Check in
I’ve been posting weekly on Substack since September 5, 2022, when I began with The Paper Bag Manifesto. Each week I think I’ll write shorter than the previous week, but then I start composing, and my foot slips off the path, and I am skidding down a muddy slope to end up on the bank of some underground river I didn’t know existed.
Last week I moved back to the home in Southeast Portland that I share with my husband, Robert. It was a long slog getting ready for that move. Robert endured four months and more of renovations that added a sunroom, a ramp and a bathroom with a walk-in shower. We had to buy a new refrigerator; evidently fridges aren’t made to last more than 10 years anymore.
There was dust all over, every surface, and it cost a lot of cash to get it cleaned. I also needed to find a place for a few extra pieces of furniture that I had acquired while I was living in assisted living for four and a half years.
There are several reasons why I moved out, but chief among them was that my MS is stable, and I don’t need any extra help. Also, the monthly room and board at Rose Schnitzer Manor is pretty steep, and I’m relatively young. Twenty years of big payments would consume our savings. If I were to need long-term care, that would be a bigger burden.
I loved many things about living in Rose Schnitzer Manor, starting and ending with the other residents. They might have been older than I, but they are really on the ball, well-read, intelligent, insightful and not inclined to gossip or cliques.
Holding off
These days, my writing is curtailed by packing, unpacking, agonizing about where to put things, tossing more stuff than I had thought possible, and trying to stay calm.
How much did I write? Not much. I even missed my morning writing exercise—twice!—while packing and supervising movers and trying to figure out where everything might be lurking in those mute cardboard boxes. They do not give up their secrets easily. The ones marked “priority” ended up at the bottom of a stack of boxes, natch.
While I am looking for power strips, that pound of coffee beans, and the sound bar for the television, I am not writing.
So this week, I offer you mostly poems and photos. I think you’ll enjoy them, and maybe also the break from my meandering connections.
Landscape
Clouds and trees have a painterly quality, as if the clouds were oils, not vapor. What are those trees waiting for? All of them have bifurcated tops, like pincers.
Sky palette
The trees make holes in the sky, But the clouds are pasted on. I just saw the hawk— That bird slices sky.
Staying with poetry
I’ve been trying to write a poem a day as part of 100 days project. Moving also got me behind on that, but sometimes I can write more than one poem a day and catch up. Here’s one of them now.
Blackbird
You are singing a song on stage— A good song About love and death. But your soul is elsewhere, Lying in an alpine meadow Or tasting the salt of the sea. You do one thing and love another. Your life is good, Or so you say. But you never finished that scrapbook, Memories are trapped in a box. What about your love and death? The audience, the accolades? When will it ever be enough? Settle everything yourself. Make the song be enough.
Fire hydrants
You may have noticed that fire hydrants turn up in many of my photos. That’s partly because I am intrigued with their orangeness, but also because they are ubiquitous.
My new writing station
When I lived in this house before, my desk was in the bedroom, overlooking a carport and a neighbor’s stunning dogwood. Now I’ve moved to a front room window where I can see the intersection of Southeast Main Street and 27th Avenue.
Interesting stuff goes on out there all the time! Just this morning, I was watching dogs and their owners, a group of seniors on bikes, and many folks walking briskly while carrying coffee drinks.
One man was busily engaged in a dance with his tiny toy dog. The dog wore a blue wrapper. The man would pretend to charge at the dog, and the dog would wriggle deliriously at the fake fun.
I also saw garbage haulers, because it was garbage day here in outer Buckman. The Heiberg Garbage & Recycling truck was printed with a motto I had not noticed before:
Satisfaction guaranteed or Double your garbage back
Message hydrants
On Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard, fire hydrants guard messages.
Grease and grit
One to speed things up, One to make them slow. Which one should I choose? How am I to know? Of the two, I favor grit, Taking the hard way out. Grease is too easy; it’s messy, too. Leaving no room for doubt. Duct tape and WD-40, Another do-it duet One to make something greasy, The other more to glue it. Or change the tempo just a bit, Think of grease and grits, The all-American breakfast, All the food that fits.
Flower guardian
Rhodies are early this year. I like how the buds on these plants are pink before they flesh out in creamy white.
