Portland
I just got back from Minneapolis, a weekend spent with admirable Minneapolis kids, whip-smart and dedicated, articulate and nerdy and cool. I like Minneapolis because it reminds me of Portland. On the airplane home I started poking around in the old files on my computer and I found a draft of a zine that I was going to write in 2002, just as I was getting ready to leave Portland. It was basically a love-letter to the city and as I was re-reading it I found myself asking why? Why the hell did I leave?!
What I tell people now is that it was hard to find a job there, and I guess that was part of it.
And I didn’t really know what to do, that was another.
And my apartment was crappy and I looked for another one but didn’t find it. And it seemed like everyone else had left, was leaving or was going to leave. And I wanted to get out of that relationship I was in that didn’t feel quite right. And I wasn’t aware that moving across the country would be a rather extreme and, in the end, pretty financially, emotionally, and in in all other ways expensive manner of doing it.
Oh well. Live and learn.
And I thought that I wanted adventure, that was another thing.
I was ambitious. I just wasn’t sure for what.
Anyway, I’m drowning, drowning at 40,000 feet in nostalgia for Portland.
Portland the big easy. Portland the green. Portland, the happy city. Portopia.
The other day I was talking to a friend and he was relating a story by Borges or Marquez or someone about how nice it would be if we could age backwards—one would start an old man, slowly grow stronger and sharper, then smaller, more innocent, and purer of heart, and finally, at the end, as the coup de grace, crawl back into Mom.
Sometimes, I want to go back to Portland. Sometimes I want to crawl back into Mom.
Sometimes I wonder why I ever left. Do some of us have repetition-compulsions related to birth? Do we become inclined to squeeze ourselves, with tears and wailing, out of close, warm, and comfortable spaces, and into the cold unknown?
Maybe.
I want to know who coined the phase “You can’t go home again,” and what the exact circumstances were that led to their saying it.
What I tell people now is that it was hard to find a job there, and I guess that was part of it.
And I didn’t really know what to do, that was another.
And my apartment was crappy and I looked for another one but didn’t find it. And it seemed like everyone else had left, was leaving or was going to leave. And I wanted to get out of that relationship I was in that didn’t feel quite right. And I wasn’t aware that moving across the country would be a rather extreme and, in the end, pretty financially, emotionally, and in in all other ways expensive manner of doing it.
Oh well. Live and learn.
And I thought that I wanted adventure, that was another thing.
I was ambitious. I just wasn’t sure for what.
Anyway, I’m drowning, drowning at 40,000 feet in nostalgia for Portland.
Portland the big easy. Portland the green. Portland, the happy city. Portopia.
The other day I was talking to a friend and he was relating a story by Borges or Marquez or someone about how nice it would be if we could age backwards—one would start an old man, slowly grow stronger and sharper, then smaller, more innocent, and purer of heart, and finally, at the end, as the coup de grace, crawl back into Mom.
Sometimes, I want to go back to Portland. Sometimes I want to crawl back into Mom.
Sometimes I wonder why I ever left. Do some of us have repetition-compulsions related to birth? Do we become inclined to squeeze ourselves, with tears and wailing, out of close, warm, and comfortable spaces, and into the cold unknown?
Maybe.
I want to know who coined the phase “You can’t go home again,” and what the exact circumstances were that led to their saying it.
Labels: diaryesque, retrospectacular
posted by katherine | 10:12 AM
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