proteanme

I just finished reading The Corrections. It was a good read and once I got into it I couldn’t put it down, but overall I wanted to like it better than I did. Maybe it’s because I read Freedom, first. I don’t know. I can’t quite but my finger on it. Still, if you’re looking for something and haven’t read it yet, I would recommend The Corrections, without hesitation.

Not sure what I’m going to tackle next.  I was contemplating trying again to read Anna Karenina, but then I heard an interview with Jeffrey Eugenides last week and he gave away the whole plot. Bastard, Jeffrey. Seriously. Maybe, I’ll try Catch 22. It is the 50 year anniversary of its publication and RU thinks that I’ll love it. Hmm . . . we’ll see.

I’ve never been a big fall fan. Can’t embrace the whole crisp air and brilliant skies (which is a joke out here) with everything around me dying. Still, I’m not minding fall as much as I thought might. And yet I can’t believe it is so unequivocally here.  This was the second year in a row that Portland had such an abbreviated summer and this year we didn’t even get a week’s worth of a heat wave. The rest of the country must have hogged up all the unbearable hottnes without even a week to spare! Or the heat couldn’t rise over the mighty Cascades to make us suffer through 100 degree days like every one else. I thought we’d get more of an Indian summer or something like that. Maybe we did and I missed it while I was in NYC. Anyway, I’m getting off track. These short days say fall like nothing else, even more so than the rain. And there’s 100 things to do in my yard and I want to keep riding my bike and I’ve already had my first cold and I don’t want to turn on the heat.

I’m practicing getting back in the habit of blogging. Like everything else, I’m always starting over.

After 10 days in NYC we boarded Amtrak and headed south, down to DC. The train ride was nice but the way Penn station manages boarding is nuts. They don’t announce the departure gate until about 10 minutes before the train departs, which kicks off a mad dash of folks racing each other to on the escalator that leads down to the platform. A bottleneck developes very quickly because there is only one agent checking tickets and only one very narrow escalator for each gate. And so people push and elbow and step on each other feet on accident and it just doesn’t seem like it should have to be so unpleasant to get on a train.

Because we weren’t on an express train the trip took about 3 hours. We stopped in Newark and Trenton and Philly and Baltimore. I may be leaving out another stop in New jersey, but I can’t remember and I can’t figure it out on the Amtrak site either. Union Station in DC was grand, as in grandeur, and it reminded me how travel was once considered this grand and luxurious thing to  do.

I had forgotten how close the east coast cites are to each other. Or to be more precise I had forgotten the experience of how close the cites are. It seems remarkable that so many people live so close to together, especially after living out here for 12 years where we are surrounded by vast stretches where hardly anyone lives, if anyone’s living there at all.

We did touristy things in DC, like walked the tidal basin, saw the new MLK monument, went to the National Portrait Gallery and the Women in the Arts Museum and did a night time drive around the city. But mostly we just wanted to spend time with our friend D. And that’s what we did. We ate some good meals together and laughed about our new car and the way Rachel did this funny thing at dinner and made coffee and shopped online for good socks and looked for parking spaces and went to some movies and took some walks and checked out the Dupont circle farmers market. We were all sad that it had to end.

Last day in NYC.  How can that be? Every time I come to New York I always feels like  there’s more to see and do no matter how much we saw and  did and we did alot. We took a ferry. We went to Ellis Island. We ate excellent soba. We walked across the Brooklyn bridge. We walked from the east village to the west village, twice. We saw a friend do stand up comedy. We drove up the Hudson and stayed with my dear friend in Tivoli. We walked through the San Gennaro festival. We had a drink at the Players club. We went to MOMA and saw the de Kooning retrospective. We went to the Met and saw Lucian Freud collection. We got caught in a down pour and I got absolutely soaked. It took 3 days for my shoes to dry out.  We had good bahn mi. We ate in China town twice.  We checked out the Dumbo Arts Festival and walked through the Brooklyn Bridge park where we saw 2 or 3 wedding parties getting their photos taken, one of which culminated in a parade like dance with a drumming. We had over hyped ramen. We had surprisingly good Indian. We went to Dia: Beacon and saw Sol LeWitt, Louise Bourgeois, Agnes Mardin and Richard Serra’s massive steel sculptures. We saw walked the Highline. We saw a fashion photo shoot. We rode an elevator with Uma Thurmon. We sat in Union Square. We sat in Madison Square Park.  We walked in Central Park. We ate lunch in Battery Park. We read the Sunday Times in  Thompkins Square. We listened to a jazz quartet and someone playing a baby grand piano in Washington Square. We checked out Occupy Wall Street at Liberty Square. We went to Blue Stockings and bought zines. We saw a good gay movie. We visited the Cloisters. We rode the bus and got stuck in horrible midtown traffic because Obama was in town to give a speech at the UN. We rode the subway. We took a taxi twice. We shopped, but not very much. We went out to brunch. We heard people speaking French and Spanish and Italian and German and Chinese and Hindi and other languages that we couldn’t pick out.  Our waiter at the Indian restaurant said his wife was visiting from India for and  for the first  time he was was going to meet his son, who was almost a year old.  We had really good Cuban food at this hole in the wall that we ran across when we were really hungry and tired. We met people who had lived in Portland and knew people we knew. We saw a rat and two black squirrel and a bunch of east coast blue jays.

