the mountain is thick with snow, this air is thick with memories

well, i came back to portland two days early. i set a date on my phone to be back into portland on february 17th before 8pm. i had planned to come into portland and just lurk for a day before announcing myself, but then steve called me and asked me what my eta was. and i didnt want to lie to him, so i told him four hours. i ended up being in portland within two hours. i am always early. i guess that hasnt changed.

the boring oregon capitol

i was in grants pass in the morning and then drove until i got to salem where i stopped to see the capitol building. its a strange thing, i love capitol buildings, yet i have lived just 57 miles away from this one for 7 years and have never visited it. also, i lived in olympia, wa for 9 months and never visited that capitol either. WTF! needless to say the oregon capitol was one of the worst that i have been too. the "real" capitol burnt down in 1935, during the depression, and the public money available afforded a very drab WWII style low lying office building. boring. so i was only there for a half hour or so and then, with surging adrenaline i drove to portland.

the first thing i saw (aside from the suburbs) was mount hood towering over the south waterfront, looking real good. mt hood doesnt look so good when it doesnt have snow, but it was a blanket of white on this clear day and i smiled. then the south waterfront and its three or four new skyscrapers in the last 9 months came into view. it was here that i started to freak out a little bit. although i have lived and been present for every single day of the last nine months coming home felt like waking from a dream. like i had been gone nine hours instead of nine months.

it was good. the second person i saw in a bicycle was someone i knew, i havent know the person (name of alex) for a couple of years, but for the first time in a long time i was happy to just be out and be able to point at random people and know that i know them. then i drove by my old house and was spotted by my neighbour. i waved and drove on. my intention was to wait the few hours i had until my "designated" arrival time to see steve. so i wanted to find a place to sit and use the internet for awhile, but i wanted to go somewhere i didnt think i would know anyone. and i really wouldve liked to have a beer.

i ended up at the albina press coffee shop and spent an hour or so there acclimating. and, since we are all experiencing this acclimation, i will paste here the previously written account of my arrival in portland for the first time, september 11th, 2002:

ah, the summer of 2002 was good to me, i was living in indiana and making a bunch of money working for my dad. i had my own house, i was collecting records, i was working on a volkswagen bus that i had purchased, i dressed "nice," entertained friends and just had the life that any 21/22 year old would want. this was quite a departure from who i was just a year before. a year before i had just gotten back from santa barbara and felt worn out and defeated by life, i felt that i had tried out the world and it beat me now i had to go back to indiana and work the family business like i always knew i would.

but, by august of 2002 my relationship with my brother had led to a poor work environment, he fired me and i accepted that. i had gotten my swagger for life back and steve was coming to visit soon. he never left santa barbara, he has always won life. when he came back i unleashed a new level of partying, reckless and without care. he told he was moving to portland and, although i had never been there and really didnt know anything about it, i asked if i could come with. of course he said yes.

this is steve and i happy, to see each other after nine months. this was last night.

it was on september 11th 2002 that i arrived in portland oregon via greyhound bus. steve was still in indiana visiting with his family, he would be here on the 12th. i got all of my things, put my bike together with a leatherman and strapped all of my belongings on this bike. it was truly a ridiculous sight. without a map i was headed for 36th and powell. i went over the steel bridge, and for those of you who know portland, you know this was a poor choice of bridges to take from downtown to get to 36th and powell. from there i proceeded to hit every single big hill that existed on the route and eventually came to my destination.

my destination was an apartment that i would now be living in. i found it, and i was all sweaty. standing on the stoop, drinking a sparks waiting for me, was carfin, and she was cute. when steve told me i could live with him i am sure he mentioned that carfin - a lady that he lived with in santa barbara - was also living with us. i was so happy to be out in life again that i let the adrenalin overcome me.

i pulled up a hilarious sight, she beckoned me up to her and introduced herself. then she wanted me to hug her. i told her that i was all sweaty and smelled real bad after being on the bus for three days. she didnt care, she made me hug her. then i got all of my stuff upstairs and took a shower. there were two rooms, her room and steves room. steve and i would be sharing his room. after i got a bit settled, she asked if i wanted to go out with her tonight. i said yes, what else could i say?

she took me to a place called the pub at the end of the universe and i thought it was an awesome place. we talked for hours and eventually i was a bit drunk. we were on foot and we walked back to the apartment. when we got upstairs, we talked more and then - out of nowhere - she asked me if i would sleep with her tonight. i probably laughed, but i know i was nervous. and, again, it was like i was a visitor in her house and i felt that i had to say yes to her. i was also attracted to her and wanted to say yes, but i was filled with all kinds of thoughts about this.

this is emily and patty, i dont know why they are so happy.

it turned out that she just wanted me to lay with her, we werent having sex that night. but, once we were in the bed we cuddled and made out with one another, i dont know if it went further than that - i was probably much too scared to initiate anything and much too confused to be a very good partner. in the morning it was a little bit strange, but we did have something to take our minds off of whatever had transpired last night, steve was arriving today!

this was good for me, i needed to process with him the things that had transpired. he had been living with carfin for about a year and a half so he would know more about her motives and i could make sure that he didnt have a thing for her, and talk about the dynamic of sleeping arrangements. i did get to talk to steve, and he eased all of my concerns and told me to do what felt right. that night we went out to dots (i am pretty sure) which is a really awesome place in the city of portland.

