The Bleeding Heart Show

Exactly where we're from

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 03:05:00 +0000

I have a (not so) secret love for Dashboard Confessional. I don't know what it is, but somehow the lyrics and pleading melodies make me feel like an adolescent boy with a pining heart. I guess I dig the nearly impossible feeling I get listening to "Hands Down" or "So Long, So Long." Oh well. There we are. I won't ever call it a guilty pleasure, because, frankly, I don't feel guilty for saying that out loud. Just wanted to clear the air. Oh, I also watch soap operas (I like to call'em stories) and love Cheetos. Maybe people should throw everything they know about me out the proverbial window, or hell, throw it out a literal window.

Sigh. I promised myself I'd get back to writing, so for now, this place will once again be my dumping ground. I hate to say it will be a diary or journal, but until I figure out something decent to write about, it's gonna be the brain drain.

What's the update here? Job's good and emotionally exhausting much of the time, baking has slowed way down, I still listen to sad bastard music pretty much every day, and I actually read one of those Swedish Girl Who Did the Thing with the Thing books. Who knew financial journalism could be intriguing?

While my time in the South has been life-altering in the best ways (I feel content with being a Southern girl and I finally feel...cool.), the West tugs at my innermost self, the part of my heart or soul or guts or some unnamed something that grounds me. I'm beginning to lose my footing here and this time I feel like I'm choosing it. Last time the world turned upside down was because I felt loss and my grief overtook me, shoving me face first into the muck of myself. This time around, though, I feel ready to face whatever is around the corner. Perhaps it's just a stone's thrown from the Ssip, perhaps it's time to bathe in the Pacific again, but whatever it is, I'm wrapped up in its embrace already.

A fraction of the sum

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 22:13:00 +0000

Holy Moses! I've ignored you, blogosphere. I have a great reason, though. It's because I was busy changing the world and making y'all some cupcakes. Don't be mad. I'm not. In fact, I'm probably happier and more at peace than ever in my personal history.

I revisited my post from last February and was a little shocked at how twitterpated I was with the Ssip then. I know I was in transition mode still and my system was repariring itself with cookie- and friend-making. I totally forgot how at peace I was beginning to feel then with my decision to be back in this forgotten homeland.

It's the end of another calendar year and the end of another decade. In this decade, I graduated from college, wrote an important paper, was published in two very different forums, have had three life-changing jobs, deferred grad school, moved cross-country twice, lost bare skin, interviewed one of my rock idols, and drank a crap ton of coffee. I feel like I should make a full list or something, something that reflects all the goodness that was. Instead of the usual list of annotated thoughts, here's a list of cool stuff for which I am thankful:

1. Seconds & Decades
2. Miss Jackson (if you're nasty)
3. K$
4. The Job
5. Pedro Noguera
6. MS Safe Schools Coalition
7. Paste
8. The band that reminded me of pure JOY
9. Gifted opportunities by an urban family
10. TBD (two weeks left in 2009)

Anyway, live hard and be brave.

Letter from an occupant

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:01:00 +0000

Dear Monday,

I hate you and your stupid rainy face. However, you give me an excuse to listen to sad bastard music from my adolescence, so maybe I just dislike you a lot. A lot.

Also, Dolores O'Riordan, I miss you and all your Cranberries. Perhaps y'all can reunite and call up Frente for a private concert on my porch. I promise to make cupcakes.

Xoxo,
Neola

I'm the pretender and not what I'm supposed to be

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 03:42:00 +0000

Dear Everyone,

I miss this girl like a lost limb. Please advise.

xoxo,
me

The soundtrack of evolution

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Mon, 11 May 2009 02:27:00 +0000

I forgot how refreshing it can be to revisit the tones that tickled your ears at some point before. When life gave me lemons, I scoffed at that lemonade thing and instead dug out old mix tapes, the tunes from lifetimes ago. It's so funny to remember what each person was telling me via musical conversation; there were glad hearts, heartbreaks, frustrations, ecstatic exclamations of true love, sincere wishes for a happy future, recollection of things and moments past. It has been like reliving five years' worth of hopes and dreams from other people, but being able to connect to each thought in my own time and space. Remember when I was SO emo?

