Day 375

hey thanks for checking out the blog if you're doing it for the first time after we may have met earlier tonight at the show. stay in touch.

i've got to admit that i've flaked on sharing anything real for the past couple days. you might have noticed that. now after today i'm not sure i'll be able to make much sense of some important things but i'm going to try right now.

i'd never expected to feel anything major when the time to leave portland would have come but now that i'm riding north on a dark highway 5 i find that i have something that feels like a small furry creature that's burrowing down at the base of my throat. actually it's not that bad. parker, friend robert, and i are heading to parker's parents to do a couple days' concrete work for his dad.

but portland had long ago been a place in my mind that had seemed attractive because of what i'd read and heard from other people's distant and exciting lives. after settling into town few weeks ago i was confused by the incoherency of identity that i thought i noticed with people. but now that i'm leaving i feel like i've come to understand this collection of 'non-portlanders' in a totally different and foreign and familiar way than i ever had ever imagined a community could function. now i'm suddenly surprised to be pushing out from within a place that had such strange and distant priority to me so long ago. i've really grown to love the guys at the clinton house and the group of friends and the coffee shops and books and church and especially my blue one-speed cruiser bike, adele, with whom i had to break up with this afternoon. i won't go into detail but i can't say that she saw it coming and i thought she seemed particularly blue in her new, dark corner of the basement. i'm reminded of all these things as the green highway signs count down the miles to seattle.

''maybe it's a sign that portland is the place for you,'' parker says and we play bon iver on the cd player and shoot through alternating patches of yellow light and black darkness in the flow of red tail lights.

noah gundersen and a couple other bands were in town and played a gig at our house tonight. we've left right after the bands loaded their gear into their van.

i'll edit this tomorrow. i'm looking forward to processing things during labor work the next couple days.