Loren, and the deep weirdness of Portland, OR

I left work, got in the car, turned up the heat. Stopped at Whole Foods and spent $59 on sushi, beer, incense, an organic squash and head of garlic. Caught myself chewing the hair that grows beneath my lip driving home, thinking through work scenarios from emails I read at the traffic light, glad for the flexibility as a contractor I can just come and go…pictured myself getting home and changing, lighting a stick of incense, lying on the sofa. I closed the windows and turned up the heat, put Bach on Spotify and dreamt about fall. Felt it coming on, fantasized about it the way I do at summer’s end when I’m sick of all the light and need an edge to things again, the coming dead.

I went back to my book The Snow Leopard to try to awaken myself again and feel, to feel some inspiration to write, which I rely on from the best books. The author was on the edge of a snow bowl in the Himalayas at risk of getting snowed in, the pass closed behind him with no way to get back, all this in pursuit of a rarely seen wild animal, to learn more about its habitat, and what human folly is that: what beauty and recklessness in humanity.

I got a text from Loren wanting to talk about his favorite songs from a new record out, took my sweater off, it was just me and my wife beater now, the dog and cat and a whiskey, the rain coming on, starting to animate the rose bushes and limbs outside—and I went out in it and stood on the edge so I could get a little wet and smell it, wondered why I couldn’t feel it yet, the desire to write, and knew I’d be better off without a drink, but wondered at that too—if the goal was to feel less, and therein the appeal.

Categories: music, writing

Tags: confessional poetry, humor, Memoir, new Slowdive, Peter Matthiessen, Slowdive, Sugar for the pill, The Snow Leopard, William Pearse writer, writers block