stretch my wingtips to the sky, tell me I won't ever fly

As I emerged from the great elm tunnel of my neighborhood this morning and the sky opened up over the Ross Island Bridge, the sky revealed of itself great hordes of jellyfish. A plop and pull of misty celestial paint, their stringy limbs suspended in flight, and I imagined what trick of windy paintbrush made this possible.

Last night was a mess. My day at work ended with a meeting called by my counterpart in another department who is the epitome of the cute Asian chick stereotype in appearance, but in personality cold as a slap in the face with an Icelandic carpelin. She mumbles in monotone while slouching petulantly into her seat, and repeats what is said to her a few minutes later, when her tech-slow thought process has caught up. That said, she was wearing some amazing shoes yesterday: white leather open-woven sandals with red inside that just peaked out and four or five inch red heels. I tried to translate between her and the finance guy, and make it seem like hers was the driving role. It worked, because she chatted me up after the meeting as we walked down the stairs.

Traffic was bad on the way home early for an acupuncture appointment, and I listened to a phone message that held subtle cues to the downfall of my mental health. I called my brother to commiserate, but later, after the appointment and an errand, I still answered the phone when it buzzed with the words "mom calling." Why did I do that?

So I was already set up to be grumpy for Last Thursday, and grump I did. After purchasing a slice of pizza at Bella Faccia I strolled the street without much interest, mostly boiling inside at the banal trappings of fashion hippies-- the crocheted hair bags in earthtones, rocks and sage, and busty fairy girls in front of the same two mushrooms. As much as I like each of those things (excepting hair bags-- never hair bags) on their own, this particular crapped-out representation was mirrored over and over to death by kids laying about the sidewalk, now younger than me and scabbier about the face than I've ever been after a fight.

I didn't walk down quite far enough to get to my favorite store on the street, but I was tempted into a blueberry-sage popsicle by a vendor of some fine, unusual flavors, and also bought some very cute spiral glass earrings from an eager artist who does custom work.

I walked as quickly as possible, given the thick crowds, and returned home around 9pm to the surprise of other-than-the-usual hungry males. Kenard I was prepared for, but there was something unsettling about being asked what I brought home to eat for my dad, who was suspiciously cheerful and had already been there for an hour. I guess he's where I get my night-owlism from. And my penchant for the utterly insane.

oregoner

Here I am, back from Hood to Coast, no house guests for the next twenty four hours, and the marathon of laundry and dishes I completed on Sunday ensure that house and home are now back to normal.

Something is still akilter, physically or mentally. After nearly thirty hours of running, living in a van with five other people on one hour of sleep, and eating some truly horrible food items manufactured specifically for such epic events... well, it's a bit difficult to cleave the fine line between the body and mind.

After breakfast with my dad and Karen at Junior's and the aforementioned household chores on Sunday, I arranged for Ted's birthday dinner to coincide with Julie's last dance with fried foods (for a while, anyways, after her gallbladder removal) at Russell Street Barbeque.

Monday was spent hanging out with my dad, his youngest sister Margaret, and her husband Bob. We got a late start, stopped at Vista House and Bonneville Dam, took the Bridge of the Gods up to Highway 14, stopped for lunch at a cafe in Trout Lake, and picked huckleberries on Mt Adams. We went home a faster route, through Hood River for a beer at Horsefeathers. The view from (and beer at) that place never fails to lull me into a deep, cushiony love for Oregon.

Another boring one

Drive home from work, inspect house siding, get geared up. Bike to OMSI to meet people. Ride three and a half miles out on the Springwater Trail, and then back to OMSI. Run three miles on the waterfront loop around the Hawthorne and Steel Bridges, back to OMSI and get on the bike for another loop. Bike home.

Erik was right about to put pizzas in the oven when I arrived home. Aspen had stopped by and I got to inspire him for his sculpted ogre feet, with my two very blue toes. Erik and I ate dinner, had an adult conversation, drank wine, and went to bed.