Now I've gotten a new mix from a mostly new friend and the sounds are that of something awesome and promising. There are unfamiliar beats, lyrical dances and a funky vibe that is going to saturate me through and through. I plan on making this year get better and better. I wholly subscribe to the belief that we each make the future what we want it to be and I'm living that day by day.

The near future holds something really awesome: the new job is going great and I feel good every day going to work knowing that I am positively affecting the lives of several thousand kiddos in the metropolitan area; a non-work project that has been in my imagination for a few years is finally getting off the ground and in the process, I am learning a lot about sound recording and music production; my writing path is being decided for me as I go along and truthfully, I really dig it. Maybe one day I really will become the female Chuck Klosterman that I believe I can be. Until then, the future is bright and music is going to continue to rule that future.

I feel like a broken record, but thank God/Moses/Universe/Stinky Cheese Man for mix tapes for making me get my ass in gear.

There are maybe ten or twelve things I could teach you. . .

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 05:53:00 +0000

B posted this on her blog and I'd like to share it as well.

Ian McEwan, in this week's New Yorker:
"McEwan said that he never rushes from notebook to novel. 'You've got to feel that it's not just some conceit,' he said. 'It's got to be inside you. I'm very cautious about starting anything without letting time go, and feeling it's got to come out. I'm quite good at not writing. Some people are tied to five hundred words a day, six days a week. I'm a hesitater.'"

We're half awake in a fake empire

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 22:36:00 +0000

listening: The National, "Fake Empire"

This has truly been a long absence from the blogosphere for me, but I've been doing a lot of thinking and doing and frankly, too much baking. The pursuit of just one of my dream jobs has kept me busier and much more exhausted than I'd anticipated, but it has been an unforgettable experience nonetheless.

The only reason I came here today to deposit my thoughts is that I've been listening to mix tapes lately, old and new, desperately remembering what I was trying to say, what someone else said to me and have been reflecting on friendships, failed relationships, new relationships. I've been in the Ssip now for several months and originally only planned to be here for a short term life, eight to nine months at most, before moving on to the next destination. And then I became nauseated from all the moving and realized I need some stasis.

This is a vastly different feeling than what I had a few months ago. Back in December, I could have sold off nearly everything just to go back to Portland. Granted, there are days I want to go back and those are the days I get stuck listening to mixes MJ made for me. Those are the days that all I want to do is dance with her and cook with her and holler at people on bicycles with her. Today suddenly became one of those days because every time I hear "Fake Empire," I think of her. In a minute, I'll move on to another song, but I'll still miss her.

All of that being said, I also had a really great couple of weeks that remind me of what I adore about being in Jackson and ease the heartache. I've had walks and talks and group television watching and Vagina Monologues and gym buddies and now, new mixes. The new mixes are hopeful and full of excitement, something that the mixes from 2008 didn't have. Those mixes were simply content and slightly shallow. These are made of motion, but this motion, while forward, keeps me in orbit here and now, just where I want to be.

I was a dancer all along

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:15:00 +0000

My very great and best friend, Casey Parks, introduced me to this video of Lykke Li and Bon Iver The song is called "Dance Dance Dance." I believe it is a nearly perfect way to usher in a brand new year. Here's to you, 2009:

After the procession no one dared to make a sound

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 04:12:00 +0000

Listening: The Essex Green, "Rue De Lis"

It is imperative that you do something good for yourself. My suggestion for today is that you visit the new (old) blog of my very great friend and dear heart, Casey Parks. She is moving in ways that make me proud to know her and be called her friend. She is breaking down our walls, word by word:

http://caseyinpictures.blogspot.com/2008/10/sonic-sharing.html

This particular entry takes you to a file to which you will listen and perhaps be inspired or heartbroken or moved or still in just a moment. It is the recording of many different people reciting from a broken book. It is the collection of all of us as "I Was So Sad" by David Lerner. Casey introduced me to this book some five years ago when we were just beginning and were attempting to feel out how each other was about words.

The collection of poems was one of the biggest reasons I felt us to be kindred and now she has made leaps and bounds in her personal art and journey to make something even bigger out of a mountain of emotion.

Listen.

So, So, So, So Listen Up 'Cause You Can't Say Nothin'

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:42:00 +0000

listening: Beastie Boys, "Sabotage" (yes, really)

So, I had this great entry planned out about the VP debate last night, but my friend Ben said it so much better than I could.

