walk a hundred miles

some things end. others begin. sometimes both. i'm getting mileage out of the daypass today.

today was very "college"...i had a campus-y good time over at sylvania. raked up the very last bus pass. filled out a job application in pencil. went to the library and looked at the books and sensibly only took a few off the shelves. walked all over downtown portland. read the headlines on all the newspapers about the hurricane and the destruction of new orleans. went to psu. did the bureaucracy shuffle. felt just as wide eyed and bewildered as when i was 18 doing this for the first time. came home and consoled myself with a bagel at tiny's. read the reports of the hurricane damage. walked another hundred miles...

all i can think about though is new orleans. i've never seen such destruction in all my life. i've got some friends down there. i hope they're okay but i really have no way of knowing one way or another. i remember when we had our "big storm", and it wasn't as bad as that. even so, it was a couple weeks before everyone in our neighborhood had power.

things in new orleans are going to be a complete mess for quite awhile i'm thinking. overall it's so hard to fathom what's happening (or not). it's times like these where sending all our troops to iraq seems a bit silly, when the real trouble is right here. i had read somewhere that the director of FEMA hadn't heard about the damage for three days, whereas even my media sheltered self was well aware that the state of things would require outside intervention pretty much from the get go.

feels like the last day of summer

it's easy to forget what the rain feels like. today was the first day that felt like the last day of summer. "september's reminding july, that it's time to say goodbye". today felt like more than august.

it rained this morning, much to my surprise, while i pried the ruby like tomatoes off the vine and filled up my vinegar bottle with dill. since it was cool enough i made fried okra and green tomatoes and enjoyed them both.

i don't know when the last time was that i saw goonies, but it's just as good with beer and popcorn as it was with a box full of legos, but perhaps in a different sort of way. makes me want to go to astoria. i hope we make it out that way before the rigors of fall set in for good.

while i welcome the rain after months of sunshine, i know a bunch of folks in LA/FL/MS/AL would love to share theirs with me. The pictures of the aftermath of the hurricane look really bad. Oddly it looks like many of the houses in the Treme were built up high enough to withstand a lot of floodwater. They were smarter in those days than they are now. I hope my friend is okay, wherever he is. Things could have been worse, but they were clearly bad enough.

back to portland

we dragged our tired butts over to the greyhound station and got in the lineup early enough to assure ourselves a spot on the dog. first though i had to stop at the piroshky place over by pike, tradition calls, ya know. rounding it off with some surprisingly good convenience store coffee from a rather unlikely location, we were ready to hit the bus station.

the bus station in seattle is surprisingly small. i've seen bigger ones in vastly smaller cities. i mean shit, columbus ohio probably blows it off the map. the one in memphis is massive by comparison. at any rate it's one of the few times i haven't seen an amish family, and more europeans than i'm used to seeing as well. must be ameripass season...

the drive was too swervy to sleep (as i would have liked to do after a weekend of hype) so we just did a whole lot of reading. the clouds and the trees distracted me from time to time. but we made it home quickly since there weren't any stops at all, and it's not like it's all that far to begin with.

i miss everybody already. sigh. freaks are special. i wonder if anyone else feels like life is dull for weeks after a freak reunion.

friday night freaks

early early in the morning we dragged ourselves to the bus station and got in the northbound lineup. riding greyhound is so much more fun when you don't have to do the potluck seatmate with the tuberculosis cough and perfume of cheap liquor. we stopped in olympia and tacoma, and then arrived in seattle right on time, amazingly enough.

figuring out how to get to lil' goat's was pretty easy. before long everyone started arriving, and we sat out in the courtyard, and goofed around the way that only happens with multiple freaks. then it was time to head over to stan's. everybody was over there. people i ain't seen since emily's wedding way back in '02. wow. a little while later we had fun in the drug store..who doesn't need body glitter and handcuffs?

coyotes in my underwear

now that i have your attention...

