Encore. Music, "That Home" by The Cinematic Orchestra

Quite a bit going on...

I've found a group of people that I want to live with. I know them all from work, but if we were to get the house we're looking at, I'd be closer to work, closer to downtown, and closer to Lewis and Clark. 

"Lewis and Clark? The university? Why does that matter, Dave?"

Great question. As it turns out, Celestino, the associate dean at Redlands who went off to become VP/Dean of Students at Carroll College is moving to Portland to be the Dean of Students at Lewis and Clark. Hopefully there will be a chance that I can have somewhat of a mentor in the Portland area again. Very exciting. 

So about this house. It's great. A pool and spa that are both out of use, but I'm sure we could save the pool. It's got a daylight basement, TWO decks off the back side, and well, that's about it. But John, Leah, Tony, and I took a trip to go see it last night and creep around the backyard. Oh what fun it would be to live there with people and no longer by myself. 

I spent about 3 hours this morning cooking food. I want to buy a new camera. That new camera costs bling. The sinkhole of my budget right now has been eating out. Bah. So I've started spending one night or morning a week cooking my food for the rest of the week. Simple enough - rosemary chicken and rice pilaf, cheese tortellini, more miso soup, and black rice pudding. In total, with about 25 bucks of groceries I'm fed for a week instead of the $132,000 it costs to eat out. 

Next to trim down on....Alcohol.

Untitled.

He handed me my Jack and Coke and looked out at the dance floor as she shivered and swayed with as much controlled femininity as I've ever seen--a confidence in her womanhood that makes kings take off their crown and that artists struggle to capture--a snake who charms the charmer.

"I wish I were younger." He said, taking a sip of his White Russian. I chuckled and he turned to face me.

"My dad cheated on my mom. My mom looked past it as a personal flaw. Tried to ignore it. I grew up with it and tried to protect her from finding out, but she knew. We both knew. We lived with that everyday and just ignored it."

He gestured with his drink towards the dance floor as the ice piled against the side of his glass, just barely pulling itself back from the edge in time, swaying in the white tide. "I'd be the same. I can feel it in me. I have such a passion for women. I just want to be with them. To know what it's like. Look at her--she's so powerful. I'm just curious. If I had one kid, I would become my dad. I would live that curiosity, that demon, whatever you want to call it. But not now. But not with two. Never with two. Now I just wish I were younger. I'd give anything to be 25 again"

Before I could say anything, he passed his drink to me. "I'll be right back, I've gotta piss. Happy Birthday, man."

What am I doing with my life?!

RIGHT? I'm working. Full-time, whoopee. Not to say I don't really enjoy my job at Apple--the people are fantastic, the challenges are varied, some of my clients are very worthwhile...but I always like working in the macro, and teaching individuals is about as micro as you can get.

So besides the fact that I'm selling my old camera to upgrade to another (really this has nothing to do with the rest of this post, but I had to mention that I am getting a new camera because I am so excited about it) I've decided to look into part-time work/volunteering in the area.

As it turns out, the volunteer market isn't much easier than the job market in Portland. Sure, there are lots of groups I could join to stand on a corner and ask people to sign a petition, but that's shoot-me-in-the-face work. I'm offering all my skills, part-time, for minimum wage or free if the cause seems worthwhile as long as I feel the organization is putting me in a place to utilize all (or at least most) of my skills.

Well, one of my normal customers who is extremely well connected in the Portland Area is also a volunteer for a group called MTI (Medical Teams International.) They provide all levels of relief, from local to international. She's already stepped in and sent an email for me to meet with the director.

There's a part of me that stirs when I don't feel like I'm working to make the world a better place. I'm just excited to get out there and do something worthwhile.

Life in Writing

My apartment is a mess. A respectable mess. So I decided to clean it. Because I love cleaning so much, I started with the documents folder on my computer. I don't even remember how I justified it (I think I happened to be sitting at the computer this morning wondering if I could clean anything without moving.) After 5 minutes of looking through my documents folder, I got up, walked out of the room, and went to the gym.

My documents folder has over 1500 files in it. Some are poems. Some are short essays. Some are schoolwork. Some are pieces of writing or sentences or phrases that have no discernible ending. Some are titled, "what the hell is this?" or "a;sdlkfj" or "work on this." Some are from a life so long ago that I hardly recognized my own voice. It was so...young. So happy. So star-eyed. So breakable. In many ways, so much more passionate.

The memories that I started coming across made it clear that I should have just cleaned out my sink, put some dishes away, and started a load of laundry. But instead, I had to just get out and go run.

And I hate running.

Saturdays off? Niiiiiiiice.

I've worked weekends since October.

Please take a moment and let that set in.

Alright, so there have been some exceptions. Correction, exception. Easter. But by god, not having a Friday was killing me.

Not anymore though! Oh ho ho no. My new schedule gives me Saturday off. 50% of my weekend is back! Since I didn't have either day off, this is infinitely better than before. I'm so excited to have a (real) Friday night and not just me sitting at happy hour, buzzed and writing at a table by myself, texting people to come downtown on a Monday night. (For those of you who got those text messages, I apologize. I had Tuesdays off. But no, "It's monday, dude" is still not a good excuse.)

And so what happens on this Friday before my splendiferous weekend? Everything right. I had fantastic classes today...covered a lot of crap that I never get to talk about because it's such obscure stuff that even Mr. Wizard turns in his grave and mumbles "geek" when I explain it. Then, I leave work to be standing in radiant sunshine, 90-degree weather, and the evening approaching with reckless abandon.

Brilliant, Portland. I love your teaser trailer of Summer.