And so summer. Finally.

I meant to post this on Sunday or Monday, but the week has gotten away from me as far as writing. But I’m saying that right off the the bat here to give some context to what I say later about Father’s day.

The internet says that the sunset today was at 9:03pm, but I don’t know how the internet defines sunset, because it was still light out at 9:30. I’m guessing it must be something about where the sun is on the horizon line. Maybe I’ve been confusing sunset with sun down. Anyway, these long days are amazing, even when it’s cloudy. Looking out the window tonight, I was thinking that’s what’s gotten me through this spring, focusing on the long hours of daylight. Even when it’s raining or chilly, it is light out for along time.

I went with some friends up to Mt Tabor on solstice. We were too late to actually watch the sunset, but we did see a beautiful dusk. Lots of people had the same idea. It’s a great view. There was even some drumming, which was kind of annoying, but I appreciated the sincerity of it. I got quite a few mosquito bites when we were up there, which I can’t stop scratching now. I’m one of those people who seems to attract mosquitoes. It’s a bummer. I’m also one of those people for whom cilantro tastes like soap and who can smell asparagus in pee. I read the articles in these links and I think we’re kind of like perti dishes with arms and legs and brains and stuff.

Father’s day always occurs during Portland’s gay pride, which I suppose adds something special to both events. While I’ve celebrated Pride ever since I moved out here, give or take a few MIA’s due to out of town guests, I can’t think of the last time I celebrated father’s day, at least not in regard to my own Dad. Sometimes that makes me a little sad, but this year I found a lot of joy in thinking about all the great Dads I know, whom I’m going to try to name here (although inevitably I’ll miss someone and I apologize in advance for that). So here goes – the ‘great dad’ shout out: David, Ned, Bart, Jim R, Jim A, Jim D, Jim P, Jim L, Phil, Mark, Jason, Don, Chris B, Chris C, Chris H, Mack, Ray, Todd, Jeremy, Scott, Clint, Joe, Greg, Rick, Mark, John, Jamie, Erik, Toby, Sean, Brian, Daniel R and Daniel G. Plus, an extra special shout to a few fellas who were fatherly to me, (in the best possible way) – my uncles Bob and Richard and my friend, Bob Richards. And last but not least, a heartfelt ‘you’re the best’ to my closest friend’s dad, Ted, who stood up for me when I was getting outted at camp and some mean-ass petty shit was going down around me.

I imagine there are lots of gay dads and dads of gays who come to one of the Pride events. I marched with OHSU in the big parade on Sunday and a couple dads, who are fellow workers, brought their sons with them.  That is one thing that’s changed since I came out – how family friendly being gay is and how much Pride reflects that. The decadence of Pride has been turned way down, which frankly makes it less fun to watch, but that’s progress for you.

Lately, I’ve been thinking of all the things that have and haven’t changed about being gay over the 30 years I’ve been out. For instance the rainbow as a gay symbol has persisted, but not the pink triangle or the labrys. And lesbians don’t seem to wear lavender anymore either. Bears and drag queens are still around and going strong. Gym queens and drag kings arrived on the scene sometime in late 80’s or early 90’s and they are here to stay. Butches and femmes made a comeback after being ostracized back in the late 70’s and early 80’s. More people are coming out in high school than they were 30 years ago. And more folks are transitioning from female to male or male to female. Queer nation kinda came and went but queerness stayed around. Whew, I had much more enthusiasm for this exercise when I first started. I think I’ll come back to it another post.

Yesterday was the first real day of summer we’ve had. It was sunny and in the 80s and it seemed like everyone was outside. People were wearing flip flops and sandals and tank tops and shorts and sleeveless dresses and little skirts and cut up t-shirts and sunglasses. Kids were running around in their swimsuits and turning the hose on each other. People were smiling. They were talking about whether or not they had on enough sun screen. They were riding their bikes and rolling down the windows of their cars. They were mowing their yards and pulling weeds and they said hi when we walked by them.

