Crush

I have fallen in love with Portland. Like, majorly.

After only a couple of days it was apparent that if I were ever to live in a real city again, Portland would be the one. I love how green it is, I love all the water everywhere, the rain, the sun, the trees, all the people riding bikes, the ever-present safe and secure bike parking, the neighborhoods, the compactness of it, the ease of navigation, the easy-going attitude, the wooden houses that look like people actually live in them ... I liked it very much.

I spent time on this trip not only with my wonderful hosts, two friends whom I've known for well over 20 years, but also with Writermama and Rozanne, as well as Writer's sister and several offspring of a few of the above. Not to mention, during the first two days of my trip, with my own adorable parents and somewhere around a hundred assorted relatives from my father's side of the family. Meeting Rozanne was especially memorable for me, because it was the first time I'd met someone in person whom I'd formerly known only online. She was a great host-for-a-day – even came to pick me up at my friends' place so I wouldn't get lost on the way to the Japanese garden, which was the perfect place to stroll around. Almost nothing was in bloom, so I got to see my favorite kind of landscape there – ten thousand different shades of green, with light and shade and koi and waterfalls, plus the raked-gravel zen gardens and a little mossy Jizo figure you can read about via a link on her site, if you want to go visit over there.

And Writermama ... there's a reason we've been friends so long. I loved seeing her again and remembering all that. She brought with her a leopard-print cotton dress I made when I was about 22 years old, which I had given to her at some point and forgotten all about ... it's still in great shape, and I was actually kind of amazed at the quality of my work – I can say that now that 20 years or more have passed – the button holes are hand-made and all still in perfect condition! And (this is big) I can almost actually wear it again. Hmm! Her sister had a Pioneer party on the 24th of July, which is a huge Mormon holiday that celebrates the saints' arrival in Salt Lake Valley. I brought my own small cadre of post- or never-Mormons, and met several others at the party, and felt more at home there with those people than I have at any party in all the twelve years I've lived here. Don't meet too many of those kind of peeps in this neck of the woods.

Being on the beach with my relatives was a new experience and I loved it. My parents are so sweet and fun and dear, I've been really luxuriating lately in the opportunity to spend time with them, just us three – not that I don't also love seeing all my brothers and sisters too, but the vibe is definitely different with a smaller group, and I really enjoyed this visit. I got some great pictures of my parents at the beach – my mom's cute feet with her first-ever professional pedicure (a gift from my sister-in-law), and my dad taking pictures of everything, and the fog and the rain and the beautiful old bridges that seem to be everywhere on the central Oregon coast.

I loved seeing my extended family again, too. It always feels so good to me to be in such a big group of people that I can totally trust. Growing up as part of that group has in some ways I think kind of spoiled my ability to be around so many other people – I sometimes wonder if I might be more functional in the rest of the world if I hadn't grown up with the expectation that people would, in general, do the right thing and be kind to each other and not say cruel things or undercut each other or compete for winner status at the expense of everyone else ... I find not a lot of groups operate that way where I live now. Not that people are awful, but competition and self-interest seem to be so much more at the forefront, rather than this family ethos (or maybe just our family mythology, though it does really seem to play out in real life as well, not just in how we talk about ourselves) of everyone pulling together, and everyone winning, together.

Anyway ... Oregon. I liked it there. But somehow I'm not feeling like writing anymore right now. I'm still on vacation until Monday, officially, and it's been such a great feeling to totally shut off the part of my mind that reads and writes and analyzes things, and just walk and sleep and eat and look at the sky and visit with loved ones. Just now when I turned on the computer I got this sudden stab of adrenalin and realized again how much I resent all the time I spend on the thing. Funny how living a normal, healthy life for just a few days can ruin you for the life you usually lead, kicking and screaming (silently and without moving, of course, lest you alarm the co-workers or incite an unwelcome revolution). Would it be possible to live in a way that would only require me to spend a few hours a week sitting down in front of a computer, instead of 40-50? What could I do to make that happen, and still have enough money to live on? Besides retire, I mean. That's still a ways off for me.

Yesterday I went to the beach at Bolinas and spent several hours just walking up and down in the fog, and sitting with my back up against the sea wall, listening to the waves and looking out at the ocean, letting the sand and water scrub all the thoughts out of my brain. Lately I like that empty, quiet feeling more and more, more than any other way I feel on any kind of a regular basis. A book I was looking through during my trip says this is the natural state of mind that humans are meant to be in much of the time, whenever they're awake; interrupt that relaxed-alert mindspace too much, and you start to have problems. We're also supposed to sleep a lot more than most people do nowadays – basically, whenever it's dark and for as long as it's dark – and eat very few carbohydrates in the winter, when our genetics tell us we are really supposed to be more or less hibernating. I am not technically astute enough to evaluate their science, but I can tell you that a lot of what I was reading felt just instinctively right to me, and that when I have lived like that – like on this trip, more or less, for example – I do feel much better and happier than when I'm chained to my desk, stressed out and staring into the bright light of my computer screen. Like right now.

So I'm going to stop writing now and go sit outside in the wind and the shade. I still have a couple more days to really live, and I intend to enjoy every minute of them.