at night there was a conundrum, should i sleep with steve or with carfin? both options were open to me and i chose carfin. so much for "bros before hoes." and with that carfin and i had some kind of a relationship. i think i liked her a whole lot when i first got there, i was young and impressionable in a new place that offered all kind of opportunity. she was older than me and (so i felt at the time) much cuter than me. i liked her a whole lot, and i think she liked me, but she liked something else more than me. that was alcohol. she was a functioning alcoholic, and that was something that i didnt really notice or take any interest in until our relationship had imploded.

for a couple of weeks things were fine, the three of us lived in this apartment, steve and i looked for work, carfin worked at the liquor store. steve and i were vegan, i think carfin was vegetarian, we made dinners and went out nights, i moved into her room and steve stayed in his own. then another friend from indiana decided to move to portland. this was justin gall, and he was coming to live with us. he wasnt like us, he moved here with a car and a tv. and he wanted his own room, that was a harder order to fill in a two bedroom apartment. but, we managed.

carfin and i moved into steves room while justin took over the room carfin and i had been staying in. our new room was great. we pushed together two queen sized beds and the three of us lived in there together, i think carfin generally slept in the middle and i also think that we stopped having sex as much. but, by this time she was also drinking alot more (or at least alot more openly) and i was less and less turned on by her anyway.

the relationship that we had completely imp.oded within a few months, we were living together and sleeping int he same bed but not talking to each other at all. i hadnt let learned the words to say or how to properly express them. i wrote letters and never gave them to her. eventually she moved out of the room with steve and i and into the living room, and then she invited her new boyfriend - another alcoholic, but i dont believe he was even a functioning one - and five of us lived in this two bedroom apartment, and at least two of us werent speaking to one another at all.

so it had to change. steve, justin, and i decided to move out and we found a house on SE 52nd near burnside. it was a nice three bedroom house with garage. steve and i had separate rooms but withing a few weeks we slept in the same room. when our lease ran out there my life was culminating into something i didnt understand. i felt like i was near imploding again, i was writing furiously everyday, i dont think i had a job. and i decided i needed another change, so i wrote a letter to my family and friends and told them that i was never going to talk to them again, move to bisbee arizona and live in the desert.

i did drop out of communication, i think that coincided with our lease running out. steve and i voluntarily went homeless and justin got an apartment downtown. i finished compiling all of my journals online and mailed the originals to my friend rob in new york. (i am writing all of this right now, this isnt stuff i wrote a couple weeks ago any longer - fyi.) and i thought i gave up on writing. instead of moving to bisbee i slept in laurelhurst park and got involved in the anti-war movement. eventually i moved onto my friends roof and slept variously up there and in her bed.

just now, going through some of my things in portland, i found a journal that i was keeping of this time period, and it is awesome. i will have to transcribe some of it eventually. but, anyway, this is going way too far from what i had originally intended. this was supposed to merely be an interlude while i was waiting for steve to get ready and now we are nine months into my life in portland. i will pick up this story eventually...(as: being in portland part 2 from the rooftops to the mississippi haus. or a more clever title)

now it was 7:pm so i could go to steve apartment. i have known steve and been great friends with him since 1996. in all of that time i have never gone to his place before. he hadnt had one, and when i thought about this i allowed myself to have some nervousness about seeing steve! how absolutely ridiculous. i went to his apartment, buzzed in and heard him moving on the second floor to come and greet me. we met in the stairwell, embraced, and then went upstairs to talk more. we chatted for an hour, and then i showered.

we left to meet emily on alberta at bellafaccia. the three of us hung out there, chatted and caught up for another hour or so. and it wasnt very strange at all. a little bit, but not very. and i was happy, things were good. towards the end of our meal patty, steves love interest, met us up there. i hadnt met her yet and it was nice to meet someone who made steve so happy. the four of us went next door to the whiskey bar and had some whiskey while we talked more and more. eventually this part of the night was done though. steve and patty took their leave and emily and i were left alone.

we went to the next bar together to hang out and talk more. i wasnt dreading this moment, but i certainly wasnt looking forward to it, maybe those arent the right words, but i was much more nervous about us being alone together. i didnt know what to expect, we have never really been alone as just friends, in portland we had always lived together. and i have never kept up with people that i dated before. not for lack of trying, but this just never took root. so it was strange for me, and she felt similarly. so we sat and in some uncomfortability talked more.

and eventually, inevitably, it came back to our broken relationship. i broke up with her over the phone in virginia beach, in november. not the most ideal but thats what happened. i had time before that to thin of all the reasons why i thought we should split and since then i have come up with plenty more reasons to justify it. she never got most of these reasons and so i found myself in the unenviable situation and breaking up with her again in person. it went easier than

my bike, before it worked.

i thought, but i really dont like making people feel bad or watching people be unhappy. but i also knew that it was some kind of necessity. oh, emotion, you devil.

around midnight we called it and went our separate ways. i went back to steves apartment alone and slept in this space, and it wasnt a great sleep. at 8:am steve called me and i was forced awake, beckoned to breakfast with him. after breakfasting i went to over to my old house to catch emily just before she left for work. i needed to do some laundry, go through my mail, see my cat (who hid from me most of the day), and fix my bike. now that is mostly done. tonight, more.