proteanme

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.

New York City, even on a gray day like today, I can’t help myself; I have a crush. Plus, kinda like Paris, people are better looking or at least look more interesting. Riding in the cab from the airport to the city I noticed there was something more familiar in the skyline. The way it lifts and stretches out. The disiduous trees and low standing buildings on the way in. So different from the mountians and huge trees and low hanging clouds crowding down Portland’s sky and something I’m still not accustomed to.

Went to Union Square market and of course they don’t have a thing on the local produce that Portland farmers produce, but to see the stands out in the middle of the city was heartening. Expensive, but heartening.Now if they could figure out how to bike and recycle here,we’d be talking wow!

So a black man is president and I’m still a second class citizen in my own fucking country. It’s a bitter sweet pill to swallow and mostly I’m focusing on the sweet part. I didn’t want this election to turn on gay marriage, but damn it sucks to be confronted with spite and hate.

I watched the election with friends and was not at all impressed with any talking head who tried to sum up the historical nature, the watershed moment, we all participated in last night. But give some people microphones and time slots and they will fill it up anyway. For me it was kinda like our Berlin Wall coming down. And Jessie Jackson tearing up said what no pundit could express anyway.  I left to come home feeling subdued, not that it’s unusual for me to hold back, and I sat down to watch Obama speak by myself and I just started crying. I was moved and proud to be a second class America citizen. I feel forever grateful to all the good people who worked the Obama campaign.

I sure fucking hope so.  My fingers are crossed.  C’mon people, let’s get an election right.

Rest in peace, Studs. A real American icon, if you ask me. He had hoped to see Barack Obama elected president. And I hope we do right by him in that respect.

It was dark and rainy this morning.  I like riding in the cover of it when it’s not cold. It’s like riding in a dream but being awake. I remember being wistful last spring as the days got longer and brightened up my morning ride because I had like pedaling in the darkness so much.

The worst question you could ask David in the last year was ‘how are you?’ And it’s almost impossible to have a conversation with someone you don’t see regularly without that question.” Wallace was very honest with her. He’d answer, “I’m not all right. I’m trying to be, but I’m not all right.”