I’ve just returned from a six-week Boston-Saratoga-Albany-St Martin/Sint Maarten-Boston-Chicago-Boston-Valatie-New Paltz-Poughkeepsie-NYC trip. Hot, frigid, farmy and urban, it was full of wonderful people and not a little adventure. Back in this city of three white mountains and countless furry hills, where the crocuses and daffodils are already in full swing, I am in love again. I’m walking everywhere, cat-hunting, buzzing among my favorite eateries, hoping every departure from here will be so temporary.

My graveyard-shift Portland vampirism phased into a strange farmer’s schedule here in Boston, so I am up and adam at 5:30. I arrived at consciousness dreaming about meticulously eating Lucky Charms (marshmallows last). Just before that I dreamed I was dying in a sealed-off tower with a bunch of friends. I thought I could survive for a few weeks on a pan of brownies I had made, but realized someone had eaten them all. Then I discovered that in order to escape, all I had to do was peel off a single pixel from the scene, kind of like a square in a cross-stitch, and the whole tower fell apart. Commence me running, screaming with joy, so happy to be alive, down an imagined Portland street that was half Washington Mews, half Sound of Music. It was exhilarating.

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Quoth Mary Pols (of Time magazine): “I read McCarthy’s lean, brutalizing novel in one unhappy gulp 15 months ago and only recently began to consider myself healed.”

So, the movie’s just in time. It comes out the day before Thanksgiving, lest we forget that cheap feasts will not be a given for all time.

But what’s this I hear … there’s more? A new Almodovar movie with Penélope Cruz, a book of essays by Zadie Smith, and fragments of Nabokov’s unfinished novel?

(Aside: There are two people in this world that I could watch for hours, without the help of prescription or illegal drugs. They are Marlon Brando and Penélope Cruz. If offered a deal where I had to give up my entire life, all its promises and relationships and accoutrements, to ride around, say, in a cell on either of their faces, I would have to consider it. Kind of like Robert Johnson’s trade with the devil, although a bit less lucrative. Especially considering that skin cells are shed and regenerated faster than you can say “creepy fandom.”)

But yes — we live in a bizarre world where there are more works of art and intellect than one could ever hope to experience even in a Guinness-Book lifetime. The Road, Broken Embraces, Changing My Mind, and The Original of Laura, all in one week? Do I realize this? Do I appreciate it? There are times when being alive, being human — the fact that the atmosphere conspired to accomodate such existence, the fact that we have these wonderful crevices and curves soaked with sensation and beauty in our big watery brains — feels acutely like a miracle. It sounds trite to say, but when you feel it, it’s not trite at all.

All I have to say about the upcoming week is — not a compulsory, bowed-headed thanks, but — Yes! YES! Jism Crisp on a corndog, YES!!!!!!!!!

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During my run this morning I suddenly remembered that the Romans had a word for “this” (hic), a word for “that” (ille), and a word for “that (detested)” (iste). English sometimes lends a little loathing to its “that” — in the throes of spite, “that girl” can pack a punch. But think of the privilege of having a demonstrative pronoun specially reserved for things you hate.

I have been running a four-mile route along the Willamette waterfront. Today, it wasn’t so much running — I felt more like I was caught in one of those dreams where the atmosphere retards motion. Why is it that some days it feels like flying and some days it feels like a potato-sack race? Anyway, I was battling through this waterfront run, thinking about a recent post by the Roving Runner. He wrote about another four-mile route, one I used to do quite often. The Hudson River waterfront from Chelsea-ish to Battery Park was a magical place for me. Unlike my partner, I am not one who can comprehend why places feel the way they do. I could not understand why this place was so wonderful — something about the wooden planks and poles, and the ferries, I suspect.

During that (iste) run this morning, I also thought fondly of the small practical things we learn from our parents. One of these, for me, is tying my house keys in my shoelaces, so I don’t have to carry anything when I run. This I learned from my mom. Sometimes, as today, it has the effect of announcing my every step with a little jangle. People look over their shoulders, worried that a hushed version of Jacob Marley is approaching.

I am looking forward to reading this book, What I Talk about When I Talk About Running by Murakami. There I hope to find some guidance in this new phase of life, which coincidentally involves writing and running.

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I bring you Pt. III in a series of search terms that have routed people to this here electronic diary. Today’s installment: “where do dingleberries come from?” The age-old question that no parent can prepare himself for.

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I love misreadings and mishearings. They provide a jolt of delight in the moment before you comprehend the boring thing that was actually being said. A recent misreading: “Once a week you lose your virginity under a blacklight…” I had it all wrong, but doesn’t it sound wonderful?

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A room one-fourth one’s own: I applied for admission to the Sterling Room for Writers in the Central Library, and got in! Now I have a rent-free writing office two blocks from my apartment. There are four desks, lockable drawers and, I’m assuming, a window. Holy shit!

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Had a rollicking night watching On the Waterfront and Werckmeister Harmonies. Real life is pretty good sometimes, but I am never so happy as when I’m invited into worlds like these.