That's what I do with my free time? I guess it is.

On how to unwind

Yesterday was a rather unpleasant day, and so I went straight home and made up a batch of Roads End Shells & Chreese, added faux ham product, orange bell pepper, a bit of tomatillo salsa, and panko on top, then baked it in a casserole dish for fifteen minutes. While it was in the oven I took a few pictures of my backyard to look at during the day while I'm at work. Nothing's as comforting as casseroles and a quiet space crammed with plants.

homesteading the hermitage

Friday night Mae, Aspen, Erik and I went to Thatch, the newish tiki bar in town. Erik and I stayed up late watching episodes from the first season of Arrested Development, loaned to us by Jocelyn.

Saturday morning Ted and I went for breakfast at Equinox, and on the way back we stopped at a running store so that he could get new shoes in time to break them in for the big Hood to Coast relay race this Friday. Erik and I went to the downtown farmers market and then to REI for an early birthday gift of fancy running socks for Ted. I must have puttered around the house and garden for a couple of hours, mostly prepping veggies in the kitchen. I forced myself to leave the house around 3pm to do shopping I've meant to and explore an area I've meant to for ages. It went fairly well, as I enjoyed the walking around bit. The main destination was fruitless, however, and despite trying on a couple of things at a slew of vintage stores, I was mostly left with the sad feeling of having moved on from the realm of such stores, when once they provided such delight. Luckily I stumbled into a tiny but exquisite jewelry store, where I purchased scissors and skull charms, and a laser-cut plexiglas octopus necklace. I also stopped by Biwa for an umeboshi onigiri on the way home. Erik and I met his parents for a beer at the Lucky Lab, and then I met a coworker and her husband and a friend for beer at a couple more places to guide them on Hawthorne, since they live in Hillsboro. I met up with them where they had dinner at the Hawthorne Fish House, and we went from there to Pix. They went on without me, despite protests, to the pub at the Baghdad.

Ted came over Sunday morning so that we could run down to the start of our long run. He's incredibly fast and the fancy socks only fueled his speed, so we did the entire seventeen miles averaging a nine-minute-mile pace. That's about a minute per mile faster than my usual. By the time we got home Erik had left to help a friend build a fence in his backyard, so I spent most of the day in the back garden weeding, trimming, finally getting the copper rain chain up, putting in bamboo edging, and generally puttering around the house. I put up a magnet strip in my sewing room for displaying bits of inspiration; it was meant for knives in the kitchen but was too long for the space I had wanted it to go. I also made hummus and babaganoush from scratch, and cleaned up my personal spaces around the house in preparation for my dad's visit and Hood to Coast-- my house will be the base for the team quite a few times over. When Erik got home we decided to try the much-touted new vegan restaurant, Nutshell. It was rather disastrous, but I got a book out of it. They had a book exchange area, and I took "Spook," Mary Roach's follow-up to "Stiff."

Overall I was mostly at home, mostly alone, and mostly getting things done, which is just about perfect.

Two nightmares last night

In the first, a warning had been issued by the government that terrorist had mentioned "Curs" (or was it "Chic" or "Cirs" or something else similar?). At any rate, there was a county named as such in North Dakota, so officials kept especial watch on it.

Cut to a morning when I wake up to pandemonium, perhaps just Julie sobbing. I can't get her to tell me what's happened, but it's pretty obviously the terrorism for which we've all been grimly waiting. She tells me that her stepdad (real life aside: Julie doesn't have a stepdad, her parents are still married), at least, is dead, and she's not sure about her mom and dad.

I search the Internet, trying to find out what's happened. I can't seem to find anything, and I pester Julie to tell me, but she can't tell me much-- something about a rain of razors, and begs me not to make her tell me more. I finally learn what's happened, and it's that one of their own members brutally murdered the rest of the band "Meow Cat." Both of Julie's parents are in the band-- more of a weekend hobby than anything else-- and her mother, the lead singer, was particularly targeted. She was basically skinned alive and had the inside-out skin pulled back over her.