My one statement is this:
When did American become so completely ignorant and stupid to not realize that SARAH PALIN HAS YET TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT ANYTHING BUT ENERGY.

That said, go read Dorfman's excellent commentary at Deep Chrome Canyons.

And the complications you could do without

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:45:00 +0000

listening: Sufjan Stevens, "Casimir Pulaski Day"

I just found out that my favorite bakery in Jackson has a job opening.

Anyway, I made it safely to Austin and K$ and I proceeded to enjoy ACL without the intense heat that plagued us in 2004. I'm still blowing dust out of my face as it's always too dry, but we had a great, relaxing time.

Here's the list of who we saw/heard, as I'm sure you're dying to know:

The Swell Season (shut it. They're sweet pop ballads and I like them.)
Alejandro Escovedo
CSS
Man Man
Erykah Badu (Lady put two tuning forks in her hair and hollered about New Amerykah in 7-in heels)
MGMT (barely as I swear there were 11 billion people crammed into a tiny space.)
Conor Oberst
Iron & Wine
Beck (Easily in the top 3 of the weekend. We sang along to "Loser" with 30K+ people.)
Gillian Welch
Stars
Neko Case (New music! It's really good! She still didn't marry me!)
Okkervil River
Heartless Bastards
Blues Traveler
Gnarls Barkley (Cee Lo has some damn pipes on him. "Gone Daddy Gone" along with the cover of Radiohead's "Reckoner" were the highlights.)
Band of Horses (They were really cute at being amazed the number of people present.)
Foo Fighters (I need a new face. They rocked mine off.)

Hello beautiful thing, maybe you could save my life

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:19:00 +0000

listening: Bruce Springsteen, "Girls In Their Summer Clothes"

I've been back in Mississippi for nearly two weeks now, making hard decisions about the next eight months and desperately refraining from making plans any further than June. I leave at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning to drive the ten hours to Austin. Thank goodness I replaced my ipod before I ever left Oregon as I'll be making this drive by myself.

Once upon a time I was a 21 year old kiddo with some time to burn and a break from school, so I hopped in the car (the same one I have now) armed with cds (although I think my music taste then was still a bit questionable) and the little money I'd made from working at the coffee bar. I gladly drove those ten hours by myself just to spend a couple of days in a city that felt so warm and right to me. I wonder what happened to me that now I cringe at the thought of spending that time in the car rather than relishing the freedom to do so.

So the big news is that I'll be in Austin for the month of October (hearing a load of lovely music at ACL this weekend and Weezer on the 20th) and then returning to Jackson til my departure again in June. I went to to my grandparents' house today to have lunch and visit and my goodness, my grandfather has aged in the past 3 weeks since I saw him last. Maybe if you wonder why I'm coming back to Jackson rather than sticking up for myself in Austin, that might be a clue.

I'm still composing the entries for my two weeks on the East coast, but here's a preview of what I did with all that time:

yesterday don't matter if it's gone

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:47:00 +0000

listening: franco battiato's cover of "ruby tuesday"

I am about to leave for two weeks on various couches and in guest rooms on the East Coast. First I fly to Atlanta to see Ben & Amanda (and hopefully catch up with C's friends J&S). After spending Labor Day weekend with them, I will board a train to Charlotte, NC, where I will finally get to see my two loves Jolene and Mister A for longer than a meal. I will stay to harass them for about a week before taking another train to Washington, D.C. where I will commune with various friends from college and the museum and another, more recent friend. I'll also be saying hello to Mister Jefferson and keeping my ears open for response from the public school system. There is fantastic article in the DNC edition of Newsweek about the new chancellor taking on the teachers' unions. The nerd in me is stoked to see what happens.

To leave all three of my readers with a pleasant image, this is the pecan tree under which I spent naps when I was a little girl, sitting in a hammock until the ropes pressed into my skin. Unfortunately, after being struck by lightning many times and showing signs of dying, it either has to be cut down or it will fall on the house. House wins. House always wins.

We should be stars and perfect tens

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:46:00 +0000

Listening: AC Newman, "Come Crash"

I'm learning about my family these days via pictures.

