Why I Love Portland: A brief list

• Because this was what the sky offered me at 6:20 last night.
• Because my neighbors seems to own no curtains though they do own chickens that are housed in their front yard.
• Because this is February and rather than being crushed by the weight of winter, I'm tripping on the sidewalk while looking up at the spring blooms.

February 21st

Sweet air. I stand beneath these early blooms and inhale and inhale. If I take enough of that gentle scent into my lungs, maybe some of the heaviness there will dissipate. The hard, bitter ball of winter starts to soften. In the afternoon, my cat uses a tuft of ornamental grass as a pillow. I dig into the soft bed of dirt beside her, uncovering worms and the earth's cool breath. Gloom sulks along the sidelines under this kind of blue, under this kind of persistence. Here I am again...SPRING... Spring...spring.

Routine vs. Ritual

This is the feast of a hundred take-out containers, otherwise known as our friend's Chinese New Year party. 2010 is the Year of the Tiger, a year predicted (by who? the stars? the tigers?) to be full of change and upheaval. That doesn't mean we had to go and mess with tradition straight out of the gate. Instead, we did what we always do: pick up a little take out from the Thai/Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant of our choice and head on over for some serious snacking, imbibing and firework displays.

I know I've missed a couple of these parties over the years, but compared to all the other traditions in my life, this is probably the most consistent. Christmas varies wildly from year to year depending on where I am. Thanksgiving suffers from the same randomness. Today's Valentine's Day but I honestly don't give a flying fuck. What else is there? Sean used to cook breakfast for a large gathering of friends every year on his birthday, until he realized how much work this was. Then he switched to watching movies in the backyard but that tradition's been thrown off course too. We never celebrate anniversaries, solstices, St. Patrick's Day or any of the days of the lord (or any other deities for that matter).

My father used to insist that we all NEED traditions either ones that are handed down or ones we create ourselves. He thought regular celebration was an important way to mark time and take note of our lives. In many ways, this makes sense to me and yet anytime I participate in a tradition part of me feels a little odd. There's no way to remove the inherent sense of obligation. Even in the most benign, most loving celebrations, I'm aware of the coercion as much as the comfort.

Maybe this is a result of being forced to go to church for much of my youth. Or it could be a lingering remnant of my teenage personae that reveled in opposition. Maybe I just want to believe that small daily celebrations can be enough. Every morning, Sean makes breakfast while I make coffee. Almost every day I walk within the 10 square blocks surrounding my house to go to the library, the bank, the grocery store (for a loaf of bread, a container of milk and a stick of butter). We regularly take time to confuse the cat and then, at night, we sit on the couch and eat dinner. These are routines, but to me they're as beautiful as any ritual.

Go. Outside. Now.

Here we are in the first week of February and we are lucky enough in this little damp patch of the world to be experiencing the first shy signals of an early spring. A gorgeous park full of lush greenery and sweeping views sits 10 blocks to the east of me. There's no reason I'm not up there every day. There's no reason why, after 16+ years in this drizzly climate that a little rain spittle or a dash of cool air should stop me from getting the hell out of my house (except for the fact that I still don't own a proper raincoat or a working umbrella at the moment...how could this be?).

Last week I had a client bemoaning the passing of her 25th birthday. I barely stifled a laugh. I try to remember that someday I'll be wishing I was 40. Every time I head out into the world to run errands or enjoy the sweet mossy goodness of our little city I remember to take note of the swing of my arms and the slap of my feet. Take note of the ease of it. Don't squander the seemingly simple ability to walk down the street and carry home your groceries.

