63.

I was downtown with a friend a couple of days ago, and as we came out of a shop we walked up behind a woman at the corner. I overheard her say, "Are you texting me right now?" At first I thought she was on the phone, but then I noticed she wasn't holding one. The man standing next to her didn't seem to know her, and moved on across the street. Another man was moving towards the corner from our right, and she turned to look at him as he tapped away on his phone, and she repeated the line. "Are you texting me right now?" This time it bit, and he said, "I AM." "Well, you don't need to, I'm standing right here." "I can see that," he said. "I should have just looked up." But then the light changed, and he crossed the street as well. So plainly he didn't know her either. It was kind of cute. My best guess for this scenario is that it was a pixie-flavored pitch by a sex worker, but it might just as easily have been a chatty woman amusing herself on a street corner for a couple of minutes.

Portland, home of the creative spiel.

62.

The teddy bear was stuffed into a sack strapped around his waist. The toy was a dingy golden yellow, and wearing some kind of blue shirt. The head and one arm of the bear were sticking out of the top, and the man held the bear's paw in one hand, and gestured with it, tapping the bear's head with his paw. "This is Frederick, lifelong friend, and we were just waiting here and wondered if you maybe had some nicotine for us." "I'm sorry, I don't." "Why does everyone say that?," this addressed to the top of the bear's head.

"I'm sorry about that," I said. This apparently occasioned some confusion, because the man said, quite firmly, "It's not a 'that,' this is Frederick. Like in "Ted." You seen Ted? About a man, his lifelong childhood friend comes to life." 

"No," I said. "I haven't seen it." He looked at me, astonished, and said, "It was for the Academy Awards last year. Ted. Lifelong friend." A full plot synopsis followed, with periodic reiterations wondering if I'd seen it, and increasing concern each time I said I hadn't. His voice getting louder as the rumble of the streetcar approached. He looked down at Frederick, and Frederick patted his own head again, and gave me a sort of teddy bear salute of endorsement. "I'll look for it," I said. "You and Frederick have a nice day." And I got on the streetcar.

day 8.

It's not that I feel anything approaching spirit animal kinship with the raccoon. Quite the opposite; I'm actively afraid of raccoons. It's not the symbolism of the masked animal. It's not any kind of political statement. It's not even that I find them visually compelling, although I do. My love for the raccoon has no defined foundation, but the stickers and stencils and paintings of street artist JustOneRaccoon have become totemic for me since I moved into this neighborhood. Whenever I see a new one, I photograph it and post it to Instagram. I don't really need to look for them anymore; I can almost hear them. My peripheral vision is tuned to the raccoon. I'll even notice the outlines where there used to be a raccoon head sticker and someone peeled it. There's a fresh batch of designs starting to crop up now, and I have the fizzy anticipation of the fanatic every time I go out somewhere new. It's always raccoon season.

day 7.

A very short Portland horror story.

Atticus shrieked at his cowering assistant, who clung desperately to the listing, creaking remains of Hawthorne Bridge, inches from the muscular and deadly tentacle crushing the metal. "You fool, you've doomed us all! I could have saved the city if only you'd brought a vegan sacrificial virgin. The monster is gluten free! GLUTEN FREE!"

well played, portland.

Three months ago today I got on a plane with a one-way ticket to this amazing place. Here's a small sampling of what's happened since then.

I spent Christmas Day at the beach, getting sandy and cold and marveling at the sheer magnitude of the Pacific Ocean and the gorgeous light at the shore. We drank bourbon from the bottle and got drenched by a larger-than-it-looked incoming wave and crunched shells and flotsam underfoot and were generally delighted with everything we saw. Then went home and built a fire and read our books and made tea and were generally contented with everything we felt. Happy Christmas.

The few days after Christmas were spent with my siblings and their families at my brother's house. We caught up on each other's lives, took the kids downtown for an outing, cooked together, and watched approximately 20 hours of Mythbusters while the kids climbed all over all of us. It's the first time we've all been together in over two years, and it was wonderful.

After the New Year, Shana and Shawn and I went to Seattle to see the King Tut exhibit. I got my first in-person look at Mount St. Helen's, and have still not fully recovered my breath. In other firsts, I also saw the Space Needle (so odd, and the sky was perfectly dramatic), and had my first ramble through Pike Place Market and lost my heart to its fish-and-vegetable wonders and nearly-Victorian alleyways and hidden corners.

The text underneath this hilarity (posted on a wall opposite the Gum Wall at Pike Place) says "6 1/2 year old burrito unicorn, dearly missed by his family. His name is Pablo."

