We gotta step out sometimes.

posted by jeremy on September 09, 2004

We have to go away from the places we love if we want to continue loving them. I am at this particular cusp. I gotta go, get, be gone. Not out of hate, but outta love. So it is.

I sit at a particular coffee shop in a particular city at a particular time. Heavy clouds hover, linger, threaten; NW ceiling, mascot of winter months. I welcome them... though I won't be here to revel or rage in the coming drizzel. I read a 20-year old issue of National Geographic, ingest articles about blue whales, Catalonia, silk & miniature horses. I stop reading, put a cigarette in my mouth, light it. I pull a notebook, nearly virgin, from my pack. I snap my pen. I begin what I hope is the beginning of the book I intend to write over the next year... My horrible black-inked chickenscratch fills out page after page... A snippet, a chunk, a piece, some peace, another page. It is difficult to pay attention, to translate, to discern.

I don't know what I'm doing, really...

"The red turning leaves of a Japanese Maple. A flutter of sparrows fighting furiously. Smoke swirls around my skull. A pretty girl walks by, sits behind me.

I am filled with lust these days, but so what?

This is my home. This city. PDX. Portland. Stumptown. Bridgetown. I've learned to love it here... tho I didn't really have a choice. My passion for this wet dog of a metropolis grew inside me like a tumor... or some miraculous child. I didn't want it at first, but now it fills me, pushes me somewhere else, pushes me on.

I love it here too much to stay.

A crazy man walks past, muttering, spitting, cursing & breathing. A hefty black kid with a huge afro rides past on a beat up cruiser, an immense smiling Great Dane loping along beside him. Worn buildings covered in ancient moss. Dark roiling skies. A single raindrop, falling for miles, landing on my upturned palm.

Home. Here. Now."

I get up. Walk back. I'm leaving for New Orleans in thirty cheap days. Why cheap? Well, they go so fast: So fast I can't keep count. Is it Monday? Or Friday?

I can't keep track anymore.

So I measure time in beercans & cigarettes. I measure time in the books that I read. I measure time in chaotic hobbled together moments. Girl-touch or whiskey-kiss. A brilliant film. A spectacular sunset rendered in megavision. There is no sequence, no thread, no chronology. My brain runs in circles, stubbornly, stupidly, a rabbit carving out arcs in an endless meadow, the teeth of some hound snapping inches behind.

Will it get away? It might.

But the hound is Time & Time always wins, right?

Huh. We'll see.

A light knock at my bedroom door. The door opens, slowly, cautiously. I turn from the monitor, the keyboard, my window filled with a rather un-majestic view of Emerson street. Debbie looks at me, says Sorry... & then Hello.

I look at her, stand up, take one step towards her, put my arms around her warm thin shoulders. She trembles & tells me she dosen't know why. I hold her tight but say nothing.

Nothing but It's OK.

Two nights ago we fought in the middle of a dark dark street: 3AM.

Yelling. Screaming. Curses. Tears. Not hers but mine. Fighting about nothing is the signature of our relationship these days. I hate it. I always hate it. I hated it even more that night. I almost started to sob. I did begin to sob. I sobbed & punched at nothing. I told her that if this keeps happening then I am going to begin to hate you. But I love you so much. I can't begin to hate you now. It would be ridiculous, evil, a tragedy. Please please please. This can't happen anymore. I can't begin to hate you now, not now, not now.

Not when I'm almost gone.

I hold Debbie & kiss her small & delicate, beautiful skull. She looks at me with her brown eyes, her dark eyes, her eyes flecked with gold. Everything's OK. Now, now, now anyway. We talk for a few minutes & then she leaves in her white car. I watch her go. I shut the door. I walk back to this antiquated if steady machine & begin writing what you have just finished reading.

That fucking hound is going to catch that stupid rabbit soon... & it will be time to go.

I am jubilant, terrified, nostalgic, elated, ready, unready. It's hard to imagine, leaving the last five years of my life; An empty shell of memories like the gory skin of a cicada stuck to some tree: A city minus me.

Still... New Orleans. Cajun cooking. Voodoo. Vigorous murder rates. 24-hour bars. Boozing in the streets. All of that ancient architecture. All of that sluggish & deadly history. Maybe I'll get mugged again. Maybe I'll get loved again. Who knows? That's the nature of Chance, Luck, God, whatever...

All I know is that Portland, this wonderful bitch of a city, will be waiting for me.