no i don't really have any coyote infested undergarments. it's just that i had a surreal conversation with tim about coyotes in the city. it got me to thinkin' 'bout how much i miss watching the hawks circle overhead while listening to the cows, sprinklers, and other sounds of the south slopes. ashland was a peaceful place. being in the city is a lot noisier.

boy did i get lucky about going to GSE when I did. I just happened to plop down in the middle of an open advising session. very informative. turns out that i might be crazy for wanting to teach language arts since i wasn't an english major. but why not...i'm sooooo good at it.

granted i don't go out of my way to follow the conventions of proper english grammar and spelling in this blog, but this is more of an artistic expression replete with attempts to replicate the quirks of my natural speech patterns and stream of consciousness type narratives. but believe me, i can wield the mighty red pen with a vengeance reserved for the copyeditors of the new york times. i know the rules. i just like to break them. wee.

today was beautiful. things may not last forever the way they are in this perfect moment, but i'm here enjoying the fleeting glory of the present moment. the future will dominate my thinking soon enough and suck the life out of the joys of today.

Thought of the day: "What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult."
-- Sigmund Freud

"For almost all of us, the systems that ‘educate’ us to be adults stifle
our natural joy and curiosity. We lose touch with our innate
appreciation of life. We forget how to dream.The blessing is that with attention,
patience and love, we can reawaken our sense of wonder.
We can again dance with life".

Actually some of us never forget...we're the ones who don't fit in.

dyslexia, dl, dmv, disappoint, deviate, discourse

deviate: “...our ordinary state of consciousness is as far from...reality as sleep is from waking...
hmm i wonder if this explains why i tend to blank out in ordinary moments and drift off into another dimension while going about completely normal business? (or does this just mean i'm a glorified space cadet?)
it's brought to my attention regularly by third parties that i'm definitely not in the same dimension as they are. so i guess this means that not everybody drifts away into more esoteric thoughts while walking down the street. am i really on to something while everyone else is "trapped in the matrix" so to speak? i can't help but wonder.
it's amazingly easy to disassociate myself completely from my surroundings, or experience mundane things far more deeply than the people around me.

dl: after a lot of pain and suffering i finally got a new driver's license. the dmv is one of those places that you can really experience the spectrum of humanity. kinda like dhs. or other government offices whose acronyms might also start with d. the kinds of places where you can feel your soul being sucked away the minute you walk through the door into the hell of flourescent lights, crying babies and the unwashed.
i would like to think i won't have to go through anything this challenging for years, but unfortunately i suspect that being in school will in fact prove to be just as bureaucratically flavortastic as my ongoing experiences with the offices of automobile related autocracies. joy.

dyslexia: is what i think i have when i'm typing things and they come out all wrong. other times i think i should just shut up and resist the urge to say every little thing that pops into my head. i'm sure everyone thinks i'm weird enough without committing it to posterity.

discourse: most of the time you really don't want to talk to the kinds of people you run into on public transit in the middle of the afternoon. but this one was an exception.
actually i've had a statistically significant number of short but meaningful conversations with many people in this city while riding the bus, come to think of it. i'm not sure how to interpret this phenomenon except to assume that maybe it has to do with the fact that it's an ongoing thing...people generally like to talk to me whether or not they really should, and that i'm just getting better than average quality conversation material. i really just don't know. does anyone else have this problem?
frankly though, as long as you aren't asking me for money or trying to hook up, i'm perfectly happy talking to you. we can have completely different views on things, and that's cool. i like variety.

disappoint: so i didn't get the job i really really wanted. the one where i could have done puppetshows for kids about recycling and composting. sigh. it would have been sooo cool. well i hope whoever did get it appreciates how cool that is.
as for me...i don't know what i'm going to do, but i'm trying to stick with something relevant to my field of educationally related endeavors. an esl gig would be nice. or something where i get to work with highschool kids. but when you get right down to it, i'd probably end up working at fedex or something.
let's face it, i need money and the more i need it, the less choosey i get about the where and the how of it. short of prostitution and drugs, i'm usually desperate enough to try anything.
but really i'm really good at teaching and hope i can find someone that appreciates just how good i am at it and will pay me accordingly. i think i deserve it at this point.

