I am on a crusade against procrastination! I decide Sunday that I will be productive. I will get myself organized and ready for move number two this year. To that end, I find myself in the garage, perusing through boxes of my own artifacts, deciding which need to get sorted through first.
On top of a tower of Rubbermaid tubs, unbeknownst to me, is a can of paint. Green, “celery sage” to be exact. Thank you Eddie Bauer. As I shift a box to determine its contents, the garage slips into time warp as the paint can tumbles, in slow motion, end over end, on an agonizing trajectory towards the cement slab of floor. I reach, struggle, but my fingers are just seconds too slow. The butt end of the can contacts first, and suddenly the garage rejoins real time, as an explosion of celery sage bursts open, the lid flying, spattering my luggage, dripping down my hair and permanently redecorating my favorite pair of running shorts. It sounds like a gunshot, the mess is unreal.
Here is where it gets really good however: Apparently I made some sort of outburst in the expletive arena, though I can’t precisely recall, because my roommate came running just in time to see the paint pooling on the garage floor beneath my feet, and the tie-dyed spectacle the garage had taken. I cannot stop laughing. My roommate is not amused.
The look on her face is sheer terror, and I find out moments later why:
The landlady arrives in less than half an hour to show the house to its new potential renters.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Stalled Out
I love the way Portland smells during spring rain. Even in the busiest moment the nectar scents of summer’s advent can persuade the most productive membranes into a daydream.
Daydreaming has been a favorite pasttime of mine lately, see, I was lucky to have a brief window, a meager almost two years where I thought I had my life in order. What’s that saying, ‘as soon as you think you are where you want to be, you’re not there anymore.”
As soon as I thought that, it was gone. The universe has ways of throwing curve balls you’ll never expect, and heaters you could never negotiate. I like to think I’m becoming comfortable with the uncertainty, but even that strategy will somehow tease the tenacity right out of you.
I always lusted after the grand adventures, Indiana Jones, Robinson Crusoe, Ulysees, the things I dreamt of at night were always the stuff of legend, epic voyages of exploration. I got my wish, but in no way is it the sort of adventure I had spent my young years acting out in the backyard. Mine I suppose are exploits of a more introspective nature, of finding the bravery of a kind I never knew existed within me. Finding the courage to corral a life out of control on a pell mell trajectory.
I'm beginning to see that a big part of my journey is learning how to get out of my own way. (And realizing how complicated that can really be.) Realizing I've been on hiatus from writing, any serious writing anyway, for almost a year. It gets stopped up and comes spilling out at inopportune times reminding me that this is a calling I can not neglect.
Daydreaming has been a favorite pasttime of mine lately, see, I was lucky to have a brief window, a meager almost two years where I thought I had my life in order. What’s that saying, ‘as soon as you think you are where you want to be, you’re not there anymore.”
As soon as I thought that, it was gone. The universe has ways of throwing curve balls you’ll never expect, and heaters you could never negotiate. I like to think I’m becoming comfortable with the uncertainty, but even that strategy will somehow tease the tenacity right out of you.
I always lusted after the grand adventures, Indiana Jones, Robinson Crusoe, Ulysees, the things I dreamt of at night were always the stuff of legend, epic voyages of exploration. I got my wish, but in no way is it the sort of adventure I had spent my young years acting out in the backyard. Mine I suppose are exploits of a more introspective nature, of finding the bravery of a kind I never knew existed within me. Finding the courage to corral a life out of control on a pell mell trajectory.
I'm beginning to see that a big part of my journey is learning how to get out of my own way. (And realizing how complicated that can really be.) Realizing I've been on hiatus from writing, any serious writing anyway, for almost a year. It gets stopped up and comes spilling out at inopportune times reminding me that this is a calling I can not neglect.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Starry Starry Night
Headlights are the only stars I’ll see tonight. A reminder that December’s cloudy early dark is more bitter than the caustic chill of winter. The latter part of this year has been marked by loss; for my family, immediate, extended, and that of my close friends. Winter has brought another sharp reminder of this tenuous arrangement we call life and the constant, vicious state of vulnerability it exists in. The myriad of ways our lives can be thrown into mythic proportions of grief, by the vast ebonies of close, early night seem almost as innumerable as the hours unchecked by the flighty hue of day.
