This weekend marks one year since I moved to Portland.  To some people that might seem arbitrary, trivial even, but to a guy who lived in one place his entire life, it’s pretty big news.

So how’s it been?  It’s been good, mostly.  It’s been a lot of ups and downs, a lot of homesickness, a lot of contemplating very seriously whether or not I should move back to Boise.  My friend Paul said, “Give  it a year.  You have to live here at least a year.”  And at the time I thought, Oh, maybe … but now it’s been a year.  And I feel alright.  Not great, but not terrible.  I’ve felt both of these this past year, and both of those feelings were a little scary.  I miss my friends back in Boise.  I wish I had more friends here.  I have yet to find a group of people here that I can relate to the same was I relate to my friends back home.  No offense to my friends here, you’re all great people, but you’re just not the same, and it’s my responsibility to acknowledge that and say, Hey, it’s time to make new friends.

The most important thing here so far is that I’m making money, more money than I’ve ever made before, doing something relatively menial, with a company that sometimes drives me up the wall, but is usually pretty cool.  I got myself wrapped up with a movement that I never really wanted to be a part of, but fortunately they’re all cool people who understand that and allow me to be as close to, or as far away from, said movement as I’d like to be.

So for starters, I want to thank my brother Russ and my sister-in-law Iva for taking me in (they continue to take me in, since I live with them) and helping me get a job and all that.

Secondly, I’d like to thank Paul, Missy, Guin, Jeff, Shelby, uhhhh … Gabby, I suppose, the two Nates, Emyli, Kaitlynn, Megan!, and everyone who lives around these parts (or in Seattle) and who also I guess is on /orate (except for Megan), for being awesome friends and giving me the boost I needed to stay here in the first place.  Honestly, I don’t know what I would’ve done without you guys, you unknowingly helped me tackle my homesickness by being around and getting me out to see shows and just do stuff.

My life in Portland has been one of good beer, good food, and good shows.  I have a job, I was in a play that paid me more money than I’ve EVER been paid for acting.  I just did a commercial.  The jobs are trickling in but I have a feeling they’ll start increasing.  The only problem now is me: I need to get out there and Get Shit Done.  But all in good time, I say.

I forget where the hell I was going with this blog post.  This is not uncommon.

Anyway, I no longer feel freaked out living here.  I’ve settled.  I have a routine now.  Bus, work, bus, home.  Rinse, repeat.  Sometimes eat a burger.  It’s not perfect but at least it’s something.  Next step: apartment, bicycle, maybe a car.  Girlfriend?  No, mustn’t say that — a watched pot never boils.

Okay this is wavering into “pretentious blog” territory.  Good night all, and here’s too another year in Stumptown.

It’s incredibly beautiful and sunny out in Portland today, as it has been the last couple of days, and the weather couldn’t be better for MFNW. First, I am very grateful to Paul and Missy from /orate for being kind enough to get me into the whole festival in the first place, being a poor, recently-transported son of a bitch. This was technically my third time ever meeting anyone from the internet, though the first time doesn’t count cause she lived in Boise too. These kinds of meetings always start off weird, but Paul and Missy are very cool and not crazy or weird at all. I think that stigma of internet people being strange and/or socially inept is starting to wane, as it should, since everyone uses the internet these days, and we can’t all be socially inept, right?

Wednesday night was pretty low-key, being the start of the fest and all. After getting a quick bite and wandering around town, doing typical touristy things (Powells, of course), we descended upon Berbati’s (“descended upon” is a literary critic way of describing getting somewhere. never will they say “we walked to Berbati’s”, instead they will say, “we found ourselves in the midst of Berbati’s” or “after dinner we slowly hovered on the wings of angels to Berbati’s,” etc) and waited for the bands to play.

Okay, the bands.

First were The 1900s, who are from Chicago. They were an excellent start off to the night, a good, jangly three-minute pop band with seven members stuffed onto the relatively small stage. They have two female vocalists (i’ll get to them in a second) and one male vocalist who plays guitar and everyone did their job very well. Their sound was tight and crisp and I found myself bobbing my head to most of their song (hipsters, as you well know, are not allowed to dance, with the sole exception of “that girl”, who dances like a maniac by herself in a small circle of room she carves out with wildly flailing arms whose movements are dictated by the amount of ecstacy she has ingested prior to the show).

We were standing beside and slightly behind the stage, which was great because it meant not getting the full blast of the speakers, and also because I could stare at Jeanine O’Toole’s ass all during the set. The 1900s are a seven-piece band (though there’s another girl in the picture I’ve posted … the one on the far left, I don’t know who she is), and three of them are women. Jeanine (girl at the top of that picture) was wearing a halter top and high-rise jeans, a throwback to the 60s, and she was hot. And totally into the music, which is also hot. Anyway, my point is, Jeanine, if you ever read this blog, I think it would be great if we got married. That’s all. Simple ceremony, maybe in my backyard, some friends, cheap beers, that sort of thing. Think about it.

Did Missy get a setlist? Yes.