well, today's been incredibly strange overall. maybe things will get normal now that the full moon is waning. on the plus side, the kale and chard are up. they're cute! i hope we have lots of lovely greens to eat this winter when the cold rainy times are upon us. and let's hope that at that time i also have a place in the world where i belong.

strawberries, blueberries, raspberries

yum yum yum. i'm surrounded by a sea of produce: strawberries (everbearning which kick out a second batch in the fall after the scant summer yields), blueberries, blackberries (which are amazingly good when they're not full of seeds), peaches, nectarines, pears, and just to mix things up, a couple stray boxes of corn. for awhile at least, i'll be at a produce stand hustling fruit to people driving in and out of costco in very expensive cars but yet are obsessed with saving about a dollar on their favorite brand of colored sugar water.

it's a weird paradox...selling locally grown fruit to people who are buying car batteries, shampoo and 30lb bags of frozen chicken breasts in the same setting-a store whose population no doubt rivals that of many towns in this state. hopefully though some good vibes leak out and, at least a few people are able to appreciate the miracle of blueberries when they're at the peak of ripeness, and strawberries that actually have a great deal more flavor than whatever they're peddling across the street.

as for me, i get to eat well. explore new parts of town. watch trains and planes go by. experience the diversity of the human spectrum. and eat more strawberries.

not really what i meant

"Don't look so sad now," said the guy limping north up the street. "i ain't sad, just in pain, that's all."

some days are like that. things take longer to do and are harder to come by.

making it to the library and back was a monumental achievement since i had to stop and rest several times. i never did find the 428's but that's a black hole in the dewey decimal system and i know it. felt better later on but that was like a whole new day. had some ethiopian food for dinner and scooted over to get some videos for the weekend. we got lost on the way home but that's to be expected. we're still figuing out which end is up.
all that was yesterday...

today started off pretty crappily too. i had an interview to go to in an unfamiliar part of town and the public transportation equation wasn't coming out even. neither was the having my shit together equation. but all flustery aside, i made it there just the same as if i had been well prepared and was able to talk about the things that needed to be talked about. and then i came home.

apparently i have a liz incoming. i had no idea she was out here but the phone rang. we'll see if and when but i'm looking forward to seeing someone i haven't seen in awhile. i love it when people turn up out of the blue.

it's that time again

you can tell it's a full moon when you nearly get run over several times by cars when trying to cross the street. seems like people in portland are really crappy drivers anyway...always running into bicyclists and each other. i saw so many accidents on the way down mlk it wasn't even funny. almost got hit myself by a space cadet who was enjoying a stimulating cellphone moment at the expense of driving awareness. she almost right turned into me as i was crossing the street. fun.

on a more personal level, the moon's full again and all my joints ache like they're having some kind of weird high tide without me. as crappy as i feel today, turning into a werewolf doesn't seem too far fetched.

i went and kicked it with my near wolf friend who looks at my quizzically across the garden fence. he's pretty wolf-like and aloof, but i'm working on him. we've gotten to petting stage but he's obviously skeptical.

i finally found title wave used books. that could be a pretty bad vice and it's only a few blocks from home. bad news.

literary times

"Money is better than poverty, if only for
financial reasons."
-- Woody Allen

The nice thing about being unemployed is
that you have time to go hang around in
libraries.  The bad thing about being
unemployed is that you have time to go
sit on street corners.  i wisely chose
the library.  so i'm currently working
my way through persian classical music
(blame it on radio darvish, a staple of
my life at delclerye) and chinese folk
tales.  on a more practical level i
picked up a couple of books about
teaching reading to the reluctant.  it should come in handy at some point, i'm sure.

Today i got all nostalgic when i found the memphis photos.  gosh...such times i've
had.
i've got tons of pictures of rusty railroad times that would sound real good
hustled up next to some tom waits and the beer you stole from your roommate's
stash.  pictures of weddings, dance parties, protest marches, and other forms of
"play".  lots of long lost faces and places long long gone.  places that may never
be seen again (the co-op and the bridges to nowhere).

