proteanme

I wrote this several years ago and I keep thinking I can user some of it for a poem. It’s about summer when I was a kid.

We spent the rest of the summer in my backyard or Tim’s and when we weren’t there, we were riding our bikes up and down the street with one of the George’s (pet snake) wrapped around our handle bars. We passed rainy days jumping up and down on my bed, singing to Jesus Christ Superstar and the Jackson Five. We found the Playboy magazines our parents had hidden under their mattresses and we swung on the trapeze my father hung in the garage. We wrote a play about saving a tree and staged it on my front porch and charged every kid in the neighborhood a nickel to come see it. We ate Oreo cookies and Space Sticks and cut the crusts off the ham sandwiches we made. We drank Koolaid sitting on the wall of my porch, legs dangling over the side, dropping half melted ice cubes down into the patches of dirt beneath our feet. On muggy evenings my mother took us to Lindners Ice Cream shop. She stayed in the car while we waited in line, waiting our turn to order milkshakes and sundaes with lids on them so we could take back home. On days it was so hot that the pavement burnt our feet, we’d ride over to Butler college a couple blocks away from where we lived. We’d throw our bikes in the grass and chase each other under the rows of sprinklers that rained down on the big lawn in front of the library. The water arced in the sun and cast off halos wherever we looked.

Front door

Originally uploaded by proteanme

On Friday I got obsessed with trying to capture how the sunlight was filling up certain spaces in the factory where I work. I locked up that day so it was just me, the sun, the shadows, and the creaks of warehouse. I only got two good pics (camera phone), but I think this one maybe gets at the experience a little.

Yesterday witnessed the pleasure of unexpected company and more sun and blue skies. I wore flip flops, which almost seemed decadent. Today I think I might drink some lemonade.

Three days in a row with blue skies. It feels kind of fragile but I’m in love with it anyway, not jumping for joy in love, because that’s not me. But more a quiet “I just want to experience that you mean the world to me” kinda thing.  It reminds me of something a critic said about abstract expressionism about how you have to open yourself, let in the energy and spirit of the painting, and allow it to dance with your psyche.

The sun.

I’m dumbstruck.

Today is the longest day of the year and it’s also the longest grey day of the year. I would like to kick the weather in its teeth, if I could. The amazingly overcast, chilly and rainy days appear to be marching on, oblivious to our hopes and dreams of summer. Today I saw a women wearing a wool coat and a neck scarf. Sometimes I really hate this place.

2 Moyers and a Fritchman

Originally uploaded by proteanme

I traded in celebrating Pride in Portland to spend time with my family at the coast. That wasn’t the original plan, but long story short, that’s what happened and here we are. Or there we are.

I missed Pride, but not as much as I thought I would and the family time was good. It was the first time my mom, sister and me have been together since my dad died. We are all a little softer with each other these days. There’s more give between us now, which is welcome. We enjoyed one stunning day of sunshine and warm air and then then rain came back in all it’s relentless oppression.

It always seems so poignant to stand anywhere on the Oregon coast, which some people call the beach, but I just can’t because I associate beaches with warm water, sun tan lotion, bikinis, et al, and that is not the shore line in Oregon. Anyway, I stand on the beach and think to myself, I’m standing at some point on the end of the continent. having grown up in the middle of the country, that still seems kind of exotic to me.

On Friday, the weather forecast promised something like 10 straight days of sun. Everyone was talking about it. Seriously, they were. So on Saturday I didn’t get up out of bed until I saw blue skies through my blinds, which was about 9am. And man it was beautiful. I loved the feel of my bare feet on our deck. I loved squinting into the sky. I loved the sweat behind my knees. It was sunny for 2 whole glorious days and then yesterday the rain came back. Today the showers have been relentless. It’s just too heartbreaking to keep longing for the sun. I don’t feel resigned or defeated, as much as I feel like I have to let go of this part of myself, this dreamy part that’s always been in love with summer.

The weather was insanely beautiful Friday and Saturday. Everyone kept saying it was like summer, but I thought it felt like fall. A stunning fall. But still fall. It has to do with the timing of dusk an dawn and the shorter days. God I love the sun. I really do. Make me wonder if I should move to LA, or the Dalles.

I should not be up. Not now at 1am on Sunday night. I don’t even know why I’m doing this to myself except that I can, which seems very 14 of me. Especially because I’m staying up in spite of the things I know I gotta do tomorrow and I’m doing things like watching the Beyonce video from the MTV music awards.  I hate that Single Ladies song, but Jesus, Beyonce can dance. She can dance like a mother fucker. Last time I saw a woman dance like that — dance all powerful and hot at the same time was Rosie Perez in the opening credits for Do the Right Thing, which is one of my favorite movies. Rosie did the whole shadow boxing thing to Fight the Power. She killed.

Summer is on the wane.  It’s cool in the morning when I ride my bike to work. I swear it’s just on this side of crisp — not enough to wear a headband over my ears, but almost. And there’s dew. Dew covering windshields and hovering on top of stop signs. The kind of dew you see in autumn. And if I leave work much later then 6:30pm, I’m tempted to turn on my back blinker. Not because it’s dusk, but it’s close. The sunsets have been beautiful though. And I feel lucky to notice them, but they are coming too early. And that’s the problem.

I don’t miss winter out here. Sometimes I get a little wistful for the snow, but the feeling passes or I drive up to the mountain and get a fix. But I do miss a proper summer. One that begins before the days have peaked. A summer where the end of May and beginning of June are like the extended versions of good first dates, and the equinox marks the tipping point where you fall in love. But out here summer starts as the season’s beginning to wind down. You know it’s high summer in Portland when the days are actually growing shorter. It’s like falling in love with a girl who got accepted to grad school two months before you met and she’s leaving town in another two; there’s nothing you can do about it but be happy and sad at the same time.

It’s the indulgence I miss.  It’s how it feels like the volume is turned up on everything in the summer and not just the heat and the humidity, but how things are over the top, like everything that can get lush, get’s way lush, or it gets parched to hell. And how those kind of extremes have this hint of forever that’s not real, but you still feel like you’ve got all the time in the world.

That feeling gets under your skin, which is why county fairs are full of demolition derbies and amateur boxing matches and giant sized portions of deep fried foods and rides that scare the shit out of you and make you want to vomit. But everyone’s still standing in line to ride the tallest most bad ass roller coaster anyway. God I miss feeling that. Not that I ever stood in line to ride any roller coast. Not even something modest. I’m more a bumper car kinda guy, although every now and then I’ll tempt the fates with a ride on the Scrambler. Which is where I usually draw the line, except this one summer when I rode the double ferris wheel at the Indiana State Fair. The only thing I can say on my behalf is I was really high and I was really hot for this girl I was dating.

It’s the luxury of doing something that scares crap out of me and feeling like I didn’t waste any time. Because out here summer’s a fleeting thing, even if we had a 10 day heat wave in July, it still feels like playing catch up before it’s over.

I miss summer. We’re just not getting enough of it this year. Please come back. J’taime été. Seriously, je-the- fuck-taime.

From The Different Kinds of People that There Are

Wizards

Assholes with beards who do magic. In modern times, wizards look just like normal people, because they’ve learned to wear tracksuits and tuxedos over their robes. This means that wizards could be anywhere. Can you trust the people you work with not to be wizards?