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The above picture was captured at a cathartic mud-race I ran to commemorate my first workless weekend. I moved about half as fast as I do at any other 5K, struggling to scale wet pyramids, extract my ankles from the grips of quickmud, and just keep a semblance of balance. Was it worth it? I’m not sure. The mud sort of crossed the line when it penetrated my underwear.

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Sitting in a favorite coffee shop, the one with the pock-marked plank floors, with the sun burning through the dirty windows and the through the flame-shaped bulbs of the turned-off chandelier. The one with the simple translucent electric lamps, looking like something just invented. I’m snorting leftover bits of the H1N1 nasal spray and realizing I would never want to do cocaine. Reading some disappointingly mediocre stories for a fiction contest, looking for the gems, the ones with some spark, some oomph.

I have to contrive something to get myself up early now that I’m making my own schedule. Today it was a doctor’s appointment. But I need something daily. Any ideas?

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Whoa, I wore fishnet stockings for the first time in my life, and let me say it is kind of awesome to have a crisscross pattern of warmth and cold breeze on your legs on a brisk fall day. Also, they don’t look as slutty as I thought.

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More searches that have led people to this blog:

“how to clean up dingleberries”

“dog dingleberry photos”

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I’ve come up with a name for an everyday urban phenomenon: the panhandler Doppler effect. (Note: this only applies to the minority of panhandlers who are dicks.) The sound changes depending on your relative position. Approaching him, you hear, “Hey sweetie, can I talk to you for a minute?” Passing, it’s: “Hello? Hello! I’m talking to you!” As you get farther away, the anger volume increases: “Thanks a lot, you dumb bitch!” At this point, sexism and judgments based on your presumed class amp up as well.

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The other day I saw a lost dog poster that was most affecting because of its simplicity. It obeyed that rule of every high school creative writing class, “Show, don’t tell.”

Margo
3-year-old Black Lab mix
Chipped canine tooth
Wiggly butt

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For someone who is highly attentive to the subtleties of language for two reasons: one, because she is a lover of poetry and multiple shades of meaning; and two, because she is extremely wary of hurting others’ feelings, so always chooses her words carefully, for this person learning a second language is an interesting experiment. Because she’s so desperate to grasp even the first layer, that of literal meaning, and because she has no idea how she sounds or what she’s implying, a kind of liberation takes place.

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Speaking of which, I was on the WordReference forums yesterday, where people ask and answer questions about usage, syntax and expressions in English and Spanish. A native Spanish speaker was asking for help understanding an English sentence he had come across. The sentence was, “I put the cute in execute.” I’ve had English on my tongue for 25 years, and…what??

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It’s official. Come Friday the 13th, I will be joining the ranks of the unemployed, as a member of that less common heirloom variety, the Voluntarily So. I’ll be kicking off my inauguration into the Creative Class with this combination mudbath/5K on the following day.

Here are my goals for this blessed stretch of tiempo libre:

• Write. I’m working on a collection of interviews/essays. Poetry-wise, I’m going to be experimenting with various straightlaced forms.
• Study Spanish. Daily at home, and in a yet-to-be-determined Latin American country for at least a month.
• Take pictures. My mistress creative outlet, the one that doesn’t hurt my brain. I want to learn how to use my camera manually.
• Travel. I’m off to the Caribbean for a week in January, then a few days in Chicago, and then a tour of the Northeast with a good friend. Later I plan on spending a month in Guatemala, Mexico, or Ecuador studying Spanish.

I know the economy is crumbling and all that, but the way I look at it, I am giving someone else a chance at a great job. We shouldn’t be greedy with what little work there is in Portland, Oregon.

And I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay away from working with survivors. The women and kids I have gotten to know over the last three years are very close to my heart.

But for now, ¡a explorar!

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Summer is gone. Remembering a June bike ride around Sauvie Island with a friend I’m lucky to have. We mingled with some llamas, ate lunch (complete with Queso-Its) on the Columbia, picked strawberries while speaking in Spanish, and eyed the grapes, grass and myriad misty offerings at Kruger Farm market. Now fall is here and we’re both turning over new leaves. ¡Vámonos!

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Tonight I have been engrossed in the story of Braddock, Pennsylvania, a blighted steel town so depressed and desiccated that it was used in the filming of The Road. The hulking Harvard grad of a mayor, John Fetterman, who arrived as an AmeriCorps volunteer (AC pride!) and now has the town’s zipcode inked on his forearm, has been trying to rub two (black mold-ridden) sticks together and start a spark in this community. To a place with no grocery store and a post-Katrina-esque landscape, he hopes to attract artists, entrepreneurs and activists. But he’s not interested in another Williamsburg (Brooklyn); his passion lies with rebuilding viable livelihoods for the existing residents.

Check out this article to read more about his efforts. The New York Times article includes a good video. And here is a spectacular gallery of images of both ruins and revitalizations.

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