proteanme

I got caught a little, walking in the downpour this afternoon, then came home,  took a nap and woke up to see some blue sky, which is now slowly being consumed by clouds again. There were things. Things I was going to do today that are not going to get done, like change out my thermostat, bring the rest of stuff in from the deck. Practical things. Totally fine, though, to make them wait for another day. I got some books from Powells, which was having a surprise sale and the cashier was soooooo fucking nice, telling me how I was going to love the books I bought and what she said felt really sincere. Also, I told this guy I saw in the store that he had the coolest sneakers (old school Nike running shoes from early 80s) and it made him grin. I love this kind of stuff. The small interactions where me and the other person get to be our better selves, even if just for a few seconds. When I bring consciousness to it, that’s how I look at grocery store encounters and standing in line at the DMV and going hrough security at the airport etc. –  being a little better part of humanity to the situation.

Yesterday there was a guy on the tram, maybe in his late 70’s, stylish in this very understated slightly western way, wearing levis and a black sweater and a cool black jacket. He had well trimmed sideburns and also wore nice wire rim glasses. He was wearing a well worn, thick, silver ring that had a polished turquoise stone on it. He was with some friends and teasing them a little and being sweet with the woman he was with. Charming without trying to hard. I ended up talking to him for a few minutes. Telling him I really liked his ring. But really I admired his whole thing. His style and what, seemed to me to be, his easy way of being with himself.  And that’s how I want to do it too and I think I might be on my way to growing into that. Or at least I hope I am. That’s the thing about getting older and I know it’s potentially going to sound hokey, but its the chance to become deeply yourself, which is an amazing thing to get to do.

Bach cello suites. It has been a looooong time since I listened to these. Remarkably they don’t remind me of my dad, who was a cellist, because unlike my mom and my sister, I have so little memory of hearing him practice. I think it must have been MTB talking about opera that made me think of putting these on this morning. They do seem kind of  perfect for the damp and dark.

Lat night as I was falling asleep I thought of 4 or 5 lines that would work together as a great poem. Who knows if that was true, about the great part, because I didn’t write them down. Lost to sleep. But sleep is good. Much less tossing and turning last night. Much less tired this morning. I did find some lines from several Tony Hoagland poems that I like (hopefully they don’t seem too orphaned without the rest of the poem). Also, there’s this whole poem of his, Lucky.

These lines from Romantic Moment

And if she was a Brazilian leopard frog she would wrap her impressive
tongue three times around my right thigh and

pummel me softly against the surface of our pond
and I would know her feelings were sincere.

These lines from the The Word

Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue,

but today you get a telegram
from the heart in exile,
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

—to any one among them
who can find the time
to sit out in the sun and listen.

These lines from Grammar

we’ve all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap.

I should be asleep. Seriously. I got so little sleep last night. But tonight I promised the midwives I would tackle at least a little freelance  web work for them and I avoided doing it until late and now it’s 11:32pm. I am operating on . . . I don’t know what, exactly. I keep thinking I am going to enter an alternate universe any moment now. In fact, driving home from dropping Remy off at the airport tonight, I hit a stretch of Powell and all the sudden I thought “where the fuck am I?” I actually felt like I was driving in Indianapolis, like maybe down Kessler or Keystone, which I rationally knew wasn’t true, but it really felt like that’s where I was and that feeling lasted for maybe 20 blocks. At some point I just started enjoying it, like “ok, I’m in. Because how often is this trippy feeling gonna happen?”

I started a list today that I wish someone would have started for me years ago, which maybe sounds whinier than I mean to be or feel about it. And I’m not even sure why I’m blogging about it because it’s kind of cheesy and a little “inner voice” and . . . oh I don’t know. . . it’s really just a list of what works for me to be me and how to be more deeply alive and present or awake in world. If you’ve been reading my blog, you can guess some of the things on the list: riding my bike, food (making it, eating it, growing it), music, etc. Even though I’ve got nothing to base it this on, I actually think it’s going to be helpful when I am feeling stuck or more neurotic than even I can tolerate or in some stupid funk. I think I will see ride my bike or walk and I will be able to say myself “get on the bike, dude” and then actually get on it.  Also, it feels like I made this list because I am preparing for something, but what exactly – rain? winter? more productive writing? Or maybe I am just trying to be a real adult and help myself take care of my heart and psyche. The list has been an interesting and unexpected experience and I’ve decided to just go with it. Embrace the sincerity of it all.

Ok, now it’s midnight and I am yawning. It is ridiculous to be up and blogging right now. I love this song playing at this second, though. From 2009, Atlas Sound kind of channeling Beach Boys.

I meant to post this earlier and I don’t know why that matters. I wrote it many hours ago and for some reason that seems significant to me. Maybe this should have been a note to myself.

I love how quiet it is as night. You drive out in it and it really is like a secret world and you are a little bit in on the secret. From some points on the east side, at least near my house, you can see over to everything lit up on the west side of the river and its almost always a little bit of an amazing thing to see.

