proteanme

RU and I are staying at a friends place, on the 5th floor of a 5 story walk up in the East Village. There’s 67 steep steps between the street and our front door. And we trek up them at least once a day. Every time I get to the 4th floor I think I should be there by now and then I huff my way up the last 15.

There are bike lanes every where now. 1st and 2nd Avenues in the Village are experiments in separating bike from car traffic via a parking lane for cars. There also appear to be some bike boulevard like streets, ala Portland style. In general, New York bike riders suck, though. Helmets and lights aren’t super common, nor is stopping for oncoming foot or car traffic. But riding in wrong direction on way bike lanes seems like all the rage. The bike riders I’ve seen are like cab drivers on two wheels. Watch out.

It rained on and off almost all of today, so RU and I headed to PS1 to check out the Greater New York show – a survey of the last 5 years of contemporary art in New York. There were more hits and misses and some of the hits were down right incredible, including Rasheed Newsome’s Shade Compostions, Sharon Hayes’ Revolutionary Love: I am Your Worst Fear, I am Your Best Fantasy and Kalup Linzy’s Melody Set Me Free.

A couple quick notes about food. It’s never as amazing here as I want it to be. So far nothing has knocked my socks off and I’ve had a few cases of sticker shock. I’ve only got a couple special shot outs worth passing along: an incredible donut that was vegan and gluten free (both of those facts being almost incidental), a very good cupcake, and some kick ass dim sum at Royal Seafood.

I keep thinking I’ll get my thoughts in better order and post something more insightful and better organized about the experiences I’m having on this trip, but when I sit down at the computer I can’t seem to order my thinking. I don’t want to forget the things that are happening though, so I’m going to post random stuff for now.

The night before last, around midnight, loud honking came blaring through our window. Sounded like it was coming from the corner right below our apartment. Three or four long blasts in a row and then a guy started yelling “You fucking asshole. I hope you get fucked in the ass you asshole. Right in the fucking ass.” Last night was much less colorful with just a handful of hoarse sounding “god damn you’s” floating up from down the block, mixed in with short and intermittent trumpets of car horns and the occasional rumbling of the bus.

Friday this older dude walked by Rachel briskly and said “I love you” to her in the same tone of voice he might have said “you dropped your scarf back there.” It’s like he was passing data to her in the most efficient way he could and it was quite the contrast to the guy who told me he thought I was beautiful. We passed that guy on Thursday, walking by Roosevelt Park, and he slowed way down as he passed us, smiled and almost tipped his hat at me.

Last night a guy in a van yelled out his window at me. RU, D and I had gone to dinner and everyone got decked out. Me in a tie and RU and D in hot black dresses. Afterwards we were walking to Bluestockings bookstore and the guy in the van yelled, “That’s no fair, you got two hot ladies. Not just one, but a lady on each arm.”

RU and I have seen a handful of famous people since we’ve been in NYC, most of them at the memorial for Peter Orlovsky, which included an amazing collaboration between Phillip Glass playing the piano and Patti Smith chanting Allen Ginsburg’s poem On the Cremation of Chögyam Trungpa, Vidyadhara. The event was held at St. Mark’s church, an East Village counter-cultural landmark and kind of the ground zero for poetry performance in the lower east side. The main room was packed with a pretty broad range of people, fans, friends, ex-lovers, as well as some St Marks regulars looking for a couple hours respite. RU and I ended up sitting in front of a guy who was a writer friend of Ginsburg’s, and I couldn’t help overhearing his conversation with who ever was sitting next to him. They talked about Ginsberg’s memorial, which the writer friend had spoken at, the sad state of writer biographies, the choices they’d have made about collecting art had they known their friend’s would have become so famous, and which is how I found out Robert Frank was also in attendance at the memorial, who I’d noticed when he walked in because Frank’s hair was standing up like my Dad’s did, and the bumblebee t-shirt and old dickies Frank was wearing reminded me of something my dad would have worn.

