About to start off on a couple of weeks of working from the road. Leaving very soon for Ashland for a wedding weekend, then back for a day, then off to San Diego for some time with my sister and niece, followed by even more adventures, culminating in my return on or about the 13th of next month. Whee.
The past few days have seen a lot of activity:
I saw Les Mis on stage for the first time with Veanne. It was great. Favorite character? Eponine. Least favorite? Toss up between Marius and Cosette. I suppose you could draw some conclusions about my ideas of love from these opinions.
I went to the wedding of two people I didn’t know, watched as my date caught the bouquet (after which the bride turned and pointed at me with a giant grin on her face), and generally had a wonderful time hanging around with yogis, dancers, actors, clowns, jugglers, and trapeze artists. Probably the most fun I’ve ever had at a wedding, and now I have a whole host of great new friends.
A conversation (taken completely out of context and probably completely unfunny as a result) at the after-after-party, between one very drunk boy and a girl:
Boy: Hey, try this (holds out drink)
Girl: what is it?
Boy: It’s swedish.
Last night I was at Zeitgeist to help wish The Tamale Lady a happy 52nd. Cool to see and hear the entire crowd in the back cheering. Introduced a few of my closest pals to my new lady friend, and everyone seemed to like one another.
K, back to work with me.
Without much fanfaire, I hope. Hopefully people are using aggregators and will actually notice, but eh. This is about me, not you 
I found my new favorite word just days after I took my blog down. Petrichor. I immediately wanted to blog about it - about the fact that I’d never heard the word before (and others I know hadn’t either), about how it felt to finally have a way to describe that wonderful smell in 3 syllables. Anyway, now I get to. enjoy (if you already knew the word, bully for you, and damn you for not sharing it with me).
I’ve been documenting my recovery from my back injuries over here for the past month or so. I’ll probably be rolling that blog back into this one soon.
I’d write more, but it’s time to head to the mission to wish The Tamale Lady a Happy Birthday.
This one also happened the same night as the last one, but it took me a while to get to writing it out.. It felt weird, I normally don’t consciously think about the fact that I’m dreaming while I’m dreaming. anyway.
…
I was at 3614 26th street, second floor. My mom and little sister had come to visit us for a while, and I was re-making the bed for them after doing laundry with Leila. My mom and sister were in the kitchen, talking about making dinner, and Leila was in the room with me at her desk, grading papers. The house looked the way it did back in March - newly occupied, clean, but cluttered. The map leaned against the corner in the living room, still unhung. For a moment I had a weird feeling - this is not the house I remembered. I looked around at everything, and had the very distinct feeling that I was dreaming, or had traveled back and sideways through time to some alternate past where my family had made it out to visit us, and we were happy together.
I finished making the bed (which was just a mattress on the floor) for my mom, and walked into the kitchen. Leila joined us a few minutes later, and we talked about what the food options were. falafel, tamales, the organic veggies we’d bought, homemade pizza, or maybe just going out to Moki’s.
It was during a rare lull in the conversation when all of us were considering the options that the first tremor came. I heard glasses vibrate against each other for an instant. I looked at the shelves and back at the women - neither my mom nor my sister had noticed. Leila’s eyes met mine, a similar look on her face, as the second tremor hit. The kitchen cart we used for a chopping block and storage space moved about 6 inches and we all had to steady ourselves against something - window sill for me, counter for Leila, stove for Melissa, and table for mom.
The next tremor was even more violent. We picked ourselves up off the floor and hurriedly moved to the foyer, with its 4 doorways. I was standing to the left, in the office doorway. Leila was nearby in the doorway to the bathroom. Mom was in the kitchen doorway, and Melissa toward the living room.
We were thrown to the floor again with the force of the next one, accompanied by a loud creaking sound. The floor in the kitchen split noisily about 4 feet back from the entryway. I could see the linoleum straining and tearing.
Another strong shake followed by a cacophony of crashes and creaks and groans as the building gave up the fight. Then a sudden feeling of lifting, my stomach rising to meet it. Miranda’s table fell forward and crashed into the bookshelf by the door, wysong and water scattering and splashing everywhere. My mom shakily slid into the foyer and shared the doorway with my little sister. Leila let go and dropped to join me. We started walking our feet up what used to be the front wall in order to stay upright. I looked into the office to my right and saw the ground coming up to meet us. Air rushed in behind us where the building was splitting apart. I reached down under the book shelf near the front door and even though it seemed to take forever, I managed to pull out my sandals and put them on, perfectly balanced as we all fell.
I was walking back to my car from the bar full of sweaty bike messengers where Winona Rider was performing when he approached me. He was a middle aged Chinese man, taller than me, muscular, and tan. He was walking through the darkened, foggy, panhandle with his little son because, he told me, it reminded them both of their home in Portland, where they did a lot of hiking.
I was walking to my car to get some stuff to take back to the bar, and he was walking that way, so we shared the bike path for a couple of blocks, his son darting in and out of the shadows and streetlamp halos some 30 feet ahead of us. I often couldn’t see him which made me a little nervous, but the guy seemed comfortable with his little boy running about like that so I didn’t say anything.
At my car I got the plastic bag out of the trunk. In it was 100 feet of climbing rope and and a child’s snow shovel. I was taking them back to the bar to donate, so they could sell them at the door for some extra cash. Every little bit helps. The guy looked at the shovel and asked me where I’d gotten it, his son would love something like that. I told him he could just have mine, pulled it out of the bag and handed it to him. He thanked me and called his son over. His son never stopped running, just a blur running back toward us empty handed and then away from us swinging the shovel above his head. Off to dig a hole in the playground ahead, maybe. Maybe all the way to China.
..
