Jul. 14, 2011 at 5:57pm with 17 notes
Lists!movinghello internet!
I live in Oregon now and other stuff as well.

I’ve lived here for about ten days or so. I’m also working full time again for the first time since before my wife did that magic trick where she pulled a kid out of her vajunglegym. Anyway, I’ve been absent from this particular sidewalk for a bit and thought I’d make words happen. But because I still don’t feel settled or that I have the energy to find the narrative thread connecting all of the nonsense sounds my head is making, I’m taking the easy way out and making a bulleted list. It’s long(ish) so I was gonna drop a read more link below this rambling opening paragraph. But then I was like, Nope, not gonna. So I didn’t. Just like that. And that right there explains the need for a bulleted list.

Please to enjoy!

  • We hired a company to move all of our belongings from Rhode Island to Oregon in a pod-like container thing. They delivered it the Tuesday before we moved and came to pick it up the next Saturday (June 25). A man came and hoisted about 90% of everything we hadn’t sold about 12 feet in the air with a forklift, shook it to get water off the top, and then proceeded to drop it on its side. Everything broke. Every. Thing. Including the container it was in.
  • Erin and I were outside watching while this happened. Sadface playing a sad trombone in a sad clown’s sadhole.
  • The form the company provided to claim our losses is not intended for the “You dropped all our shit from a second story window and now it’s all busted” type of problem. It’s intended more for the “One of my dishes was chipped from less-than-tender handling” sort of problem. As a result, our claim form runs onto a fifth page.
  • They brought us a new container and the same driver who’d dropped Container #1 stood by and watched as we repacked all of our broken shit so we could reconcile the claim when it reaches Portland. So what we’d spent days meticulously organizing and packing and not breaking we got to spend an hour hurriedly jamming into a box as a man we hate stood there playing audience. Super fun!
  • The drive west out of Denver on I-70 is probably the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen while inside a car. This includes all body parts of all former girlfriends and current wives. Sorry, ladies.
  • I listened to the wildly-hyped-up novel The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht during some of the driving. I wasn’t sure I’d like it, as the language initially seemed a little too ornate and precious, and sometimes I like the voice actor so much I can’t tell about the actual book, but then a few minutes into the opening a four-year-old watches a man get his arm chewed off by a tiger and it’s described with the same ornate precision and I was hooked. I really kind of loved the book. There are several frames to the narrative—so frequently shifting and layering that the audio book actually has multiple voice actors—and the further I got into it the more I realized that the language worked well to mirror the bizarre, unpredictable, violent, and confused reality of the early-90s, post-Soviet Balkan States it was bringing to life. Of course, now I just want to see it on the page.
  • According to this Google map, I drove 3410 miles.
  • Arches National Park is a totally bitchin’ side adventure. It is essential one has Totally Bitchin’ Side Adventures when powering through a Moderately Bitchin’ Primary Adventure.
  • The first leg, from RI to my mother-in-law’s house in Dayton, OH, somehow took 18 hours. Somehow is named Roya and she ardently believes that long travels via automobile should be eliminated from the realm of human possibility.
  • This week I’ve (finally) been reading Ben Lerner’s Mean Free Path and it ranks with only one or two other literary experiences where I’m certain my understanding of poetry and my relationship with language is changing as a result of sitting with the book. Holy sweet unicorn crap it is so effin’ good. (See? Changing already!)
  • The building we are moving in to is not finished yet. We knew that was the case when we signed the lease. Still, I’d like it to be finished now so I can feel like I have a home again please.
  • We stopped in Grand Junction, CO, to visit two of my bestest pals and their son. It was super amazingly fantastic. I miss seeing my chosen family as often as I would like.
  • The following day we were in Salt Lake City to stay at my very bestest pal’s house, visiting with his wife and their son. Ditto.
  • I am not looking forward to replacing all of our things.
  • I am looking forward to necessarily having less things.
  • My sister and I have not spent that much continuous time together since childhood. It was shockingly easy.
  • Portland is filled with food. I knew this from visits, but Jesus Christ there’s a lot of fucking food. Cart pods have exploded all over Southeast PDX and I am required to eat it all because I don’t drink or smoke or do drugs anymore and you’re not the boss of me or my mother or my doctor so GET OUT THE WAY I’LL KICK YOU!
  • We are currently staying at my sister-in-law’s house. All three of us, two dogs, and my desk in their spare bedroom. It’s not nearly as horrible as it sounds.
  • I haven’t slept in a bed since Denver. Couches and inflatable mattresses all the way. My body is beginning to revolt.
  • This many bullet points is enough bullet points.
  1. naimhe said: definitely an adventure
  2. ecantwell said: Congrats/good luck/I hope nothing else breaks! Also, MEAN FREE PATH. I actually ended up writing about it for a section of my PhD exams because, Jesus. I would like to have Ben Lerner’s brain now, thanks.
  3. marleymarley said: your misfortunes are hilarious I’m so sorry.
  4. damndanm posted this