This is a throw away image that my friend made while learning how to screenprint. My friend now has four of these Tom Selleck panels. I found the same image available as a $20 t-shirt. What exactly are you saying to the world when you wear a $20 Tom Selleck t-shirt? When will we stop embracing irony as a driving force in our culture? Does sincerity have even the slightest chance? And furthermore, what do you think I can get for this panel at my garage sale?

Aah, my first river day. Humidity gone, sun out, the river a beautiful cloudy aqua blue. But when we went to dive in, we found our usually deep swimming spot had no more than a few feet of water. The river was high on the banks but filled with tons of extra Sandy River sand.

When I got home, I read how just this afternoon they started demolishing the Marmot Dam on this river. It will be the largest dam demolition on the West coast in 40 years. It sounds like it was more of an economic decision than anything else. Still, hooray for the fishies. I kind of doubt this is the reason our swimming hole is now a wading pool, but so be it.

Click here to watch the dam explode!

Go out TWO nights in a row? Crazy. Stay out to 2 and 3am listening to music, dancing, drinking, talking to STRANGERS? Yep, that's me, the good girlfriend. Sean's birthday celebration started out on shaky grounds when his band got bumped from a craptastic show at the Roseland, but redeemed itself with a little dancing with Dr. Theopolis. I think I avoided this band in the past because I was turned off by the fake afro wig, but these guys put on a great show. Extra endearing was the fact that they sang the song "Sweet Love," "I made sweet love to your mama/Nasty wrinkly love" with the singers' mother standing at the front of the audience. Kudos.

I saw Sicko yesterday. I cried through a lot of it, partly because of hormones and partly because I have lost my steel-hearted immunity to any true story about loved ones getting sick or dying. Give me a story about someone who's been killed and my eyes will stay dry. I guess I'm still under the illusion that my loved ones are safe from the more dramatic kinds of death. May I never be disillusioned.

Anyway, it's a good movie for stirring up some bewildered anger and some desperate longing. Quick, I have to get to France NOW. But really, I don't want to go to France. I want things to be fixed here. I just fear that it's all too late. We've become too hardened against the poor, too enamored of the dream of wild amounts of wealth. I wonder if there is a cure for our selfishness other than the complete collapse of our economy and our environment.

I guess, we're all going to have to get better at self-surgery. Here's a story about an apparently sane man who decided to remove the steel plate from his ankle in the bathroom of his home, down the hall from where Mom was sleeping. He was not successful.

Rain, gobs of it. Yesterday, today, tomorrow(?). Only now, here in the evening, as a few streaks of blue crack the clouds, do I finally feel a bit of the drag drop from my feet. I should be happy to have 100% confirmation that the sunflowers turned out to be sunflowers.

Aah, family. Sean's dad has been visiting for the last few days. This photo was taken at a picnic where two other friends had visiting parents and siblings. Lots of bad jokes and lots of good cheese.

In the presence of other people's families, I am reminded to be thankful that my own family's primary sin is that of dullness, unless, of course, you are really into archeology, business assessment or lengthy arguments about who should pay the bill or who was sick what year on who's birthday.

Let us all learn from those who've gone before us.

I have a friend that paraphrases Camus at me, something about writers not showing their doubts, and sometimes I think this is good policy. But I'd also like to note that I don't always exclude myself from that group of people I put down in yesterday's post, the ones with stories worth telling and writing but not necessarily publishing. There is too much far too much mediocrity in the world of writing. As a girl with a well-off suburban childhood and a happy adulthood, I have to face the fact that I'm going to have to up the ante as far as language, observation and imagination go. Nobody needs another dull romp through the ennui of suburbia. Nobody NEEDS any of it so I better make it good.

Every summer I do this solo ritual of riding out over this Reed College "canyon" to hear readings and lectures at the Tin House Workshop. It's way too expensive to actually attend, so I slip in as unnoticed as possible into the back of the lecture hall and ampitheater and absorb a few good words.

I usually appreciate the guests, but there's something weird about all these hopeful writers gathered together in one of what must be dozens and dozens of summer writing workshops across the country. Who said that everyone has a story to tell? Maybe they should have said that while everyone has a story to tell not everyone needs to try and get their story published. Is that mean? Maybe. Fuck it.

100 degrees is no good for giving massages (I had to buy a tiny air conditioner for my room yesterday...sorry.) It is no good for the new shoots on my new plant that shriveled up into a crisp yesterday. It's no good for the old people who have no fans.
But still. . .
I love riding my bike through the heat, like I'm riding through water. I love lounging in the heat with a cigarette and a glass of whiskey and gingerale. I love the heavy wrap of it and the slick of sweat.

Tonight I was twenty-three again. We had Mai Tais and a full dose of Martin Denny at the Tiki Bar before I abandoned my friends and rode off to a poetry reading alone. Is there an age when it stops being okay to drink in kitchy bars? Is there a possibility that I will ever sit and listen to poetry in Portland and be able to roll my eyes and applaud in the company of a friend?

Lucky day. Lucky me. Berries make berry smoothies.



The sky is now streaked with that perfect orange-pink color but my view is slashed with wires and poles. I have to narrow my site on the smallest little part, on the evergreens many blocks away and pretend there is nothing in between me and that landscape.

This reminds me of the excellent Philip Johnson documentary "Dairy of an Eccentric Architect" that I watched the other night. At one point in the film he is showing off a huge Frank Stella sculpture and he talks about imagining he was very small and walking around in the caverns of contorted metal, then growing a little bigger so he could climb up to another part of the sculpture then coming back to his real size to enjoy the piece as a whole. I used to do this same thing on a plane while looking at the clouds, or with the patterned wallpaper of my bedroom. A little shift in perspective and the whole world is new.

Sorry to those who hate the blog tag. For what it's worth, I've found some new blogs I like because of it. For those feeling that unique kind of chain letter nausea, check out this guys research on chain letter evolution.

Now, let's move on...


This is a pic from a few years ago, but there are certain rituals which look more or less the same around here and picking berries on Sauvie's Island is one of them. My friend in her cowboy hat is part of that ritual. Mouthfuls of perfect raspberries and blueberries (all covered in deeeeeelicious pesticide I'm sure) are also part of that ritual. Now the freezer is full of fruit and my day in the country just twenty minutes from my house is complete. All I have to say is summer summer summersummersummersummmer.

Jordan Rosenfeld has tagged me "It." Jordan has a non-fiction book on crafting a scene due out this fall. Yeah Jordan! I generally hate tag and all tag-related games, but since I love Jordan and because it's not just me, but lots of "its" all over the land of blog, I will comply. Welcome to yet another interesting way people connect, promote and maybe even gloat in this weird voyeuristic universe.

Here are the rules:
1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Well hot damn, no one's ever called me a "player" so let's hit it.
1. Last night I watched this movie about the attempted coup against Chavez in Venezuela. Very interesting.

2. Last night I also watched about three minutes of Tony Danza practically having a heart attack trying to dance and sing really badly though his opening number at the D.C. 4th of July hoopla-thingymabob. Very bad.

3. I don't have a book to promote, so I'll promote Funk Shui instead. Their old album will kick your ass but the new album out next month will kick MY ass (and folks, that's a lot of booty).

4. I once rented Edward Penishands from a store called "American Family Video." Go figure.

5. When I used to listen to Starland Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight" coming from the tape deck of our station wagon, I thought they were referring to ice cream sundaes at HoJos. I still have that tape, I still like that song and I still love ice cream.

6. I have a literary crush on Stuart Dybek because he writes about Chicago the way I hope to write about Portland.

7. Back in our college days I had a regular old crush on the man who designed this amazing lightbox

and imagined that some day in the future I would "convert" him to my team. I'm hoping to get one of these as a reward for (a) not attempting an actual conversion and (b) 18 years of friendship.

8. I'm a little drunk.

Okay, so that's the deal. Now I'm tagging these people, some of whom I know, some of whom I picked randomly and some I stole off Jordan's list. So there.
Hotel Overshare
Linera Lucas
Life's Persistent Mysteries
Guide for the Careering
Side Dish
Welcome to Blog
The Urban Emigrant
Myfanwy Collins

What would people talk about if they couldn't complain about the weather? It's getting hot here. HOT. I, personally, love it. To me, it means river time. Even if I'm stuck in the city, I like knowing that the rivers are out there, doing what they do, ready for me to plunge in at any moment. I was always a pool girl growing up, but now I'll take the river over the pool any day. It's colder and messier and a million times more beautiful.

It's very nice of my friends to agree to let me share these photos. It's very convenient too, since I've lent my camera to a friend and have no current pics to post.

If you are one of the two people reading this who aren't Jordan or Emily, then check out these lovely women in their more intelligent and thoughtful personas on these blogs:
Jordan Rosenfeld at Jordan's Muse
Emily Block at the Fit Pregnancy blog Emily, Expecting

I'm not kidding. I just counted. I have photos of twelve different people in this get-up. I'm pretty sure only a few of them were drunk. Mob mentality emerges in the oddest places, I swear. . .

Aah, you see the thing with the early onset alzheimers is that it kicks in at very convenient moments. To protect those that can not defend themselves (how could you when I have all the photographic evidence) I post only my own shameless display. Now, I was neither the only silly person, nor the silliest silly person in this particular misadventure at sleep-away camp for writers. I seem to recall a certain non-participant in this bit of dress up saying he was amazed not that so many of us tried on the fur coat, glasses and lipstick, but that it kept amusing us, over and over. It was entirely stupid and completely endearing.

I haven't been this silly in a long time. How about you?

Maybe permission to be silly is one of the reasons people have kids. Silly, like my nephew who insisted I take a picture of the tiny tiny hairs on his arm then ran off laughing as if the click of the camera had tickled him.

It took almost a year, but I finally got some pictures from my cousin's wedding that I've wanted. Here are most of the women on the maternal side of my family.

I'm especially fond of the Mafiosa thing going on with my grandma. To get to this wedding we had to be bussed up to the top of this hill on an extremely narrow and twisty road. I liked imagining that some drunk jerk would start causing trouble and my grandmother would simply gesture toward the cliff with her cane. Later that night, there would be reports of an "unfortunate accident."

But no. Everyone behaved. No one got hurt. Sean and I left before they served the goddamn cake. Now that's unfortunate.

So. . .how did I live so many years of my life in Massachusetts without hearing the term MASSHOLE? I imagine that the people who cemented rocks into the wall around their house in Cambridge were Massholes. I imagine all the people who honked their horn at me while I manuevered carefully through a traffic circle or intersection were Massholes. I think it must take a lot of meditation, scream therapy and/or booze to keep from becoming a huge jerk from having to drive around the greater Boston area. In a store in Harvard Square, I asked a woman to excuse me as I squeezed by her in a narrow aisle and she practically growled at me. That's right. Masshole.

Having experienced a week of refreshingly friendly strangers in western Mass. I thought maybe I'd been unfair to my old haunts. I tried smiling as I walked down Mass Ave. Not crazy smiling, just happy smiling. It was a beautiful day and I was enjoying myself. Not a single person smiled back. I could give them all a break for being in a big city instead of a small town. I'm sure that's part of it. But then there are the reports from friends who insist that New York is far more friendly than Boston.

Despite the general jerkiness, I still know and love many lovely people who make Boston their home. Maybe they are stronger than me. More flexible. More loyal. Somehow they know how to thrive in a less than welcoming environment. Or maybe it was just me who was unwelcome. Unwelcome from the start and bitter ever since.

It feels great to be home. Great to fly through the magnificent pink sky past half a dozen white capped mountains, the Columbia Gorge and a vast spread of green. Great to fall back into the familiar grid of my life. Breakfast, gym, writing, coffee, massage. Oh massage . . .that.