Poetry x 12: A.R. Ammons

As part of Dana Guthrie Martin's Poetry x 12 challenge for January, I read A.R. Ammons' Uplands, published in 1970. My poetry knowledge is sparse, so comparing this book to those of its day and with what is being written today isn't something I can really do. I picked the book from the list on Wikipedia. Some heavy hitters were publishing that year: Ashbery, Brooks, Strand, Merwin, to name just a few that I recognized. Why Ammons then? Well, it was available at my library and I'd never read anything by him. And so I dug in:

Semicolons. Lots and lots of semicolons. Apparently, this was Ammons' signature piece of punctuation. They don't dominate every poem in this collection, but they play a strong role in giving the work a sense of continuous flow. My nature is to follow punctuation rules, as if my grade school teacher were looming over me with a ruler ready to swat my knuckles. It's always a pleasure then, to read a writer who has taken control of the punctuation and made it work for him. Prose so rarely lends itself to this kind of manipulation and so, again, another pleasure.

Nature is everywhere in these poems. Not a static description of it, but rather a dynamic view where change is inevitable.With a few exceptions, they felt very contemporary and I continually forgot that these were written 40 years ago. This is what I read on the Poetry Foundation's page on Ammons which perfectly sums up what I liked about his work:

"Ammons rehearses a marginal, a transitional experience[;] he is a literalist [sic] of the imagination because the shore, the beach, or the coastal creek is not a place but an event, a transaction where land and water create and destroy each other, where life and death are exchanged, where shape and chaos are won and lost." -Richard Howard.

Here are a few of my favorite lines, the final stanzas of "Conserving the Magnitude of Uselessness"

for the inexcusable (the worthless abundant) the
merely tiresome, the obviously unimprovable,
to these and for these and for their undiminishment
the poets will yelp and hoot forever

probably,
rank as weeks themselves and just as abandoned:
nothing useful is of lasting value:
dry wind only is still talking among the oldest stones.

Reprieve

The sun is out in full force, pulling the first daphne from bud to bloom. I have a couple days of beach time under my belt. The state passed two important tax measures that should help keep us all afloat, clinging to our little soap-sliver of hope. Apparently the Abyss allows day trips to slightly brighter locales.

The abyss is lovely, come on in!

If ever I look back on the entries in this blog let it be known that January 2010 was when the last shred of hope I had for this country was torn in two. I still have a shred, but it's half the size. I barely even feel it there beneath my first rib.

First came the 7.0 earthquake in Haiti. Every morning there were new pictures of the dead being lifted unceremoniously into dumptrucks, the desperate sleeping amongst the rubble. Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh exceeded my expectations for how hateful and cruel people could be while pretending to be concerned.

Then Ted Kennedy's senate seat went to a Republican who pretended to be "for the people" and talked a lot about his old truck. Slick as shit and stinky as shit too. The next day, Obama was talking about slowing down the push for health care. The stink wafted over and continues to linger.

This morning the Supreme Court ruled to allow corporations the ability to donate freely and widely to political campaigns. I can barely allow myself to think about this or I might scream.

Next Tuesday, Oregon votes on whether to raise the minimum corporate tax (so that companies like Portland General Electric pay more than their current $10) and raise income tax on individuals making more than $125,000. I fear disaster and my ratty shred of hope won't do much good when I go to sop up all my tears.

Damn. Bad week.

At least the sun came out today. I opened the front window a crack and sat squinting in the light as I wrote.

The imaginary poet thugs try to take me down.

I couldn't, for the life of me, get this photo to post in the correct direction. But maybe that's appropriate to what I want to say today. As part of my haphazard exploration of poetry, I've been listening to the Poetry Foundation's podcasts while I zone out and play mahjong online. It's true. This is what I do sometimes to wind down at the end of the day. That and have a glass of whiskey. I used to watch the evening news, maybe a little Simpsons, an occasional round of Jeapordy! but the TV is for DVDs only now. So instead I listen to things like Matthew Zapruder and producer Curtis Fox talk about John Ashbery's poem "How to Continue."

What I like about this short podcast is Zapruder's willingness to read a poem and sit in confusion afterwards, to dwell in feeling rather than thought. In fact he goes even further and says that after first reading the poem "I didn't know what I felt and that didn't bother me." He goes on to say that "you have to be ready to not know everything right away" and that you should resist the urge to think every poem is a metaphor. Thank you, Matthew Zapruder. That's just what I needed to hear.

