nika rebekah

I have lived in Portland for over a month now. The homesickness has just begun to creep under my skin. I long for the constant companionship, the dry-heat, the monsoons, the Mexican food, the culture. The house is a pretty one. The clawfoot I always wanted, the wrap-around porch, the ferns & vines & hydrangeas hug close to the hugeness of this old Victorian. My money dries up as the days pass & I wander aimlessly in search of a job. I get many other things done—watching 30s musicals while I mend clothes, roast beets, harvest lavender & tie sashays, meditate, make pesto from my basil plant, watch the spiders dance around the backyard, alone.

Portland is a dream in the summer. Hot days spent at the riverside & picking blackberries—
Nights spent in a crumbly old living room watching scout niblet tear away at her guitar strings. Drinking is such a hobby here, but somehow more desirable with the grandiose selection of locations to do it & lots of cute little food-carts nestled on street corners late into the night to satiate drunken hunger.

Molly’s house is probably my favorite. Teas & spices lining the walls, strawberries & beautiful greens in the ground, nighttime bonfires, melodramatic dog fights, the sweetest ducks wander their magical yard. We took two eggs home & they were so delicious with rich orange yolks the size of two chicken eggs each. they live a few miles from the center of the city but you feel like you’re in a country farmhouse at night, the sky creates an isolating backdrop & the cold air makes you feel like you’re the only one around.

On my family’s day trip to the coast last week, I collected sticks & small rocks encrusted with moss & lichen. I have been soaking them every day, caring for them before I put them into their new home—the jar I have yet to find.

As you can see, my time is spent in intense leisure, but i do also go out every day & hand out resumes. Never the less, I wont bore you with the story of every bitchy old gay man who owns a vintage shop that “wont ever be hiring” in downtown Portland. I suppose its time to regroup.