darkly

The coffee in Portland is a revelation. The taste of it is like no other coffee I’ve had in my life up until now. As if every other mocha was only a mocha through a glass darkly.

This week has felt like an escape, in the same way that moving into the house in Saint Paul in less than a month seems like a new start. Even though I am shaking nothing off as I edge my way a little further north, I press on with the futile hope that a new geography will somehow transform the messy life I’m dragging along with me, even though I know only time will begin to unravel and straighten things, not location. But maybe a new location will make the necessary passing of time a little more bearable? There is hope in that thought, a more realistic hope, if couched in disheartening reality.

I am staying with old friends while I’m here, in a perfect little wood-floored apartment on the third floor of an old brick building with windows opening onto thick-barred fire escapes and a view of Mt. Hood, a claw-foot tub tucked into the tiny bathroom. The apartment is in the middle of everything, a pleasant walk to Powell’s Books and more artisan coffee roasters than you could hope to reasonably try out in a weekend, or perhaps a whole month. Every third person on the street is walking a dog and the drivers on the highway are polite about merging. The ongoing west coast drought means sunny skies and dry clouds soaring overhead, despite Portland’s damp reputation. It feels like heaven, even though deep down I know it is just another place with bad drivers and rude hipster baristas, a mass of humanity with all her foibles, as everywhere. Yet the temporary escape from my life, at least for today, seems like a real one. I do not want to go home.