Live In Portland Now

I live in Portland, Oregon now.

I needed to be closer to mom. Mom is at the point in her adventure when she needs regular attention, and I need to be three hours or less away from her. So I considered the three Cascadia cities: Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland. I also considered Olympia and a few small towns along the I-5 corridor. I audited for cost, climate, opportunity, complexities, and ultimately for how I felt spending a few days in the city. Portland won.

Standing in a park the other day here in Portland, waiting for my Streetcar. Across the street from me is a strand of maples, and under the maples is a brick building with a cafe on the ground floor, and inside of this cafe a girl is sitting in the corner table. She's facing away from the window. Bent over her book. Studying. That steep-angled September sun pouring in, turning her blond hair into strands of gold while maple leaves flutter by in the breeze.

There's a moment in the fall when summer capitulates. A cold wind that sends leaves flying and chills running up your spine. A sign: It's time to stop screwing around. It's time to start squirreling away nuts for the winter to come.

I've reached that moment. It's been six months making hay. Nonstop play - with plenty of work in between, but even the work has been play, done wildly and with abandon. It's time to slow it down. Contemplate my losses, consolidate my gains.

Autumn in my new home. Portland, Oregon. Leaving behind all this doing, returning to being, and the return of the artistic mind...

Edit from the future: This is an ironic post. Less than two weeks later I had started a new business, building software for commodities futures traders. Rather than being the return of the artistic mind, this was more of a booked for it. I would continue to write poems for another couple decades, but as far as photography and longform fiction goes, this was the end for a while. - Jon O, mid-2021