RU and I rode our bikes to Colonel Summers park, which was filled with clusters of people on blankets laid out in the sun. Lots of guys had their shirts off. Lots of gals were wearing bikinis or at least bikini tops. People were eating and drinking and reading and sleeping and throwing things for their dogs to chase down and bring back. Someone had a grill. Someone else was hitting a tennis ball against the practice wall. A couple guys were throwing a frisbee. There was a pickup game of Chicago style softball,which was fun to watch. A few of the players really hit the crap out of the ball.

RU and I rode our bikes to Pok Pok and got a table outside. The food was sooo good. We rode home and I watered the vegetables. We slept with the windows open and under only one cover and instead of two.

Tonight we get a sunset we can see. A nice and welcome break from the end of what seems like an eternal spring.

I spent a portion of this long weekend reading (for the first time) Slaughter House Five. I didn’t choose the book because of Memorial day, but I fully appreciate the coincidence, and in that respect, I think it was fitting. Also, now I know why so many folks have told me to read this book. If you’ve never read the book, you should. It will take you less than a day. Afterward you won’t be able to stop thinking about it. I swear that Slaughter House Five should be on a required reading list for being human.

If you like Kurt Vonnegut Jr, you might want to check out this interview.

I got an early start to celebrating my birthday this weekend, with a family dinner, Uris style. It reminded me of all the years I spent celebrating my birthday with my extended family, which meant a lot to me. However the rest of my birthday plays out, last night was pretty perfect.

A bank of clouds, visible form my front window, has turned nearly the color  of fuchsia. We really do get amazing sunsets

The days are getting wonderfully long. Dusk happened around 9pm tonight. The fact that it was sunny made it all the more amazing. Long days are one of the things I love about Portland. It also got up to around 70 today, which was perfect weather for the bike ride home. We have such a long ass spring out here and this one’s been chilly. So when things have warmed up on the fews days that have been over 60, it’s felt like such a luxury.

Strangely I haven’t minded the rain that much. At least not yet. I say strangely because March and April set some records. March was the 5th wettest March on record (I’m not sure how long the “record” dates back). Total rainfall for April was the third-highest in 71 years. However if that pattern of precipitation continues into July, I’m sure I’ll be losing mind.

Today is the anniversary of the eruption of Mount St Helens. That fact plus the huge trees, vast stretches of wilderness and all the massive rock formations make me feel like I’m living right on the edge of the prehistoric. If prehistoric was accessible via bike.

The days are longer and getting a little dryer and a little warmer so fair weather bike riders have started taking to the streets. Lots more commuters on the weekdays and leisure riders on the weekends. It’s heartening and maddening at the same time. Critical mass is supposed to make it safer for all of us bike riders, but about 75% of the time bike riders do insensitive and jerkish things.  I’m not excluding myself. I do jerkish and insensitive things on my bike too sometimes. More riders means greater potential to experience someone behaving badly on his or her bike. I’m struggling to adjust to the increased odds.

Here’s a list of my pet peeves (the jerkish and insensitive behavior that drives me crazy). It’s not in any particular order, as in the the first item does not peeve me off the most. If anything, it may be in order of frequency. The "you" is intended to be generic. I guess the me is too.

• Not indicating when you’re gonna pass on the left
• Passing while pedaling as fast as you can at a pace you can’t maintain and then slowing down to a pace slower than, me trapping me in a narrow bike lane with lots of car traffic so now I can’t pass you.
• Talking on your hand held cell phone.
• Checking your voice mail or ipod at a red light and not noticing it’s turned green.
• Turning up the music so loud in your ear buds or headphones that you can’t hear me signalling to you that I’m passing and you don’t move over or you pull out into me or another rider or pedestrian.
• Yelling at me when I signal to you with my bell that I’m passing you because you don’t know bike etiquette.
• Blowing through red lights when there’s lots of car traffic.

I realize this makes me sound grumpy and self-righteous. I admit that I tend to be self righteous when I ride. But sincerely I believe when we ride, we are sharing public space and most of my peeves have to do with behaviors that make it safer and more enjoyable to ride. For all the riders on the road.

My house faces west and there are two big windows in front. Perfect to view sunsets. Tonight’s seems kind of hopeful, which is what spring is all about, if you exclude floods and tornadoes and other acts of nature batting last that tear people’s lives apart. I guess hope has context.

Passing on some stuff I’ve  found interesting or amusing:

• The Possibilian (I wish I would have made up that word)
• Michelle Obama getting down (Can you imagine Laura Bush or Barbara Bush doing this. Good lord, I don’t want to.)
• Rumpus interview with Edward P. Jones
• Generation Why? (a little out dated but still good)
• Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues