The blue hour.

It seems like ages since I taught a Write Around Portland workshop. Last night we had a reading for the Spring Workshop participants. It was good to see my people and watch them defy the trembling in their hands in order to stand in front of a crowd of 200+ people and read their words. Predictably, those that I've come to think of as the angry troublemakers (as opposed to the talkative troublemakers) came, read their work and left without even making eye contact with me. Oh well.

One of the facilitators spoke about how he'd become a habitual thief of bravery at these readings and in the workshops. There was, indeed, a palpable sense of accomplishment and courage in the room. Removed from the chaos and hard work of facilitating, I found that spark that initially drew me to this organization. I left the reading with half a dozen ideas and bits of language eager for the page. The world became illuminated, in neither flattering nor harsh light, but in the temporary glow of a community collected, imperfect and hopeful.

This is a picture of Jared Lund who showed up at every workshop filled with patience, grace and an open mind. His poem and artwork are in the new anthology, Called to Speak Stories.

Bird art, bird art, bird art. It's STILL everywhere, even though I'm pretty sure this trend is very much over. I'm so tired of it and I even own some of it. Now, I'm not saying nobody should paint a picture of a bird from here on out, but if you're going to do it, you're going to have to do something very new with it or something very very good. While I've often been a big fan of embracing your mediocrity, in this case, it won't stand up.

I have to take my own advice on this as well. As a person who is more or less trying to write a love story, taking the "good enough" stance I take with housecleaning, repairs, and dressing myself, is not going to get me anywhere.

So pick a new animal to paint and I will pick a new way to say I love you.

See how it glows! My manuscript, with beginning, middle and end, all crammed onto a handful of blindness inducing pages. It doesn't really deserve this ethereal glow, though it does deserve the blurriness. It's just a draft, which number draft I can't say. That would depend on what counted. But that's not what matters. What matters is that I have this thing that feels like a wildly imperfect whole. Its very existence infuses me with a vigorous sense of challenge. That's nice, but you can do better.

The other thing these pages whisper to me is Oh my god, you might actually finish this! What will you do then? This question came to me for the first time this morning. I didn't even now I was scared of this prospect, but aparently I am. No big surprise really. Finishing it will mean facing the truly daunting world of publishing. My instinct at this moment is to protect my poor little story from such brutes, but I'll have to get over that. Luckily, I have some time.

I can't believe I forgot to brag about my new bike! I got a great deal/trade for this bike just by walking into the Write Around Portland offices at the same time a bike mechanic was there volunteering. The organization's director asked me a massage question and, long story short, I got an amazing new ride.

It was funny to watch the mechanic try to be diplomatic about telling me my old bike was a piece of useless crap. It served me well for the last twelve years (!) but I bought it for $100 off my roommate at the time, a woman who is many many inches shorter than me. I think it's done its duty and deserves to retire.

Meanwhile, I'm hoping that my "being in the right place at the right time" juju hasn't been used up on this nice, but barely noteworthy event.

I've been itchin' for a new tattoo lately and was searching online for people who had text tattoos to see the various typefaces, sizes, locations. I came across a site for literary tattoos which seems to be filled with young English majors and library science students. If I was seventeen again, I'd be all over that shit. Still, I love this librarian with a semicolon on her finger. Even more charming is the fact that it is her only tattoo.

This little Basquiat guy has been charming me all month from the calendar hanging next to my computer. I've never believed in the muse as such, but I feel like Mr.Everlast has been my silent guardian over these last few days, pushing me through the final chapters of my draft. Not since grad school have I felt so compelled to get something done, ignoring the pleading of the sunny park and the bad television and the smelly dishes. It's especially nice knowing that, as opposed to school, this has been purely self-induced.

In less than two weeks Mr. Everlast will be buried under June's picture and that seems like inspiration enough. How could it almost be June? How could I have given such little attention and care to my writing all these months and years? If I can show up and be professional with each and everyone of my clients as I have for the last eleven years, then I can show up at my writing job with the same level of professionalism. Wouldn't it be sad if, in the end, I turned out to be, first and foremost, a massage therapist and not a writer? If it was all because of laziness and fear?

