I just moved into my new office at 1308 NW 20th Ave in NW Portland’s Alphabet district. It’s in this cute blue house on the corner of 20th & Overton. The new location offers a ton of flexibility so I am now offering evening and weekend sessions.
Here’s my name on the sign… yay! (rockin’ Suite 5)
This is the entryway… how cute are these blossoms?
Can you tell I’m excited to be here? =)
from Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge
The Question: Did you have a night out with friends or a loved one that rocked your world? Who was there? What was the highlight of the night?
There were probably a few nights, now melded in memory, from my last residency at Pacific in June. There was the uncontrollable laughter–the kind that you’re almost concerned about whether or not you’ll be able to take another breath, but the thought of losing consciousness owing to oxygen shortage makes everything even funnier… the kind that makes your obliques hurt more than they have from abdominal crunches.
When I laugh that hard tears stream down my cheeks.
There was that time when Aaron raised his hand, and we just lost it. There were homemade brownies. There was red wine in real wine glasses thanks to Eric. There was that all night conversation… To say that that night, or nights, rocked my world, would be vastly understated.
Pictured here with my fiction writing friends, Jason Sandefur and Alissa Nielsen.
My interview with Paul Gerald, author and publisher of Breakfast in Bridgetown: The Definitive Guide to Portland’s 
Favorite Meal, aired yesterday on pdx.fm. I love that he has a whole radio show dedicated to breakfast!
We talked about all my favorite breakfast/brunch places in Portland, and which restaurants the PDX Breakfast Club meetup has visited to enjoy their first meal of the day.
My top picks: Tin Shed on NE Alberta and Veritable Quandary downtown. Holy yum!
If you missed the show, grab the podcast here: http://www.breakfastinbridgetown.com/?p=641
Seriously?? Life is so frickin’ weird. Hilarious actually… like I can’t stop laughing. As Sean Stephenson says in his kick ass book, Get Off Your “But,” “I’ve learned to focus my focus on one solitary question: What’s funny about this? This puts all my conscious awareness on seeing the comical side of any situation and the resulting laughter takes care of the stress.”
Two weeks ago this guy is serenading me with gorgeous songs and a guitar on his front porch in SE Portland, asking about dating me, and today he’s joined a Franciscan monastery. Awesome…
The guy I swore I would not date has won my heart and the one I thought I would date shrouds himself in tortured unavailability.
Funny stuff.
I am thinking about the power of our souls to pull exactly what we need out of this life experience. And from this perspective, all I can do is chuckle.
There is harmony in the flow of the universe… If we allow ourselves to relax into it, to become one with the music. There is only the current, the pouring out of love and the experience we came here to partake of. In that, there can only be gratitude… and laughter.
It’s 102 in Portland right now, and it feels like my brain cells are sweating out of my pores. Lovely image, right?
Everything today feels surreal, like a film stuck in slow-motion. I may as well have moved to Phoenix — what’s another 10 degrees once it’s over 100? Hot is hot.
Whoo! The sun comes out in Portland and people pop up on sidewalks like weeds through the cracks. I hit Powell’s for a new journal and a used copy of Castaneda’s Teachings of Don Juan in preparation for James Ray’s Modern Magick: The Dreamer and the Dream. The conference starts Monday and I’ll be posting various updates throughout the week.
Can’t wait to hear what Stephen LaBerge (Stanford PhD superstar of lucid dreaming research) has to say. I’m also curious about how lucid dreaming compares to dream yoga. Is it the same thing? Well, I’m off to Dana Point, California to find out….
VOTE EARTH
This year, Earth Hour has been transformed into the world’s first global election, between Earth and global warming.
March 28th, 8:30 PM, Local Time
More info: www.earthhour.org
I never met a writer who said “fuck” more than Joe Millar or Pete Fromm… until today. Dorothy Allison‘s talk on place at Tin House was nothing short of awesome.
She reminded us that writing about place is so much more than getting the details right. It’s not just the type of tile used in a truck stop or the manicured gardens at a college. It’s our reaction and response to those things that creates meaningful story.
She also issued a challenge: “We’re only getting Portland out of Charlie.” (Charles D’Ambrosio) “You people gotta get to work.”
Right now, Portland is easy for me because I just showed up. Stumptown, Powell’s, the Hawthorne Bridge… everything is a new experience and I’m taking it all in, noticing the detail. What my own challenge will be is to begin to write myself into the picture, whether as a character in fiction or as narrator in memoir. Me experiencing and responding to my place.
I am like a little kid when it comes to fireworks. I cannot help the foolish grin as they’re exploding across the sky. I especially like the ones that surprise me, those that look like nothing as they shoot up then take over my whole vision field as they burst colored flame.
I carried a book and a blanket the few blocks to the Willamette waterfront. The fireworks were set off from barges on both sides of the Hawthorne Bridge so there couldn’t have been a bad seat in the area. The people-watching was good too. I didn’t read much of the 1000+ pages of Didion I toted. With the Blues Fest jamming in the background, I scoped out my new city neighbors till dark then waited for the magic to begin.