RU and I also saw Uma Thurman the other day in the lobby of my friend’s building. RU and I tried to act casual, like we stand right next to people like Uma every day.

It’s almost 3am. I woke up an hour ago and couldn’t fall back asleep. Now I’m laying on this love seat in the living room portion of the studio where RU and I are staying in NYC. I was thinking about the movie Risky Business earlier, but I don’t know if that was when I was falling asleep or waking up,and either way I  don’t know why. I keep trying to draw some loose association between the movie and thinking about he midwest, where I just visited before coming out here, but it seems more random than that. More like a case of the flotsum and jetsum of pop culture surfacing in the semi conscious state of my brain, the way thoughts of food sticks do or the memory of an Up with People  song. Sleep has been elusive this vacation, but never this bad.

The time in between my old job and my new job is winding down and I’m feeling a little wistful for it already, wishing I could have stretched it out a bit longer or at least long enough to spend a couple afternoons doing nothing but hanging out in the hammock an reading. If only my brain wasn’t so tweaked for endless anticipation and rumination . . .I did get a bunch of stuff done though, practical shit like replacing the chain and cassette on my bike and I got to visit with my sister and niece too. Plus I a took trip with RU to Oregon’s outback. We saw shooting stars, an owl, some pelicans, lots of cows, goats, horses and chipmunks. We soaked in a natural hotspring, camped near an active volcano, and tried to find Oregon’s only geyser, which seems to have gone missing. We visited a tuff ring that is set in what was once a prehistoric sea. We hiked around Oregon’s youngest obsidian flow where in 1964 astronaut R. Walter Cunningham tested the mobility of a moon-suit. And we got caught in little traffic jam in downtown Bend. A rancher riding his horse said hello to us, a fisherman warned us it was going to get down in the 40’s the night we camped and we me these two guys that drive shuttles from Corvallis, Eugene, Salem and Albany to and from the Portland and San Fancisco Airports (whew).

Great coffee in Palm  Springs. I’d never have guessed it, but every morning RU and I have walked to Koffi for lattes and americanos that rival Portland’s own. Seriously. That’s one thing about traveling and being kind of addicted to coffee. It’s hard to find great stuff on the road. So Koffi’s a terrific find. Way, way better than the Blue Bottle in SF. And makes the beans in NYC not even worth mentioning.

At first we couldn’t find the place. The guys that run the little hotel where we’re staying had called it coffee with a “k” and that’s literally what RU and I looked for as we drove down Palm Canyon, craning our necks at the signage on either side of the road. We shared a collective “doh” when we finally spotted it. Prices run about the same as in Portland, which tells you something about the Rose City’s cost of living. Anyway, it’s just been this nice, unexpected pleasure to have such good coffee every morning.

I’ve been swimming twice since I’ve been here, which seems almost unbelievable to me. It makes a big difference that the pool is heated, for sure, still, I can’t think of the last time I went swimming outside. I don’t go swimming in Portland in the summer. And any time I’ve been to any of the Oregon beaches the water is too cold for me, even in warm weather. I’ve only swum in the Pacific twice. Once when I was visiting Martha and she took me to this semi isolated beach in Malibu and another time in the Bahia de Banderas when RU and I went to Puerto Vallarta.

The last time I was in a pool though was this time last year, when Kath and I went home to bury Dad. We stayed in the suburbs at a hotel with a pool and I brought my swim suit just in case. I swam on the one night that we didn’t have other things to do. I don’t know why. I wanted to do something normal I think. But it was like trying to take respite in my junior high gym after everyone had gone home for the day — if it had had a pool. It was empty and out of place and I wasn’t sure what I was doing there.

I didn’t plan this trip to coincide with last year’s but it’s ok it turned out that way. It doesn’t make Dad’s dying the way he did any worse or any better, but the sun feels good and I got a slight recharge. Which is a lucky thing because I still need to write a letter to the VA appealing their denial of our application for his death benefits. Fucking bureaucratic bullshit. Something I’ve had little energy to deal with for the last year, but time is running out.

