moving to portland

By the end of this week I will be living in a small bedroom in my brother’s house in Portland, Oregon, with probably about $50 in my pocket and a plan in my head. Since Monday I’ve been staying at my parents’ house, which is calm and secluded and unchanging like a Walt Whitman poem. My only regret is that I can’t take all of my friends with me. My problem has always been my introverted nature (surprising to some). I’m a bit of a loner. So the irony is that moving to Portland, and being even more of a loner, kind of frightens me, because being pulled away from my friends made me realize how many friends I had. I don’t regret having a lot of friends.
I suppose this blog will become more of a travelogue and journal of my time in Portland. Most people when they move are much less pretentious and amazed by the whole thing than I am, but what can I say, I’ve lived in Idaho my entire life. Change is much more change to me than other people’s change is to them, I guess. I’ve only lived outside of Nampa for about three years, and then it was just in Boise (and the summer in Auburn). It’s a big deal.

So off I go, into the wild blue … well, gray wonder of the perpetually overcast pacific northwest. I promise I’ll write more once I’m out there.

In the meantime, here’s a poem. It doesn’t have a title.

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some people say they
want to fly; i just want to walk.
i don’t care where.
up hills, down mountains,
through streams, underground,
on clouds, it doesn’t matter,
just as long as i’m no longer here
but there instead, amongst
things that aren’t the things
i’m used to being a part of.

(one day you and i
will lie in clover fields,
surrounded by green,
searching for some
long-lost four-leafed
clover which will prove
our undying luck and
love for each other)

some people say they
want to fly; i would rather swim.
to hold my breath and fly
flimsy through the pressure
of billions of tons of microscopic
water and creature, to flap my
pasty white arms and surge,
unhindered–a form of flying
but one with death behind
every crusty old rock.

(we will marry who we
think we are, and fall in
love with the notion that
we can never change,
and soon we’ll sag and
sunder and separate and
all we knew about the
moon and stars will die)

some people say they want to fly.
those people are idiots.
what else is in the sky besides
the clouds and the sky?
even birds grow weary of gliding
through the air, and their children
are born on this good green earth,
to be suckled into life with
earthworms and earth beetles
and nothing from the sky.

(in death we’ll be buried
intertwined, like mummies
in love, destined to be
together through a rough
manipulation of our rigid
bodies and a foundation
poured above our heads,
to shelter us forever)