Laughed and laughed and cried a little listening to people tell wonderful stories at The Moth in Seattle. (Shawn and Shana are wearing the same shirt. Unplanned and unnoticed until this moment. They're adorable.)

On Mardi Gras, I wore a fancy mask and watched a fire dancer and ate fantastic New Orleans food and marched in a second line through the streets of Portland (Shawn was playing saxophone), gathering people as we went. It seems odd that my only experience of a second line should be almost as far away from New Orleans as you can get on this continent, but it was so fun and we had a great night.

My brother and his family live about an hour away by train, and I'm enjoying getting to know him and his beautiful wife better. I'm in love with my niece and nephew, and it's so nice to walk through the door and have them recognize me and be happy to see me. I've babysat twice without mishap, and look forward to doing it a lot more.

There's been lots more, and I've been bad about telling stories since the move. There was a fantastic New Year's Eve adventure, and a really great party, and my introduction to Kung Fuesday and probably a hundred other things I never wrote about. So much to see and do and learn. I intend to get better at blogging again, but at least there's this small record. Hooray for smart phones and the incessant urge for documentation. It's been an amazing three months, and I can't wait to see what happens next.

what's next?

It's been a long time, and I'm trying to remember how this blog thing works. Um...I put words, yes? Right. Let's see how I do with that.

It's been three weeks since I got here, and I'm starting to feel like I'm home. The first ten days or so were a blur of holiday celebrations, family, friends, meeting people, exhausted sleep and disorientation. After that was a period of sort of shell-shocked looking at all the new things in my life. But around the middle of last week I started to feel like I had a routine going and some idea of what I need to do to start building my new life and take care of myself and let the wheels grip again.

I've lived alone for a long time, and to my delight and gratitude I'm finding that I love sharing this transitional phase of my life with these two people who mean the world to me. They're incredibly generous to share their home and life with me, without any idea of how long they'll be stuck with me; and we do have so much fun together. I've started to look for an apartment, but it looks like that process might take some time; I'm not anxious about it, though. Typically, I'm a really impatient person (cue pause for my loved ones to smile as they read this), but the past year has given me a tolerance for uncertainty that I've never had before. I've been living in some level of flux for several months now, and I almost feel like I'm getting good at it. It's not something I want to do forever, but it's good for me to exercise those flexibility and portability muscles.

There are three excellent pieces of wisdom that are serving me well right now. The first was a farewell from a friend in Chicago: "It's going to be great, but it might take a minute." The second was from one of my oldest and dearest friends, when I wrote to her just after Christmas that I was alternating between panic and joy on a minute-by-minute basis: "I know those feelings of panicky joy. Lean into them. Being off kilter can be quite amazing." And the last was not directly a piece of advice, but something profoundly useful that came up in conversation: "I love being the stupidest person in the room. The newest employee, the worst musician. There's no pressure and everything to learn." I am, right now, the stupidest person in the room in almost every sense. New place, new life, no job and no home, a totally new awareness of my roles and possibilities. The feeling that I have everything to learn, and no one except myself to impress, is very freeing. (That being said, I still have fairly high standards for impressing myself and I have to keep working at it. But my point, I hope, is clear.)

Two days ago, Shana and I went and got my jewelry supplies out of my shipping container. She loves me. She spent hours clearing a space for me to work in her studio. Last night I made several new designs with vintage glass. I think my entire being breathed a sigh of relief. It's been over a month since I made anything new, and many months since I made anything with glass. I've been itching to get back to it, and it felt so great to hold my work in my hands again. I look forward to being back to full time designing soon; look for new pieces to appear at both Leaves of Glass and urban legend in the next week.

In other news, surprising to no one, Portland is beautiful. The natural landscape is very similar to what I grew up with in Vermont, but on a larger scale. Taller trees, and real  mountains. Seriously, very large mountains. We drove to Seattle last week to see the King Tut exhibit, and I got my first in-person look at Mount St. Helens. I wasn't expecting to see it, and it's a breathtakingly iconic sight. I lost my head for a little while, thinking about the history of that mountain and its unmistakable shape. I was practically on tiptoe in the front seat of the car and Shana said, "You can't take your eyes off it, can you?" No, I can't. That's going to stay with me for a while. I feel like I should be taking more pictures, but I'm too gobstruck half the time to think of pictures. I'm just soaking it all up.

There are so many new things to absorb and think about, and I've not been doing a very good job keeping up with anything online. My blog, my shops and my social networking are all a bit of a shambles, but I'll start surfacing more often now, I think. Things are returning to a whole new kind of normal. I'm leaning into my off-kilter. I'm happy. Wish me luck, and I'll keep you posted.

leap of a lifetime.

