A dark and misty afternoon

Here's a couple of fave shots from a recent trip to the Oregon and southern Washington coast. The tree in the background of the picture on the right is the Lewis and Clark tree in which Lewis or Clark (?) did a little carving to show he'd been there. Nowaday, it'd be graffiti, but since it's old and there weren't 270 million of them doing it, it's all good. More photos to come... I'm back!

Eccentric miscellany

Well, it's been a long time since my last post. Life has been full of life and that's kept me very busy and somewhat unmotivated to blog. So, some of the results of the busy-ness are as follows:

1) I have finally downloaded Firefox and Ad-Aware (ok, the whole Google Pack) and am now whipping along at unheard-of speeds minus 100+ (!!!!!!) adware items that my Earthlink Protection Center software did not eem to find it worthwhile to mention.

2) I did laundry today and while doing so, witnessed a very clean but apparently homeless man camped out in the laundromat watching TV (HGTV, to be precise) sucking raw eggs. His grocery store bag also included a Rock Star and an apple. Go figure.

3) Hurray! I finally downloaded and cleaned up some new photos from last year's Arizona vacation! The one above a favorite. When the CCC built the dam in the '30s, they also put in some really interesting art. After having been inside a couple of dams in the past, I found the art outside more intriguing than the loud, noisy guts inside, as well as a lot cheaper (had I but realized it, you can walk around outside all you want for free if you park ACROSS the river and walk across the dam to the visitor center area. Somehow, it just seems that the insides of damns should really have windows looking out onto mermaids or large sturgeons or subversive Earth First divers or something. If you're in Vegas and need to get some fresh air to nurse a hang-over, this is a great place to go.

Book Recommendation: Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger

I'm not going to write long because I'm in the middle of a great book and want to get back to it. Peace Like a River is the story of a young boy, Reuben, who goes on the lam in 1962 with his father and sister to find a brother accused of murder. Reuben has asthma, his dad performs miracles, and his sister Swede writes Western poetry.

When I heard the above, the book sounded too over-the-top to be good. But it's one of those books that are so rich and real and truly themselves that I know the characters are going to live in my head for a long time. The prose is warm enough but not treacly and Swede is one of the most stalwart and intriguing girl characters I've read about in years -- much like Reuben himself.

Also, check out my friend Dan's blog. He writes a lot about sports, but I forgive him....

Two Fave Shots - Downtown Portland

Digital cameras are amazing! I took these over the weekend on the way to work.
Fox Tower always seems to float, and Big Pink in sepia has a noir feel....

Not So Profound Thoughts about Life and Laundry

It's been hard to post lately because about the time I pin anything down about anything in my life for one darn second, everything shifts and I don't know what the heck I'm talking about anymore. If I write, by the next day it's outdated. On the other hand, I seem to be getting nowhere fast and my life seems to have no concrete results lately.

Plus, are there any really truly unique ideas out there? Or are we all doomed to just re-create mushier, squishier, blander versions of the things we enjoy, respect, and wish for? I thought about writing about my life via my hatred of laundromats, but somehow it just sounded already done. And besides, no one really did anything interesting when I did my laundry this week. My co-launderers were well-behaved despite some moments of stupidity. Case in point -- a guy walks up and asks if that's my laundry hamper on top of the washer next to me. Anyone who's ever been to the laundromat knows that this is laundry speak for "I want to use that washer, annoying stranger, so get your shit off it." Ironically, that was indeed my hamper, but my wash was also merrily zooming around in spin cycle in it, so asking me the mystery question was not going to get him access to that washer. And, of course, the highly referential thought crossing my mind was, "Dude, here's your sign."

To say the least, it's been frustrating.

Drunks in a Mitsubishi/Flight 93

Blogging has quickly gone from a fun, creative release to yet another avenue of attack by angst. Suddenly I have all these drafts sitting around and I'm too picky to post them.

Xie Xie has become a jealous, neurotic creature who stalks the Internet looking at all the cool kids' blogs and whimpering. Witness her viewing the cool Stardust blog in which a very fun-looking girl is blogging about her experience in a NASA study in which skinny, extremely healthy people spend several months bedridden (wouldn't it make more sense for fat, sedentary people to be bedridden -- they already have the skills!). All Xie Xie can think is, "Huh, think THAT'S cool? I threw up three times in the Stardust Casino (in Vegas). Top that, punk!" This is obviously a ridiculous thought. I have begun to realize that I have a lot of ridiculous thoughts, and that I will not change the world with my profound insights.

On the other hand, though, life does continue to happen, so why not write about what is floating through the ol' cranium?

Monday night, my friend and I are sitting quietly in her car in front of my house, gabbing way into the wee hours and minding own darn business. My neighbors, a bunch of unruly punks in their 20s who admittedly know how to keep up a yard but otherwise have yet to show evidence of other redeeming qualities, come racing down the dead-end street at, I kid you not, 35 miles an hour, clip off my friend's mirror and send it hurtling across the street and then almost slam right into the park. They NEVER EVEN NOTICE that they've clipped the mirror, are clearly drunk off their sorry asses, wobble into the house, and apparently go to bed. I realize that my life depended on the judgment of a stupid kid with very bad depth perception and a brain full of some kind of toxic substance. Not a good thought. If they'd gone another foot to the right, this blog would end with a pathetic two months' worth of posts.

It didn't really dawn on me just how close I came to the great beyond until I wandered over Mt. Scott on Thursday. For those of you outside Portland, Mt. Scott is a lovely big hill that overlooks Portland and houses at least two major cemeteries. The grounds are really gorgeous at some times of the year and I had gone up to look at flowers, not contemplate my mortality. It's one of the few big open, quiet spaces in town and on Thursday, the sun was out and I could see for miles. Being among hundreds of graves reminded me just how short life is... and how easily released from it we are.

To switch gears but continue the thoughts of death -- man, this blog is full of it, isn't it? -- I'm still deciding whether to go watch the Flight 93 film.

Even talking about 9/11 still makes me cry, and with good reason. Part of my job is to debrief survivors of traumatic events, and my work during 9/11 put me in close contact with survivors from the World Trade Center. For me there's still a lot of unresolved emotional stuff. There is no shiny gloss of network coverage on how I remember 9/11.

The question becomes, is it better to go, watch it and have whatever emotional catharsis that ensues, or to simply avoid it? Is it enough of an event to take the risk? I know that the movie won't resolve anything for me, and it won't destroy me, but is there value in just going and being sad and angry with no end game? Will I feel more a part of something or just more traumatized? I don't know the answer to this.

Magic melancholy

It's ridiculously late and I'm sitting up in one of those wonderful melancholy moods that goes well with a pot of tea and badly with liquor.

The chores are done and I've got the very strange mixture of Chris Botti, the refreshingly angry new Dixie Chicks release, old Dave Matthews Band songs from the '90s, MSTRKRFT (a song that seems like a redux of a 70s disco ditty) and a world music combo called Willie and Lobo. Last night the new ITunes free downloads and some new releases came out, so XieXie got her groove on!

The music brings on what I think of as the most typical Portland mood, the one that goes best with rain and sitting alone in coffee houses -- an achy regret of grey skies, old memories, future angst and an inner lining of guilty pleasure. Perhaps I've grown so used to the seasonally-produced mood that now that the rain has slowed down, I needed to create it for myself.

My memories are going back to a younger self when I was a park ranger in Colorado, of loving the wrong man at the wrong time, moonlight drives across mesa tops in the Southwest to parties at remote, brilliantly lit, packed-to-the-rafter trailers where I didn't need the tequila to dance like there was no tomorrow. And, on the way home, a quick-silvery mountain lion leaped across the road...