New Voices

(Written 5/26/10)

It is 9:00 and it is just getting dark out. If you stop for a moment when walking up our staircase and look out the window, you can see a perfect frame of the sky as everything is setting. Bright, pink streaks and sometimes a stripe of yellow. The dark blue paint of our neighbor’s house fading a bit, the trees turning black. There are almost always clouds.

One of my favorite things about Portland: even when it’s raining, the night comes at the same time.

I’m not one for doing “cool spontaneous things” after work. But thanks to the effortless motivation of a housemate and an easy MAX ride, I ate a falafel sandwich and headed to the reading of Write Around Portland’s spring anthology. (An agency that provides facilitated workshops to different communities throughout the city.) The event was held at a large Methodist Church in Southwest, and we wrongly entered through the front door and were led down long classroom hallways by peppy volunteers who claimed the directional signs to be misleading. They brought us to the auditorium, where cups of apple juice were being sold at a long fold out table toward the back. Dozens of people proceeded to read the poems and stories that they’d crafted throughout the workshop season. Thirteen year old girls covered their faces with the papers they read from, and seventy five year old women stood a bit too far away from the microphone. Susie told us about her talented teddy bear who could speak 18 languages and run a triathlon, and Wendy reminisced about the man she loved who never fulfilled his promise of returning to her. Bob confessed that nine years after his mother’s death, he still misses her. And throughout all of it, the tragic stories, awkward moments, memorable occurrences while riding the bus, I never felt sad. I don’t think anyone did. It proved to me what an important tool writing is. That no matter how painful life can be, it’s worth putting down on paper. To confront it, or to honor it. Or maybe a little bit of both.