At this rate it may take me a year, working seven days a week, to save up for a computer.  Actual writing is impossible, so I’ll just cultivate a mysterious reticence.  

—JLE

Moving On

I’ll have to hurry because there’s not much time.

I’m writing this on a Chromebook from a library on Killingsworth that I walked about 35 blocks in the rain (yes, still raining as if it will never stop) to get to.  Not an easy bus route available, so easier to walk.  

Fascinating: they loan out little laptops for patron use in two-hour chunks. It’s great!  This may be my computer-deprived self being overly enthusiastic, though.  This is the first time I tested a Chromebook, and I have to say I like it—little and light, functional, no frills.  I want one.  Purchasing anything is quite beyond my reach at the moment, but eventually.  Right now even being able to pay rent is a mysterious and welcome step into normalcy after years of such strange transience.

It’s been nearly three weeks in my new place renting a room from a retired musician in a rustic old (built 1915) home near NE Alberta/28th.  My landlord’s buddy (this guy), whom he plays with once a week, managed to get a couple good gigs recently, including the Waterfront Blues Festival.  Impressive.  And the landlord has his own lovely ramshackle band as well: it’s all bluesy, old-timey Americana type stuff.  There’s a kazoo, a washboard, and a harmonica involved. Sometimes I can hear them all practicing downstairs and it reminds me of so many other situations in which I cohabited with musicians.  It feels comforting for there to be guitars in the house.

Lately I spend my time riding the bus back and forth to tutoring gigs or to my new temporary campaign work.  I spend more time each day on the bus than most people do sleeping.  The cast of characters always changes, and on a glance I used to imagine their lives in the most hyperbolic way possible.  That got old, though, and I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can now focus on reading despite any distracting noise around me. 

So, domestically.  I love the house, but there are quirks.  Whoa Nelly are there quirks.  Again, the house is nearly a 100 years old.

There are two things I can’t tolerate in a living environment, and that is why I was sure to find them because…inevitable: 1) cold, and 2) insects.  The hot water heater doesn’t work properly, so I boil pots of water for my baths in the old cast-iron clawfoot tub.  It takes longer, but really, I’m in no hurry for anything to happen anymore.  I have adjusted my expectations accordingly.  Also, the heater in my room one day sparked, smoked, fizzed, buzzed and died.  So no heat.  However, there’s a little plug-in heater that functions in a pinch.  Minor setbacks.

Character.  It’s character.

It’s really not bad.  Not luxury, no doubt, but clearly peaceful.  That is, all the humans I’m coming in contact lately with are fantastic people with little to no friction, assholery or dysfunction.  I’m trying to somehow emit a frequency of tranquility everywhere, within and without, and it seems to be working, for the most part.

Except the thing about the ants.

The ants have taken over—they’re those little carpenter ants, or I think I’ve heard them be termed Argentianian ants.  They don’t bite, but they are everywhere.  I doused my room with insect killer to little avail.  There are too many of them.  No matter how many I crush with my fingertip, another one will come crawling out of nowhere.  I’m sure I’ve accidentally eaten a few of them.  They mock me, crawling on my book as I’m in bed reading.  It’s not like there are any crumbs for them.  More like, they just seem lost or even intentionally trying to irritate me.  This is a true test of my newfound ability to become at one with all of nature’s creatures.  For days at first I didn’t sleep, hunting them down and squishing them.  Now I just say goodnight to them and let them go about their business.  Summer should prove interesting.

What else?  I love the neighborhood.  Some day I’ll have the money to spend at all those posh restaurants cafes and boutiques and such surrounding me.

—JLE

Some things/thoughts. Thought-things.

Come to find out, reality is mostly dull.  I am perfectly okay with this.  The last couple of days have been strange, but internally more so than externally.  I do wish my figurative imagination would do something interesting, though; everything seems so literal anymore.  

See.  All I could think of figuratively just now was nothing new and not even my own thought: that Eliot line about measuring out one’s life in coffee spoons.  True.  I’ve been enjoying coffee by the gallon lately.  

So yesterday I felt all kinds of quirky emotions.  I’m going to call it compassion or sympathy, or possibly it was pity.  I don’t know.  Emotions other than pure panic are not my specialty.