I watched them pack away the things that had belonged to my grandmother. Why I stayed I’ll never comprehend, perhaps the same way people can’t seem to look away from a horrific traffic accident. Clothes musty from too much time forgotten in the closet, the smell of her polluted by the drafty dirge of time. Jewelry doled out to distant relatives that I would see hanging from necks where they did not belong. Rings on fingers that weren’t hers. I couldn’t let them get rid of her bathrobe. The sight of the thing elicits such vivid memories of everything she had been. So it sits above my dryer, as forgotten and unused as the things that were packed into boxes to be given away to people who have no comprehension of what they once meant. Its better that way, that they end up in the hands of people who know the things as precisely that, inanimate objects, the way I could never classify them ever again.
Two weeks into my first experience as a student teacher I got the news that one of the most special people in my life had died. While not entirely unexpected, Gram had been very ill for a very long time, I found I was not nearly as prepared for the finality of the idea as I had thought. In all reality, it was a fortunate event that quelled years of suffering.
That thought did nothing to assuage the strange and empty feeling I woke up with realizing again and again that this was a world without her in it.
Gram-less as it was however, the world went on, and I went to my placement the next day and found myself eager to engage with the second graders, and leave the sorrow behind for a few hours. The following week I attended the service and after an emotionally charged and draining day filled with family, condolences and mini cocktail sandwiches, I was again glad to return to the routines of the second grade. On recess duty that next day I received many hugs from the class before they ran off to join kickball and basketball games.
What caught me completely off guard was one little girl who tugged my coat sleeve gently. She looked up at me with dewy brown eyes and said slowly, “I’m sorry someone died.” My heart stuttered in my chest as she quickly hugged me and ran off across the playground. Willing myself to breathe deeply, the bells rang and it was time to go inside. After recess I was grading papers. The assignments I read instructed students to relate an event from their summer.
Between pages of camping and trips to national parks, I was forced to fight back tears again as I came to the little girl’s paper. She had lost her grandmother in July I discovered, and in the eloquence of a seven year old expressed that she still missed her.
I watched them pack away the things that had belonged to my grandmother. Why I stayed I’ll never comprehend, perhaps the same way people can’t seem to look away from a horrific traffic accident. Clothes musty from too much time forgotten in the closet, the smell of her polluted by the drafty dirge of time. Jewelry doled out to distant relatives that I would see hanging from necks where they did not belong. Rings on fingers that weren’t hers. I couldn’t let them get rid of her bathrobe. The sight of the thing elicits such vivid memories of everything she had been. So it sits above my dryer, as forgotten and unused as the things that were packed into boxes to be given away to people who have no comprehension of what they once meant. Its better that way, that they end up in the hands of people who know the things as precisely that, inanimate objects, the way I could never classify them ever again.
Two weeks into my first experience as a student teacher I got the news that one of the most special people in my life had died. While not entirely unexpected, Gram had been very ill for a very long time, I found I was not nearly as prepared for the finality of the idea as I had thought. In all reality, it was a fortunate event that quelled years of suffering.
That thought did nothing to assuage the strange and empty feeling I woke up with realizing again and again that this was a world without her in it.
Gram-less as it was however, the world went on, and I went to my placement the next day and found myself eager to engage with the second graders, and leave the sorrow behind for a few hours. The following week I attended the service and after an emotionally charged and draining day filled with family, condolences and mini cocktail sandwiches, I was again glad to return to the routines of the second grade. On recess duty that next day I received many hugs from the class before they ran off to join kickball and basketball games.
What caught me completely off guard was one little girl who tugged my coat sleeve gently. She looked up at me with dewy brown eyes and said slowly, “I’m sorry someone died.” My heart stuttered in my chest as she quickly hugged me and ran off across the playground. Willing myself to breathe deeply, the bells rang and it was time to go inside. After recess I was grading papers. The assignments I read instructed students to relate an event from their summer.
Between pages of camping and trips to national parks, I was forced to fight back tears again as I came to the little girl’s paper. She had lost her grandmother in July I discovered, and in the eloquence of a seven year old expressed that she still missed her.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Harthager's Ghost
A Volkswagen Vanagon, blue and white, model year 1976 paused at a stop light next to me while I was out on a jog. Now, you may be considering why this of any other seemingly ordinary events might bear such significance as to be recorded here today.
Let me begin with a conversation I had with my brother about this very same vehicle not too long ago. No, let me begin even before that, with the origin of this automobile in my life:
This car, see, is the vehicle that bore me any location that was more than walkable or bike-able distance from my home for the better part of my childhood. To Seattle, Portland, even occasionally on long hot summer days to California, all five kids packed in, parents too, with water bottles pressed against red cheeks in the rising heat of summer driving through Redding and Yreka, through the produce checkpoint, holding out to rest stops for water fights and finally on to Sacramento.