So yeah, I'm going to try and not let that happen.

If you look closely enough, even my back yard can look tropical. Actually, with it hitting 86 degrees yesterday, it WAS pretty tropical around here. With Sean out of town on a job, it's feeling a bit like a vacation for me. It's the kind of vacation only weird artsy types and overworked mothers seem to like. Nobody talks to me. I barely go anywhere. I avoid the phone as much as possible. I work a lot on the things I want to work on and little else.

"Art is a vast democracy of habit."
The Creative Habit. by Twyla Tharp

Last night much of my friend's large catholic family came out to hear Funk Shui play. Among her eleven siblings is a nun who hit the dance floor in full habit. On the same small dance floor was her brother and his girlfriend who looked like they were auditioning for a soft-core porno. And then there were the rest of us, mostly happy.

I'd never given much thought to what it must feel like to be up on a stage playing music, looking out into a crowd of family, friends and grateful strangers. It struck me last night what an addictive thrill that must be. I enjoy reading my writing to an audience, but people don't dance to a short story or raise their beers and whistle their approval if they like your sentences. Mostly it's just me sitting behind the curtains in the quiet of my room. I love the loud and obvious joy that comes with the gift of music. It is a powerful thing.

Let it be known that the tomatoes are in the ground, along with the basil. It might even be a little too early but I'm willing to take a chance if it means getting some produce before the end of October. This year also marks our first attempt at growing veggies in a real plot in our backyard as opposed to the narrow strip along the driveway full of mysterious, ashy, lead-paint infused dirt. Mmmm. Good eatin'.


On another note, check out Bill Moyers new show. Because we know how to PARTY on a Friday night around here, Sean and I watched the whole thing. But you don't have to be an asocial hermit to stay informed. You can watch a lot of the show on their site. I recommend the interview with Marilyn Young who helps Bill deconstruct a few insane and delusional statements Condy Rice made to Charlie Rose. Also check out the story on Pat Robertson's robot lawyers at Regent University.

Reading Proust has reminded me to walk slowly through the place where I live and look carefully. I like the sunset to twilight hours and if it is also the close to a warm spring day, then all the better

The neighbor's yard sprawls into forgotten corners where vines take over and mysterious manmade beehive huts disintegrate at an elegant pace. These people also have aristocratic chickens whose chicken castle glows red on cold nights. Their yard makes me wish I was their child, the vast tangle of a yard my own private playground.

I don't care what it says about me that I feel the need to pat myself on the back for finishing Swann's Way this morning. I'm just glad I finally read it and enjoyed it and can now have an inkling about what people are talking about when they mention Proust (you know, during all those conversations at the bus stop, the coffee shop and during commercial breaks of House). There is an exhausting thrill to the experience.

"Words present us with little pictures of things, clear and familiar, like those that are hung on the walls of schools to give children an example of what a workbench is, a bird, an anthill, things conceived of as similar to all others of the same boat. But names present a confused image of people–and of towns, which they accustom us to believe are individual, unique like people–an image which derives from them, from the brightness or darkness of their tone, the color with which it is painted uniformly, lke one of those posters, entirely blue or entirely red, in which because of the limitations of the process used or by a whim of the designer, not only the sky and the sea are blue or red, but the boats, the church, the people in the streets. Because the name Parma, one of the towns I had most wanted to visit ever since I had read La Chartreuse, seemed to me compact, smooth, mauve and soft, if anyone mentioned a certain house in Parma in which I would be staying, he gave me the pleasure of thinking I would be living in a house that was smooth, compact, mauve, and soft that bore no relation to the houses of any real town in Italy, since I had composed it in my imagination with the help only of that heavy syllable, Parme, in which no air circulates, and of all that I had made it absorb of Stendhalian softness and the tint of violets."

The ice cream truck has arrived, turkey-ing up the straw. I wonder if the ice cream truck has been sufficiently exploited in horror movies. The way it always seems to be there, following you at every turn, feels about as creepy as an old clown doll. Admittedly, that's not much, but still . . .