Reading poems makes people feel stupid too often. I feel stupid much of the time even when I'm all alone reading a poem in bed. I want that to stop. Zapruder had a worthwhile technique that I think will work with at least some of my stumbling blocks. Simply read it again. And again. And again. Of course, the emotional tug has to be there first. Something has to grab me to want to spend that much time with a poem, but there's no need to abandon hope simply because I "don't get it."

If I never "get it" it still has to be okay to just like the sound of the words. Feel the thrum of joy or sadness without knowing why. Thrum without any kind of emotional label at all. Maybe this is basic stuff, but I think most people, if they ever think about poetry, think it's impenetrable. If you don't walk away enlightened then you're dumb and the pursuit of understanding is pointless. Avoid poetry at all costs.

I will admit that I have an irrationally strong fear of looking stupid. Even as I wrote the above paragraphs I thought how some poet friend is going to read this and say no, no, no...that's not how you go about reading poetry at all. Nice try, dumbass. Or they'll say, No shit Sherlock. I can't believe you're just figuring this out. (This is how the poet thugs talk in my brain) The imaginary poet thugs will then present a detailed and articulate argument for why I'm wrong. Such are my neuroses.

If I give in to this fear, however, no poetry will get read. So I'm going to buck up and read Ammons' book. One poem, "The Unifying Principle" that I was struggling with last night ends with the phrase "the small wraths of ease." Explain that to me if you'd like, but it doesn't matter. I'll like it regardless.

More poetry, more poetry. I've taken up the poetry x 12 challenge offered by Dana Guthrie Martin. This month the challenge is to read a collection that was published in the year you were born. I'm still waiting for my copy of A.R. Ammons' Uplands to come in at the library as well as Mona Van Duyn's To See, To Take.

I love the focus this kind of challenge offers, not too narrow, but a useful tool in beginning my navigation through some wide wide water. My further challenge will be to actually understand some of the work. I suspect a superficial yeah or nay may be all I'm capable of at first. What is the poem trying to do? I don't know. What is the poem about? I don't know. Do I like the words and rhythms? Yes, I hope so. Yes.

As an example, here's one by Ammons that I love for its language though I'm highly uncertain what it's about.

The City Limits

When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the

leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.

Writing in Bed.

For the last three years, the spare bedroom in my house has been my retreat as well as my office, workout space and closet. At the end of the year I had to deconstruct the space and recreate it in my own bedroom. Time for a new roommate.

New roommate is great. We love him. New office is strange. Sitting at the computer doesn't feel quite right yet. Looking at the wall or my own reflection in the mirror instead of the window and my neighbor's patio is a change, not good or bad. But I'm not drawn to the space yet.

Instead, I've discovered that I really like writing in bed. We keep the heat at around 60 degrees in our house during the winter. More than a few minutes at my desk and my hands are ice, my feet are chilled. I looked over my shoulder on one of my first days at my new desk space and there was the fake fur comforter, the electric blanket, the cat.

I grabbed the laptop, slipped beneath the covers and found that being warm does wonders for my creative flow. I'll be in good company too. Twain, Proust, Wharton, Percy, these are a few of the writers who propped up their pillows, blanketed their knees and broke out the pen and paper. I figure, if dreaming is as close as I can get to pure imagination, then why not settle in the spot where dreams happen and hope that a few of them cling to the covers and climb back into my brain.

See ya later, sucker!

Here are a few photos from the two days I actually left the house this month. Once for a walk on Mt. Tabor on Christmas Day, one on an evening adventure for pie and Peacock Lane, the insane street near my house that draws hundreds of gawkers, wreaks havoc with local traffic and made something in the pit of my stomach twist and vibrate in nauseating turns. The last photo is from our one day of snow so far, a mere inch or so that caused 4-5 hour delays on the highways. Days like that, I'm thankful for my housebound life.

