strike that

recitative

I could tell you about how I spent Sunday giving away four hundred bikes to underprivileged kids with the Community Cycling Center, but let’s face it. The best posts aren’t the cheerful ones. So luckily I’ve been tempering my happy-to-be-in-Portland general joy with some good wholesome lonely bitterness, the kind I learned in New York. The kind born of being underemployed in a city where everyone seems to be living loud and late, except for the people I actually know, who have suddenly decided to settle down. The kind fueled by the fact that meeting new people is a process, and finding work is a process, and processes take time, and I am not big on patience.

I would prefer to work very hard at some ridiculously demanding job and also romp fearlessly around the city’s backstreets and also stay up very late and also get up very early and also bike very fast and also everything else that is Portlandy, right now, This Very Moment, with no more waiting. Because waiting, to be honest, has never interested me that much.

So in the spirit of working with what I’ve got, I’ve been riding the lonely bitterness for all it’s worth. I’ve been having some moody melodramatic fun, drinking alone, sending unwise text messages, writing unsent letters. I went to a dark independent film by myself on a Saturday night. I smoked my first post-marathon cigarette, followed by my second. And right this very moment I’m wearing a black turtleneck over a black dress over ripped jeans over Docs. It’s quite delightful.

And just to drive the point home, just to leave no teen-angst stone unturned, tonight I will be stubbing out the last smoking remnant of my burnt-down bitter on the last little raw place I can find. Tonight, my friends, I am going to the opera.

posted by tortaluga @ 3:44 PM