I fell prey to the temptation of lychees in the summer.  i watched computer techs
from india smile at the panopoly of stuffed animals on my unlikely bike.  i saw it
rain in august which feels like a miracle after all that i've been through.  i swept
the bad karma out the door.  i saw an old man in coveralls sitting next to an
orange haired punk girl sitting next to two lesbians sitting next to the goth
teenagers that can be found in every town.  i took danraj's curry recipe a thousand
miles from memphis and resurrected it in an iron skillet in another place and
another time.  the sage is drying in jars by my window and the fruit flies are
beginning to discover the bounty of our produce mountain.  i made two jars of salsa
and passionfruit flavored popsicles. 

i may be poor, but i'm happy (for non-financial reasons).

here goes...

well tomorrow's the job interview. hope it goes well. i haven't been properly nervous up until now. hope i can pull off "goofy yet professional". ..it's a delicate balance.

watched samurai champloo this afternoon while the heat was baking us like bread in the oven....aww yeah. two fun flavors in the same bowl...like if you had the beastie boys and kurosawa doing films together...almost too much of a good thing.

went by new season's and there was a R&B band jammin' out by the barbeque shack. whew, that gave me the memphis blues for a minute. just like something i'd see back down home...shit i can almost feel the mosquitoes nippin' at my heels.

creme brulee

we checked out steven's bakery last night on the way to the video place. yummmm. pretty swank but sometimes that's what you need. that place is just eye candy.

movie madness rocks. they literally have just about everything. and they're a lot cheaper than crappy ol' blockbuster (who never has anything worth watching anyhow...i've totally given up on that place).

the bus ride home was wild. the driver musta been a former cab driver in NYC. There was a colicky infant across the who kept spitting up on mom...and the toddler was tripping out the punk rock couple. and we bounced and swayed all over town. what a time.

i just can't get enough miyazaki...or popcorn with nut yeast. life is good.

get crunk

been awhile ain' it? and i'm worlds away from where i came up out of. but now i don't really need to explain memphis to y'all...you can just go watch craig brewer's most recent movie-hustle and flow. should be pretty self-explanatory after that.

apparently it's a phenomenon...and all over the place...i didn't even know it was out and the next thing i know, it's like #6 or something...don't care about all that though. it's a damn good movie. and i'm glad to see all my favorite spots gettin' some airtime...the railroad wasteland, under the twin bridges, crystal palace, and vance. i kinda miss hot 107 too. and shit you got isaac hayes, what more do you need?

so here i am wearing a coat in august (nothing something I'd EVER be doing in memphis) but i can pretend real hard watching this. i can almost feel the mosquitoes...

stuck in neutral

can't get it in gear today. must be the the weather. my body things it's november, and that's justified i guess. not that i wasn't warned...
i'll probably be making some blackberry jam this afternoon sometime. but for now i'm gonna do myself a favor, and kick myself out of the house. should be good for me.
there's a big world out there. i should be participating on some level...

mercy and grand

i was lost. couldn't find the library but thought it was on fremont. yelled and cursed and sailed my shipwreck of a ghetto bike up and down the street a hundred times. i guess it's not a total loss...it's a nice neighborhood to ride a bike through. but in the end, i ended up at wild goats instead.

i feel more at ease following my more feral of instincts, drifting down the back streets, into places no one ever goes. i feel at home with himalayan blackberries staining my fingers, and lurking under the highway. watching the trains go by makes me lonesome for the open road.

throw me out in the rain and see where i wash up next...

i like the idea of hamming it up for a job interview. hope my idea of a good time isn't lost on the audience. how often can i get away with being silly? and maybe get paid too?

it will always come to find you, the thing that you are most. it's hard to get rid of the scars and tattoos. it's hard to get that song out of your head. it's hard to shake off them blues. it's time to petition the gods of the river to hear my foolish thoughts. it always comes from within like a wind under the crack of my door. i bust up out of abandoned places, like a mutant himalayan blackberries, put a fence in my way and i grow right on through it like breeze through the trees.