Now...let's get on with it. Bring on 2010. A new decade, a new chance to fight off the flypaper stick of inertia with pen and paper, keyboard and shutter snap.

Poetry vs. Ohio State

My book group for writers met at my house last night. Not only did it compel me to give the slanty shanty a good scrub behind the ears, but it gave me the opportunity to dwell in poetry for a good portion of the day. That's a good place to be. One I'd forgotten about for a while.

Most of the year our group reads novels and stories and essays, but in December we read poetry to each other, not for critique or for any in-depth discussion, but simply because we love it. At least, some of us do. What a great thing, to have friends in my house with stacks of poetry books by their side, reading and re-reading.

I laugh. My neighbor brings his friends together every weekend to watch college football on a TV tucked into the corner of his tiny patio. They drink and cheer and thrill over it. I bring my friends together and we sip wine and tea, nibble at cookies and scones and read Wallace Stevens and Mary Szybist. I will never love football. They will never love poetry. Sad for both of us, in some ways.

It's not that I'm a rampant consumer of poetry. I wish I read more widely and understood more deeply. But I try. A poetry book gets into my hands once every few months. It should be every day. I've tried a poetry new year's resolution but it was something vague, without any kind of daily dedication. Maybe I will try again. A poem a day. I'll start with the Poetry Foundation's daily poetry offerings in audio. Why don't you join me? Maybe then we can gather some weekend and drink and cheer and thrill over what we find.

Joy to the world?

Being busy has always been a virtue in my family. "Are you keeping busy?" is one of the only questions my 96 year old grandmother consistently still asks me. It's the same question my parents both ask me when they hand the phone back and forth on a Sunday call.

My schedule as a massage therapist has been full to the brim lately . My work as a writer has been giving me a good nightly excuse to avoid the bitter cold that recently gripped our usually mild city. This makes my family very happy and in these times of rampant unemployment, I certainly won't complain about it.

I will, however, note that being busy has never been the most important point. I guess I'd prefer that the question was "Have you been enjoying yourself?" The answer is the same. Yes. A modicum of joy comes with feeling secure and successful in my work. But more of it comes from watching the cat absorb the tiniest square of sunlight that penetrates my chilly living room in the afternoon. More of it comes from pulling the warm covers over my head for ten more minutes of sleep and eating homemade bread for breakfast with my beaux.

These are considerations for the privileged, certainly. And certainly most privileged people would agree that joy is in these small things, not in simply having a full schedule. While a vast majority of the world is simply trying to survive to the next day, here in a land buried in plastic lead-filled crap, and dotted with abandoned 8,000 square foot homes, asking a different question wouldn't be a bad idea.

Light Bright

This year, our neighbor hung blue holiday lights. They make for a dim and melancholy trip to our bathroom. They glow vaguely through the frosted plastic covering the bottom half of our constantly weeping windows. In the mirror, the streetlight burns a lurid and lonely orange. Though it surprises me every time I open the door, I still like it. Christmas lights and fireflies, stars seen from the middle of the forest and tiny midwest towns seen from a red-eye flight. I've always been a sucker for a dash of bright in the middle of the dark.

I've lost my fictional way again while lying under the weather for the last week, while trying on Ohio for a few thank-filled days. I will find it. As I round the corner of the month I plan to pick a path, probably a new one and see where it goes. My 50,000 words for Nanowrimo will not be met but that's okay. It was a good experience to get to about 35,000 and feel the momentum of language building on a daily basis. I'm back at home, my head is clearing and I'm ready to do it all over again.

Artistic Voyeuristic

Other than a year-long stint in Boston, I've never lived in a dense urban environment. In Boston, I lived in a tiny dorm room on the top floor of a brownstone. From the single bay window, I looked out at the buildings of M.I.T., the Charles River, and the rush of traffic on Storrow Drive. While the view was brilliant, it was an unpeopled landscape, not a portrait. All the windows were too far away, the cars too quick.