This is Mamaw:

This is my Papaw:

This is Clodmore, my dad:

This is my mom and her brother, Terry:

Sisters, all 3:

driving your mom's cargo van

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 04:50:00 +0000

listening: the avett brothers

today is my birthday! well, for a few more minutes it is. also, for those of you not in the know just yet, i have a travel blog set up to document my cross-country moving. i think, also, that i'm going to expand it to include my 3 weeks of East Coast touring, the month(s) I go to Austin and whatever comes after that.

go visit and leave some love:

http://movingmymemory.blogspot.com

to my sister on her birthday

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:30:00 +0000

Happy Birthday, K$!!!

May your day be filled with love and hot, scantily clad men.

It's never quiet as it seems, 'cause you're a dream to me

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 07:27:00 +0000

Listening: The Cranberries, "Dreams"

These arms belong to Casey. There have been a lot of days lately when I wonder what it will be like to be without her in my immediate environment. I try hard not to have those days. Unfortunately, moving will make this a reality for both of us. I really do believe that one day soon she and I will share the same city again, barreling down unfamiliar streets, discovering more "Little Saigons," learning more Jay-Z lyrics, fretting over what to cook for pot luck dinners. Casey has been the constant in my life since arriving in Portland. We separately planned to move here and somehow ended up here on the same day. Since January 1st, 2007, my life has changed for the better. I have learned so much about having adult friendships and it's due to my relationship with her. I have learned how to unabashedly say "I love you" and enjoy the embraces, the joyful grins shared over pretty drinks.

Friendship isn't the only gift Casey has given me. She's also shown me new ways to look at the world around me. While we both work in jobs that focus on education, we have different perspectives, a varying scope. Casey charges into the world with a roar, photographing, writing, reporting: this is the world to which you should focus your attention. She is going to shake the journalism world up more than she already has. Casey made a magnificent impact on the readership of the New York Times with her reporting from Africa. Rather than present yet another story full of anonymous statistics and incomprehensible disease names, Casey gave us heart, she showed us the people by relaying the plight of a woman named Prudence. Now she pours her heart and soul into stories about teenagers in Oregon, the entrepreneurs of their generation, the artists to watch and learn from, the struggles we forget about as adults outside their world.

I cannot wait to see the roads she'll take us on.
She's amazing and kind and so, so lovely. (thank you, thank you, thank you)
I'm so blessed to call her my B.

Watch her jumpstart.

Something's unguided in the sky tonight

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:06:00 +0000

This is a bittersweet time for me right now. I leave in a little over a week from a home I've built in the Pacific Northwest for the road...I've written enough over the past weeks. How about another mix? I believe this one reflects all parts of my time here and my time to come:

everyone else is doing it, so why can we?

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 02:32:00 +0000

Everyone in my blogging world has been making these little mix tapes, so I, of course, jumped on the band wagon. My mix is sad, gets sadder and then suddenly you might want to dance your face off.

EDIT: I decided to dance a lot lately, so I changed the mix to reflect the title. Out with the sad and in with the joy!

Enjoy the dancing around.

Til I see you around, til we clear the accounts

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:20:00 +0000

I have this problem.

I keep the New Pornographers' song "Challengers" on repeat. I think it is a testament to Carl Newman's songwriting abilities that this song has kept me so engaged. It's such a beautiful letter for "Hi. I like you, but....maybe later?"

And this whole discussion that will lead to my amazement at how Neko Case's face reflects the hopeful sadness in the video, etc, is actually a distraction keep me from talking about the real reason for this post.

I quit my job Monday.
I gave notice to my landlord this evening.

This move is really happening. Meditating on this the past few days, I've seen Portland in a new light. My eyes are not mine recently, or maybe they are and are irrevocably changed. While I'm looking forward to seeing family and friends, welcoming the touch of humidity to my face and hearing the familiar music of the Southern accent(s), I am feeling fiercely loyal to my current city, my Portland.

I have been making a mental list of things I will miss, what I will not miss, things I never experienced here. The first list seems to be the longest: regular recycling, bike lanes, Cacao, happy hours with my coworkers/friends, my housemates, my B, Mount St. Helens' silhouette, La Bonita, dance nights, the Skidmore Bluffs. . .

It will be interesting to surf couches and cities and embrace a new life on the road (for a time). I wonder if I'll find anything to replace these things (never B or other B). Ha! I talk so much about feeling unsettled and needing "home," and here I go making the road my home.