Most importantly of all though, this Vanagon took us to perhaps the most enchanting place I have yet encountered on this earthly coil. Priest lake. Our dog Biscuit knew, instinctively, where we were bound when that sliding door opened for her in early august. With four feet of liftoff, she bounded in, only halting when colliding with the brown pleather bench seat, her tail flailing so enthusiastically the whole time it echoed off the dull metal of the floor boards.
My life has felt pretty fragmented since I came back from Peru. Even after securing an apartment and garnering some employment, my life is still in many boxes, most of which reside in my childhood home just outside Spokane, Washington. To add insult to injury, my parents have just closed on a new residence, and the Benton drive place, with my 24 years of life history, will be empty by May 22nd. Its been on the market for months, surely, with the economy the way it is, I thought, the universe would see fit to keep it in my life for at least a little while longer. Until I could pack up and reconcile the things of my youth. The yearbooks, trinkets, notes from my fourth grade soccer buddy Toby, and on and on. The treasures of us from a time we ourselves have a hard time recalling.
But back to Priest lake for a moment, I can't go back there. To Kalispel island, suspended like an inky emerald thumb print in the glossy surface of the deep deliberate lake. It is a place defiant of description, for its both its beauty and its sorrow. Silent and swift in the early morning, the Sleepy Jeanne, our sailboat, carried us there. Its the place I first experienced death as a child, the place I spent summers in the earth, learning it, becoming it. Biscuit had dragged a half-decomposed deer carcass out of the steep hilly interior of the island, down to the beach she tugged it, triumphant. I was horrified.
My brothers and I would snorkel around the entire thing one day, rafting on a windsurfing board, perplexed and humbled by the things we discovered; water snakes, minnows, strange dark swirling things in the pooling shadows of the wake. I know these things as vividly as if it had been a day ago, and yet, the distance between my persons would make it seem a lifetime. Its almost uncomfortable, Kalispel, the way it nestles down inside of you, haunting and ethereal. Like the things you confront with it are beyond your understanding. As a human, I think I have a deep seated desire to understand, and so I often surround myself in the illusions of things I think I understand. This place though, it will never let you. It is a place defiant of time. I can't go back there.
There came a day in our household when the the Sweigert family and the VW Vanagon would part ways. My Dad assured us more sentimentally attached members of the family that it had gone to a good home. Whether they would appreciate the way the heating system smelled of maple syrup, as we had, I could not help but wonder. A new car appeared in our lives, and it was thrilling for a while, but I think we all miss the VW, just a little.
Rumor surfaced several years after that the new owners of the VW had moved to Oregon. My brother, he swears he's seen it grunting around the streets of Southeast Portland. He can tell it by the dents in the bumper we each of us knows all too well.
Let me begin with a conversation I had with my brother about this very same vehicle not too long ago. No, let me begin even before that, with the origin of this automobile in my life:
This car, see, is the vehicle that bore me any location that was more than walkable or bike-able distance from my home for the better part of my childhood. To Seattle, Portland, even occasionally on long hot summer days to California, all five kids packed in, parents too, with water bottles pressed against red cheeks in the rising heat of summer driving through Redding and Yreka, through the produce checkpoint, holding out to rest stops for water fights and finally on to Sacramento.
Most importantly of all though, this Vanagon took us to perhaps the most enchanting place I have yet encountered on this earthly coil. Priest lake. Our dog Biscuit knew, instinctively, where we were bound when that sliding door opened for her in early august. With four feet of liftoff, she bounded in, only halting when colliding with the brown pleather bench seat, her tail flailing so enthusiastically the whole time it echoed off the dull metal of the floor boards.
My life has felt pretty fragmented since I came back from Peru. Even after securing an apartment and garnering some employment, my life is still in many boxes, most of which reside in my childhood home just outside Spokane, Washington. To add insult to injury, my parents have just closed on a new residence, and the Benton drive place, with my 24 years of life history, will be empty by May 22nd. Its been on the market for months, surely, with the economy the way it is, I thought, the universe would see fit to keep it in my life for at least a little while longer. Until I could pack up and reconcile the things of my youth. The yearbooks, trinkets, notes from my fourth grade soccer buddy Toby, and on and on. The treasures of us from a time we ourselves have a hard time recalling.
But back to Priest lake for a moment, I can't go back there. To Kalispel island, suspended like an inky emerald thumb print in the glossy surface of the deep deliberate lake. It is a place defiant of description, for its both its beauty and its sorrow. Silent and swift in the early morning, the Sleepy Jeanne, our sailboat, carried us there. Its the place I first experienced death as a child, the place I spent summers in the earth, learning it, becoming it. Biscuit had dragged a half-decomposed deer carcass out of the steep hilly interior of the island, down to the beach she tugged it, triumphant. I was horrified.
