Basking in the Eternal Now: A Walk in Southeast Portland

There are things that I know I have forgotten, and I am bummed to have forgotten them. And there are other things I know I've forgotten, and I'm happy about it. But the things I wished I remembered, they usually don't matter anyway, because I usually don't spend my time wishing I remembered them, so they usually don't exist.

I walk in Southeast Portland, basking in the eternal now. I hear the legs of my jeans brushing against one another. I know that I am in a good place when I can hear my own footsteps. There are roses and rhododendrons and so many multicolored leaves on the ground and the trees. There is a bicyclist for every car. Many cats and kids and ravens. Waves of autumn roll through the streets, waves of ash, auburn and grey. We are drowning in Portland, but it's not wet. So many people smile at me as we cross paths. Where am I? Scandinavia? There's something eerie in the perfect. Are people content because of the miracle of life or coffee? My past washes in the waves and all I know is sidewalk and crunching leaves.

Curt reminded me of things I had forgotten, and it made me bummed that I had forgotten them, though I remembered that I wasn't bummed when I didn't remember that I had forgotten them. But it was OK anyway, hearing these stories about a stranger. He remembers me a different way than I remember myself, and that goes for everyone. My whole time in Portland, I've found myself thinking over and over how much safer I've felt to have everyone be "older."

But why is Five Weeks in Australia starting on a walk in Southeast Portland? The five weeks haven't even begun. They only exist in anticipation, like a mirage on a desert highway: the glowing promise of a fast-food and gasoline oasis after miles of Nothing. Right? You know what I'm talking about? When you're driving on a flat freeway for miles and miles and then in the distance you see the silhouette of tall poles topped by shapes? Then you're closer and you can make out the colors on the signs, the familiar fonts, the familiar feelings associated with the icons. Perhaps that is so distinctively American, those tall signs on the freeway in the distance. What are they called? (Pause for extensive Google Image Search. Signs of this type are very difficult to find on the Internet. They are exciting monuments reserved soley for real time American freeway experience.)

What is the Nothing that lies between these fast food and gasoline oases? This is where I long to be, existing actively in the Nothing space that spreads out infinitely on both sides of the freeway. How long could I survive if I slowed from 80 mph, pulled over on the shoulder, got out of the car, and with no preparation other than mental, walked in a perpendicular line from the freeway, out into the American Western Nothing? I'd probably die in 48-72 hours, from thirst and exposure. But I'd experience some pretty pure desert before I died. Maybe I'd trespass on military land and get tased and dragged to an underground office and interrogated. And I could only say, "I was curious!" Good to die curious.

(I'm making fun of people who call the desert "Nothing.")

That all was totally a tangent.

The walk is over, the walk will never end. This is the one week mark, it's T minus seven days to departure for Australia. I have a strong disdain for airplanes and it has nothing to do with fear of crashing. I dislike the way people eat on airplanes.

But I assume I will get over that and then I will be there, out of the plane cabin and into the dome of existence that holds Sydney, then smaller cities, and on and on. I'm going away from my home to a faraway place so I can play songs written in bedrooms on large public stages. Think about how weird that is objectively.

But it's cool.
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Sort of like this, but also deeply not like this:










(All of these images courtesy of Google Image Search, except Digital Caveman Freeway Drawing. Thank you.)