p.s. you should see what neat things you can do with a yan-yan sometime.

thought of the day

today i went over to sylvania with brian. darn they have some very satisfying trees over there. that's gotta be the best looking community college campus ever.
on the way back, we got on the wrong bus and were rather unceremoniously dumped off at the greyhound station. so we walked back home over the bridge, and stopped off over at anzen, and got some stuff to make sushi. gosh it's nice to be able to do that!

i came home and made a bunch of pickles: okra, cucumber, and green beans. then it started in on sushi. made a mountain of it, and we ate it while playing chinese checkers with steven's parents.

some crazy guy across the street is mowing his patch of dust and half dead grass. aside from fucking up his fuel filter in a major way, all it looks like he accomplished was to create a huge iraqi style dust storm. what a nerd.



"Valuing The Moment"

"... the only time you ever have in which to learn anything or see
anything or feel anything, or express any feeling or emotion, or respond to
an event, or grow, or heal, is this moment, because this is the only
moment any of us ever gets. You’re only here now; you’re only alive in
this moment."

-- Jon Kabat-Zinn

Make today really matter. It's all you'll ever have.

i love math

hmm...it sure has been awhile since i've seen polynomial equations. (for those of you who've been out of school for even longer than me, and need a refresher, it's all the horrid algebra that you haven't seen in forever).

but that was the first thing that awaited me on the computerized testing screen. that was a GRE caliber math question, yo.

granted i was the only person above 21 in the room anyhow. a couple of really annoying boys rolled in right after me. guess i'll be seeing more of them when i start teaching, eh? well i've already got a nice range of "teacher-like" comments to use at times like these.

so it stayed pretty much in the vein of me banging my head on the desk, trying to remember long lost math secrets from last decade. and probably not remembering them.

the reading section of course went a bit better.

with that little formality out of the way, i was able to squeeze past the registration blocks. now i've got enough credits to petition the gods of financial aid to help me pay for a better future.

ah if only my experiences at PSU went this well. god bless community colleges and their relative lack of BS.

i finally got a state ID today. i'm a real person after all. what a line at the dmv though...

went to the SE People's Food Co-op for the first time. it sure was cute. reminds me of the one in memphis, or rather it's a bit like square foods but yet not. they had lucious looking produce. looks like at least some of the building was a cob structure. wonder if i could get a job there.

summer is really a glorious time. i just love that i can spend it sitting out on the porch listening to Najma and typing away on my laptop while watching the constant flow of bikes go down the street. life is really good.

walking towards tomorrow

making another stab at getting ready to go get on with the whole graduate school gig, i got it rolling with an academic advising appointment this afternoon.

these things never go quite how you plan...there's always new variables popping up like mushrooms after a week of rain. but someone shined a light into my dark hole of doubt and confusion. sometimes i think all i need is for someone to hold my hand and tell me it'll all be okay. i guess the bigger question is would i have the sense to believe them? my experiences with bureaucracy are always exhausting and soul draining. i wandered out of financial aid into the sun, and hopped on the first bus heading north. i figure they'll all get you close, at least most of the time.

the war really fucks people up. they really never let go do they? i see this over and over again in vietnam vets....and in the new generation of gulfwars survivors. so many wasted lives.

i like the reflective walk home. it's just long enough to get major issues resolved, but not so far as to be tiring. there's a lot to be said for not having it too easy. i wonder what i'd do without a good death march now and then.

tried to go to the dmv, now that an unprecedented number of proofs of address turned up in the mail...but alas they're closed on mondays. that still wouldn't solve the OTHER PROBLEM, but we're working on it. Question #488 Why do you need a driver's license as a condition of employment for city government when I live in one of few cities in Oregon where you DON'T need to drive ANYWHERE? The answer may be forthcoming from the crack of my ass. i may be walking towards tomorrow, but i still don't exist and i certainly don't need to drive there.

i wonder if somone would pay me to teach them japanese? or do puppet shows about composting? i can only hope so.

quote of the day: brian says, "don't worry. i promise you they want your money."