The second band was Norfolk & Western, which I’ve never been a huge fan of but they pulled off a great set last night. Some of you might know that N&W’s drummer, Rachel (right of the guy in the middle, Adam), used to be the drummer for the Decemberists, but her boyfriend is in Norfolk, so obviously she chose them over the D’s, which is fine. I didn’t like them before because their songs were kind of slow and I just didn’t get into it, but last night they were a little more upbeat, a little more rocking, and Rachel kicked the shit out of those drums. Seriously, I saw shit flying right out of the bass drum, hitting the audience and making them cry out in disgust. She later apologized.

N&W was a four piece last night, with the bassist and keyboardist switching roles almost every other song. Sometimes one would play guitar, too. It was pretty cool, each guy utilizing his own experience with each instrument for each song. Overall, they won me over with a strong setlist.

Did Missy get a setlist? Yes.

We unfortunately had to miss the Old 97s because we had to catch the MAX back home, so our last show of the night was Langhorne Slim. Now, I had never heard of this band before in my life, which just goes to show how un-cool and un-hipster I am (I think I was the only person in the entire room wearing shorts — it was hot that day! I am a warm person!), and Paul was super excited to see him, and I was thinking, “Oh boy, this is going to be one of those soft folk picker types, and I’ll have to sit through five minute songs about the plight of the narwhal.”

Further from the truth.

The bass player, Paul, looked like a frat boy yet played an upright bass, the drummer, Malachi, was approximately 98% too cool for school, and the lead singer, Sean, wore a golfer cap and slightly nautical looking pants, and the crowd went wild, and they started playing and it was like a more Americana Flogging Molly, and it was awesome. Langhorne Slim is a lot more diverse, musically, than Flogging Molly, which made it a whole lot nicer. The energy was 110%, loud and raucous, each song two minutes or so, except for a couple of songs stretched or medley’d together. There wasn’t one dull moment in the entire show. Their set was short (they even had to play an extra song at the end) but it was intense and amazing. I’m glad I saw them.

Did Missy get a setlist? No, cause they didn’t have one.

Overall, day one was a success, a lot of fun, and especially good to hang out with people who were very cool and tons of fun. This weekend should be a blast.

Here I am in beautiful sunny Portland, OR, sitting at the edge of my bed, at a computer desk which is much more accommodating than my old computer desk, my bed being, as mentioned in the blog title, a third larger than my old bed. I’ll always be one step ahead of you in the bed department, Aaron Kiefer. One step ahead…

I had to leave earlier than I thought, not realizing the impact of the Democratic National Convention on my brother Russ, and his extreme need to get back home in time to do his radio show (which is live on Saturdays … it’s 12 to 2 here, and I think you can hear it on KPOJ.com). So during Obama’s speech on Thursday night, he was driving from Denver to Boise, and ended up getting to my parents house at about 11am. I was in Boise giving plasma. My night of fun and frivolity ruined, I would be damned before I left without getting my precious blood money. Also I left my eyeglasses at the Dorian House and had to pick them up. Afterwards I managed to eek out a lunch date with my friend Megan, who is a most ambitious person and was able to essentially be the last person I saw in Boise before I left. That was about 3pm.

I got to my parents house and was immediately whisked away into Russ’s car, where we took the long, somewhat boring drive through eastern Oregon up to the Columbia Gorge, which is very pretty, and finally into Portland. I drove most of the way while Russ and Karri (I guess I haven’t mentioned Karri yet, have I? Well, she’s awesome and she lives in Astoria, which is equally awesome) slept. The drive to Portland is great, but once I’m in the city I lose all concept of what it means to be in a vehicle. I had to go around a roundabout; there is only one roundabout in the entire Treasure Valley and it’s like a kiddie roundabout. Anyway, I frightened Russ a couple of times with my ineptitude. We got in about 9pm, watched a bit of Obama’s speech (tivo’d) and went to sleep. Oh, and once I got to the house I realized that in the fervor to get out on the road, I forgot all my stuff in the bathroom — contact solution, toothbrush, etc. So that sucked.

Today was an adventure day. I got up at 10, walked to Walgreens, and marveled at the sheer amount of stuff a couple of blocks from my house. A park right across the street; a Burgerville(!) at the corner; a Wendy’s further down the way; a Walgreens, a Safeway, a Subway, a … some other things. It was great. And the weather couldn’t be nicer. So I went to Walgreens to buy all the stuff I forgot in Boise (they didn’t have contact cases, by the way, so I had to buy a little bottle and a case with it. Stupid). When I came back it was time for Russ’s radio show. I’ve heard it through the interwebs before but I’ve never sat in on it. Needless to say, it’s surreal, to be sitting, listening to a radio show on headphones that’s happening right then. It was a good show, cause the Sarah Palin VP thing had broken and it was essentially a hilarious decision on McCain’s part, and so there was plenty of fodder for Russ.

