Portland Month 5.5, Easter Edition

There is a deep current of weirdness here.

Friday, the pish, swoosh, clatter of bowling pins. Smoky bar, lane side onion rings, back lit by the black lights, pitchers of beer with cold cores. It's a birthday.

Later, the skate rat and I end up in a strip joint shaped like a Gallo Jug, full of leather clad bikers and one extremely hot and extremely hostile lesbian stripper.

Later we smoke some dope under the stars and I get lost in bed.

Saturday, I head downtown to buy a conservative suit, and wind up spending a shit ton of money on pretty things. Pending joblesslessness (that's a lot of s's) be fucking damned, mama's riding the flush of some sexy time and if I have to resort to wearing stockings to gain respectable employment you can bet dollars to donuts that I'll have something vaguely naughty underneath.

I meet friends and brother at the Elk's Lodge - the where? - for a 'twilight rummage sale'. The doorman solicits me for a dollar and keeps me hostage, this after I've walked the perimeter, assuming that the entrance is the service entrance. In I go. Into the smoky murk, full of the elderly and bewigged snoozing over tables of worthless crap, to the betatooed and tragically hip, to the just fucking tragic of ambiguous sexuality and morbid degrees of girth. Who the fuck cares, there is shuffle board, and portraits of Elk members past, I score some awesome tchocke for all of six dollars and we drink rum and cokes in the depths of smoky disconnect.

Because I am discovering daily, short cuts and bridges, places and restaurants and bars. Because I am discovering daily, because I am weirdly afraid of earthworms and the freeways here, because of these, I have found that I am enjoying being a stranger. I am enjoying the strange. Things that eight months ago I might have automatically dismissed, I just sort of let go of any pretense and let it ride.

Sunday, Easter Sunday. It's always sunny in California, the amalgam of Easter in my head is warming and twirling in my Easter dress, and later just twirling through an early afternoon drunk. I wake to a mean, gray rain.

I head out with my friends A & J to her family. We hunt eggs, we eat eggs, we scavenge for treasure, we are thoroughly sodden, everyone is unphased. Then we laugh for a long time. Then I head to my belle soeur's family. We eat some more, I swear to give up devilled eggs for another year, and then I am back in my beloved house.

It's taken some time, but I am beginning to yield. I think I am falling in love with Portland. With it's particular and extreme dichotomies, the confluence and the quiet battle between the old currents of the city and the new currents is everywhere, it's a funny dance of mutual respect and mutual repugnance. It's poignant really, it's a last bastion. We all know who will wind up winning. I suppose if I were elderly and badly bewigged I'd like to go out valiantly as well, menthol 100's ablaze.

More Bullets/Equinox

* I'm still here, in Portland, that is.
* Still sick, three and a half weeks of intermittent fever, impacted sinuses, newest symptom - extreme gastro-intestinal distress.
* Still jobless, temp job ending shortly, dipping into savings, skirry!
* interview next Thursday, think good thought internets, I am counting on you.
* still hanging with the skate rat, mixed emotions about that, he's sweet, and I freely admit that I am making up for the deficit of making out.
* I have half an ear cocked to the local news at 11:00, local news is weird. Weirder since half the time I am surprised that I am in Oregon.
* State of Oregon hates me, I don't get sick like this, ever.
* My cherry trees are shedding their blossoms all over my porch and my side walk, I can't bring myself to sweep them up - they remind me of Akira Kurasowa. Four Seasons I think?
* It stays light here, late, again, so far North.
* I have all kinds of flora shooting up in the garden, but I am so hopeless, I cannot distinguish what is weed and what is a potential crocus.
* That said, my lawn is shortly in need of serious mowing, I went and looked my lawn mower (awaiting my loving care in the garage) it's the electric kind. I stared hard at it for a quick minute, then decided the lawn could wait a little longer.... then I called my dad.
* My best friends P & M came for the weekend from SF.
* I was so happy they came up, we had an excellent time, though the weather was skittish. I was glad to be host, proud to show off my home and my new town.
* If you are ever in Portland, do eat at Le Pigeon. Four words: foie gras ice cream.
* Had a really great dinner party on friday night for my old friends and my family and my new friends, and I was extremely pleased that all parties were happy and suitably wowed by my carnitas, slow cooker, oh how I love you. Thanks P!
* Muse still mostly gone, not sure what to do about that, best to be patient.
* Pessimistic about the economy, but I've been watching the market like a hawk. Follow the money, but the money is confused. Mixed emotions about Wall Street bail outs.
* Funny how quickly a scandal fades - Elliot Spitzer's hooker seeking ways diminished by Street fluxuations and Obama selling out his granny.
* I think I have finally set aside all my skepticism and have allowed myself to be wooed by Obama. (I still have reservations, if HRC were any other woman... No more dynasties.... even Bill, Bill! who I hearted, oh so very much, is making me berserker)
* There are lots of rainbows and flowers here, everything will work out as it should.
* Plus! Bowling on Friday!!

Happy Song

I'm letting go, I'm starting to drift away, it's beautiful.
Paraphrasing my current happy song on my brother-managed iPod.

And just like that, it was done.

So long pre-concieved notions, farewell benefitted job, so much for the sought after idyll, up in smoke after too many cigarettes and the beer I am becoming accustomed to, but don't yet totally enjoy. Hello to new hair, hello my inner super-dooper neat freak, girl, chillax, a spot in the sink is no cause for bleach.

but between you and me, it's always going to be alright to gyrate in the bath tub. Everybody has their own particular dance music, nobody ever has to know, we've got the secrecy of bath tubs and vehicles on freeways, in private we are all a superstar of our own private narrative, making amends, charging forth armed with the twin swords of imaginary righteousness, changing the ending, bossing, bowing, falling head over heels for the perfect disembodied dick. Dancing in the dark, striking Billy Idol poses, striking any pose, all of these poses (thank you Rufus) get you nowhere pretty goddamn fast. Poses are elementally static.

And then there is this. Totally unfamiliar, not fighting any current of any river in particular, not fighting any tidal pulls or the moon, just riding the current, the pull of the moon, the erratic economy. I've got no plans to lasso anything like some mystic cowgirl, I checked my ego at my front porch. Not fighting, I want to slide down the yellow brick road of varied songs, I am at the mercy of a tin man, the cowardly lion and fickle providence, somehow it will work out - that me and theoretical dog will win some kind of ecclesiastical golden ticket and spend our days between the Elysian Fields and a composite cafe somewhere between the west coast and Paris, in the middle of the ocean, where the coffee is sublime, where the cigarettes are endless and nobody ever heard of cancer, and I will write the kind of post cards I wrote at seventeen, guilessly free of the threat of velveeta that might smother genuine sentiment.

Not that I would have anything to say about this, that, or the other thing. I've been too busy sleeping.

fuck you flu of death.
.
I did get a sweet reprieve over the weekend, which included a skate rat I went to highschool with in the eighties. Hooray for fulfilling freshman fantasies, hooray for quid pro quo. So it goes, so I roll. I eagerly await the next spate of weirdness. Bring it.

Beautiful, beautiful, just beautiful. You should see my garden.