Scapegoats

First, I will blame the Internet connection in this apartment. And then laziness. And then indecisiveness. And then I will go ahead and post after a bit of a hiatus.

Everything has been moving along as it should as October comes to a close. It's been a good, razor-less month.There were leaves that turned from green to many other colors. The introduction of cold weather, and the introduction of my spiffy Recuperative Care Program winter jacket. Patients coming and going. New flooring. A filing rack. More rhyming words of wisdom from the man who sits in his wheelchair outside of our building. The intentional purchasing of bike supplies. A long wait for a bus that never came, followed by a whiney phone call to Morris house, requesting a ride home. Several examples of how wonderful it is to be brought out of crankiness, and how that can happen in so many ways.

I tried to post this on Sunday, and I failed, so I will post it now:

I woke up this morning wanting a pumpkin. Not just a pumpkin, but the experience of getting a pumpkin--the mud, the farm, the hot chocolate, my inability to wear socks that are warm enough. It's fall, and the leaves are beginning to fall in heaps on the sidewalk. I love this time of the year, the peak of the season, the last hurrah of beauty and color before the bare (or maybe this time rainy) winter rolls in. And as the leaves fall I've felt more and more pressure to take action--to hike around, take a hay ride, claim a pumpkin. And as the weeks go on, I find myself accomplishing none of these tasks. No hiking. No camping. No cider. No large cow standing behind the barb wired fence, or the tour guide that isn't at all disgusted with the smell of manure. Just me, and my hopes, and my inability to make them happen.

Today, I had it. The determination, the bus route, an enthusiastic housemate to accompany me on the quest. We took off around 1:30 without having to wait very long for trimet. And when we made it downtown I knew exactly how to get to the connecting stop. The bus came, the driver opened the door, and when I asked if the bus would take us to Sauvie Island, he said no, no bus would be going there today. He shut the door. We let go of our smiles as the reality sunk in. No pumpkins.

So instead went to the only other place that we know exactly how to get to by bus: Mt. Tabor. We arrived, to a lot of stairs, that we'd conveniently forgot existed. We climbed. It was damp out by then, but a pleasant dampness, and a thin steak of clouds and a sliver of yellow light above the city. I realized, once again, how much I love the sky here. How colorful it is, even at 2:30 in the afternoon. For the first time all weekend, I felt present to the place I was in, the conversation, the people walking their dogs near by.

(And that's all. Going to sleep. Happy Halloween.)

Pictures

"You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."

Mary Oliver

I'm not a photographer. But I've taken my camera out occasionally, because I have it so I may as well use it, and store images on my computer, just to have. When I'm in a new place or had a bit to drink. To print out and slide under plastic pages of a decorated photo album.

So this one is from Seattle, where we went more than a month ago and stayed with Leslie Phillip's parents in the house she grew up in. The first morning we took a walk around her neighborhood, next to Lake Washington, without a clear destination or goal except to get some air. It was lovely, even in the haze, and when we turned around to go home I saw these geese. There were lots of them, perched along the grass. They were attentive. And I guess, for some reason, I wanted to remember them.

There are a lot of books in our house. Mostly about social justice, written my nuns and Jesuits about their experiences in small villages in central America. Jonathan Kozol's Ordinary Resurrections, Edward Hays's Prayers for the Domestic Church. All good. All pertinent. All very wise. And all things that I'm not very motivated to read on a Sunday late morning while curled up on the couch.

But in my room, I found an anthology called Earth Prayers. There are poems about loving the ground, praising large turtles, escaping your ego while in the forest. And then, there is a poem about Geese, by Mary Oliver. Which I have read everyday since I've discovered it. And has brought me back to the moment in Seattle, as I observed the consolidated force, before going on my way with my new pack of people.

There is something motivating in her words, that gave me small reassurance of what it is to be an individual while living in community, to keep your own self and your own needs, and be at peace with the fact that they will be different from others. I guess it's possible to act together, to create a life for a year in a random house in the middle of northeast Portland, and a little harder to claim exactly what that should look like.

Lunch breaks.

I've been slacking a bit with this blog. Which only makes me want to slack more... and be more indecisive about exactly what I want write about.

I decided to go to lunch early yesterday, before serving the leftovers from the elementary school to the patients. It was Friday, and Nic (my supervisor) was out of the office and like most days, around 11:30, I decided I needed a break. From the front desk, the beeping fax machine, the drives around the block in the red van to pick up patients. So I zipped my backpack and filled my water bottle and headed to Pioneer Square. Have I talked about the square yet? Across from the courthouse? The bricks, the water fountain, the Starbucks without a bathroom? The canvassers for international children's foundations lurking on every corner, who I politely (and somewhat self righteously) inform that I am already volunteering and only making $80 a month so will not be able to contribute financially, but approve and support of their cause? Pioneer square is 4 or so blocks south from where I work, that resembles a small brick stadium with nothing organized to look at. But most days, there are surprises--people spreading the word of Jesus to the disinterested crowd of professional twenty somethings eating their chinese noodles from environmentally friendly to-go boxes, a sun burnt man strumming on his guitar, field trips of third graders trading their potato chips, and festivals covering every heritage and every cause. I guess what I like about all of it is that I don't have to participate in any of the festivities. Friday was domestic abuse awareness week. There were fliers, and free coffee, and extra doughnuts. And I could be in another world without anyone asking for me.

This is what I like about being in a city, and what I like about working in the downtown area, that there is always something else going on. No matter how much I feel like I'm losing control of my responsibilities, how late I am to appointments, how frustrated I am with clients, or how frustrated they are with me--everything around us keeps going. The max rolls in and out, people sit on the brick steps eating their burritos, the fountain keeps running. It's a reminder, or an invitation to keep yourself open when you feel like everything is closing in on you.

So it was a good hour. Which may have had something to do with the free coffee, the surprise doughnut, the fact that Danielle (a JV living in MAC, the other Portland house) happened to be hanging out there in the late morning as well. We sat under the glass roof beside Starbucks. We did not take off our hoods. And I realized that there may be no such thing as perfect.