When the show wrapped up we took the dogs out for a walk (they are cute dogs, I will post pictures soon), and then went to Burgerville for, I dunno, burgers. I think they serve those there. They were delicious. Once we got back, though, it was time for the grand Moving of Bedrooms!

You see, Russ and his wife (I dunno if she’s big on the “name on the internet for all to see” sort of thing, so I’ll leave it out for now) had their bedroom on the ground floor of this house. It’s right next to the bathroom, and it meant less time hauling laundry up to the second floor. But eventually they realized that the upstairs bedroom was the master bedroom (well, I mean, they knew that but, yeah) and so when I moved in they wanted to switch bedrooms with me. I don’t blame them; the upstairs has a little office and nice closet space and another room that’s just an unifinished part of the attic or something, it’s weird, but either the office or offshoot room would make excellent writing/music recording rooms, and so naturally by the grace of fate I would not be allowed to use them.

Okay. So first we move my bed downstairs. My bed is a queen? King? I dunno, but it’s supported by two single box springs. Don’t know why. We moved it and set it aside in the kitchen, while we prepared to move Russ’s bed upstairs. We strip the bed, move everything aside, and start hauling the box spring up the small staircase.

And it gets stuck. And not like, hey, we can muscle this stuck. I mean the “if we move this any more we’ll break something” stuck. This box spring was not meant to go up these stairs.

Now, Russ has one intolerable quality that is a quality of all Belville’s, and it is Stubbornness. When we get it in our heads that we’re going to do something, then by god we are going to do it. And it was decided by the two of us (not by his wife that much) that we were going to get this bed into the upstairs. We tried muscling, we tried alternate angles, we tried removing the door to the stairs so we could come in from the kitchen. We tried everything. That box spring would not budge.

At this point there were two thought processes: one, that we saw the box spring in half, and two, that we remove the moulding from the door to give us an inch or two of extra room. Another qualtiy that Russ and I have is that we sometimes have stupid ideas that do not conform to common sense. Granted, I have more than he does (like when he gave me this computer desk. I set it up and for some reason put it somewhat in front of the closet. Russ came in and said, “Will that desk work?” and I said, “Yeah, it’s kind of in front of the closet but that’s okay,” and he said, “Why don’t you move it away from the closet?” and I said, “Uhhh, yeah, good idea.”), but every rare once and a while we both get the same stupid idea, and that stupid idea was to remove the moulding. Russ’s wife went along with it, too, because she knew Russ’s stubbornness (though has not been privy to mine), and so before you knew it, they were tearing moulding off the doorframe.

About a third of the way into the process it became clear that this was a Bad Idea, but they were already doing it and so eventually the mould was off and we could see the doorframe. Russ tried to hammer the doorframe out of its place but it was cemented in there and would not budge. But we thought, Hey, we have a couple of inches now! So we took the box spring and started pushing it up the stairs…

And it got stuck. On the next step. In roughly the same place.

At this point Russ was pissed, his wife was desperate to get some sleep (she worked the night shift), and I was secretly hoping that they would opt to leave their bed downstairs so I could get the kickass upstairs all to myself. But the Belville Stubbornness does not dwindle when faced with such a dilemma; nay, rather, it grows tenfold, like a hydra who just had one head cut off, three more grow in its place.

We briefly assayed the idea of hauling the box spring through an upstairs window, but they were all too small. Perhaps, we thought, we could remove the stairs and get it up there. Too much work. And then we got back on the idea of sawing the fucking thing in half. This seemed risky because we were afraid of disturbing the springs. But after some pawing of the mattress itself (is it technically a mattress? I never know), we realized that there weren’t any springs in there at all, just a simple latticework of wood supports. So Russ and I were like, fuck it, let’s saw it in half. We spent ten minutes taking the staples out of the fabric part, and then Russ got his saw and he sawed the thing in half. To be honest, it was pre
tty awesome. And then we folded the box spring in half (sans springs, apparently), and it was much easier to get up the stairs.

Once we got it up there, though, having had some previous experience sawing things in half in tech class and the need to put them together for stability, I realized that we would need something to put the wood back together, or else maybe one night Russ and his wife are sleeping and Russ turns over and suddenly the whole damn thing caves in. That would be bad. So I suggested we get some small 1×4 pieces of wood or something we could screw into the wood to put them back together. We ended up going to Home Depot, getting metal joiners, and screwing them into the box spring, making Russ’s bed look like a weird Frankensteinian monster.

Then we brought his regular mattress up and while it took a bit of muscling, it was much easier to get up there than his box spring. And then of course I unloaded all of my stuff in the downstairs bedroom, and everything is copasetic now. I’m still getting over the fact that it’s an hour earlier here than Boise, and that I don’t know anyone here (yet), but I’m already having a blast, and Russ’s wife has a contact in the theatre, and if all else fails I can go busk down on Hawthorne street, which might be fun, actually.

Anyway, it’s late, and I’m going to attempt to put a fitted bedsheet on a bed that is too large for said bedsheet, but somehow had said bedsheet on said bed before we moved it downstairs. Goodnight!

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.

————————-

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)