tease
I love what the sun does to people. After a rainy gray winter the sun pokes out and suddenly everyone is sweet and easy. Portlanders are pushovers when the sun comes out in March.I just took lunch – a long walk up the park to the food cart where the vendor chatted to me for fifteen minutes about hamsters, and a warm brick balustrade in the square where a guy filmed me saying the phrase under-the-sofa-cushion money into his phone camera, “for a video project.” Somehow these things seem like a good idea with this weather.
Before lunch I went to the bank to find out about getting a cashier’s check for a very large sum of money, which in the next couple of days I will be handing over to an escrow agent in exchange for a cute and crumbling little house. This would feel negligent in November. But here on this scarfless day in March there is a tangible will to optimism, a collective wink, an unspoken agreement to forget that the rain will be back. When I smile, passers by smile back fast and full. A crossing guard this morning literally danced me forward in my Smartcar. And everyone is making eye contact: lingering, loaded eye contact.
I often wonder if residents of warmer climates live this way all the time. When I visited a SoCal friend over winter break a few years back it was jarring how undressed the girls in the bars were – skirts hovering lightly around their hips and tops falling off their shoulders. This is not how we dress in the northwest, and it was lovely. All those white teeth and tan skin. And it's surely tied to mood.
But I believe it’s the change that gets us going in Oregon, the way we get to disappear and then break out each year all new. Not yet, I keep telling myself. Plenty of short days yet to go. But I’m revving up. One little taste, months early as it is, gets us all to the edges of our seats. Last minute preparations. Finishing touches on the best-laid plans for the long stretch of blue sky ahead.
posted by tortaluga @ 2:32 PM
1 Comments:
I love how downright GIDDY people are in this, the lovely little break between the winter & spring storms that gets us through & gives us hope.
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