I’m at Powell’s books, nursing a pretty good buzz and a whole lot of good vibes.  Powell’s is rapidly becoming my second favorite place to hang out, after the George and Dragon in Seattle, where I spend a couple hours a week cheering on Liverpool.  Speaking of the George, someone from the local LFC supporters’ club in Seattle approached me out of the blue last weekend and gave me a sticker: “LFC SEATTLE – Supporters Club”.  I was pretty jazzed to receive it, and I got to meet and chat with both him and the club’s primary organizer, who almost tripped over his shoes indicating they need website help.   Nice to know even in a recession my skills are in demand.

I put the sticker on my laptop.  My son is impressed.  He sees the stickers as signs of accomplishment, of milestones earned; which, as a first grader, I’m sure is perfectly understandable.  Among the road-warrior crowd, though, stickers are an oddball element.  I gather that Apple fanboys dare not desecrate their pure Apple-logo covers with stickers, while PC laptop users are not hip enough to be generally into the sticker thing.  That, or I haven’t outgrown my 7-year-old phase.

I have a metric fuck-ton of things to say and a metric centiliter of discretion right now.

I’ll give you five reasons why: Madras Royale, St. Elizabeth Sour, Village (?) (see, at that point my memory starts to get fuzzy), and then, after a change of venue, a Cask-Conditioned Jubalale, and a Nitro Jubalale.  A fun night.  A very fun night.  Entertaining and informative and promising and energizing and engaging and, well, just damned invigorating.  I started out after work at the Park Kitchen, which is a very cool but small restaurant/bar in the Pearl District, and from there to the Deschutes Brewery, where the beer is FUCKING STRONG and where ESPN lulls you into a kind of stupor such that when you walk out of there to head to Powell’s Books, not 2 blocks away, you head in the wrong direction.  But it’s all good.   A few extra blocks of walking among the interesting downtown Portland streets is never time misspent.

I used the term “vex” tonight.  This is a word straight out of Jane Austen or Thomas Hardy.  It is surprisingly appropriate tonight, for I’m vexed.  Not angry – no, not by a long shot – nor frustrated, exactly, nor indecisive, again inexactly, but unsure,  uncertain, and with more than a little self-reflection and pondering going on.  Not in the What Is My Ultimate  Purpose On This Green Orb sense, but more like Where Do I Go From Here sense.  I guess if life were easy everybody would do it.

OK, Anthony, so you’re feeling so expansive and happy and, well, let’s face it, buzzed, how do you feel?

Fulfilled.  I am surrounding myself more and more with people who share some of the same fundamental attitudes towards life and people that I do.  Life is meant to be lived, and to be enjoyed, and that things are mostly good, in spite of everything, and that optimism is a better way to approach your days than pessimism.  A healthy, snarky, dose of cynicism serves (very occasionally) to offset the ruby-red roses that I cast in front of me, but not too much, and not too consistently, lest I degenerate into an embittered old layabout, more content to complain than to act.  To do.  To participate, to throw one’s hat in the ring, to do battle, to compete, to win or fail as circumstances and my own efforts warrant.

And I’m ready to compete.

To win.

And if you doubt me, even for an instant, you have yet more to learn.  Above all things, perhaps (love of my children being the one untouchable constant), I exist to challenge myself.  I am tired of (as a friend put it tonight, so eloquently, if so simply) “tying my shoelaces together”.  I want to stride purposefully, to run, to bring those I value along for the ride, to ride simultaneously, together, in purposeful collaboration.  To join together, ad-hoc, as energies and purposes align, and achieve remarkable things.

And, as a writer, I want to document these things.  The ups and downs, the progressions and reversals.  The temporary, euphoric highs (such as tonight) and the (also temporary)  challenging lows.  Writing helps ease the demons back in their cage, and let my better angels take flight.  Writing is cathartic, and revealing, and (depending on who you are) sometimes intentionally obfuscatory, and you really have no choice but to read or not-read, to absorb or not.  Filter it how you will, my intent remains the same.  My existence, my subjective existence, plagiarized by my mind and fingers and keyboard, and delivered in emphatic detail.  I hope you keep reading, because I certainly intend to keep writing.

I’m blogging from the café at Powell’s City of Books after a wonderful dinner at the Davis Street Tavern, an upscale gastropub in the area between Pearl and Old Town.

It’s got a great interior – old brick walls, hardwood floors, combined with modern-ish wood furniture, high ceilings, art, and a very mixed crowed.  When I arrived around 6:15 the place was packed – standing room only in the bar area, and a 20-30 minute wait for tables.  A couple groups came and went after I walked in, disappointed that they couldn’t get a table right away.

The wait was worth it.  A spot opened up a the bar and I ordered from a menu that worked in all the right ways – variety, traditional dishes, eclectic whims and nouvelle cuisine.  I almost ordered the lamb burger but settled on a combination of seared albacore Carpaccio and an orecchiette with sugar snap peas.

The albacore missed, by just a pinch, as everything was overly flavored, leaving the subtlety of the fish well behind in the dust.  There was a tomato-and-cilantro sort of chop/puree along with a large scoop of chunked/pureed avocado, and the albacore itself had too much whole ground pepper.  But it was still a good dish.

