Collecting Myself

I haven’t written anything in a while, so I figure now is as good a time as any to tell people how I’ve been.
But it’s hard to begin. kind of like how hard it is to feel like you belong in a new place. It almost makes me uncomfortable writing about living here, since I haven’t lived here that long. How can you really know a place and how to write about living in it after a couple months? I’m risking eventually looking back at this and being really embarrassed at my ignorance. But since people have been worried about me, because I’ve been in kind of down mood for the past year, I guess I’ll write and risk the humiliation.

A friend’s daughter asked me the other day if here felt like home yet.  And to be honest, no not yet. But I guess I’ve never really felt at home anywhere, so maybe that feeling will never come. Maybe it’s not a feeling that actually exists, or if does exist maybe it only happens to people who know exactly where they are in their lives and what they want to do. And I think my only consistent answer for people who ask me what I want to do with my life is travel, so I think I’m pretty much set up for perpetual wandering and a feeling of placelessness.

 

All that aside, I do like it here a lot. There seems to be a lot of people here who do what they like and like what they do, which even if one of New Orleans’s nicknames is “The Big Easy” no one I was close to seemed to be enjoying their lives at all, so being here is a complete attitude changer. Lately, I have been beginning to think that maybe eventually I’ll actually know what to do with myself. Or that maybe I’ll actually be able to focus and commit more time to the things I actually like doing, which is a new feeling for me.

 

Another reason why Portland is a good place is because it’s so similar to everything and yet different too, which makes no sense without an explanation but an explanation isn’t exactly the most concrete of things to offer.  I think one of the biggest reasons for this feeling is that no one actually seems to be from here, so everyone brings with them a little piece of somewhere else. It’s almost a feeling of deja vu, like you’ve been here before or thought of here before but not quite. It’s a little uncanny, and I think it’s a feeling best experienced first person rather than have me sit around and fail to try and find the words or scenarios in order to describe it.

 

Today, I went to Cathedral park and walked under the St. Johns Bridge,  a huge looming structure with tall gothic towering archways (I don’t think they’re necessarily arches, but I’ve never really been someone who learns architectural terms). It was nice there, a pretty little park next to the river, with a view of all the hills. The hum of the cars going over the bridge combined with the peace of an almost empty park was very good for thinking.  I had time to sit and absorb what’s been going on and let memories of moments kind of rise to the surface and they are not significant life changing memories but the sum of them kind of describe my experience.

Like waiting for the train home from Beaverton at the Willow Creek transit center.  There was a small platform area presumably for smoking, but maybe I guess that because a group of people were gathered around there smoking. It was 9:00pm and in the upper 40’s as far as temperature goes. On this platform was a light pole, and on the light pole was a speaker. As these people were standing around, talking about not paying for train fair, drug testing policies at their work places, and how far they had to go home, from the speaker moderately loud opera music was playing. And everything felt so much more dramatic.

Or today on the bus back form St. John’s, there were a bunch of mothers with their children, since school had just let out. One mother asked another mother’s son, “How are you feeling today?”
“Not good, “He said, “I bumped my head.”
“You bumped your head? Oh no!”
Then his mother replied, “Yes, he wasn’t paying attention to where he was running, and was looking back at his friend Emmanuel, and ran into a wall. It was a brick one, too, so he’s got a nice little bump.”
Not long after this conversation, another little boy got on the bus and sat next to me, across from the head bumper. Of course, when you’re a child on the bus, and there’s another child on the bus  who looks like he’s around your age, 10 or 11, you have to talk to them.  I only caught a snippet of their conversation, but it was really good.
The boy next to me said, obviously lying, “I’m a teenager.”
“You don’t look like a teenager. How old are you?” the head bumper asked.
“I’m 13.”
“You know when you’re 17 you can get into all the movies.”
I love how no matter where you are kids only care about the important things in life.

I’m sorry, but that’s all I feel like writing right now. But I’ll try to be more vigilant in updating stuff. No promises though.