strike that

break my heart again

My running sneaks got left in Austin during the post-Quebec purging of baggage. They’re living in a box in La and Marc’s guest room, providing companionship for the tent and the watercolors and all the other things that were too bulky for a suddenly mobile summer. So I haven’t been running.

But yesterday I was sitting at my computer for the sixth or so hour, clicking my way through the job sites of the City of Portland and the State of Oregon and Monster and Craigslist and the American Society of Landscape Architects and every marginally progressive-alternative space-related firm and nonprofit in the region, and I looked out the window past my porch to the sunny afternoon, and that was it. I needed to be moving. And is it too late to grudgingly admit that all you runners out there were right, that this stupid antisocial non-sport has in fact grown on me, does in fact provide me with a certain convenient outlet for restlessness and crowded thoughts?

So I pulled on my REI scratch-and-dent trail runners and took off. And Portland’s Willamette River loop is not as serene and friendly as Eugene’s Willamette River loop, but it’s not at all bad. There are bridges and railroad tracks and sand & gravel barges and other assorted industrial delight. And Portland this week is indecisive and inbetween just like I am, warm bright days and chilly nights, confused crocuses blooming under already rustling oaks, mingling smells of summer barbeques and autumn leaves. And soon enough we’re all going to have to figure out what’s next, but it’s hard to stop flirting with the remnants of what was good for a while.

posted by tortaluga @ 1:14 PM