So what will I do with my night now? I have no idea. Go downtown. Without a camera I think. I almost knocked a girl off her long board yesterday because she stuck her hands up in front of her face to block the picture and luckily fell towards the sidewalk just in time and avoided the busy traffic had she fallen the other way. She really did not want her picture taken. She berated me for not having asked for permission and how blah blah, yak yak...all I could think in the moment was how her crooked, pointing, accusing finger would make a great picture. But my mother snapped into my head and said "what did I teach you?" so I apologized and went on my way.

I walked up the street and there was an awesome VW Bug under the trees. I mean, fantaaaaastic shape and so I grabbed a picture with the trees hovering over the car. Next thing I know, Long Board Girl rides up and and tears open the door on the car and throws in her long board and I mutter something stupid like "oh that's your car, this must look weird" but I trailed off by the end of the sentence like 12-year old apologizing to someone they don't want to and immediately I punched myself in the face for saying anything as she sped off.

In retrospect it was brilliantly funny after about an hour and a beer. Take that, hippy, long boarding, VW driving girl who I creeped out with my photography! Chalk one up for the awkward team!

And, before you blow me up like Timmy, Mr. Wizard, know that Bill Nye (although entertaining for how uncomfortable and seemingly emasculated he is because of his show) will never replace you.

...oh, and because I can...










/muahahah

dek

Downtown Again

People are funny. First, they're everywhere. Second, barring time fluctuations, false realities, and nit-picks, it's taken about as much time to grow one as it's taken to make a me, if not more. All some billion of us have jobs or families or houses or shacks or corners. Inevitably, you at some point have run into another person. They are everywhere. And so I take pictures of them. I catalogue the species.

I'm not a very patient photographer. That doesn't mean I won't take time to get lighting and framing, but I rarely have time to ask my subject for permission. Not that I want it. If I ask "can I take a picture?" I get this crap where they know the picture is coming and inevitably, someone does something stupid like put their hands up or check their teeth or make a face that resembles nothing like how they look the other 99.9999996% of their day.

So I take out my big zoom lens and get in close on some faces. They're not ready. They're talking. They're kissing. they're fighting. Pedaling. Rowing. Hell, the look like normal people. Most the the people who see me ready to shoot prepare for my camera as though they weren't prepared for the world.

What is it we become aware of with that camera pointed right at us? Our bodies or posture? As though it's the chance for someone else to see you as you do in the mirror? That suddenly we're taking up 1/60th of a second's worth of our 15 minutes of fame?

I see people walk with indifference past crowds that scour them up and down with their eyes. Not a flinch or tremor. But then they see my lens: that baneful, soul-stealing mechanism and then they react. To a hunk of metal and plastic.

Maybe its the permanence. This idea that when we're put into some format--either written, drawn or taken--we imagine it as becoming a part of our legacy. If pictures could only be captured for an hour or two, would we react the same way? Would we hide from the lens? Or would we engage it like 13 year old girls who live from photo to photo?

If it's legacy driven, I feel more inclined to just shoot away. Is there a reason we shouldn't be remembered for how we were in that honest, everyday moment and not for the few seconds posing for the stranger behind a lens?

Maybe being caught in a genuine moment is simply too damning.

Welcome to Tuesday Breakfast

On my days off, I like to take my morning slowly. Really slowly. As in "wake-up-at-8am-to-start-making-breakfast but-don't-start-eating-until-10:30" slowly. Today, I woke up, read some news online, checked the phone, and tossed some brown rice in the rice maker. 1 hour 40 minutes right there, just to get the rice cooked. 

Then I got started on the miso soup...a little anchovy stock (oh, you didn't know that's what miso soup had in it? Didn't think you liked anchovies? Oh but it does and you do), some miso, some lotus root, some firm tofu, and a touch of green onion. Simmer that pot for a while. Simmahhh.

Now let's get out our fish. "Wait, what? Fish for breakfast? You kid surely." No, I'm no kid and don't call me Shirley. So I grab my two filets, my bottle of soy sauce and get these puppies ready for a crisping on the grill. My grill was on and ready to go at 9am. Bingo bango. 

My fish done crisping on the grill, my rice maker singing a happy tune that it's done (it's a Zojirushi, about as Asian as it gets...and it plays a song at the end of cooking), my miso soup in my hand as I pull the fish off the grill. 

And this....this is a Tuesday Breakfast with Dave.

Downtown P-Town.

I've been living in Portland for coming up on a year. Only recently have I begun to trench myself out of my apartment to venture within the city. I don't know what it was that's kept me--my old relationship, stubbornness, fear, or maybe an overall sense of discomfort in this area--but regardless, I'm expanding my independence.

Having traveled internationally a few times by myself, I know that sense of feeling completely unshackled and unchecked; as though I've been dropped into a brand new world where no one knows me, and anyone I know is infinitely far away.

Going downtown lately has imbibed me with that feeling. Every restaurant I pass looks unique and exotic, strangers say hello to me on the street and I have no clue how to respond (this is America! who the hell says hello on the streets?) I walk for hours and just peruse the area and get caught up so deeply in the experience that I forget I'm alone. The pestering thought in the back of my head informing me of my own suspected mediocrity is silenced and only before me is another street block I haven't seen. A bridge to cross. A dive bar with tired locals whose daily life I've stumbled upon seems permanent and repetitive, but no. Not mine. I'm a tourist simply passing through, getting a drink before I head back to my 1 bedroom hostel, 25 minutes to the west where I spend every night.


I write when I go on these adventures. I haven't written in months, but these nights are invigorating. Poetry is flowing again. Creativity is brewing. My camera lens is freshly cleaned. And a blog...well it might be about time for a blog.