Oh glorious sunny day. Think I'll put on my sandals and walk over to the library.

Not so fast there, partner. Do you think you're ready for such tricky footwear?

Apparently not. As I approached the corner to cross the street, I noticed a cyclist coming up to the intersection and a handful of other pedestrians waiting for the light and in all the confusion of forward motion and other people, sunlight and cars, I went down. Normally I would laugh at myself in this situation, but today all the witnesses were kind of glaring at me unsympathetically as if they were thinking, "Could have seen that coming a mile away." I had to wait until I got home before having a little chuckle at my gazelle-like grace.

This lot used to house some mildly charming courtyard apartments. Of course, you can't stop progress especially when progress is synonymous with condo.

I wonder where all the artists will live, all the social workers and bicycle repair shop employees? Where do the baristas and pre-school teachers live in cities like New York and San Francisco?

If I kept a plastic head in my window it would definitely scare me every time I came home at night. Instead of a mannequin, I've been thinking of putting an IMPEACH sign in my window. There are a few clients who might react poorly to it, but none that would be offended or surprised. Then, I think of the IMPEACH bumperstickers I've seen and realize that my first reaction to them is–yeah, right. That'll never happen. And yet, more and more every day, impeachment seems like the only solution for returning some kind of sanity to our country. Click here for some easy, fun DIY impeachment fun.

I have always thought of myself as a part of a generation whose apathy rose largely from cynicism. I can't recall a time that political figures weren't there to be mocked. I even remember doing my own Jimmy Carter imitation as an eight-year-old. What has surprised me lately is the extent to which the state of affairs has affected my general mood. I thought my cynicism would allow me to care less, feel less. What I find is that the ongoing evil has begun to poison my daily life in a small but ever-present way. And yet my lack of faith in the politicians and the political process keeps me from feeling like I could possibly make a difference. That's a lame excuse, but it might also be the truth.

I'll probably still stick an IMPEACH sign in the window and write a few letters. It might help water down the poison for a minute or two.

I don't think I've ever actually seen a mothball, but I think this is what they'd call mothball-sized hail. This was yesterday's dose of it which came after a big thunder and lightening storm. Today we just got a wild cloud show. Now is the time when Portland's everlasting spring starts to wear thin. There are still tons of flowers and trees in bloom but the heater is also kicking in at night. Sandals and scarves sit in the same pile on my floor.

It's always easier to blame the weather for all the crankiness around here. . .
or it could be the funny hairdo I seem to sport in every single photograph, the same one I'm sporting right now,
or it could be the total lack of plot in my book,
or the neverending supply of hypocrites, religious and otherwise,
or all those dead people who shouldn't be dead.

The sun will be here soon and most of my crankiness will go away even though my hair is still funny, my book is still dull, the hypocrites are still alive and the dead are still dead. I am one of the lucky ones.

A month ago I was zooming across the open waters of the Bay of Banderas in a little boat. With each swell, the boat slapped against the waves and we all laughed at the adventure of it. After about an hour, the hills surrounding Yelapa emerged from the mist like Bali Hai.

On our last night in Mexico, we watched the full moon from our hillside home and forgot about time altogether.

Tonight is another full moon. There is much to do. The days disappear too quickly.

Every year a group of people paint this giant sunflower thing in the middle of this intersection. Within a month or two it looks like a half-erased chalk board. Why not, right? Then again, why bother? Instead of spending the afternoon painting the street, why not spend it actually cleaning the crap out of the gutters, or some other useful activity?

If I lived on this intersection and wanted them to paint a giant skeleton on the street I wonder what would happen? If I didn't want them to paint anything at all would my voice go unheard?

I'm a crumudgeon, I know, but the problem with some of these community building projects is that they are only open to a certain kind of community. If you disagree with them, you're out. Community is a far more difficult and messy thing than simply ignoring those you don't like. You could say that at least they are trying, but really, I think it mostly just gives those involved a false sense of satisfaction and superiority. That's why, personally, I'd rather screw the whole lot of them and go read a book.

On my way home from the gym I often wait outside this christian bookstore and find myself reading the bookmarks and little cards they have displayed in the windows. The rest of the place is blocked from view so this is all I have to go off of. Apparently God likes kittens and bassett hounds. They seem to be very popular.

Now, there's nothing inherently offensive about this stuff. "Give Your Worries to God" and "God hears even the smallest voices." None of the cards say Baby Jesus Cries When You Do It Before You're Married or God Hates Fags. They are only offensive in their sugary cuteness and the way they consistently insist that it's all in god's hands. If this were really true then maybe these bookmarks and cards would be all we needed. Just a little reminder that everything's going to be okay. But really, this Jesus-Take-the-Wheel bullshit is bullshit and by making a kitten deliver your message of blind, unquestioning acceptance is just an insult to kittens. Bassett Hounds, however, deserve whatever they get.

So . . .the other day Sean was playing street music and this well intentioned but rather clueless man tipped him with a half-eaten roasted chicken. Gross. And yet, just the night before we had been joking about what would happen if we simply bought kitty mao a chicken and let her go at it, let her be the wild, carniverous cougar that she thinks she is.

Turns out, she's not really a wild, carniverous cougar. She can barely do anything but lick the nasty chicken carcass, occasionally managing to nudge off a small bite that she can actually swallow. It's all a little funny and a lot disgusting.

Now, I'm heading off down the street to visit Sean at his post where he is playing music on this sunny day. Maybe somebody will tip him with a half-eaten cake and I will get to pretend that I'm a sixteen year old with crazy metabolism who can devour half a cake in the blink of an eye. And when it turns out that I'm not actually any of those things I will take the fat cat on my fat lap and we will console each other for having such skewed self perceptions.

Things have changed. I spent half the day in middle school today doing research for a character in my book. My saintly friend brought me into his classroom and let me observe the chaos. I am absolutely certain that there were never classes like these when I was in school.

It's not that some learnin' didn't get done. The surface of cylinders were determined. Covalent bonds were made and broken with the swipe of a paper towel across the overhead projector. But what I noticed was that even the students eager to learn and do their work seemed completely incapable of sitting still or being quiet. The kids were constantly moving around and talking and even encouraged to chew gum ( I never really understood that no gum rule myself).

I didn't get the impression that this swirl of energy was simply a result of the kids working in groups (although, really, that used to be a free pass to goofing off). I know it wasn't the fault of the tired but talented teacher. I think this is simply how it is now. With twenty-five kids in a class, how could it be any other way? With kids glued to TV and video games and cell phones and ipods, how could it be any other way?

Of course, I wasn't there to judge but to observe. When I left at lunch time and headed down the way for some lunch and, good lord, a beer too, I felt just a little sorry for my shy, nervous character and the cracking weight of his days as a middle school teacher. I want to rescue him from there, sweep in and set him up at the employment office. I'll even do up his resume for him.

"Life is not significant details, illuminated by a flash, fixed forever. Photographs are." –Susan Sontag, On Photography

As I waited for the bus from dowtown back over to the comfort and weirdness of Southeast I felt as if I were heading back to the homefront in some more permanent way. With my writing workshop over, my trips downtown will now return to being a more sporadic thing.

Of course, I was just dowtown last night to hear David Sedaris read to a packed auditorium. He was very funny, but my favorite thing when listening to a funny person, particularly someone who mostly reads off a page, is to watch that person crack up over something they've just thought of. Sedaris cracked himself up several times while answering questions from the audience. It made me think about how he may very well be almost exactly like he is in his stories and that this would probably start out being hilarious and then soon become very very annoying. Here is a rare photo of Sedaris and his boyfriend who have been living together in Paris for eight years. . .bastards:

This is a photograph I took on Earth Day 1990 in Boston. It was the first time I'd heard of Earth Day. It was also probably the last time I came close to celebrating it. It was a beautiful spring day in the city and there were people everywhere all along the Charles, including this very out of place couple who were standing on the pedestal of a statue. Some band was playing, some people were out trying to raise awareness of things we are only now starting to be aware of on a regular basis. This couple looked down at the crowds in dismay. I couldn't decide if they were trapped on the statue, unable to get through the crowd or if they had deliberately chosen it as platform from which to sneer at the masses.

