Portland, Month Three

Things have swivvled such that I write from my old bed in my new bedroom. In my house. The house with the porch and the benevolent ghosts who are no keen on keeping the front door locked. In the neighborhood full of porch lights ablaze.

I have done things, as in I have used a drill (and krazy glue), and I conquered technology when I installed the motherfuckingrouterofmyass, because after the welcome presence of my parents and particularly my dad, which degenerated into me becoming some kind of unholy adolescent beyotch - I DO NOT WANT THAT COUCH!!!

Well so be it. Now I have a half primed kitchen and a pantry half stocked with oddities I will surely never cook up. But I do have a big red couch.

The house and I and history are getting along just swell. I register unexplainable blips in my peripheral vision, I say aloud, let's just be copacetic, the house can be ours, but my dreams belong to me.

I dunno if it is the doldrums of winter, come to weigh down the hems of my pants, I think it must be, but I've got an abject sort of sadness trying to settle into my winter parched skin. I miss you California, I can see you through this freezing night, just as clearly as I can summon the best kisses from all the best boys, you there, languid on the horizon, clear and distant, we, I, wherever we are, not impervious to the January sunburn.

Here, so far North, the sun leaks a gray light, it's wan, and cold, if bright. Still there is beauty. Things are gathering in the buds. I am growing fonder of that great dormant volcano, especially now that I have zoomed down his ridges, and hope to do so again soon, knees straining, breath short at the joy of velocity on skis.

But, from this crest of limbo I am ready to descend. I still need a job, I still need a lot of things, I need not to feel like an interloper in the rooms of my house, ambling from room to room, from toilet to toilet, silently entreating the ghosties and the powers that be, OK, well now what.

I'll tell you this much, you can move a thousand miles, let your hair grow, take to wearing hats, but your old sweet demons are never going to be put off by your subterfuge, they'll follow at a distance and come for you while you are getting your lady hard-on for anthony bourdain, they will come and lay down beside you on your new couch, they are coming to heap lead upon your leaden heart.

Don't let them win, not now and not yet. It's too soon, still, I can't even really tell my East from my West without golden bridges and the sea.

I've made it this far.