proteanme

If you can’t swing a dead cat in Portland without hitting a Thai restaurant, then you can’t swing said feline in Western Mass without hitting a Dunkin Donut. I had no idea North Easterners were so into fried dough. Seriously. And I miss good coffee. I was at a restaurant last night and saw they served coffee and asked the young women working the counter if the coffee was good and she got all insulted because she makes it. Of course I got some and it wasn’t badly made, but the brew itself was kinda flat. After trying an actual coffee shop this morning I’d say that they just don’t have the good beans out here in Western Mass. Damn, if Portland’s not ruined me for seriously good beans.

I’ve only been here in Northampton for about a day. So this is a pretty cursory report. As expected, there’s a serious college town vibe for sure, mixed with the old hippie thing and of course the lesbian factor, which is amazingly high. Really, I haven’t seen this many down-to-earth lesbians since I went to a womyn’s music festival. And that was way back in the day. Also, I haven’t seen so many stores selling so many things I would never in my life buy. Except maybe all the geegaw shops on the Oregon coast. I can’t say for certain if I’ve seen a butch or a femme, although I spied a pretty masculine dyke at the food coop last night.

I was a little sad that downtown doesn’t have a square. Just a main drag with streets shooting off it. I thought I’d get a nice small town square ala so many small towns in Indiana. No such luck. Walking around I passed three street musicians. All guys with beards and guitars, separated by a number of blocks. At one point each one was playing a different Neil Young song. A street jam conspiracy or coincidence? You tell me.

My girl lives out in the wilds surrounding Northampton. For you Bloomington folks it feels kinda like if you lived out in Brown Country or out past Lake Monroe. For the Portlanders, just imagine getting out past the urban growth boundry on some small road and you get the picture. But it’s a different world out here on the other side of the continent, although there are echoes of Willamette Valley and Southern Indiana, that is if I had to find something familiar in the landscape, which I do. It helps me orient myself.

I had forgotten what so many deciduous trees look like getting ready for winter. The way they bare themselves against each other and the sky. Not that there aren’t still a fair amount of fall leaves around. There are. It’s just that it looks like I’m on the other side of what must be quite stunning. And I guess that was several weeks ago. But it’s still beautiful. Thick and wild and beautiful. It must feel pretty lush round here come spring and summer.

Right now, the sun is out and I’ll call that good.

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.”

I’ve just been churning inside and not externalizing it very much, which explains some of the silence here. Plus I’m not very well groomed for social commentary and I don’t watch TV or listen to the radio much, so I’ve not had much to say about the big topics at hand, like the election and the financial meltdown.  I’m glad to have a number of friends who are better equipped in this arena. With that in mind, onto something completely different.

First, here are some photos from the butch femme bash I attended when I went to SF.

I was really moved by Forest Church talking with Terry Gross about living, loving and death. Early on in the interview he talks about not believing in an interventionist God. A God who micro-manages our lives. He goes on to articulating how he does not find solace in the face of tragedy, whatever the scale, when folks say “It’s part of God’s plan” or “God has his reasons.” His words were powerful: God doesn’t throw a three year old child out of a window. Or allow a drunken driver to kill a family crossing the street. These are accidents if life and death. If God is responsible for the a tsunami that  obliterates the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and leaves their families in tatters, then God is a bastard.”

I’m thinking about my friend who is having her first round of chemo today and hoping for the best.

And I’m heading east next week to see one of my most favorite people in the world and then to meet this girl I’ve been wanting to meet for a long time now.

I meant to post this last night, but I guess I didn’t hit publish. It still stands though, so up it goes.

I hung my coat on the peg inside my front door after an angry ride home and felt utterly alone. Sun was nearly set. Apartment was empty. Nothing was on the schedule except dishes, eating and working out. Alone.

Anger is a good first sign that sadness is lurking beneath the surface. Sadness and confusion. I can’t say that I know what I’m doing these day because I just don’t. I don’t know that is. I think I talk a lot like I do, but inside I’m confused and sometimes, like right now, I am sad and lonely. I keep telling myself it’s good work to just try and stay with the sadness. I’m resisting turning on the radio or calling a friend or thumbing through a catalog. I’m resisting distracting myself too much so I can experience the fear and the sadness and the yearning for something to change those unwanted feelings into ones that are more pleasurable.

This is me today. Still sad and I think fighting off some sickness. This is the first time I’ve called in sick to work since I started this job more than two years ago. I need to sleep. I went to bed at 8:30 last night and got up today at 10 and will probably go back to bed pretty soon.

There are moments in experiencing all the unwanted feelings when I’m able to summon the courage to let the experience open me up to other folks’ pain. Last night I thought about my mom and dad and my girl in western Mass and RU and my friend with breast cancer and some of the people I saw on the street in SF. I thought of all of them and I felt such tenderness. I felt a little in awe of the human condition too.  The capacity for suffering. It made me think about my own capacity for suffering. Made me think about how I cause my suffering. What a silly human I can be. Seriously. I say that with mild judgment, because mostly it’s a curious and humorous endeavor.

I’ve been struggling a lot this year with trying to figure out how to connect with people–people I love, people I like, people I work with, people I just know–understanding that connection is not an all or nothing endeavor. I’ve also been trying to figure out how to manage what makes that hard for me, which means not shutting down to fear and fear is at my core, not that it’s the only thing there, but it’s in the mix. RU left a comment about fear that was right on target about how it prevents connection. In my experience fear shuts my ass right down, makes me smaller and meaner and tougher and more apart. But as I’ve worked with fear, sometimes I can loosen the grip and not take all those attendant feelings so seriously. Fear doesn’t exactly soften me, but it doesn’t rule me either, not every time. I say that and immediately get superstitious that now fear is gonna get me back and show me about how I should take it seriously. Ah, this is a perfect example of my monkey mind.

But it’s not just fear that get’s in the way of connection for me, it’s what’s at the bottom of it, and I’ve not been ready to get to the bottom of it until now. So what is it? It is this fundamental mistrust. This core belief that no one will look out for my best interests. No one has and no one will. Not because everyone’s mean or cold or so fucked up. I’m not a misanthrope. Folks just get broken in such a away they don’t have it in them, don’t have it to give. By the way this is not a personal reflection on anybody I’m close to or his or her capacity to be close. This is just me putting out there why it’s hard for me to be close in return.

• New York in black and white
• Raymond Loewry the father of industrial design
• Obama’s sense of humor