Happy Earth Day.

Today, I am all goofy smiles. The sun is out. Tonight is the last workshop I will facilitate (for now, though perhaps not forever). The gutters are full of pink petals and the skyline is growing thick with chartreuse leaves. Enough said.

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”
Kurt Vonnegut. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

I won't pretend that Vonnegut meant much to me. I read a few of the essentials back in the day. I liked them. What I liked more was that Vonnegut was an atheist with a good sense of humor and an understanding that you had to laugh at things or shrivel up under the caustic waste of a million different miseries. I've been telling myself over the last few days to be kind. Be kind. Be kind. It's really not bad as far as mantras go. I recommend it.

Yesterday was free cone day at Ben and Jerry's. The boys bundled up and played all day while school kids circled and circled in the rain and sleet, so much sleet, all for a few bucks worth of free ice cream. Well, good for them. Free ice cream can be a good salve for the bullshit even on a cold, stormy day.

Some of that bullshit was in full view on another great report from Frontline . This show is just about the only TV journalism worth watching these days. EVERYONE should be watching this stuff. Bring some ice cream with you. You'll need it.

A White House spokesman said President Bush was horrified by the rampage and offered his prayers to the victims and the people of Virginia. "The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

Really? You're going to toss in a plug against gun control after thirty-two people were shot? Today, this comment was the straw that broke, not my back, but my weary weary head. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.

These are the goalpost trees. Nice of someone to not just cut the things down. In the week I was in Mexico all the trees blushed green. The sight of them and the cool but not cold, partly sunny/partly rainy days have evoked a suprise attack of nostalgia in me. Nothing particular comes to mind, simply a sense of this season when I was a teenager and a young adult. I get flashes of walking home from school or crossing the college green and the pervasive sense of anticipation that accompanied me back then.

Twenty years later and I'm surrounded, quite literally, by the greener grass. This leaves me with little to long for other than that largely lost sense of not knowing but hoping, of waiting to become.

Everybody who has a few bucks to spare should check out an organization called Kiva. They are a microfinancing organization that makes lending money to small businesses in developing countries as simple as a few keystrokes. Here's a woman in Samoa with a lot of vowels in her name that needs money for the store that is helping support her family.

They were featured on Frontline last night and Sean and I were really inspired by it. Sean sent the Kiva info to his friend who passed it onto his mother who works in a hospital. Within a few hours the hospital staff had raised about $1000 for various people. How cool is that?

Of course, by signing up with this you will probably be put on a World Bank hit list. I'm sure we'll be in good company there.

This is Sean's new post outside Ben and Jerry's. Visit him there on a sunny afternoon. Or visit him now over at Seannowland.com

Hamming it up for my own self portrait. God, I look insane.

If you want to see more pics of my trip, got to my Flickr page, here.

If looking at pictures of tropical landscapes makes you mad, then you'll have to settle for looking at the fancy new crosswalks that now grace the Street of Broken Dreams and Shattered Hopes (Hawthorne Ave.) Now, with the reduced risk of pedestrian injury, the hopes should shatter a little less readily. I can't believe it's taken all these years for them to paint some stupid stripes across this street and, even more surprising, how excited I am about them. Not quite as excited as I seem to be about the view of the beach, but still . . .

Our phone service has been down for most of the last two days. Frustrating, yes. . .but also a nice bit of transition back into the world of cars, television and the rest of the horrible mess.

And so my vacation days truly come to a close. Instead of this salt-encrusted typewriter that sat at the entrance to our palapa, today I settled into some hard work on my book with a swift keyboard and glaring computer screen. Instead of resting in a bubble of warm, water-drenched calm I prepare for the eighth of ten writing workshops with my usual dose of anxious jitters.

But still, it's a gorgeous Portland day and the familiar sights from my office window (the string of fake grapes draped around my neighbor's veranda, the lightpost and the top of a Magnolia tree a block away) feel like welcoming whispers in my ear.

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.