. But I barely work. No, really. The hours I put in on my job are wonderfully laughable compared to most. And I love my life here in Portland; my boy, my house, my cat. I almost never feel the urgency that others do around vacations. Which isn't to say I'm not looking forward to Yelapa and that this dreamy image won't be floating in my mind for the rest of this gray wet day.

Just down the street from where we do our workshop is the Oregon Jewish Museum housed in this very seventies pseudo-Chinese building. It's such an interesting part of town, as if all the oppressed and marginalized parts of society have been tossed together into a few blocks regardless of their relation to each other. Strip club next to low-income apartment next to Chinese Language Association next to gay bar next to homeless shelter next to Jewish Museum, to name a few. The more time I spend in this neighborhood, the more I come to loathe its gentrification. I'm not against gentrification just on principal, but Portland needs its weirdness. Without it, what would be the point?

As part of the preparation for the next workshop, I've spent a good deal of time over the last two days reading lots and lots of poetry looking for the perfect writing sample to share with the group. I couldn't get away from it and thankfully so. I went to the Write Around Portland offices to look through their files of writing samples and don't know how long I was sitting there, flipping through page after page of really good stuff.

Poetry feels thoroughly alluring right now, not only because I feel drenched in it, but because it seems like a good though difficult antidote to writing a novel. I look at a line and think, hi words, I remember you. You're that stuff that makes me shiver and boil.

But I can't let myself drift too far. I can feel how, if allowed, I'd scrap the whole book and fall back into coddling and cursing half a dozen phrases, temporarily blissful in my most lyrical form of procrastination yet.

What is happening to me? I am facilitating a writing workshop and now I've gone and joined a book club for writers. I was actually picked up by a stranger and driven to SW Portland or Hillsdale or some such impossible place where I sat in another stranger's home and talked to a whole circle of even more strangers. And my heart never got nervous. And I was interested most of the time in what these people had to say. If I keep up at this pace I will either be running for public office or leading some grassroots campaign by the end of the year. Or not.

We read local author, Martha Gies' book, Up All Night, about night workers in Portland. I didn't love it, though it was an entertaining read and a good reminder to me that offices, schools and restaurants are not the only job options for my characters. The work itself can be fascinating, if presented the right way. Sitting with a group of serious writers was also a good reminder that I need to take myself more seriously. My secret competitive streak rises despite never having read anything by any of these people and I think, "All they have on me is dedication. If I get me some of that I'll be able to blow them all away." I think this and I laugh and still I try very hard to believe it is true.

This is why I love Portland. The Daphne are blooming. The crocus are out. The daffodils are pushing up, sleepy and curled, from the cool dirt. It is the middle of February and while I know that there will be more rain, more cold, windy days, the long long spring has begun. I feel like congratulating everyone on the street. Here's to another winter survived.

I collect my talismans randomly and without much thought. Why one thing gets thrown in the closet or garbage and while others stick around in plain view is not entirely clear.

I wasn't nearly as scared as I thought I'd be last night, facilitating my first Write Around Portland workshop. My heart remained calm and my voice didn't waver. Maybe I drained out all my jitters in the days before. Maybe I actually liked, just a little bit, the feeling of faces turned with their attention to me, especially when I knew I was there not to teach but simply guide.

The room was poorly lit and their was a leak in one of the pipes right into our circle. People talked over each other and didn't follow the guidelines they'd just helped write, but they were all kind and enthusiastic and funny. The writing was good. I thought I'd be stumped about how to give positive feedback about somebody's piece that was full of cliches or so straightforward it offered no nuance. But it was easy to see the creativity stuck behind the cliche and how the simple, straightforward tellling of a bit of their lives was, perhaps, the best way to give voice to their story. There were also those that offered up real gems of imagery and rhythm and structure. I honestly look forward to seeing how we will all grow together.

We have had some gorgeous afternoons around here. Terribly wrong, frighteningly warm and sunny afternoons. If I'm not working I follow the cat around the living room, and settle into a spot of warmth and read. The upside of global warming, I guess.

And no, I don't celebrate Valentine's Day. If asked what we did today I will be forced to say something obnoxious. "Oh Sean made me a lovely omelet and we had a nice leisurely breakfast together. You know, like we do every morning."

Death of the Daisy Kingdom. I tried to find a pic of what the Daisy Kingdom once was in its full glory: A huge blue and pink building frighteningly close to several gay nightclubs that was overflowing with so much cutesy craft crap (the dreaded three Cs) that just walking on the sidewalk next to the building made me nauseous. I was always too scared to go in myself and take pictures, though now I wish I had. It's been shut down for a while now and is being turned into a great gallery space. Meanwhile, the buildings blues look sad and the pinks looks tired and the curliecues still left in the window look like the last desperate scrawl of some forgotten daisy dolly.

I've gone through periods of months at a time when I don't leave my little Southeast Portland rectangle of house/grocery store/gym/coffeehouse. What, there's a river running through the middle of this town? There are streets full of office buildings, rehab clinics, boutiques and playgrounds? I've been traveling into the forgotten realm of downtown quite frequently over the last few weeks and finally remembered to bring my camera today. Next week I'll be down in the thick of it, the gentrification goo that puts the office of the homeless paper I'll be doing a writing workshop at along with a low-income housing apartment across the street from a Southeast Asian antiques shop and an expensive size 0-4 kind of clothing store. Oh, plus the leather bar next door and the Chinese Gardens and Port of Portland office building all within a block. Really, it's this moment I like best, the point where a swirl of different classes come together. Now if only this moment didn't come with the anxiety of knowing that rents will be soon be on the rise and the streets that were once home to the poor will soon become inhospitable, kicked out of their own little Old Town rectangle.

And so it begins. My big beast of a beautiful tree got sawed into a big toothpick today by my old roommate. The boy used to be a cook at a restaurant with amazing cakes. He would bring me cake and that made him a great roommate (among other reasons). Now he swings at my tree with a growling blade. Oh well.

I won't hug what remains of the tree, but really, I may just have to go apologize to it. As the branches went down, the sun, even the light gray sun we got today, came barrelling in. I will try and not make an enemy of it as it boils through my office window this summer. I will appease it with bamboo and whatever other tricky greenery I can convince to grow tall and taller.

Great grief and great joy still seem to snag on my New England sensibilities. What to do with such blatant emotion? My only wish is to be at this spot on the coast. Not tropical, but magical nonetheless. I want to be there now with my best friend listening to the waves, watching the boys in their wetsuits, the sun pushing it's thimbleful of February warmth into our cheeks.

Kung Fu-ing coconuts for dinner. You see? Maybe Sean and I are actually meant to go live expat lives in the tropics, stumbling from our grass shack to grab dinner from the trees.

What is it like to live in a house with teeth?

This has been a good writing week for me because my paying work has been slow, Sean is on a job, and my best friend is out of town. A thrum of guilt grabs me when I feel how happy I am at being left so thoroughly alone. As Bjork says, I thrive best hermit style. And yet, I will never be the writer that embraces poverty and loneliness for the sake of their words. I like swimming in tropical oceans and going out to dinner with my beaux. I like gossiping with my friends over beers and wandering around my neighborhood with little purpose. That means it will take me years and years to tug this book out of me. So be it. We have a good little life, Sean and I tell each other. What we lack in ambition and drive we make up for in the little luxuries of the every day.