Ah, urban living. I know the yard I have would be considered vast in other cities. It's a nice, manageable size if I were a person with garden manageing skills. I am not. I spent the afternoon planting a few scared looking plants in my front yard and pulling more weeds in the back yard. I am highly aware of not knowing what I'm doing, but it must get done.

Instead of beach houses and tropical palapas, I am now focusing my procrastinating powers on building some small semi-private sanctuary out of this bland patch of earth. Hide. Hide. Hide. This picture doesn't even show the worst of it. The view out my office window, the window I sit next to as I write, is five feet from my neighbor's crowded, cluttered patio. It's quiet over there now, but as the warm weather returns it will fill with squealing teens and middle-aged drunks watching baseball.

I've got to get my fortress growing. I've got some shy characters over here. They scare easily and don't like rowdy parties.

Periodic cat photo:
Here's Mao trying to get into Middlemarch. She had about as much trouble with it as I did. She gave up and decided to play with her toy mouse instead. I gave up and tried Tolstoy.

If only I could make these blooms my umbrella. Fat pink joy.

The New York Times has this page up. 4,000 dead U.S troops.

Meanwhile, there's the civilian death toll. Over 82,00, at least.

Go ahead, vote for McCain.

Yet another monster going up in The Pearl. There's so many now that one more doesn't matter. The stretch of empty field and railroad yard between the Broadway Bridge and the Fremont has long been consumed. Who lives in these places?

The condo down the street from me has three tenants and the rest sit empty. The signs have gone from "For Sale" to "Price Reduced" to "For Rent/Lease." The only activity I've seen over there has been a small local production company that rented one of the units out for a shoot of some sort. So now, the building so many neighbors worried wouldn't fit in with the local aesthetic, fits in even less. It sits there, with an open pit next to it where another condo has failed to appear. A giant mistake.

Last year at this time I was preparing for a week away in Yelapa, Mexico. This year, my friends are going back without me. I feel the lack of tropical sun on my skin. I crave that bone-deep warmth. That said, I could also live quite happily in this permanent state of twilight blue. Berries. Ink. Sapphires.

The beach and the bay and the two brief moments I was out enjoying them on my trip to Lincoln City. The retreat was a success. Thoughts thought. Writing written. Struggles, triumphs, whiskey and a big ass bathtub. I honestly can't say that I'd want to do that kind of intense thinking all day every day. It felt good to get back to my physical work this afternoon. But I'd be willing to take one out of every four weeks and hide away with a project and a view. If only I could find someone willing to pay for it.

I hate to leave town when Taylor St. is about to burst out with my favorite celebration of pink blooms, but I'm off to the beach and another round of revisions. It's just a stack of typed pages, but I feel as though I'm about to meet up with some old high school friends. What will they be like? Will we get along? Do I really want to spend four days all alone with them? No choice now. Dig in and make the best of it.

photo by Herman Krieger

A new study shows that for every dollar Oregon spends on higher education, a dollar and six cents is spent on prisons. Look here to see how much your state cares, then let your state legislators know what you think.

Ever feel like you're driving around in a beater van with painted over windows and no brakes? Okay, so it's a bit of a stretch. Still, it feels like I've been bumping around inside this shitmobile for over a month now, waiting to hit something solid. I'm hoping that landing is solid but sweet when I head to the coast in a few days for another round of novel revisions.

A poem by Robert Creeley

The Farm

Tips of celery,
clouds of

grass–one
day I'll go away

In a dream, this would be my backyard. A forest of timber bamboo. In reality, this is one small grove on the extensive grounds of Bamboo Garden in North Plains, OR. Too open to truly hide in, it would still be a good green filter against a rush of miseries, a good tease for the imagination.

The top picture was taken a few days ago out at Sauvie Island, home of pick your own berries, bird sanctuaries and buck naked fairies. We walked along the Columbia, saw a whole host of pretty little snakes and admired the distant but crisp view of Mount St. Helens.

The bottom picture is from 1980 when St. Helen's erupted. Those aren't clouds. That's ash. I find it fascinating. Imagine the energy it takes to blow the top off a mountain. In my fourteen plus years here, I've never been to see it. That's unbearably lame. It is, however, top of my long list of Pacific Northwest destinations to get to before the end of the year.

Reading an old issue of The Paris Review, I came across an interview with Jack Gilbert. This guy has it figured out, or at least, a good way of trying to figure it out:

The poem is about the heart. Not the heart as in "I'm in love" or "my girl cheated on me"–I mean the conscious heart, the fact that we are the only things in the entire universe that know true consciousness. We're the only things–leaving religion out of it–we're the only things in the world that know spring is coming.

Later, the interviewer asks Gilbert what, other than himself, is the subject of his poems.