After more than 18 months of planning, saving, setbacks and re-planning, I am so happy to finally be able to say that I'm moving. In 40 days, I'm moving 2,123 miles. Chicago to Portland. Old life to new life. I've been repeating these words to myself over and over and over for the last 10 days, partly in celebration and partly in an attempt to make myself believe that it's really true. That on December 21, I will work my last day at the high school where I've worked for 10 years. That on December 22, I will get on a plane with a one-way ticket and that when the plane lands, I will be in my new home.

It's something of a crash landing. I don't have an apartment lined up. I haven't found a new job yet. It feels like a massive achievement just to have arrived at this point, and I have people who will catch me when I fall out of the sky. To be honest, I'm not going to worry about the job or a place to live for at least a couple of weeks. I'll be staying with Shana and Shawn until I get settled, and I'm going to take a little time to recover. This year has taken every ounce of bravery and patience I have, and I need to collapse for a bit. Actual conversation from last week:

Shana: Is there anything you'll need when you get here, besides a game controller and a place to fall down?
Me: I love you. Oh, and beer!

For the next six weeks, I'm packing my apartment, working full time, trying to see my friends as much as possible, and running a small business heading into the busiest of the year. I'm excited, I'm overwhelmed, and I am profoundly tired. I'm also in some kind of epic design vein, badly timed but very welcome. Like a fugue state, with sparkles. I'm making piles of new things, which I'll list in the shop as I can. Fingers crossed, I'm planning to keep both urban legend and Leaves of Glass open until December 18. I don't have a date set for re-opening, but I'll make that happen as soon as possible after Christmas. (In the meantime, I will love you devoutly if you do your sparkle Christmas shopping early.)

That's all the news I have for now, but I'm thrilled with it and I think it's enough. 40 days. 2,123 miles.

when the runner walks.

I’m feeling anxious scared about my move to Portland. 

I used to be a really good mover; every few years, I'd pick up and go. It's been a long time since my last one, though, and I'm out of practice. There's so much practical work to be done just to make it happen, and it's expensive, and I'll need to find a new job. In the meantime, the sense of living half in one place and half in another makes me feel like I'm always away from home, and that's exhausting. 

What really scares me is this time, I'm not running. My last two moves, I was running in one way or another. When I moved to Nantucket, I was running from a man I loved who was marrying someone else. I wanted to be as removed as possible, so I moved to an island. In the winter. Never say I can't work the symbolism for maximum effect. When I moved back to Chicago four years later, I was leaving a dead end life that felt toxic. I could have gone anywhere, but Chicago had the lure of the familiar, so I came back. That was running, too, of a different kind.

This time, I'm not running from. I'm not running to. I chose. I'm leaving a comfortable life that isn't the right life. I knew more than two years ago that Chicago wasn't home anymore, and I started looking at new places that might be home. I worked through a list of possibilities based on specific things I wanted and ended up with Portland. By the time I made that decision, Shana and Shawn were already packing for their move to Portland. My brother and his family are also moving there next month, and it will be amazing to be able to see him. That gave Portland an extra layer of appeal, but I'm looking for a place that can become home either with or without people I already know. Portland might be that. It might not. I'm not going to know until I've been there a while, and that scares me.

Here's the thing about running: it's easy. It doesn't leave you any room to doubt yourself. When you run, you think everything will be better someplace else. By the time the doubt comes, you're already in the thing and doing it. The not running hurts. There's so much time to think about my decisions and wonder if they're the right ones. This time, I'm not trying to outrun myself; every fault and uncertainty and bad habit is going right along with me in the full light of day. That's actually amazing personal growth for me, but I still catch myself trying to do yet a third kind of running: sprinting ahead to the next decision. If I get there and this wasn't the right decision, what's the next plan? That's a bad way to think. So I keep having to turn around and go back a short distance to the place where I've made a decision, and learn to live in the uncertainty. 

I don't mean to suggest that I'm not excited about moving, or that I'm thinking of changing my mind. I know this is the right thing to do right now, and I can't wait to get there and meet all the wonderful people I've already begun to know online. I'm so grateful to have chosen a place that seems to welcome me before I even arrive.

Over the past several months, I've transferred my energy for emotional running into physical running. I've never been an exerciser; I am a curler-up-in-chairs-with-books. But lately I'm almost addicted to working out, and I think I'm doing my running on the elliptical so I can stand still and breathe in other parts of my life. When I work out, I can see out the window to the pool at the park, which has stenciled signs all over the concrete apron: WALK, Do Not Run. I'm working on it.