Tour de Fat

Yesterday the Tour de Fat
(http://www.newbelgium.com/vibe_tourdefat_portland.php)
was in Portland.

Being the bikish sort and loving a good pageant, we went and got ourselves in some trouble. Our vague idea for costumes were the Redneck Gas company (inspired by all the bags of beans I saw in Gatlinburg that said Redneck Jaquzzi on them), and well my normal bike is a costume in and of itself.

The parade was lots of fun...i just wish there could have been less hills. but me and my burning lungs of asthma redemption made it back to the beer tent and i spent the rest of the afternoon watching a bluegrass band called Oakhurst, and the Yard Dogs Roadshow (which fulfills my love of freakshows). That was some good stuff. and it was a nice overview of Portland for the newcomers that we are. i saw a lot of good costumes and sexy bikes, and some plain stupendous amazing contraptions that musta been bikes at some time or another. and burlesque shows are fun too. wish casey coulda been there for that one.

for the love of bureaucracy

okay so let's just say today was one of those days that was so frustrating, that i wish i was 5 so i could howl like a baby and totally get away with it.

alas i'm a bit older than 5.

so, i still can't get a state id.

and i still can't get a driver's license.

and it's still LOT'S of FUN trying to call the DMV in indiana.

and i can't get any financial counselling unless i register for classes, but i can't register until i know if i can afford to go.
the fun never ends.

it's kinda like i don't exist at the moment.

i realize that things will get better and i can dig myself out of this hole that i'm in. but right now i just someone to hold my hand and tell me what to do next. is that so bad?

the big squash debacle

today was a frenzy of cooking. i made turnip pickles with fennel, and beet pickles with dill and garlic. steven was cookin' up a storm with some fennel and squash soup, hummus with cucumbers, and cucumber salad. then i made squash and maize fritters with chutney.

all that culinary activity rolled along consuming pretty much the whole afternoon, but it was great fun. i haven't done anything like this since i lived at declerye, and i like the dynamics of talking and choppin'. we're talking about getting a pressure canner so we will be able to can up the squash for winter. i would personally love to have one around.

we went over to anzen to get some yanyans and some juice to make popsicles. anzen could be a dangerous vice if i ever get a job to fuel my addiction to teapots.

i love being able to sit out on the balcony and type away on the laptop. it's the best having 4 or 5 wireless hotspots in this area. portland is all about some wifi. aww yeah.

good ideas, bad ideas

whew, someone remind us not to try to get on I-5 in portland at 6pm. man, what a baaaaad idea that was. i think it took an hour to go a quarter of a mile.

good idea: riding our bikes in downtown portland instead of driving: time not spent looking for a parking space: priceless. spent most of my day riding bikes to pawnshops to put the word out. not that it'll do any good. but it's better to do something with no hope than to do nothing at all.
i hope whoever took my shit gets run over by a bus, fo' real.

Over at Target, the Rubus calcyinoiden was covered with orangey gold berries. They taste a bit like a citrus-y raspberry (they are closely related). makes me want to go back and pick some more. i love edible groundcovers. i think they'd make a lovely jelly.

Came home and picked beet tops, nasturtiums, dill and tomatoes, and made a lovely salad. i love summer! i also love the fact that it's not 98 degrees here like it would be back in Jackson county. I miss the mountains though. The mountains here are cool but you can't see them all the time, like the Siskiyous which are everywhere you look...

the big crapola shamola

i'm pretty depressed today.

i realized that someone stole my bag out to the uhaul truck while we were parked at storage, and other than $20 or so, the only thing in there was my wedding ring, and a couple of other rings that I've had forever and really liked a whole lot.

damn. this sucks. a lot.

so yeah, if you live in portland and some crack head's hustling some rings...run 'em down!

i'll go back to crying now, thank you.