I have just one client today, but that means clipping my writer nails. That makes me sad. I like the extra click they make on the keyboard. I like the ridge they make for my thumb, rubbing back and forth looking for the right word. Oh well. The words are there regardless. They're there somewhere, waiting.

Going back to Bennignton after two years was largely painless. Of course, it helped to be there with my more socially adept friends to urge me over to our former teachers and mumble through a few bits of conversation. It was like no time had passed at all and also that a whole world of difference has emerged between then and now. It was good to feel like a writer in the world instead of a student of writing. It felt good to know that Alice Mattison could "build a house out of all the drafts" she has for her new book and that Askold Melnyczuk's wife has read his new book dozens of times. I knew this about writing a novel, but it's still nice to hear from the experts that they struggle with this not just once, but every time.

A few last scenes from my life as a writer. Over the last few days, I haven't thought about being a massage therapist at all except for when a woman at the poetry reading asked what I did. I had to hesitate a moment to find the answer she wanted. Because she knew I was staying at Wellspring, she already knew I was a writer. She wanted to know what else I did. And despite the frustrations and bits of loneliness, I have to say that I don't want to do anything else. It's not that I don't miss my life in Portland, but I will miss the purity of this life and will have to work to bring more of what I've found here back home.

Can a person gain 4 pounds in one day? Yes, they can and they have. My diet of Ben & Jerry's and Makers on the rocks is proving me a pig. Out of guilt and the need to not be sitting in my lovely little writing room on this gorgeous day, I went for a jog. Why do you go for a jog but on a run? It was really more like I took a walk with a few moments of shin splint testing thrown in. It's very pretty here, even though I'm pretty sure I could work myself up into a state of full blown horror movie terror, what with all the old, sunless farmhouses, empty sidewalks, American flags, and places with names like "Bear Swamp."

I had pictures of fluffy cows on the edge of a forest, but Blogger won't let me post any pictures tonight. Instead, you'll have to go check out Curbstone Press and some of the cool titles they are publishing. Sandy Taylor, one of the people who started the press, was here reading yesterday. He was wonderful. And kind.

I bought a book by Aracelis Girmay from Curbstone and have been enjoying it as I sit on the patio, absorbing the thick weather. The heat is its own special thing here. It feels like a fever you have to burn off in your bathing suit.

I was watching a Malcolm Gadwell lecture on Genius from the New Yorker 2012 Conference. That makes me a geek, yes, but it provided me with a theory I surely have heard of and conveniently forgotten. Theory is that if you spend ten thousand hours in thoughtful practice on something you will be a master of it. I don't dare do the calculation. All I know is that I've put in some good long hours over the last few days.

There was a mostly good poetry reading here today that I will have to write about tomorrow. My six or so hours of thoughtful practice today have got me wiped out.

Okay. First full day here at Wellspring House and I've been writing (and erasing) for about eight hours so far. My head is a little tired and I wish I could kick back with Sean and watch some TV for a while, but I'm going to push on. I expect diminishing returns from here on out as I get more tired and lonely.

A gaggle of poets have arrived this evening for a picnic/reading that will be given tomorrow. I feel excessively shy and unwilling about socializing with them. I have already been asked twice what I'm working on and though I'm okay with saying I'm working on revising a novel, I fear the questions that might follow. I don't like to be rude, but I will be if it means not having to talk to anybody.

I'm a sucker for an old New England cemetery. Why do I love these places so much? Stumbled across this one down the road from my retreat headquarters. It's a different kind of old from Oregon. Graves from the early 1800s. I know that ain't nothing compared to the old of whole host of other places, but still. . .

I find nothing morbid about cemeteries. In fact, I rarely think about death at all while I'm in them. It's an aesthetic thing plus a fondness for melancholia that never quite wore off from my high school days.

