Portland Month Seven
Some unseen hand flipped the switch and it went from cold to really fucking hot. Just as sudden as that.
The weather is fickle, like weather everywhere, it's not a portent and it's not a harbinger, it's just the weather, clement or not. But these last days of grace have been a welcome boone, as my garden explodes in blossoms, color, color everywhere.
currently there is a squirrel losing a lover's quarrel off my front porch, it's just another example of everything gone sideways, it's not neccessarily a bad thing.
A few snapshots.
This evening. I am standing in my yard, miles of hose wrapped around my ankles, I am wearing flip flops and a short skirt, a mosquito is draining my right arm, I am furtively watering my lawn, when it comes to refurling the hose, I realize that I had better get it right, nobody is coming to do it for me.
Earlier I am running down the mountain singing I want candy, outloud, I don't care, it's the middle of the afternoon and no one is about. A minor advantage of unemployment, mitigated by poverty.
Later. Chemical pink margaritas with friends.
Later still, elbow deep in potato salad. I'll turn 37 on monday.
A few days earlier, just as the weather is beginning to break. I am standing on the porch, under the last of the slanting sunlight watching the shadows shift and the neighborhood settle into twilight, I had a very forceful realization, akin to a sledgehammer, and just as unpleasant, that I was home, and to my chagrin I didn't want to be anywhere else. I sat on the porch for a long while after that, let the darkness settle on my shoulders, took up the mantle and paced for awhile, fell asleep after I had sloughed off the comforter, watched the boughs of the trees float on the breeze in the shadow box high on my bedroom wall, considered weeping, but was bereft of grief.
For pennies and dollars and wishes and dreams, I am home.
Portland probably suits me more than I care to admit, I enjoy the ritual of friendliness.
I love my belle soeur and her family who have so effortlessly incorporated me.
OK, fine. Lurching towards the seventh month, and if anyone is really keeping score it's closer to nine monthes without gainful employment. shit, really, that's scary. Word is supposed to come down on a job that I really want on Monday. It's my birthday, must be auspicious, right?
Maybe 37 will be lucky. Maybe I'll get a job I love. Then I'll get puppies. I'll grow some lovely tomatoes. I'll love up on my garden, I'll love up on new friends, and maybe if I am exquisitely lucky I'll meet a man who I recognize and who recognizes me. We'll go a'frolicking through the fields of fallow dandelions and we will laugh a lot.
But in the mean time, you can find the city girl in her pink gardener's gloves, poking about the raised bed, trying to determine weed from succulent and succulent from perrenial, learning that the wise person wears safety glasses when wielding the weed whacker, the hard way, of course.
Some unseen hand flipped the switch and it went from cold to really fucking hot. Just as sudden as that.
The weather is fickle, like weather everywhere, it's not a portent and it's not a harbinger, it's just the weather, clement or not. But these last days of grace have been a welcome boone, as my garden explodes in blossoms, color, color everywhere.
currently there is a squirrel losing a lover's quarrel off my front porch, it's just another example of everything gone sideways, it's not neccessarily a bad thing.
A few snapshots.
This evening. I am standing in my yard, miles of hose wrapped around my ankles, I am wearing flip flops and a short skirt, a mosquito is draining my right arm, I am furtively watering my lawn, when it comes to refurling the hose, I realize that I had better get it right, nobody is coming to do it for me.
Earlier I am running down the mountain singing I want candy, outloud, I don't care, it's the middle of the afternoon and no one is about. A minor advantage of unemployment, mitigated by poverty.
Later. Chemical pink margaritas with friends.
Later still, elbow deep in potato salad. I'll turn 37 on monday.
A few days earlier, just as the weather is beginning to break. I am standing on the porch, under the last of the slanting sunlight watching the shadows shift and the neighborhood settle into twilight, I had a very forceful realization, akin to a sledgehammer, and just as unpleasant, that I was home, and to my chagrin I didn't want to be anywhere else. I sat on the porch for a long while after that, let the darkness settle on my shoulders, took up the mantle and paced for awhile, fell asleep after I had sloughed off the comforter, watched the boughs of the trees float on the breeze in the shadow box high on my bedroom wall, considered weeping, but was bereft of grief.
For pennies and dollars and wishes and dreams, I am home.
Portland probably suits me more than I care to admit, I enjoy the ritual of friendliness.
I love my belle soeur and her family who have so effortlessly incorporated me.
OK, fine. Lurching towards the seventh month, and if anyone is really keeping score it's closer to nine monthes without gainful employment. shit, really, that's scary. Word is supposed to come down on a job that I really want on Monday. It's my birthday, must be auspicious, right?
Maybe 37 will be lucky. Maybe I'll get a job I love. Then I'll get puppies. I'll grow some lovely tomatoes. I'll love up on my garden, I'll love up on new friends, and maybe if I am exquisitely lucky I'll meet a man who I recognize and who recognizes me. We'll go a'frolicking through the fields of fallow dandelions and we will laugh a lot.
But in the mean time, you can find the city girl in her pink gardener's gloves, poking about the raised bed, trying to determine weed from succulent and succulent from perrenial, learning that the wise person wears safety glasses when wielding the weed whacker, the hard way, of course.
posted by emma at
10:53 PM
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