mystery/stratus

I'm at a cafe in Sellwood, the ganglia of Portland's hearty nuclear family. Only the cockroach outlives this culture. So many idle dogs with frothy mouths, the unborn, the freshly born, runners, flexing, pulsing, strollers, coffee, dads in fleece. I'm nauseated from coffee and no food.

(...)

Ok, I never finished that entry...I shouldn't hate on Sellwooders. They're nice people. It's two days later, in a different cafe, a less gestative atmosphere, with more dimly lit library chic. Rabbit ear cacti and an old piano. I'm meeting my ex here in an hour to show him how to use his new MacBook. The barista here is one of my clients (at the print shop, perverts). He's like a cat, the kind that, once you're all sitting down and comfortable, might let his guard down and come over and circle your lap and say hi. He's really nice. A shy, turtle-necked David Byrne kind of character. If David Byrne were a mime named Max Ernst.

Yesterday, I spent a thin envelope of hundreds on a new (old), mint condition Nishiki Prestige, along with matching toe-clips and leather straps. So far, it is worth every penny. Riding it is like sailing on a sea of margarine, naked. With wings crafted from the feathers of a really soft, fast bird. Maybe a peregrine.

I've never spent this much money on a bike before. The bill came to $519. My last bike was a Nishiki Century, which I bought for a smokin' $50. I drove the back roads out to Boring, Oregon to purchase it from a guy who lived in a cookie-cutter mansion with a yard full of kids and fixer-uppers. I don't know why he sold it for so cheap, but it was a good bike, and it served me well. I'm going to fix it up (I think it just needs a new wheel) and have it as a back-up, or maybe sell it in dire straits. Anyway, this new, beautiful silver bullet is a dream boat, and I feel like I have to treat it like a new-born baby. I know a lot of people who treat their laptops this way. I am actively, unabashedly sexualizing the bike. I kept catching glimpses of it at work, ogling the luster of the lugs, the bronze, the steel, the lube, The Prestige. Yeah, it rocks. I have yet to take pictures of it, but here is a close replica. Mine isn't a fixie, and doesn't have fenders or a rack yet, but it will receive a nice pampering soon. It's sitting outside in almost clear view, and I'm already worried that someone is going to run up with a baseball hat and shatter it into a thousand pieces.

Now I just need some cute rain booties.

My favorite piece of writing on the rhetoric of the weather. The occasional, oncoming whipping wet weather and drone grey skies has made me want to do nothing but be at home (when I'm not cruising for a bruising on my new wheels), writing, brewing thick, spicy teas, enlisting my favorite fragrances (tea rose, jasmine, green tea, laundry, wood soap), tripling my coffee intake, pillowing, sucking in the absolute overcast. I love fall. It is visceral, from the gut. It's all about extraction and restraint, doubled with this amazing, simultaneous surfacing of color and ether. Maybe even in a gelatinous, Matthew Barney kind of way. It puts me to work, puts me to sleep. Tugs. I love the feeling of thawing in bed, under blankets of varying thicknesses and plume. I even smelled the flint of wood-smoke tonight on my bike ride home. Autumn in Portland will always and forever receive an A++, which usually isn't possible beyond grade school.

I was joking with G. this morning about how we should go as "Hair" for Halloween this year. Between the two of us, we could probably smother an entire person in varying gradients of course, reddish-blonde hair. Mine is becoming absolutely out of control. The pins and bobbies are always popping out. I even found a small, but undeniable dread the other day. It's actually more of a "mat," but mats turn into dreads eventually.

Wow, I'm too drifty to write anything profound. What kind of writer am I? God must have run out of midnight oil.

Good night,
~a.