Those I love. Being. Living my life without being diverted into things that people so often get diverted into. Being alive is so extraordinary I don't know why people limit it to riches, pride, security–all of those things life is built on. People miss so much because they want money and comfort and pride, a house and a job to pay for the the house. And they have to have a car. You can't see anything from a car. It's moving too fast. People take vacations. That's their reward–the vacation. Why not the life? Vacations are second-rate. People deprive themselves of so much of their lives–until it's too late. Though I understand that often you don't have a choice.

Makes me want to pick up and move to Italy, move to the beach, move towards some slower place. Makes me wonder about all the times I've chosen security over adventure, comfort over joy. Makes me wonder what it would take for me to make a different choice.

I now own tan pants. Sigh. I long ago came to terms with being shunned from the punk rock club, but I'm now officially banned from inclusion amongst the artsy/fartsy pre-goth alternatypes. Of course, the transition happened ages ago. The thrift store dresses got chucked. The amount of polyester in my wardrobe has been minimal for years. Still, tan pants? Having grown up surrounded by L.L. Bean models, I always feared this moment would come and now it has, but that's what I get for trying to make my pants from last winter make it through this winter. Slim pickins off the winter sale rack. Shoot me if I post a pic of my new duck boots.

Is it obvious now, how I'm in full avoidance of the matters at hand? There's big trouble brewing in my latest novel revision. Brewing can be good, of course. A good boil can do wonders. However, I fear the whole thing will have to be chucked in the end, an unpalatable mess. Humph.

The rain may come in slow and steady for the rest of the week, but today we have daphne. Regardless of what the calendar says and ignoring the pale crocus blooms, the first intoxicating hit of those tart pink buds means it's spring in Portland. Praise be.

Long ago, I shaved my head bald. I went by the name Bob. I was the regretful owner of a big iguana named Skunk that lived in my closet. But I have never been punk rock in the traditional sense. Hm. That's a funny sentence. Anyway, there is still a little part of me that admires the punk rock life and those capable of living it. There will always be a part of me that loves a house decorated with mannequin legs and puppets. I especially like the long ladder leading up to the second-story porch that's just barely visible in this picture.

There is something ridiculous, stupid and completely wonderful about the punk house. There's a book of photographs by Abby Banks out now that documents these houses. Thurston Moore wrote an essay for it. And yes, Portland has its own pages in the book.

I just finished rereading Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson for my book club. I must have read this in high school, maybe I saw the movie. All I remembered of it was a cold darkness and a certain affinity with the tall, quiet narrator. I'm so glad that I went back to it.

Having spent a great deal of time thinking about regional literature for my graduate thesis paper and lecture, I found Robinson's novel a perfect example of how to do it right. Robinson insists that the fictional town of Fingerbone is just that, fictional, and that the story could take place anywhere and yet the landscape plays a crucial role in the story. These characters stand apart from the civic and social aspects of the town they live in, and yet they feel like a natural product of the landscape. They are also a product of their particular tragedies which, in their case, are intrinsically linked with the lake that dominates the area.

This is writing of a place, not about a place. The landscape is there to serve the story, not be the story. This is a difficult distinction to make, but a necessary one. The landscape has to already be there. It can't be imposed on a story, attached as a few introductory paragraphs. Here is a great example from early on in Housekeeping when Ruthie and Lucille skate to the far side of the lake:

The town itself seemed a negligible thing from such a distance. Were it not for the clutter on shore, the flames and the tremulous pillars of heat that stood above the barrels, and of course the skaters who swooped and sailed and made bright, brave sounds, it would have been possible not to notice the town at all. The mountains that stood up behind it were covered in snow and hidden in the white sky, and the lake was sealed and hidden, yet their eclipse had not made the town more prominent. Indeed, where we were we could feel the reach of the lake far behind us, and far beyond us on either side, in a spacious silence that seemed to ring like glass.

It's been a few weeks since I finished the latest draft of my book. At the time, I was eager to take a break, play with some new ideas and get a fresh perspective. What I've noticed, however, is that since I sent my baby out for feedback, I've been lost. Being lost can be good and I can't deny that one of my new ideas has blossomed oh so slightly. But I've been cranky and disoriented. Without my novel to focus my attention, I've had very little focus at all.

I need them back, those imperfect and imperfectly written people, but I also NEED to take a little bit longer break, not only because the feedback hasn't rolled in yet, but because I still need to wipe my head clean of all those paragraphs I have memorized, all those scenes I've squeezed the life out of. My characters need time away from me as much as I need it from them. Doesn't mean it's easy. Doesn't mean it's fun. Our reunion, I hope, will be grand.

For the last two years, I've gone to Mexico with my friend, Joe. This year he went without me. Stupid me. Portland hasn't had any tornadoes and we're not buried under feet and feet of snow, so I don't really have the right to complain about the perpetual cold rain. I only have the right to complain about how much I regret not going to Holbox, a little island northwest of Cancun where there are no cars and no paved roads. Only crazy blue water and dreams of crazy blue water.