proteanme

Thanks to Susie Bright, MG gets on one of the most popular blogs around.

I don’t know if the flakes are bigger or I’ve just forgotten what they look like, but it’s snowing here. A once or twice yearly occurrence. Last time I remember snow like this was last year at Christmas. If it keeps up all of Portland will shut done except for the people that don’t know how to drive in the snow; and they will speed around way too fast thinking that the chains or studs on their tires give them have special super snow powers. My cat doesn’t know what to make  of it. He keeps looking out the window, his head following the flakes from sky to ground. It’s pretty. I think I will go for a walk and be out in it.

I love twilight. In a nearly clear sky.

I’m lucky in that one side of my cube is almost all windows, extending from side to side and then up three feet. This way I get to notice the sky. Today I sat for a few minutes and looked at dusk and thought to myself, wow, this is what liminal looks like. This is liminality done up nuanced and stunning at the same time.

The interior landscape. Now that’s a tricky one. I wish I could keep it from getting over run with nay sayers. It’s funny how much I’ve externalized nay saying. Unconsciously, I think. It’s like a sixth sense the way I gravitate to the “no can do” in a crowd. Not that there aren’t some really wonderful and supportive exceptions. Lucky for me, there have always been; say for instance, the terrific friends who read my blog. But I swear to god sometimes I feel safer with the cynics and critics; I have a lot more experience negotiating with dismissiveness and disdain. For those of you who feel comfortable doing so, feel free to give me a gentle nduge away from the rut of familiarity.

I’ve been watching myself these last couple days, riding a baby roller coaster of small successes and defeats. Good practice I think — to observe it all.  And the stakes are pretty low, but details count. I keep thinking of Churchill saying “life is one damn thing after another” and how that doesn’t have to be condemnation or an echo of defeat. It could be an invitation to embrace the damn things. What else are you gonna do, work against it all?!

Landscape. It’s impossible not to have a relationship with it. Impossible to escape its imprint, even if its only in the imagination. When I was in Paris I wondered what it would be like to grow up and inhabit a space so immersed in history. Here in the U.S. history is an event or a place one goes to visit. It’s not an every day occurrence. But in France 200,000 families live in houses dating back to Henry IV (1589-1610); 500,000 families live in houses of the Louis XIII period (1610-43); and 1,250,000 families live in houses of the Louis XV period (1715-74). Home is a historical landscape. And in walking through one’s neighborhood, there is the possibility to mark one’s steps along a time line connecting the now to the the past. The times that came before are right there. And they’ll be right there for the next generation too.

A couple hours before sunset the grey skies gave way to blue and now the hues of the what will soon be dusk are visible. This is the kind of thing for which Portland is so perfect. Outside my window the world is lit up pink. Pink with bursts of orange and red because it’s been so warm here this fall that many of the trees that were the last to change colors are still holding on to their leaves. This is the stunning part of Oregon’s nature that I can be myself in. Maybe because it’s nature all hemmed in by roof lines and brake lights and power lines. But it’s living art, I think. And because there is so much quiet in my life right now I’ve got the chance to notice it happening. To sit on my stoop and be in it as it unfolds. Amazing.