Remember the children’s song “Go Tell Aunt Rhody?” I got to wondering what sort of name Rhody was and whether it was short for something. Nope. Rhody is an Irish/English name with a connection to “rose.”
A jolt
Robert and I were celebrating my move home by visiting one of our favorite restaurants. As we got out of the car on Northeast Glisan Street, I heard a loud horn blast from a passing pickup truck. A man leaned out the passenger window and flipped a bird at the restaurant. He may have yelled an epithet, but I didn’t hear it.
The name of the restaurant may have ticked him off: Hanoi Kitchen. The owners have long endured frequent vandalism, broken windows and graffiti. I didn’t ask if they have considered a name change.
Instead, I consoled myself with a bowl of phó sam chay. The powerful vegan broth is loaded with ginseng and softened with rice noodles and plenty of vegetables. It cures what ails you.
Squares to contemplate
From phó to coffee
On my first wheelchair promenade down Hawthorne Boulevard after I moved home, I had adventures. I met a poet, a teen named Tara who sold me a poem about the Portland Timbers for a buck. She was raising money for her cap and gown rental. She told me which school she was graduating from, but I forget.
The poem is good, and I’d like to share it, but I didn’t get her contact information and I don’t have permission. It ends like this:
Good Luck Timbers, the team that is
the one that you can go to
McDonald’s and still get breakfast
at 7pm.On to coffee
I bought groceries at Fred Meyer, then had Robert drive over and pick them up. Meanwhile, I stopped for a pour-over at Tōv Coffee. The Egyptian business that started in a double-decker bus parked on Southeast 32nd, has moved into a storefront at 37th Avenue. It’s gaily decorated with bright and flowing fabrics, colorful rugs and inlaid furniture.
The coffee was from Columbia, where Jorge Rojas, a fourth-generation coffee grower, manages Finca El Jardin in Planadas, Tolima. It’s roasted here in Portland.
I could still taste that wonderful coffee the next morning—berries! chocolate!—so I went back for another cup. Then I bought a bag of beans.
Tōv makes a really fine cortado, too.
I wrote a poem for the barista.
The barista is Vanessa
Vanessa makes coffee with sweetness and verve, Caressing the beans with the love they deserve. Baklava, cortado, or mocha to go, But better is “for here,” taking it slow. Outside the windows, folks stroll in the sun. No one is rushing, the lifting is done. Now we have time to converse, have a drink, Read some palms, play the flute, or just kick back and think. It’s easy, Vanessa, to rush through the day. Getting and giving and making our way. Here, nothing else matters, the coffee is right. Toss out the grounds, and to all a good night.
Check out
I missed another day of writing exercise later this week. Unpacking is just too engrossing.
But seriously, folks, I have come to rely on those exercises. Twenty minutes at the keyboard, every day.
They have morphed in form and meaning over the years. Initially, I would do some word association and type “coffee coffee coffee” over and over when I couldn’t find other words to write. Most days, the words would coalesce into a little story, an entire mini plot. I have scores of them. I can’t explain it, but I am reluctant to post them in Fables and Legends, where they belong.
The exercises have a different texture now. I resist using them as a diary, a blow-by-blow of the previous day. I step back and step back and step back again, asking myself, “but how do you feel about that?”
I suspect I may have some depth. I’m using the exercise, Morning Pages, whatever you want to call them, to explore. It isn’t easy. It isn’t particularly hard, either.
It just is. It has to be. I need my morning writing.
And here is one final poem:
Fountain pen
I’ll have to wait for the ink to dry. The downside of fountain pens. But I love the way the ink flows. And, well, there’s the cachet. The ink is lovely, too. Refilling the pen is fun. But as a subject for a poem Fountain pens are a bust.
—30—
Housekeeping
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I'm glad your move went well, and I hope you are finding those priority boxes and places to put everything. The change in view for your writing space from then to now will yield all kinds of discoveries and observations, I'm sure. Orange fire hydrants! I'm charmed that you ran into a young poet selling her poems.....
So much to love about this entry, but for me, the rhododendrons take pride of place. Thank you Fran, Rob Stoltz