I hadn’t planned on writing about Dad. I had no idea how much his death would become part of my life. I’m not surprised that it has, it just wasn’t something I predicted. For so long he wasn’t really part of my life.

Yesterday, after spending the better part of the day by our hotel pool, Rachel and I went on a self-guided MCM architecture tour that took us from one end of Palm Springs to the other. It was late in the afternoon and we were driving on these wide streets that reminded me more of the midwest than of Portland. Something about the traffic and way the sun was shining made me flashback to a teenage summer evening in Indy, riding in the car with my mom over to my cousin’s, window rolled down, pushing my hand against the air, skin a little sun burnt, chlorine rainbows jumping off everything that was shiny, and there was the faintest smell of coconut oil hanging around me. The impossibly sexy smell.

I’ve been thinking about the upcoming trip home for Ned and Kristi’s wedding. I haven’t been home in the fall since I moved here and I wonder if I’ll notice the leaves and the crisp air as much as I have the snow when I’ve come back in the winter or the humidity when I’ve been back in the summer.

I like the idea of making such a grand statement in the fall, or at least the fall in Indiana, when the chances are things will be colorful and friends and family won’t be sticking to their clothes which will in turn be sticking to their chairs. But more than that, I like the idea gathering together the things that are important to a person before the winter sets in. It’s a kind of romantic notion about storing up to face the winter together.

I like weddings. I especially like the one’s of folks for whom I have lots of affection. Clint and Kelly’s ceremony was so moving. As was Pat and Rachel’s. And Jim is a toastmaster extraordinaire — such a pleasure. I feel lucky to be included in Ned and Kristi’s big event. Please make me tear up. Seriously. I can be super sentimental.

It’s funny to be writing about a wedding but mostly talking about myself, which is one of the downfalls about blogging for me. Me, me, me, me. Need I say more more?

I miss Ned on the blog, but I’ll trade in his absence for knowing that there are these really wonderful things happening in his life. Here’s to you, buddy.

About a month ago I went to NYC with RU. It was the first time I’ve taken more than a long weekend off work since I went to Paris. I’m not counting the week I had to go home to attend to my dad’s death. We stayed in Brooklyn. Everyday we walked so much that by the time evening came around we were almost always too tired to do much more. But we did. Sometimes. Like the night we went to see some live theater in the East Village. The guy that took our tickets said we were the cutest ones there. But he was a flirt; plus, there barely anyone had taken seats yet. We ate some first rate Chinese food, tried various takes on bahn mi but Nicky’s is still my favorite, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, saw the Francis Bacon retrospective at the met, went to H & M, walked around the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, checked out the High Line, rode the subway, got ignored by all Hasids in South Williamsburg, explored Park Slope, tried to see a cool dance show in the rain but ended up just seeing lightning bugs, which i miss, and ate some awesome bagels. When we flew out I remember looking back at the city as we ascended. It’s a human Grand Canyon. The spectacle of a mountain, but made by hands. It’s like we all got together and said “look what we can do”.

I am back in Portland. And in a daze. I don’t really know where to begin in talking about my travels, as it was so much more a journey of the heart than anything else. Had I combined this trip with a stop in Indiana my heart my just might have burst.

One funny thing that occurred that I didn’t expect was that I missed Portland. I missed riding my bike and drinking good coffee and walking around my neighborhood and making contact with co-workers and neighbors. I missed the every day familiarity and comfort that grounds me and keeps me connected to the world when I’m so lost in my head. I even missed the idea that just around the corner is the most mind blowing hike or day trip or backpacking weekend, which is quite funny to me because for the better part of this last year I’ve been railing on the how I can’t deal with the relentlessness of the stunning landscape of the Northwest. In fact, I had to laugh at myself on the bus ride up from NYC to Northampton when I looked out the window and found myself longing to see something tall and then felt so grateful as we left Connecticut and the low mountain ranges of western Mass finally came into view. Like it or not, Oregon has imprinted itself on my brain.

