Vacation, All I Ever Wanted: Sunday Sept. 9

Hello you magnificent bunch of weirdos. I’ve finally organized my headspace. After so many days of having all the feelings I needed a mental vacation. But now I’m back from outer space and stronger than yesterday and all that other colloquial, euphemistic shit. First of all: hi! I’ve missed you. Second: you guys. I don’t even know. If I mysteriously disappear, never to be heard from again, don’t even trip. I’ll be living in A-Town. Just follow your tingling unicorn senses, you’ll find me.

To facilitate the ADD readers (AKA to facilitate my inability to write for more than an hour at a time), I’m splitting my adventure chronologically into possibly one billion little pieces. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Sunday 9/9

This is how I imagine public transportation...

Saturday night I alternated between anxious over-sleeping dreams and delirious Lucy texts. From her recounting I’ve deduced the train is either a social experiment or a front for time-space continuum alteration. Being in a closed space for long periods of time spawns strange alliances and adversaries. People sprawled on every horizontal surface like refugees. To escape her angry, Mid-Western seatmate Lucy used a 2-year old child as a pillow. Somewhere around Spokane, time as a concept ceased to exist. Between 3am and 9:30am every text message sent or received contained at least four exclamation points.

I still managed to wake up too early, eat toast and change my shirt four times. I pulled into the train station forty minutes too early. Instead of doing anything productive with my time, I bought a gigantic Americano from an Asian grandmother and sat in my car waiting. Occasionally the homeless man across the street would salute me. I think he was eating beef stew. Around arrival time I waddled back into the station, clutching my coffee. I set up in the receiving bay, leaning against a wall with the other hopefuls, keeping an eye on the tracks even though the announcer had just told us the train would be another 10 minutes. We awkwardly shuffled, fidgeted and avoided eye contact.

There are times when you’re forced into strangely intimate contact with strangers. Most involve waiting. Standing in line for the bathroom, hospital waiting rooms, airports and train stations. These are people you’ll probably never see again, but you see them at their most vulnerable. Waiting can be fucking terrifying.

Lucy was one of the last people off the train. I saw her and smiled so big I thought I might die, smiled so big an old man patted my arm and smiled for me, like the force of my happy might be too much, like I needed help holding all of it. I don’t know how to describe what it feels like to come home when you’re still standing in the same place you were five minutes ago. Or maybe it didn’t feel like coming home at all. Maybe it felt the way coming home is supposed to feel but never actually does. All I know is I was there, in that train station, hugging her and feeling like that would be enough. If nothing else came of this trip, that moment would be worth all the hassle.

After lugging her bag to the Biscuit, we set out to find Le Happy.

http://www.lehappy.com  

Le Happy is a mythical creperie in Northwest Portland. I decided a few months ago that eating there would be the pinnacle of my Portlandian accomplishments. Seriously you guys, look up the menu. This place looks epic. Turns out it’s also closed on Sunday. Along with nearly every other café in downtown Portland. Apparently Sunday morning breakfast is not a big thing in Portland? Around lunchtime when Lucy was terminally under-caffeinated and I was sure my stomach would digest itself, we found the Morning Star Café. After wolfing down sourdough flapjacks and some sort of veggie scramble, we mobbed back to the house for a nap.

Several hours later when we woke up it was time for the highlight of the evening: attending an Ira Glass reading with Friend. For those of you who don’t know, Ira Glass is the host and executive producer for This American Life. Also he’s absolutely brilliant. Also also, this was the point where all the feelings began. Expect to hear more about said “feelings” and their impact.

I’m sitting in a coffee shop right now, putting off the writing I’m actually supposed to be doing. You know, the writing that pays me cash dollas. You guys! There are 7 days of vacation left to cover… Tune in next time for more downtown ambling, the Great Donut Debacle and Meryl Streep.

I love you all.

-b