Old habits die hard when you've got a sentimental heart

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:12:00 +0000

Listening: She & Him, "Sentimental Heart"

After a few failed tries at syncing our busy schedules, I finally got to meet Mister Abe. I met Lori and the Boy at the Tin Shed for brunch this past Sunday. While we had to wait for about an hour in a chilly morning to be seated, we finally got a table and settled into scrambles, grits and biscuits. I got to see a lot of his personality while we waited in the form of some of those delightful faces only babies can make (and this baby takes the whole cake) and his changing moods. A sleepy face gave way to half smiles and determination to squirm out of arms.

This was exactly what I needed, a smiling and hilarious baby. This amazing creature (Lori and Ted know they've hit the jackpot with this kiddo) reminded me of the goodness in this world, the happiness and glowing warmth that exists. What Lori didn't know going into this breakfast date (or even leaving it) was that my family suffered a tragic death this past week. The death alone is enough to cast a wide gray cloud over anyone, but the nature of it suppressed any smiles and joy we had left. I've been conflicted and confused in my grief, but I will say that seeing that slight dimple in the Boy's left cheek brightened me for days and days.

Lori and I talked a lot through our two hours together (a boy needs his sleep in his mama's lap, after all) about community and how that community can become your family. This past week for me has been frustrating in addition to being grievous. I immediately looked for plane tickets to go to Mississippi and was constantly on the phone with K$, trying to figure out a million different travel plans. Time and cost ended up hindering my attempts to get to Jackson, to embrace my parents and help where I can. It has been so infuriating to be so far away and feel helpless about the entire situation. I don't know how to handle this grief really. What I needed was my family, to see their faces. My friends here have asked what I need, offering to take me out for drinks (and my housemates cried with me over a 6-pack of Mothership Wit), hug me, love me.

When I've needed to be with my family most, I realize that some of that family is here. They are here and I need them. They are willing and able to hold me up and for that, I am truthfully and wholly thankful. This brings me back to sitting with Lori and Abe. The image is burned in my mind of a slack-mouthed baby boy sleeping soundly against his mother's form. It was enough to remind me how family grows just as theirs did, a mother and a father gaining a son, a son gaining parents. It reminded me of how family evolves, how the meaning of "family" changes over time. My heart, in its shroud of grief and conflict right now, is glad to remember that.

and I wanted in your storm so bad/I could taste the lightning on your breath

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 22:20:00 +0000

Listening: songs:ohia, "Coxcomb Red"

Once upon a time I found a lot of joy in writing about music. I feel like my approach to reviewing or talking about music should be about the experience one feels in listening. I think that I have, in the past, done a pretty great job of relaying what I personally experience in listening, e.g. reactions to lyrics, emotional surges from strums or feeling the toms on my eardrums via headphones. While I appreciate music writers who feel it more necessary to express their thoughts on the mechanics of music and comment on production value, it's not my scene.

That being said, I have committed ten minutes of each weekday to writing specifically about an album, a song, an artist. I've asked a great friend, an accomplished music writer whom I greatly admire, to accompany me in this experiment. The idea is ten minutes a day for five days will get the beginning of something, even a profile. The weekend is for editing and emailing to each other, as we're on opposite coasts right now, and then critiquing, making suggestions and then onward for more. I am putting all of this here because I'll need a reminder of the solid commitment I need to make to improve. Also, the fruits of that labor will then have a home here.

My first attempts will be with:
Essie Jain: We Made This Ourselves
She & Him: Volume One
The Mountain Goats: Heretic Pride (way overdue, of course)
Yeasayer: All Hour Cymbals
Grand Archives: Grand Archives

I rest my head on a pillowy star and a cracked-door moon that says I haven't gone too far

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 19:05:00 +0000

Listening: Wilco, "Via Chicago" (Thanks, Jeff Tweedy, for the subject title)

I'm still stuck on the ideas of "home" and returning South after being way up here in the Pacific Northwest and what all of this means, etc. So, bear with me, it's what I'll be writing about quite a bit with breaks in between to review things like The Mountains Goats' Heretic Pride (waaaaaaaay overdue), The Master Butchers Singing Club, talk about new projects like the review writing exchange. There won't always be such heavy talk here.

When I left Mississippi I knew in my heart of hearts (what does that expression mean anyway?) that I was doing exactly the right thing at the exact right moment in my life to pick up and move so far away. I needed space and time to sort my thoughts, to start my life again after surviving a broken heart, to challenge myself. I've always been at ease in social situations, but the thought of starting all over again, building community in a place I'd never been (truth be told now: I'd never set a foot in Portland, Oregon, before I arrived here last January) truly frightened me and in the outcome, made me more self-aware and confident.