Moving to Portland, I fell in love with a different kind of city living, one that made space for porches and gardens and wide sprawling parks. Out my office window now, I get a much more mundane view of my neighbor's patio with its card table, TV and left over football party beer cans. While washing dishes in my kitchen, I see the retired longshoreman in the house next door washing his dishes or watching TV and paying his bills. From my porch, I watch a girl with tattooed arms on the steps of her porch, smoking and watching me.

A certain amount of voyeurism seems commonplace in any urban setting, whether your view is of twenty floors of brick and glass or a single well-lit bungalow. For some reason, the curtains remain open. The lives remain on view. And who am I to turn away?

I was excited to see that a real photographer has gone out and done the project I've always imagined doing. Gail Albert Halaban has created Out My Window, NYC. They are luscious, lonely and yet comforting photos of New Yorkers and their views. Yesterday, the New York Times wrote about her and other Window Watchers. While I'll always prefer my Portland view, it made me long for all the well-lit windows New Yorkers get in a single glance.

Katahdin, not just a big mountain.

This is the bear from the movie Prophecy, our Halloween movie pic. She had the misfortune of being mutated by toxins from a paper mill in upstate Maine. Now imagine being a young boy of about 8 who lives in upstate Maine. Your rather clueless father takes you to the drive in and there she is, the slimy mutant bear who leaps from the woods and tears her victims to pieces. Funny, those woods look an awful lot like the woods along the road you live on. The next day, you decide to stay home and not bike to your friend's house down the street. You may never bike down your street again.

I will now blame Katahdin, the bear's name (and also Maine's highest peak) for, well, everything. I blame her for everything. She doesn't look very happy about that, but I live in Oregon and there are no paper mills here, right?

Six hours and 3,466 words later

I wouldn't call my first day of Nanowrimo full of flow unless it was a flow of sticky honey. Still, I took the free hours and made a good show of it, pushing through to my first pile of words. I flailed around in the first paragraph for way too long and then eventually found a way in. The way in wasn't this photo, but when I found this photo on my computer this morning, I see that it will be today's portal.

So already, I find lesson one, which of course is a lesson I already know: Be open. Be receptive to the world's bright and brassy cues, as well as to its rhythms and subconscious ripples. I'd lost touch with this kind of openness with the work on my first novel, the plodding and plodding and plotting and plotting. The fun part is looking (but not looking) for connections and patterns in my life and my character's lives. The grind I'd made of my writing life simply wore out anything loose and ephemeral. Now I have a chance to get that back. Eyes open, but slightly lowered. Brain alert, but slightly dreamy.

All happiness depends on courage and work, or so says Balzac

All art demands imagination. All art is imagination. But how do we learn to trust the fantastic beauty and grim monsters of our minds? How do we learn to listen? How do we leap from the well-defined lines of our daily lives up into the ether?

It feels like my own imagination is ossifying. What was once flexible and willing is now stiff as bone. It makes no sense to write fiction in this kind of state. But I want to write fiction. I don't know what else to do with the world.

In the next week, before I begin my novel-writing escapade, I need to find that crazy, magic potion that will reverse the effects of too many years of over-editing. Too many days given over to drudgery and easy numbness.

On some level, I worry that I will lose my sense of balance. I wonder if it's possible for me to write a worthwhile story without abandoning that balance altogether. So add to that magic potion something for my courage. Or maybe that's the whole of it. Courage and more courage. Gotta go get me some of that.

I'm signed up for Nanowrimo. The goal is to write a novel (or 50,000 words) in one month. My personal goal will be to prevent a nasty ear-biting bar brawl with my own psyche. I like to edit and fuss. I like to stop and savor the three lovely sentences I've written then pat myself on the back for a hard day's work. Keeping that instinct at bay is going to be hard. Very hard.

The last few months of writing have been painfully slow. If I'm going to tap into the flow of swift and heavily flawed prose, then I'm going to have to get in shape, grab a few books and do some arm curls. Jack LaLane, show me the way.