I read a poem a number of years ago and there was some line in the poem about birds flying away in your chest or your heart. I don’t remember if the line was about feeling sad or feeling happy, and I’ve searched but I can’t find the poem, but the image of the line has stuck with me. For a while I used the “birds flying away” line as a way to describe all sorts of tender feelings and heartfelt stuff when other words just didn’t seem right or didn’t fit or I needed to somehow say there’s a bunch of stuff inside my heart and I am just trying to feel it. I haven’t used the phrase in years, but I still like really the idea of it; it seems so not neurotic; so not over thought; so just being and breathing.

Sooo . . . I put the word “emoticons” in a poem. I think I’ve definitely ensured that the piece is not going into some special poetry time capsule. Unless it’s my own special poetry time capsule. I  kind of wish I was the kind of person who would make time capsules. But it sounds so Wes Anderson and I am not a “Wes” kind of guy.

This is me practicing “writing” and /or me trying to bring you with me on my commute into work: Riding in to work at dawn I look up as I pedal over the Hawthorne bridge because I want to see how the tall glass buildings downtown shine in the half light of morning. I feel like I’m riding into a photograph. I notice fog is hanging over the west hills and I think about how OHSU looks like some modern midievil fortress when its surrounded by the mist.  I cross the river and head south to the the tram. I am riding fast, for no reason, except I like how good it feels to make my legs ache just the smallest bit. On a straight stretch of road without any traffic I turn to look east where the sun is coming up. I don’t expect the pink and orange I see at the edge of the sky, just above the mountains and under the ripple of clouds. I say a secret “wow” to myself.

Grey and warm. Windy and rainy. Fall for sure. I am fighting off or adapting to a headache that’s lasted 2 days. It’s more like a dull, distant chainsaw buzz now than the temple throbbing thing it was last night and this morning. Strange, as headaches aren’t my usual thing. Or at least they weren’t until the last couple years. Kinda like how not sleeping wasn’t my thing either until the more recent past.

I had the pleasure of an unexpected visit with friends tonight, wherein I forgot to take the sparkling water I had promised to bring because I didn’t have anything else to offer at the last minute and then I forgot it because I kept changing my shirt (I think the shirt changing is a  sign of narcissism for sure (ha)). Friends and food and and the dog, who laid next to me, were all lovely  and I was forgiven for forgetting.

Also, I wrote an entirely new song. Not a new melody to old lyrics. But a whole new song, which puts an end to a 3 year dry spell that I had just about given up on caring if it had even had an ending. Like, I had been saying to myself, “Oh, this is the year I quit playing.” I guess I’m stretching out my 36 year streak. Anyway, this new song is kinda countryish. Not sad, but a little wistful. Feels like a perfect fit for the weather today and definitely perfect for this fall. A nice little bit of luck, part heart and part practicing almost every day for the last 3 weeks and then sticking with it, as in working through the idea. The creative process is so fascinating to me because so much of it is work and I love not having it be a mysterious thing, wherein (a word I am enjoying using tonight) the muse visits me and bestows on me this gift and I’m like “whoa.” The thing I have to remember is if I am doing the work, something is bound to happen.

Also, my friend Frannie wrote this amazing and mind blowing and beautiful post.

I have had my stereo on at home playing music, almost non-stop, for at least the last month. It’s been a massive “feeling” infusion. Typing that made me flash on that scene in Pulp Fiction where John Travolta shoots that big ass needle right into Uma Thruman’s chest. Except stretch that out to an injection that takes 6 weeks to administer. Lord, knows I needed something massive. I can get amazingly cut off from myself. That’s not the right way to describe it. I can tamp all my feelings down like packed earth . . . that might be more accurate. Or hibernate, except only the “feeling” part of me is in the cave and the part of me not in the cave really longs to get the part that’s deeply in there out of there.

All this public naval gazing, is it good? Is it helpful? I have some anxiety that I will turn into a narcissist but I won’t know it. God, that would suck.

Also, I am going to start going through stuff I have and giving things away and I hope if I approach you with something that you will consider taking it, because that would give me some joy.

Naval gazing break here via links to things that are well worth reading if you haven’t already:

• Amy Hempel’s In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried
• Cheryl Strayed’s The Love of My Life
• David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech
• An excerpt from Wendell Berry’s Faustian Economics
• Tony Judt’s Night
• bell hooks All About Love (preview)