I am here. I am gone. Tomorrow I leave for my writing retreat and try to untangle my mind from the usual dull but dizzying experience of sitting in my parents house all day. I have to take the loathing I feel here (not for my family but for this place) and shift the burden to my character's shoulders. I have to pull myself out of the immediate sloth and blind determination to just get through that I feel as soon as I cross into Andover's borders. Tomorrow, I am free and become not a daughter or a granddaughter or an aunt (three generations in this house today, one bathroom). I become a writer again.

I made Sean transplant these from the middle of the yard where some birdie must have dropped the seeds. I am hoping they are sunflowers and not some giant mystery weed.

I leave early in the morning tomorrow for my two weeks away. I don't know about two weeks. It's a lot of time. The sunflowers and tomatoes will be huge in two weeks. The summer solstice will have come and gone. Shorter days will have arrived as they always do around here, before the real kick of summer settles in. Two weeks without my cat and my common law are bearable only because my expectations for the writing I will do are dangerously high. Better disappointed than lazy. Better struggling than stuck.

Google Earth is bad for my nostalgic tendencies. Somebody told me about this site ages ago and I'm just now falling prey to it. Look, you can see the foursquare markings on my elementary school playground! How crazy is that! The ability to track your history, your paths across the globe, your daily routes is a very strange thing. I spy on my childhood homes locked by satellite photo in a permanent state of winter. I can see the creek I used to play in as a toddler, the house on Blood Road (yes, named after Captain Blood) that we lived in for only a month. With the touch of my mouse I can follow my path to school and stop by my friend's house.

I don't know what to do with this kind of nostalgia. What does any of it matter? Still, I'm grateful for it. It helps me tap into those joyful and horrific moments that have been all but lost. There's the tree in Catherine's yard that I was scared to climb. There's the bird sanctuary that loomed like an evil garden across the street. There's the club pool I swam in every day of the summer, comforted by the silence of water.

As predicted, it is literally raining on our parade today. Oh well. The cool gray weather is making me that much more covetous of these new lightbox paintings from jef designs. Isn't this cool? It's art that glows. I'm pretty sure that if I had one of these I would lose a lot of time due to endless staring and daydreaming.

It's parade time here in Portland. People tape off their places along the parade route days ahead of time. Some people are violently opposed to this while others call it a tradition. Who are these people that they care so much? I heard about this practice when I first moved here and it reassured me that I had indeed come to a small city.

Because it's parade time and because my friend is coming into town from Atlanta it will start raining tomorrow and not stop until he flys back home on Tuesday and all the ferris wheel riders are soaked. Portland in June.

After more than ten years of doing massage work, I recognize the signs of my cyclical burnout. It's never anything so strong that I want to throw it all away or that my clients suffer under my less than fully enthusiastic hands, but it's there. I watch the clock too closely. I hover slightly outside myself and think, "You have your elbow in this woman's butt cheek. Don't you think that's weird?" I work out plot points for my novel while I knead someone's shoulders. In my mind, I drift off toward the park and imagine myself lying under the trees. Luckily, my hands seem to work without much input from my brain. Luckily, I leave in less than a week.

There was a bird, a cat and now a dog. Lulu is the only dog I like because she is often exactly like the loving lap cat I've never had. Her personal masseuse and chef is also my dearest friend, Joe.

Last night, Joe fed a few of us dinner and several bottles of wine in his beautiful back yard. I drooped happily in my beach chair, pulling peas from their salted pods. I sat wondering how this strange crew of friends and acquaintences have managed to muddle through all these years. Some of it's love, but some of it's habit. We come together hoping that maybe, just maybe, this time we will each shine with the same kind of charm or wit or honesty that brought us together in the first place. And if that fails, there's always another glass of wine.

I've been trying to leave my ipod behind when I go for walks. Instead, I bring my camera and try and listen to my own rambling thoughts. I haven't been putting a ton of words to the page lately, but I've been thinking about my story a lot, trying to gain a little perspective before I leave for a week long writing retreat. It's an odd process to go from the highly detailed specifics of building a scene, a chapter, a book, to thinking about the whole. What is this story about? What is the right structure for it? Who the hell are these people I've created?