My brothers and I would snorkel around the entire thing one day, rafting on a windsurfing board, perplexed and humbled by the things we discovered; water snakes, minnows, strange dark swirling things in the pooling shadows of the wake. I know these things as vividly as if it had been a day ago, and yet, the distance between my persons would make it seem a lifetime. Its almost uncomfortable, Kalispel, the way it nestles down inside of you, haunting and ethereal. Like the things you confront with it are beyond your understanding. As a human, I think I have a deep seated desire to understand, and so I often surround myself in the illusions of things I think I understand. This place though, it will never let you. It is a place defiant of time. I can't go back there.
There came a day in our household when the the Sweigert family and the VW Vanagon would part ways. My Dad assured us more sentimentally attached members of the family that it had gone to a good home. Whether they would appreciate the way the heating system smelled of maple syrup, as we had, I could not help but wonder. A new car appeared in our lives, and it was thrilling for a while, but I think we all miss the VW, just a little.
Rumor surfaced several years after that the new owners of the VW had moved to Oregon. My brother, he swears he's seen it grunting around the streets of Southeast Portland. He can tell it by the dents in the bumper we each of us knows all too well.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Zebras
I'm drinking coffee out of zebra. No joke. My friend Tara found these safari themed mugs at the world market and one day, the four housemates each had a different animal. This was several years ago now, but as I sip out of this awkwardly amazing coffee container, I get brought back to the glory days of our college lives. My point here is that as I sip out of the zebra, I'm staring out at the rain from my very own apartment. That is something I have never been able to say before.
Its mine. And it feels strange and decadent.
I've managed to get most things back together again after returning. There was a point I thought, for sure, I would not be able to pull it off. To get my feet under me again. And its been a grueling, spirit breaking experience. By now I'm so used to getting rejected for jobs that I can guess exactly what the email says before I read it. I did find one though, a job. And it pays the bills...barely. Its hard not to feel behind. As friends and I get back in touch, they have good jobs, careers, engagement rings, 401ks. I have a Honda with a hole in it and very little idea what I should do with my life.
I'm on my own timeline though. I have to remind myself. It feels good, the opportunity, the vastness of choice I face each morning to not feel defeated, but determined. Determined to chase down whatever awaits, and create it into something unabashedly respectable and beautiful.
Its mine. And it feels strange and decadent.
I've managed to get most things back together again after returning. There was a point I thought, for sure, I would not be able to pull it off. To get my feet under me again. And its been a grueling, spirit breaking experience. By now I'm so used to getting rejected for jobs that I can guess exactly what the email says before I read it. I did find one though, a job. And it pays the bills...barely. Its hard not to feel behind. As friends and I get back in touch, they have good jobs, careers, engagement rings, 401ks. I have a Honda with a hole in it and very little idea what I should do with my life.
I'm on my own timeline though. I have to remind myself. It feels good, the opportunity, the vastness of choice I face each morning to not feel defeated, but determined. Determined to chase down whatever awaits, and create it into something unabashedly respectable and beautiful.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Pieces
This post is overdue. I know myself to be a bit of a procrastinator, but this, i'm afraid, has gotten out of hand.
I wasn't ready. Are we ever really? Ready to face the fact that three very long flights and one very long day returned me home. HOME. I've never been so grateful to see Portland city lights twinkling in the distance, and to finally breathe the air i missed. It was raining. In true Portland style. This city always seems to know how to rain like it does in classic movies.
By the tempered reality of the new year though, the fact that i'm not ready is heaving itself over my shoulders. The fact that home is a place that dosen't exist for me anymore, that will temper even the most skilled of imaginers. You can't live in the sheer bliss of homecoming joy forever. But i've given it a pretty good shot.
No one ever told me that coming home could very easily be the most challenging part of the journey. The part that means rebuilding everything. The part that leaves you flustered, floundering for the pieces of your life you know should be around here somewhere. Like searching for your favorite pair of old shoes buried by a crowded closet. And hoping that when you find them, they still fit.
What is even more funny (or is it ironic? I'm not sure) is that i can't even tell you what it is i learned. What it is inside me that forever changed. I wouldn't know how. And when i speak of this experience there will forever be a secret that i have no choice but to keep.
I know its true, i know that part of me loved every minute of Peru, and another part of me that never stopped being afraid. I know that i came home, but that day, the evening i landed and the following day exist in this foggy, placid dream. Shrouded by the reality of not being able to put it behind me. Searching for closure, roaming the highways of the Pacific Northwest, hoping someday my mind will make it right. And maybe one day i'll have a place to put my stuff that isn't the trunk of the battle scarred old Civic.
