Squirrels: friends or foes…

Portland was a lot of fun. I have been more than a little down in the spirits department of late and was in much need of experiencing something beautiful, luckily that is just what I did. Walking the halls of the old Kennedy School although benign to many, I am sure, was- uplifting. The architecture, the artwork, the faint signs of disrepair, those physical ghosts that have enchanted me over space and time. I want something that was so important to someone or many who have passed on, I feel like I have always longed for this. I suppose that is why in recent years I have rejected the supernatural, I do hate disappointment.

It rained, I felt steeped from the moisture. I sat in the honors bar with friends and lovers sipping cocoa, the antique fireplace emitting a dangerous amount of heat. Not a detail untouched in this place even the pipes were adorned with portraits of historical figures. It is funny how everything is smaller in person. Later that evening curled up on a red velvet sofa in an auditorium converted into a theatre, we eat veggie pizza, my zebra clad toes wiggling in anticipation as we wait for the show to begin. She tells me that when they officially closed the school all the power was turned off and the clocks froze in time. I look up, "but when they reopened despite cutting power to the clocks themselves it still seeps through slowly churning out minutes over the last several years." I nod and feel a glowing, as I completely relate to that feeling.

I search the map of all the rooms, all different, all given to guests at random. We are in the tea party room, which to those who know the tale as well as my own fascinations is hilarious and nearly fateful {if you dig that sort of thing}. There is no tele and a chalkboard that covers most the wall, I have to tell you this feels most liberating. Not that the tele is quite so tempting but that it makes it much easier to be un-ambitious.

In the car on the way over I read water for elephants, even now I have only a few pages to go. I cry when it is sad, when it is beautiful, I read passages out loud to David as he drives. I look up, take in the scene and make mental notes on the general area as we pass, so quickly. I know when we are close to my family because the land loses color and becomes irritatingly flat. I know we are close to our home when the trees and water join space, the road elevating. I know what bathrooms are cleanest. I know what markets are best stocked, as though I have spent too much time driving and I lament on what it must be like to take the train.