Yesterday I went to check out this room for rent, seeing as it would be a good idea if I found somewhere to live that wasn’t temporarily inconveniencing one of my friends.  First off, the house I visited was in a very run-down part of town, nothing like all the happy, flowery neighborhoods I generally wander around and find so photogenic.  There were burnt out old Baptist churches, boarded up shops, rusted truck parts on lawns, people avoiding eye contact and sort of skittering like sea creatures across streets and sidewalks.  No grocery stores, no businesses… the neighborhood seemed as if it were already dead in some way, and the people in it just ghosts.  I looked around, wasn’t sure just how I felt so affected, but I almost started crying.  I am still not sure for whom, or what.  Everyone.  For those in any way familiar with Portland, the neighborhood is sometimes called Lents.  Most people would have advised me against going there alone at all, but I happen to be invincible so no matter.

For $300 a month a woman was renting a room, and at that shiny price it seemed a deal.  I went to the house and did what the sign said: KNOCK LOUD.  Eventually some small little ponytailed person—a sassy, obviously intelligent seven-year-old—came and let me in and told me to have a seat and wait for her mom.  So I did, on the miniature kiddie chair, to amuse myself.

The place was in a pretty serious state of disrepair, but mostly it was just messy.  Remarkably messy.  The stained couches seemed slouchy, depressed even.  Bits of food and dishes were everywhere, the dishwasher had been pulled out to the middle of the kitchen, and there was this spoiled milk spell lingering underneath everything.  It was hard to breathe.  ”I clean all day long,” she said as she came out. “It’s impossible to keep up with them.”

I met the woman who was living there then, trying to rent out the pieces of her house.  I just got so much sadder.  She was incredibly nice.  She was in her early 30s and had four young children, and was only three days earlier abandoned without warning by her boyfriend so he could reclaim his misspent youth (or something, who knows—I only got one side of it).  Of her younger identical twin babies, one was partially deaf.  Of the older two, one was autistic.  They all seemed fairly well behaved, but it was a chaotic scene nevertheless.  And of course very, very loud.

I just got so sad.  I thought about what the rest of her life would be like, how deep and relentless a struggle it would be.  She seemed so lost, and oddly, so naive.

Before I arrived she had just rented the master bedroom to someone. What I looked at was another “room”—this tiny, sad little section of the basement:

I don’t even think it had a power outlet.  It wasn’t actually a room, but a piece of the kids’ playroom that wasn’t walled off or anything, just another part of the basement overrun with broken toys.  In all honesty, it wasn’t actually livable, even if it was free.  Paying to be there, in that place, in that neighborhood, is not something I could fully reconcile in the logical part of my brain.

I didn’t think that way when I was there, though.  Seriously I thought, “She really needs some help around here.”  I thought about how much would need to be done on a daily basis in order to actually make the environment pleasant (for me anyway, I’d go insane in that kind of grime and clutter and muck).  A very compelling part of me wanted to do it, to just go ahead and rent the room, befriend her, help out with her family.  Clean her house. I felt a compulsion to do something positive for someone else even though it would be significantly inconveniencing me—at the very least, living there would be adding a couple more hours to my already four hours of travel time each day.  Living among four small children, I thought to myself, is one of the few environmental catastrophes I’ve yet to experience.  It wouldn’t be that bad, I thought.  All kinds of negotiations and mental pre-enactments of possible worst case scenarios reeled inside my head for hours.

I’ve still not decided.  Maybe I have.  That’s why I had to write this down.  Most likely not something I have the fortitude for, but the experience of having met someone so clearly authentic and optimistic while facing such hardship had this bizarre impact on my psyche for hours.  She was really just a nice person.  You don’t see those around much anymore, though when you do you can bet it’s going to be someone in poverty.  Anyhow, I’m looking at another place tomorrow.  Some old musician is looking for a roommate in NoPo.  This ought to be equally interesting in its own way.

In contrast…

Another thing happened worth remarking upon: I got a job today.  Not a “real job” per se, but a temporary part-time job working for 10 hours a week for a six-week stint doing call center stuff for an upcoming political campaign.  What was amazing is that they hired me on the spot, at the interview.  That never happens to me.  I was so euphoric and delighted and pleased at this.  I’m excited.  Hence, on my return trip all the trees and flowers looked so pleased with me, the sky seemed so blue, and everything felt okay for a minute there. 

—JLE