A New Year

So here I am. Again. Portland Oregon. The infamous Pacific Northwest.
Everyday the weather man says "The forecast for today is rain" with a deadpan intensity I adore completely. He's not joking or being ironic and i love him. On the East coast such groundhogs day-esque circumstances would be drenched in horrifying jokes and nudge nudge wink wink cliched expressions and banter that not even the news staff could enjoy. but here they just say "yeah, it's still raining. back to you bob." Bob nods and moves on to the next fire, drowned dog, or local abomination. I want to kiss them all.

It's true this place is clogged with things like high end pet boutiques with 4 million bags of cat food each one titled something abstract like "full life" as if shopping were some kind of new age pyschic game or word association and not a fact based activity. I mean if I don't buy the cat the "Full Life" food am I condemning her to a half-life? Am I contaminating her with radiation?

But it is also home to places steeped in a past world, before strip malls and the internet, when families went to Friday night dinner at the same restaurant every week and ate steaks and drank manhattans at the bar while aunt betty watched the little ones so mom and dad could decompress and pretend they were young again. places still coated in oak and marroon carpeting. I like these places.

And i do like the rain. It makes me think god is constantly cumming all over the city in both disgust and ecstasy.

The omnipresent mexican and thai restaurants are reminders that the politics of freedom and economics often move in tandem cycles and that makes me smile.

There is a leak in the roof on the back porch and sometimes the hot water heater screams and leaks and needs to be turned off to rest. I Murphy's oil soaped the hard wood floors and dusted until my nose was congested for three days straight. When Rob gets home I get him to smile through the agony of his day and soon enough we're giggling over something the cat did and i have never felt so bonkers in love.

The movie is in pre-production. Casting is the 21st. There is so much to do that sometimes I don't know where to begin. But Rob bought me an espresso machine for christmas and so it bolsters me daily to attack a new detail of the picture that needs to be painted in my mind. I like making the whooshing gurgle noise in the morning standing in my pajamas i picked off the floor in the hallway (since i dress in any part of the house that pleases me and this is a luxury to me) with only one eye open. I have only owned the machine a few short weeks but already I make my dark cup of hot addiction without a thought to the knobs and dials I am manipulating in perfect time. I like to think about kinky friedman when the machine is jumbling and coughing at me like an efficient monster.

Portland is good. Sometimes I hear weird sounds and it reminds me how perfect my boyfriend is for me because he says "thats the big fat drops of rain dripping off the leaves on the right side of the house landing on the metal patio table." then he smiles and says "aren't you glad I'm a recording engineer?" and i say "YES."

so to the man who commented on my leaving cleveland for a city that "runs perfectly" instead of staying in the city that needs me, i say:
i left a city that needed me for the city i need. no one is useful to the world unhappy.