I wasn't ready. Are we ever really? Ready to face the fact that three very long flights and one very long day returned me home. HOME. I've never been so grateful to see Portland city lights twinkling in the distance, and to finally breathe the air i missed. It was raining. In true Portland style. This city always seems to know how to rain like it does in classic movies.
By the tempered reality of the new year though, the fact that i'm not ready is heaving itself over my shoulders. The fact that home is a place that dosen't exist for me anymore, that will temper even the most skilled of imaginers. You can't live in the sheer bliss of homecoming joy forever. But i've given it a pretty good shot.
No one ever told me that coming home could very easily be the most challenging part of the journey. The part that means rebuilding everything. The part that leaves you flustered, floundering for the pieces of your life you know should be around here somewhere. Like searching for your favorite pair of old shoes buried by a crowded closet. And hoping that when you find them, they still fit.
What is even more funny (or is it ironic? I'm not sure) is that i can't even tell you what it is i learned. What it is inside me that forever changed. I wouldn't know how. And when i speak of this experience there will forever be a secret that i have no choice but to keep.
I know its true, i know that part of me loved every minute of Peru, and another part of me that never stopped being afraid. I know that i came home, but that day, the evening i landed and the following day exist in this foggy, placid dream. Shrouded by the reality of not being able to put it behind me. Searching for closure, roaming the highways of the Pacific Northwest, hoping someday my mind will make it right. And maybe one day i'll have a place to put my stuff that isn't the trunk of the battle scarred old Civic.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Lima Lung
One of the biggest challenges here is to make your own quiet. To find the spots, the moments amid the chaos where there is a little pocket of peace you can keep all to yourself. Its not easy. You won't find them quickly. Like a scavenger hunt in the dark, between the construction clamor, the noisy women in the street trying to sell you a Peruvian hairless dog, the honk happy cabbies, and the streams of police, the quiet is elusive.
We've finally landed in the apartment that will be home, and the nesting has commenced. I went on a jog but the air is still strange and hard on the lungs. We've coined an endearing nickname for it, just to make it more familiar.
On the 19th floor it seems almost cosmopolitan: we have a balcony. We can see the ocean, and the hotel where Bush is staying for the APEC. We watched him on tv sipping a pisco sour and posing for pictures in an alpaca tunic. He looked excited about the pisco, not so much the tunic. We can also see the American battleship anchored in Lima harbor...just in case?
Security is overwhelming, police, two, three, sometimes four uniformed Peruvian officers loiter on every corner of every major intersection. Roads are barricaded off and cross too close and your bags and person may be subject to compulsory search. The place is, for the first time, swarming with english speakers, some with discreet microphones tucked in their ears, and some proudly broadcasting their native land. I'm still wondering what the battleship is for.
Sometimes you have to make your own quiet: No, i will not purchase your incredibly homely looking hairless dog, even if it is very hot to the touch, and his name is Obama (my real objection is that he won't fit in my carry-on). Yes, i can attune my ears to the placid bird calls, and not the sirens. No, i will not look at you because you make strange hissing noises in my direction. I will sit on the bench in Parque Kennedy and eat my banana, still scavenging some quiet for myself, even if its only in my head.
We've finally landed in the apartment that will be home, and the nesting has commenced. I went on a jog but the air is still strange and hard on the lungs. We've coined an endearing nickname for it, just to make it more familiar.
On the 19th floor it seems almost cosmopolitan: we have a balcony. We can see the ocean, and the hotel where Bush is staying for the APEC. We watched him on tv sipping a pisco sour and posing for pictures in an alpaca tunic. He looked excited about the pisco, not so much the tunic. We can also see the American battleship anchored in Lima harbor...just in case?
Security is overwhelming, police, two, three, sometimes four uniformed Peruvian officers loiter on every corner of every major intersection. Roads are barricaded off and cross too close and your bags and person may be subject to compulsory search. The place is, for the first time, swarming with english speakers, some with discreet microphones tucked in their ears, and some proudly broadcasting their native land. I'm still wondering what the battleship is for.
Sometimes you have to make your own quiet: No, i will not purchase your incredibly homely looking hairless dog, even if it is very hot to the touch, and his name is Obama (my real objection is that he won't fit in my carry-on). Yes, i can attune my ears to the placid bird calls, and not the sirens. No, i will not look at you because you make strange hissing noises in my direction. I will sit on the bench in Parque Kennedy and eat my banana, still scavenging some quiet for myself, even if its only in my head.
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