The orecchiette was dense and perfectly flavored, if not quite hot enough when it was first served.  The sugar snap peas barely made a supporting role – this was all pasta, all the time, and it did what good pasta dishes do – make you feel warm and loved and homey.

I accompanied my meal with a couple Oregon beers: Double Mountain Vaporizer Pale Ale and a Ninkasi “Sleigh’r” Dark Double Alt Ale.  The Vaporizer rocked; the “Sleigh’r” really didn’t have much to recommend it.

While eating, I enjoyed chatting with Ian, another transplanted worker up from San Francisco on contract and also working (tangentially) in the tech industry.  Portland has a very nice feel to it in terms of feeling comfortable talking to and meeting new people while you’re out and about.  Since I’ll be down in Portland every month or six weeks, it’s nice to get to know more people to meet up with when I’m in town.

I’m convinced that there must be some combination of beer, coffee, sleep, environmental stimulus, angst, and sex drive that is optimal for the blogger.  As I write this I have some (ed: or all?) of the above in varying quantities, most notably “environmental stimulus” – I’m sitting in the coffee shop at Powell’s City of Books in Portland, maybe the largest bookstore in the nation/world/universe.  You could get lost in here, and I’ll bet many people do.  In an earthquake, you could quite literally drown in romance or erotica or Persian-studies anthologies.

Earlier this evening, I drank beer at a hipster place up the street, where the big event was the bartender’s announcement that “she’s no longer homeless!”.  A nice young man from South Carolina – or Gresham – tried to sell me a homemade CD of his guitar music, and when I demurred, changed tactics and offered to sell me drugs.  I am currently in the cafe in Powell’s drinking my signature cappuccino.  I had a nap. 

As for the rest of the list of optimal blogging inputs, let’s leave something as an interpretive exercise for the reader.

As I was drinking my beer, I leafed through Portland’s equivalent to the Stranger, called The Mercury, and it was nearly the same in every regard – but, surprisingly, it was a little nicer, a little cleaner cut.  Whether that’s the result of Dan Savage’s blunt, cover-the-children’s-eyes brand of erotica, or whether the Seattle crew has a bigger drinking problem, or whether the Portland advertising purchasers are more family-friendly, like Sesame Street viewers, I didn’t feel like i had to wash my hands (or eyes) after reading the Mercury.  In fact, if there was a single reference to “penis” in the entire magazine I’d be surprised.

Portland has been busy and fun. I arrived Monday after a relaxing, dull-the-senses train ride, exactly what I needed after a couple weeks of anxiety and turbulence surrounding my big announcement that I was leaving my previous job and moving on.  The cascade of untapped emotion that came along with that decision, and the series of inevitably sweet-sad goodbyes with coworkers whom I know and love, has slowed to a trickle.  I’m still convinced it was the right decision, for me personally, and that moving on will open up new vistas.  However, part of me will still clutch to the past, as ridiculous as that is, and I’ll have to be aware to open up and seize new opportunities as they arise.

I had a nice time catching up with a friend Monday over drinks and food at a cool little place downtown.  Tuesday was a U.S. Open Cup meetup at a soccer bar, where I drank too much and watched the Sounders come out on top over an overmatched Columbus Crew team.  Tonight is quieter, which I’m not sure I like.  What I think that means is that distraction remains my friend while I continue to work through things in my head about where I am, where I’m going, and that I don’t want to be too eager to sit still and listen for the echoes as my mind shouts out these questions.

If you would have told me ten years ago that I’d be sitting in Powell’s, arguably THE mecca for book lovers, and ardently wish to be somewhere else, I’d have dismissively called you a meathead and/or slapped your nose, Three-Stooges style.  And yet I am wishing I were elsewhere.  Ah, that will pass, I suppose, for nothing is truly permanent, not even the most finely polished feelings.  The trick, as I summed up in not-so-many words to a friend last night, is to capture the happiness available to you now, in the present moment, and not let the weight of the world (or the weight you take on) crush you, block you, blind you to good things that are available if you were just to reach out.  Life is meant to be lived, not endured.  Suffering is temporary, not transitive.

So – back to Portland?  I think so, yes.  I’ve buried quite a few ambivalent memories here and will be better able to experience the quirks and angles that Portland has to offer next time I return.  There is a lot of city to discover, a lot of serendipity to open myself up to, and the feel of the place meshes well with what I (think I) need right now – young, alternative, diverse, energetic, and literate.

Tomorrow I board the return train to Seattle.  I may catch up on some reading, or I may review a couple things on the laptop, or I may write some code, or all three or none of the above.  Who can say what will happen?  A friend is fond of saying we manifest the things that we need, at the time that it makes sense, so I may think on that and put some thought into what it is I need/want and how to put my world in the correct place to allow that to happen.

We’ll see.  In the meantime, last night in Portland, and on the way back to the hotel I’m going to stop by Voodoo Doughnut on the advice of a friend, and pick up a sweet nom for the MAX ride.  Their motto is “The Magic Is In The Hole”, and how could I not love that?