strike that

can't fight this feeling anymore

Some of you have been following my love affair with Portland. You will remember the extended courtship, the flirting from afar, the eventual get-together made possible, as per usual, by a sudden and illplanned plunge at the end of a drunken vacation. And then the less flattering fall light that revealed a glitch in the romance, and who knew what would happen. And winter came, with that awful reality of being together but feeling alone.

I like my love big and senseless. So I am by now aware that these down times are part of the package, and I can’t say I wish they weren’t. I try not to seek out disaster but I try not to hate it when it comes. Big disaster is, if nothing else, big. And it is sometimes followed by big joy. And here we are.

I work for the City of Portland. Approximately once an hour, when I am researching perchloroethylene or photographing an abandoned gas station or even photocopying two hundred pages of an environmental site assessment I sing a little song, and the song goes like this: I wu-hurk for the Cit-tay of Po-ort-land. Sometimes I remember to sing only inside my head.

I leave my house when the sun is coming up, and I take the 9 or 17 or 19 bus over the Ross Island Bridge and it stops in front of my building, the Portland Building, no kidding, and I swipe through the turnstiles with my little plastic ID card that says Bureau of Environmental Services. I spend eight hours figuring out how to make contaminated properties safe again, and in the middle I walk to a block of food carts for lunch, and if it’s sunny I eat on the steps of Pioneer Courthouse Square.

I walk home over Hawthorne Bridge, over the river turning pink with sky, while bikers with blinking red tail lights stream past me. The skyline starts to light up. I pass the science museum with its half-sunk submarine and the Willamette Rowers boat dock, and I pass the McCoy Mill with its sweet smell of sawdust, and the booming Feed and Concentrates warehouse, and Dimitri’s Garage. I cross the railroad tracks where the dirty yellow Northern Pacific boxcars roll through with tanks of sulfuric acid and corn syrup. I come home and it's night, with a little crescent moon, and it is magic. It is the stuff of poetry and power ballads, neither of which, thankfully, I write.

A blog is the best I can do to declare my feelings for you, Portland. I'm glad that I stuck with you when you seemed mostly cold and indifferent. And I'm glad you came around even though I played dangerous games, fingering maps and Googling other names. My feelings for you are big and senseless and perfect. I love your easy conversation and your second-hand clothes; I love your bleary-eyed mornings and your questionable hygiene and the way you felt familiar all along. Sometimes other cities with accents and easy access to unpasteurized cheese cross my mind, and I smile because I could have loved them too. But I choose you.

posted by tortaluga @ 10:29 PM