There's something else from the dream about a rain of razors, but that might have just been what I imagined to be the terrorist event, in the dream. I think that the murders were explained by the government to be an act of terrorism because they thought that the guy who went on the rampage was poisoned to do so, by terrorists. The name of the target, which we all knew beforehand as a warning, is revealed to be a shortened nickname for Chicago.

---

The other dream I'd call "Metal Filings." I can't remember how it started, but I remember my room in the dream-- sparse and like an alpine lodge, in a row of such rooms off a balcony, like a motel.

I had seen these on someone else, but somehow I contracted it too-- small thin pieces of what seemed to been animated metal, like half-inch lengths of graphite from a mechanical pencil. They dance over the skin, particularly liking mucus membranes and skin corners-- between the gum and the cheek in the mouth, or in the corner of the eyes. They move around like a hive, multiplying before your eyes. I had somehow gotten a few, but I kept pulling them off and keeping the numbers low. After seeing the... teachers? authorities? a friend came over to me and said "Do you take vitamins? Here, Mr. So-and-so said I should give you this pill. I guess it's from the mining company." The pill is a huge amber gellcap, the kind that I know is usually gelatin, but this time I can't afford to be picky. I've managed to keep the metal filings a secret from everyone around me; most people don't know about them anyways, so they wouldn't know any better what it meant that I had them, but it's definitely something to keep hushed. The friend is talking about how crazy huge the pill is and how I probably shouldn't take anything proffered by the mining company, while I grimly size up the pill and swallow it down.

---

That's about when I awoke from the dream. I awoke from each really cold, to pull the blankets back up over my shoulders and wait to warm up from such awful images.

portlandese

Yesterday, in a stress-induced push to do some hill training, I ran up Mount Tabor. I haven't been in ages, probably more than a year, and I tried to follow the route that C and I used to run once a week on "Mount Tabor Mondays." It took me at least a month back then to work up to running straight to the top without stopping. I remember how painful it was then, deep in my chest, the tight dry air. This time, although I haven't run anything particularly hilly in quite awhile, I made it all the way. I can't say it was easy or felt great, but I felt good afterwards, and it felt picturesque to run in the dry summer grass stained with late evening sun.

This morning, awakening hurt like pushing up through six feet of black earth. I couldn't understand how or why the sound of the alarm was even happening. I was deep in a dream in which I was in a shop on Hawthorne, trying on dresses. A woman who was there with her husband was trying to find a cute skirt, and had tried on every one in the shop. In the dream I gave her directions to Ipnosi and drew a map showing it just down Hawthorne from where we were. In reality it's up on NW 23rd, but no matter-- I dreamt of a real Portland street and a real Portland store! Much the same way that the first time you dream in a language you're learning, you know you're fluent, I realized with joy that I am now, truly, a Portlander. After giving directions to the woman, a younger woman struck up a conversation with me in the dressing room area, asking what I do when I'm bored. She had recently moved to the neighborhood and she said she usually went shopping when she was bored. Even in the dream I had trouble remembering the last time I was bored.

themeless collision

My nephew said I am
dressed like a ladybug.

I am posting without a theme or destination in mind, which never bodes well. It's been a difficult week, so I'm ready for its end.

A quick summation of the days is as follows: Saturday, triathlon; Sunday, Erik hikes South Sister; Monday, jury duty; Tuesday, Luna Chix bike ride; Wednesday, women's run and Hood to Coast meeting. Today is Erik's birthday.

I wish I could explain my mental turmoil. I bristle when pushed, but do try to live up to what's expected of me. So what are the unspoken expectations? There's something I just don't get, something I'm missing. I keep stumbling and I must've dropped a few letters out when I fell, so the language no longer makes sense. I'm waking up from a dream or falling asleep into one, and I'm not immersed enough yet to be fluent.

Something will give. Clouds pass overhead in the night and I will breathe deeply. I go outside to listen for the call every morning, and I have faith in listening.