Fast forwarding through the last year+, I've managed to gather some kind of surrogate and wonder family. After a hiccup of a try at living with my landlord, I moved into a yellow house with two soon-to-be great friends. I found a home with them: community dinners, dancing in the kitchen, having kitty friends and learning to chase chickens. I've spent time with this amazing lady (and her equally amazing and hilarious husband) and will be fortunate to meet their son, for whom they've fought so hard these past few months. I found something of a soulmate (as much as I don't know what I think about such things, I do think that souls recognize each other, a la Plato, but that's another entry altogether) in a lady who moved here when I did, independently of me. She has become a favorite fixture in my life and it will surely shatter my heart the day I leave her here. I found a job I really love and has helped me learn more about what my life's work will be. I made great friends at that job, exploring the city's many happy hours through laughter and sharing of lives with them.

And now I am choosing to leave this all behind.

I knew when I moved to Portland that it would be a tenuous existence and that something else would propel me forward again. For all the reasons I could move back to Mississippi (admirers, Eudora Welty, my family, the way the Delta feels to my skin, 930), there are a million reasons why I cannot and should not right now. I have more to find out about this great big world and as a child I'd dream of seeing what else is out there. I know that I need to be back in the South, if for nothing else than to get a refill on the hopes and dreams that only Southern air can inspire. I hope that a stay in Austin will soothe my need to know about living in Texas, the romanticized version inspired in my childhood by reading and watching Lonesome Dove. My next stop will be North Carolina to see if I can wrangle a teaching job in Charlotte, where two of my other life's loves live currently. Maybe one day Mississippi will be in the cards for me. I will spend time with M&P, pay visits to gravesites, bask in sunshine and then say goodbye. I think right now it would take something catastrophic to get me to plant my feet back there. I have a lot of love and fierce adoration in my heart for the Ssip, but there's more out there. There will be a lot of travel and moving and shifting in the next six or so months, but it comes down to this:

Some people find stability in staying in one place for decades, content with stasis. Today, my stability comes in the form of momentum, changing my orbit, always moving forward even with a few steps back.

Muppet Love

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:04:00 +0000

When I left my house today it was just a sprinkle and quite colder than it has been the last two days. By the time I got off my bus to walk nine blocks to my office, I was drenched, punched in the face by a sudden downpour. Anyway, I feel like the Muppets always help a down day. Perhaps you think so, too?

The Way We Get By

noreply@blogger.com (neola) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:52:00 +0000

Tomorrow evening, K$ will arrive in Portland. I have missed my sister in a million different ways since I left Jackson (and then she returned to Jackson after graciously tagging along on the Road Trip of the Century) last December. I think about what it will be like for her to be here, my temporary home. I think about if she'll like the things I like about Portland. I wonder if she'll fall in love with it like I did or have her own affair with this magical rainy place. I will show her every wonder I've discovered and hope that she'll have secrets of her own, bridges she adores or neighborhoods that she'll wonder about living in.

I think about leaving this place to return South soon. I will miss so many pieces of it--the strangely named parks (I live half a mile from Unthank Park), seeing toys chained to the old rings used to anchor horses, the sweaty Soul night at Rotture, my daily bus/MAX commute downtown and all of the characters that accompany that trip, seeing Mount St. Helens from my 9th floor office.

The piece I will miss most is the family I have gathered here. I finally found a semblance of home in a person that is not my given family and she will stay here for the foreseeable future. It really is nearly unbearable to think about leaving a piece of your soul or some other intangible organ behind you in your wake. My blood screams to return to the South, to douse my skin in humidity and heat again, but my heart will break.

home.

And I'm still chasing it. I need a place to hang my proverbial hat. A place, a place where I don't feel the stranger and feel the need to change drastically so that I might finally be genuinely and wholly happy here. I've found some semblance of happiness and I think being in Portland has helped me get there, but it's not Portland that made it. I think it was more along the lines of "not the destination, but the journey" idea.

So now I'm going to prepare to scream and push my way back.Really it will be a gliding ride to the homeland. For all of the faults the South carries, at least they make better biscuits there than what I had Saturday morning!