Should I have read Billy Budd when my dad was alive? Did I fuck up? I hope not. I really don’t think so. It is hard to imagine it would made any difference, really, that it wouldn’t have changed our relationship, right?! He never asked me about the book after he gave it to me for Christmas however many years ago.  I don’t even know when that was. Is that significant that I can’t remember that? This is maybe the most open hearted I’ve been since he died. So is this new bout of sadness and anger all just the normal long tail of grief and it feels different because I am in a different place? Heather? What do you think? Kath? (There’s some other names I’d post here, but I want to respect your all’s privacy.)  I keep thinking about Dad’s friends, Joe and his brother, Patrick, and that guy, Gary, and Delbert and his sons and how they all knew Dad loved them. And how they knew Dad would do anything for them because Dad did do so much for them. He was a wonderful friend. The best. ( Also, Mom, you can’t pipe in here and say how much Dad loved us because it was an abstract thing — all idea and no action.) God, I just don’t want to be this person anymore with these sad-ass Dad abandonment feelings. It sucks. It really does. I know I will be fine. I know these current feelings or sadness and anger and rejection will pass. But the stuff in my psyche – man, dude, not the legacy I was hoping for. (Mom, you also can’t tell me about all the great things I got from Dad, right now. I know how much we are alike. I wouldn’t trade that in, either.)

I both make jokes and serious comments about my longing, as in how much I love to long. I say things like I am a “longing junkie” and I date women on the other side of the continent. I write sad songs and neurotic poems and then listen to even sadder songs and read even more neurotic poems. Longing is just so much a part of me. I cannot imagine myself without it. And the irony, and irony is not even the right word (but lots of right words don’t even exist) is that it comes from this hard and messed up place of not really having a dad and then being this little baby gender queer butch who never thought she would . . . I don’t know . . . get to thrive in this world. Thrive sounds so fucking therapeutic. I mean get the chance to have as meaningful life as everyone else around me who was not a baby gender queer butch. Sometimes, when I think of my life now I am amazed, really, that it has been possible. Right up to this very minute, I am amazed to always be becoming more myself. It seemed like the most secret dream I had when I was kid – that I would be myself in this world. I guess I am posting some belated coming out commentary and potentially ending on an unexpected up note, which is not something I predicted when I started writing tonight.

I have been listening to this handful of sad songs over and over this week. I have been listening to other stuff too, but these 3 or 4 heart breakers are on repeat. (This new band Rhye and their live version of a song called The Fall is pretty perfect.) MTB asked me if that was because everything is changing and I think that was a good intuitive guess. When she said it, I thought yeah that’s it. I like the places a really good sad song gets to and I think I’m open to having those places be gotten to right now, if that makes sense. Also, I admire immensely the craft of writing a great sad song without lapsing into cheesiness. Although it not the craft that’s getting under my skin.

I keep trying to remember if we had music on all the time growing up. Kath?  My sister is the keeper of so many childhood memories. Our parents had a pretty massive classical record collection and Kath and I started amassing our own collection pretty early on – Beatles, Jackson 5, Jesus Christ Superstar, Partridge Family, Up with People, Bobby Sherman, the 5th Dimension and the Monkeys are the ones I remember. And then down at my best friend Tim’s house his older siblings had the Spinners and the OJays and the Ohio Players and Marvin Gaye and Al Green and Chakka Kahn.  Plus, everybody played piano at our house, maybe not well, but Kath and I took lessons and our parents met in music school, so they played very complicated stuff, or at least it seemed that way to me when I was little. There is a particular Mozart sonata that immediately evokes very visceral memories for me of my Dad and our house growing up. A friend who teaches piano played the piece for me several months after Dad died. I swear for a second I could smell him and see  his fore arms (which are pretty much my fore arms)  and . . . well . . . crap, that was not where I planned to go with my thoughts. There is just not a good way for preparing yourself for the unexpectedness of always missing someone. I don’t know why I keep forgetting this.

Rain.  . . I went for a  walk anyway.  At the end of my work day, I put on my rain coat and a baseball hat and trekked over to the bank on Hawthorne. I was soaked by the time I got there. Huge rain drops on the back of my neck. The teller at the walkup window smiled at me. On the way home I stopped at New Seasons and got 4 things, which I carried home in a brown paper bag that was pretty much disintegrated by the time I crossed back over Powell. But 4 things are easy enough to carry and this is my plan this year. To walk anyway. Or ride anyway. To not drive as much as I can. Moving my body is good for my brain and I want to be a better friend to my brain.

Before it started actually raining this morning, it smelled so much like it was going to rain that I got a little wistful for Indiana. I don’t notice the “rain smell” very often here in Portland. Definitely not like at home. Maybe because it rains so much in Portland that the smell doesn’t have time to accumulate into an actual thing you can smell. I would put missing that smell right up there with missing fireflies and thunderstorms and . . . well . . . alright, I’m not going to do this to myself right now. I have been thinking of home the last several days. Nothing concrete and for no particular reason that I am aware of, just how really nice it would be walk around Bloomington and go to breakfast and see everybody.

On a totally different note, I have a small and secret crush on one of the bike valets at work. He’s blond and young and clean shaven and not that much taller than me. We always talk whenever we have the chance and it’s never just dude talk although it is a lot about bikes. My small and secret crush makes me feel very gay in a sweet way, instead of the kinda raunchy way I felt walking around NYC and getting checked out by gay dudes.