a return to the scene
Yesterday morning, I took a snowing train ride back up the coast, returning from a week in Portland, my city of ghosts...
Good friends and I had a family reunion of sorts, coming in from our various new places of residence to traipse about the city, eating, reminiscing and enjoying each other's company. This is what is feels like to be surrounded good friends, I reminded myself. It has been a while.
Portland is a city where I fit. I am not too enormous to buy cheap, fabulous clothes. The food is good. The movies are cheap and star my imaginary Mexican boyfriend. It's where Powell's is. I am able to share interesting conversation with strangers - the man in the beer line beside us told us of how he would like to live inside the Seattle Public Library, a woman told me she had tried on my new-to-me coat just hours before I purchased it - and pick up where I left off with old friends. And since it has been a year and a half since I have lived there, it is very easy to over-romanticize the place.
I forget how much I hated my job and how hard and unsuccessfully I worked to find another.
One night, I took a cold 30 block walk to meet A. I left from the flat of a fellow I used to date who's probably coming to Belgrade in a few months. I passed the place where I ate dinner on the worst date of my life. I passed a street light under which I kissed yet another fellow. I remembered the painful ends of my attempts at relationships in that town.
There were very good reasons to leave.
Good friends and I had a family reunion of sorts, coming in from our various new places of residence to traipse about the city, eating, reminiscing and enjoying each other's company. This is what is feels like to be surrounded good friends, I reminded myself. It has been a while.
Portland is a city where I fit. I am not too enormous to buy cheap, fabulous clothes. The food is good. The movies are cheap and star my imaginary Mexican boyfriend. It's where Powell's is. I am able to share interesting conversation with strangers - the man in the beer line beside us told us of how he would like to live inside the Seattle Public Library, a woman told me she had tried on my new-to-me coat just hours before I purchased it - and pick up where I left off with old friends. And since it has been a year and a half since I have lived there, it is very easy to over-romanticize the place.
I forget how much I hated my job and how hard and unsuccessfully I worked to find another.
One night, I took a cold 30 block walk to meet A. I left from the flat of a fellow I used to date who's probably coming to Belgrade in a few months. I passed the place where I ate dinner on the worst date of my life. I passed a street light under which I kissed yet another fellow. I remembered the painful ends of my attempts at relationships in that town.
There were very good reasons to leave.
posted by rachel @ 5:39 AM
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