Octo(ber)pus: eight legs and four weeks of recap.

10/19-10/26

Uh.  Hi.

I’ve been thinking about writing for a while now.  I just can’t seem to make the words come.  I can almost always depend on these stories I fabricate – layers and layers of metaphor between my actual experiences and my memories.  The shapes and sounds I use to articulate, hone, and polish reality into the plot I want – usually I can always beat something into place with a wrench; sand it into a smooth curve, break it in two, paint it, and stick it back together again.  Then can I sit back and say, “There.  A story worth telling, remembered exactly the way I want.”

But recently I can’t find the threads to weave my life into a coherent narrative.  The life itself seems to have too much for that.  Too much.  Of something: clarity?  Weight?  Vivid color, without a dreamlike saturation.  It’s just there, and undeniable, whether or not my pretty words follow.  Nonfiction, here I come.

So, what has been going on with me?  Well, crap, when did I last talk to you?  I moved out of my Burnside house.  It was time – our summertime arrangement was up, and the Alaskans kept telling me how cold it would get in my uninsulated attic room.  So I drank the last of the liquor, said my goodbyes to the West-facing porch view, and moved by carloads back into my parents’ cozy, thick-walled home.  To free food, unlimited internet access to research new apartments, and solicitous parental care. 

I like: a kitty that occasionally sleeps in the crook of my arm in the dead of night (causing the arm to go a bit dead, too).  

I like: the creative and collaborative cooking of three people sharing fresh food and a pantry full of ingredients I’m almost sure haven’t expired.  

I like: debating decorating decisions as my parents furnish their new beach place.

I don’t like: traffic over the West Hills.  How snippy I get after just a few weeks of that solicitous parental care.  Being 26, employed, relatively stable, and living with my parents.  It’s past the time for that.  So October (now grading into November, if we are to be realistic about it) plans principally include a high-priority search for new housing.  Ideal world: close-in Eastside, bikeable to OMSI, heat included, cheap, with lovely clean dish-doing people.  Same old song.  Real world: East, North, whatever; not too expensive; with responsible semi-clean people.  Here’s hoping.  Again.

In September I biked to work all of three times before I moved to suburbia and that became unfeasible (for novice-level me, at least).  I rode on a brave steed named Lola, The Lavender Menace.  

The Lavender Menace.  Lola, for short.

I love her, and I feel bad having now shut her up in the garage.  We rode to the library together the other day, through hilly neighborhoods where my elementary-school friends used to live.  Going there was a fun challenge.  Coming back was a grueling drudgery.  So goes nearly all my attempts at exercise for exercise’s sake – I get bored far before I get tired, and my mind saps remaining motivation from my body, which (having no mind of its own) never puts up much of a fight.  But the important thing is I tried, right?

How Portland am I?  Point me to the nearest local organic charcuterie/waffle/doughnut/mircrobrew foodcart, please.

I’ve moved on from Trapeze class to Rope and Silks class, which is fun but challenging.  It’s a bit more intimidating having nothing to sit on way up in the air – the only positions you can really “rest” in involve having a length of fabric wrapped around one or both feet or ankles.  An untenable position to hold for very long.  But it’s damn fun.  On my business trip last week, after cramped airplane seats, lots of walking in inappropriate shoes, not getting enough sleep, etc.  all I could think was, “Oh, I wish I was upside down.”

OMSI opened a new exhibit, about brains and society and genetics called Identity.  It’s been way fun to remind myself of all the weird brain stuff I studied in college, and how endlessly fascinating it all is.  I’m trying to make the process of opening a new exhibit easier on myself, and I can tell that I’m improving with the process the more I do it.  Lost Egypt, next on the bill, is set to open at the end of January.  I have hopes to start that process relatively soon so I can have it mostly done by opening day.  A novel thought, but I’d like to see what it’s like - meeting a deadline.

Earlier in October, I went to Arizona.  In early November, Arizona is scheduled to come here.  Time travel, a system of tubes, winning the lottery – all these things would make my life easier.  Scientists, get on that.  Phoenix was warm, I felt the sun on my skin, and I spent something like 14 hours at museums and zoos.  Nerd!  It was a great time, but I still didn’t take any pictures.

Last week I was in DC for a conference – baby’s first business trip.  (Aww.)  More on that later, because I did take lots of pictures for that, and it deserves its own post, but it was full of such insular education-talk and science jargon that I got all know-it-all-y and briefly imagined a world where everyone knows what the fusiform gyrus does, and I can casually ask, “So how’s that chladni plate working out for you?” like it ain’t no big thing.

So here we are: October winding down, Halloween(!) fast approaching, laundry to be done, big fancy museum-work to be organized, apartments to be rented.  I’ve regained a bit of my metaphor skeelz and am feeling a bit better about describing the flow and plot of My Life (But not "My So-Called Life."  I could never get into that show).  Leaves are changing, wind is blowing, the ground is shifting under me faster than the strides of my steps.  But I’m pretty confidence in my balance, and mostly confident in my confidence.  And the world spins madly on.