I missed all those things because I’ve been thinking of leaving them. I don’t have a plan, just in case anyone is wondering.  I have vague ideas and dreamy notions and all this last year I’ve been opening up to the thought of moving away from Portland, a thought which scares me. For lots of reasons.  Like it scares me because I crave familiarity and routine and I’ve found that here. Along with some things that make part of every day work for me. And some people I love.  But one thing that is clear to me is I really can’t hold on to the life I have if I want to have the life that’s waiting for me. That all probably sounds much more dramatic and fateful than I intend, because I really don’t know what’s waiting. But I do get that to really open a door to one thing, to open it and go all the way in, that means I have close the door on other things.

If you can’t swing a dead cat in Portland without hitting a Thai restaurant, then you can’t swing said feline in Western Mass without hitting a Dunkin Donut. I had no idea North Easterners were so into fried dough. Seriously. And I miss good coffee. I was at a restaurant last night and saw they served coffee and asked the young women working the counter if the coffee was good and she got all insulted because she makes it. Of course I got some and it wasn’t badly made, but the brew itself was kinda flat. After trying an actual coffee shop this morning I’d say that they just don’t have the good beans out here in Western Mass. Damn, if Portland’s not ruined me for seriously good beans.

I’ve only been here in Northampton for about a day. So this is a pretty cursory report. As expected, there’s a serious college town vibe for sure, mixed with the old hippie thing and of course the lesbian factor, which is amazingly high. Really, I haven’t seen this many down-to-earth lesbians since I went to a womyn’s music festival. And that was way back in the day. Also, I haven’t seen so many stores selling so many things I would never in my life buy. Except maybe all the geegaw shops on the Oregon coast. I can’t say for certain if I’ve seen a butch or a femme, although I spied a pretty masculine dyke at the food coop last night.

I was a little sad that downtown doesn’t have a square. Just a main drag with streets shooting off it. I thought I’d get a nice small town square ala so many small towns in Indiana. No such luck. Walking around I passed three street musicians. All guys with beards and guitars, separated by a number of blocks. At one point each one was playing a different Neil Young song. A street jam conspiracy or coincidence? You tell me.

My girl lives out in the wilds surrounding Northampton. For you Bloomington folks it feels kinda like if you lived out in Brown Country or out past Lake Monroe. For the Portlanders, just imagine getting out past the urban growth boundry on some small road and you get the picture. But it’s a different world out here on the other side of the continent, although there are echoes of Willamette Valley and Southern Indiana, that is if I had to find something familiar in the landscape, which I do. It helps me orient myself.

I had forgotten what so many deciduous trees look like getting ready for winter. The way they bare themselves against each other and the sky. Not that there aren’t still a fair amount of fall leaves around. There are. It’s just that it looks like I’m on the other side of what must be quite stunning. And I guess that was several weeks ago. But it’s still beautiful. Thick and wild and beautiful. It must feel pretty lush round here come spring and summer.

Right now, the sun is out and I’ll call that good.

Sitting in my friend’s lovely apartment on a Saturday night in NYC having spent two perfectly sweet days walking around, catching up and seeing art. The rain and gray skies here have a very Gotham city feel making it seem like we’re in a movie, which is an apt setting to think about the rest of my trip.

Every time I come back across the Mississippi, I am reminded I’m not really a west coast guy, although there are things I do treasure about the life I have there. But coming here, it really does feel like I’ve gone to live abroad.

I’m wanting to capture something tonight but I don’t know exactly what, just something about myself before meeting this girl I like who I’ve known now for almost eleven months but will just be meeting in person for the first time. I’ve stopped trying to explain her place in my life to people I know and to some extent to myself. In many ways, she just is — in my life. The shape of that, the details, they have been like math. Figuring out the equation is what I’ve been doing. For quite a while now. Her too, I suppose. I mean this isn’t just my story. And really, it’s sweet to be part of her story. Lucky, I’d say.

So here I am a couple days away from everything changing, which sounds much more dramatic than I intend, but it will be different afterwards, whatever the shape of it. It will be a different shape. For both of us.