starting this on thurs evening, so as to include: the screening of metropolis at Cinema 21, which was dizzying and awe-inspiring and which sent us and our 3 companions into a discussion that spanned art, movement, cinema, music, narrative, history and which stretched past 4 hours and which combined with copious champagne, left me flattened on friday. but pretty much in the best way possible...later that night met m on bikes at dots. we made a split second decision to bike to laurelhurst theater to see 'girl w/ dragon tattoo' which i'd already seen but you can't beat 3 dollars and projected celluloid. (incidentally, the metropolis screening was digitally projected but they did not announce that). then biked home...
sat AM we have breakfast at J&M, then go to ikea (which i can only stomach in quick blasts) for a long duration, then later to bipartisan cafe to pick up pie where we run into a friend of a friend w/ an unfortunate story...back home, continue unpacking boxes, putting new house in order. then to laurelhurst park to meet friends and eat pie...then back home, on bikes, head downtown to see play at JAW festival. we see something i don't particularly love but that's b/c it explores death and i'm super-sensitized to that topic. later, we find ourselves back at dots, 2 nights in a row. once there m points out that dots and j&m cafe, both of which we've been to today, were introduced to us by a once-dear friend who is now - not sure how else to put it - a non-friend. we spend some discussion determining what, if anything, this means particularly since our presence in portland is directly attributable to the aid of this person years hence. we are unable to come to any satisfying summation beyond 'oh well' though one of us is more idealized about making it right then the other, waiting patiently for a train to arrive not realizing the trains don't run anymore. put in perilous terms, one of us believes in rescue, the other in recovery. we bike home and watch:
sunday am we have coffee and decide to finally build the bed from ikea which we purchased on another visit 4 wks ago. we begin to do this but run out of time before we're back at the laurelhurst theater watching 3 days of the condor. After we're at storables downtown, a horrid circle of the underworld disguised as a benign shop in the pearl district, then at mall 205, yet another horrid circle but this time no disguise entering places like target and bed, bath and beyond. a few moments in and my skin crawls...later we're at sorels on hawthorne, more purchasing, then home. we only have time to play w/ dog before we're due at nw film center to see To The Sea (aka Alamar). it's fantastic and warm and awe-inspiring and on the way out, in a urge to show affection to my wife i swing my arm around to put it over her shoulder but i end up knocking her in the nose with my elbow and for a few moments we're waiting for a gush of blood that fortunately doesn't come. i convince her that the action yielded the opposite of my intent. later we're at dove vivi w/ matt. later we're at home and i have drunken hiccups that i cannot shake so i'm laying on the bed while m discovers that the dog could not wait for us to come home and has left us a gift.
processes of subtraction and reduction have been underway for some time, reaching highest point this past wknd, moving out of one house and into another. to be sure it engenders chaos and exhaution in varying degrees. the process forces contemplation of items, some long un-contemplated, and their worth, obvious or implicit. And it birthes a question: is the remainder what defines you or is the process itself what defines you?
