OreGone - Western Meadowlarking

Staying in different motels with varying success of 'free WiFi' has reeked havoc on my determination to blog less erratically this summer! Car and parents abandoned in SF after an eye feast of Pacific coast, this really is the first chance I've had to catch my breath. With Vietnamese iced coffee and pumpkin cream cheese muffin in hand, I appear to have found the Portland of San Francisco in a little cafe on Dolores in the Mission - just with less macs. And beards. And bikes. And rain. Yes. You can take the girl out of pdx but you can never take the pdx out of the girl (plus after an hour and a half walking girl needs a caffeine fix fo'sure!). I've been debating for the last ten minutes how creepy it would be to take a casual snap of this SF does pdx place!

Anyway, I digress! Our road trip turned into a beach/brewery tour of the coast and, as someone new to the wondrous world of microbreweries, Dad can take point on saying we sampled some seriously blinding beer. My liver will defs need a detox at some point. (Insert yolo here if, y'know, you buy into that kind of great shit).

I have to apologise for the lack of photos from now on. A) I'm trying to leave my camera in the bottom of my rucksuck and shutter with my mind instead and B) I gave the parentals my laptop and full photo uploading paraphernalia.

Crossing the Golden Gate bridge, we left our gold dusted tires and tried to relocate limbs that had become too used to being folded into themselves, (I'm sure they were legs once), to face the joys of a toilet Vesuvius and running around underwearless like hysterical kids in the Holiday Inn at 10pm. And of course, San Francisco take II. Swathed in this glorious Californian blue. And the touch of whisked sea foam that fogs golden gate grey.

I can't believe Renn Fayre was nearly a month and 672 miles (if we trust Google maps...) away. Not that I've not had a lush time along the 101, and am insanely excited to brunch it up with Tash across the bay tomorrow or get my Stetson on in Austin with Rich and Anais on Tuesday, it's just that Reed has already become hazed with dream shake. Did it happen? Was it real? The 4.0 GPA my transcript is telling me happened would definitely suggest otherwise!! (cheeky brag. I know I know I know). And trying to remember it all at once is like slicking water on hot tarmac. So I haven't been able to help, tucked under polyester folded sheets, the sound of Dad's snoring (chiming in occasionally with crashing wavesd, but more frequently garbage trucks) thinking about where the people I spent pretty much every day grabbing breakfast in commons or having a cheeky midweek beer with, surliving this surreal year with, are now - Naima  back home in Toronto, Anais LA, Rich NYC, Neil Boise, PL back in France, Sam Santa Fe.  I hope their adventures are magic.

Again, I digress. Butterfly fingers.
My $12 boots from redlight on Hawthorne are now caked with Seattle troll dust, sand shorn from trillium lake shores, Washington Park mud, flecked with sea lion cave crumbles, cannon beach caverns, bandon's sunset licked beach crumbs, redwood bark chipped from forest hue, sunglasses sloshed with more things that empty beautiful of it's inadequate meaning. These feet have wandered far. These eyes have shuttered much. Glutting on this Western gold soil. I'm banked for good. And I've only just begun.

(707)

(OreGone)

Redwood National Park, CA

(541)

(We at the Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn)

Grants Pass, OR

(541)

Bandon, OR

(For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night)

(503)

Cannon Beach, OR

(503)

Trillium Lake, OR

(503)

Japanese Gardens, Portland, OR

(503)

Downtown PDX, OR

(206)

Fremont Troll, Seattle, WA

(206)

The Harbor at Bainbridge Island, WA 

(206)

Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA

Reed Relieves

Can you tell? I've displaced talking about talking about leaving Reed with a stubborn silence. A reticent tongue tapped still. I'm not ready to slip away. Not yet. There will be time for talk later. But for now rushing feet unwind their way down the Oregon coastal highway. Seattle to SF. Keep racing mind tracked to other horse stampedes. We'll harness the fallout later. We'll open the letter spilling aches to my stomach and figure it out in internet spun syllabary. Later. I took to pen to keep the ink sweat in check for now. We'll translate it once the magic begins to creep in and paint D.R.E.A.M over dust.

[Renn Fayre&] Steady as the morning and just go

Crack out some MGMT - it's time for a metaphorical photo montage.

If I could still the last three days and spin it on a loop forever I would never be sad again.

'true story' ('ashtag Anais)

Honestly? There just aren't words. If there were, I would net them so tightly and never let them breathe. Because. Magic is real.

It's in Reed's lips, Naima's camera shutter mind, Anais's joyous laugh, Rich's banging synchronized dance moves, Sam's music breath, there-will-always-be-something-about Pierre-Louis' accent, Charlie's perpetual tiredness, Neil's brummy fringe ponytail.

Did you know we were strangers once?

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Sunshine sparks from our spokes

as we return to the beginning of the circle. O week on repeat as we come to the close. Seeing the same people then now with altered eyes. Theirs and mine I expect. It's hard to track sight on laptop screens, to concentrate on anything other than the freckles beginning to blossom on my back, soft grass between toes, iced Snapple, drums beating out there somewhere, counting seconds with the people who tick the same clock clicks, and the promise of Renn Fayre. RennFayreRennFayreRenFayreRennFayre. This place has licked my little soul clean. I mean it. And I am determined to make the most of my last two weeks, yes, there are McQueen essays to write and short stories to plumb, but to stretch my smile wide, let my newly plumbed heart bloom in the spice that sweetens summer is more important. Maybe the sun has made me delirious. Probably. But there is something gorgeous in seeping up as much lightness before I leave. I mean, not that it could ever leave me. But two weeks until it kisses my hand and waves my body away down the West Coast, Yosemite, Texas, Arizona, New York, Toronto, Reykjavik, on... on... on...
I'm procrastinating...