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And in a tele conversation with my friend from Queens (NYC) – Jon – who has all kinds of medical concerns and I mention I’ve developed a new medical concern which I am so far treating with magical thinking. It is a medicine. Nor do I believe I’ve mentioned a more substantial purchase ($60) the other night through FB market place of a hand-sown quilt, one of its panels with the initial of its first buyer and the year of its sowing – 1977 –

the p.m. purchase including a far out rainbowed blanket way too wild for the kid in “Peanuts’ and so far it’s dangling on a cool, straight-back, armless chair I bought for five dollars on a street corner a few blocks away – a chair designed for chair zazen and maybe Zoom koan rooms and even guitar practice if I get my butt back in gear there and – Oh, I don’t know, there’s Chinese poetry and drawing and understanding the new computer in ways that offer more computing than its current service as an indoor drive-in movie, and real to say the built-in speakers aren’t so hot, but, and thrilled with this, since I jacked-in headphones the intricate, dynamic, spacious experience of every luscious individual sound is breathtaking, and as it’s an add-on like attaching the speaker from the parking space pole on top the inside of the rolled-up window makes it all the more a bitchin’ drive-in flashback.

 So Friday I go and invest two and a half hours of way early time to the DMV for Oregon plates (now on the car) and an Oregon license (in the mail). I swing back to the studio and check the ‘Most Important’ list, which leaves finding and buying affordable house plants ’cause I want them. And later up to Wilshire Park, house plants on my mind three times around, and then, just inspired, over to Alberta Street for the first time since back, I stumble into a secret Alberta used book store, it’s so late Friday afternoon, and leaning toward a couple of large, fat art books for $5 a piece I end up paying $7 for Kerouac’s ‘Desolation Angels’ and flash on all the Kerouac books I’m paying to store in Idaho – out of my sight five years now – including ‘Angels,’ and it’s a rush of both sadness and whirring energy to find the way to get them over here (the Rose City) and to a garage-space home for when they arrive. And sometimes I’m just tired with it (stored boxes dilemma) and sometimes crazy with it.

And so I was saying….

If I was given 10,000 words I couldn’t describe my life and how I feel, how I am feeling today, this Friday, anywhere near as well as this song sings and this video shows.

Talk about being in love.

Off to the Southeast yesterday on errands, in between I walked along Johnson Creek on the Springwater Corridor. I did what I’ve been doing about once a week and hiked down over and beyond the railroad bridge and to a sitting bench just off the tar trail. There I took out my phone, dialed up You tube, and played The Shangri-las “Out in the Streets.” Kind of wicked great. Then it was Kate Bush’s “The Big Sky.” The hits kept coming.

After a while I got up to head back and was listening to The Band’s “It Makes No Difference,” a remarkable song for me. I got to thinking that everyone in that band – and I grew up with them – was gone, had passed away. All five. And here I am, dawdling along on a Wednesday in early May, Portland, OR, two addresses in the last two months, fully alive and not only out in the world but absolutely positively wildly of the world.

So these thoughts are passing through and a jogger’s coming from the other direction, slowly approaching, he’s tall and lean, and when he’s about 15 feet away I give a close look and I swear I knew right there and then it was Levon Helm, The Band’s drummer, on record as having passed away in 2012. His face wasn’t exactly like Levon’s, and he was taller than Levon. But it was him. And as he was passing, without turning his head, his eyes came over and found mine and said to me – “We haven’t gone anywhere.”

Pinky swear.

This is not a post about reincarnation or angels or ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’ or ‘Remember Walking in the Sand’ or running up any hill or anything that could be explained, even hinted at. It was just me being struck amazed.

This is a true story.

Sunday afternoon, my landlords off to the coast, I came up out of the chilly basement into the serious heat, and turned right – I couldn’t tell you why – instead of my plan to walk left through the tunneled shade of the huge sidewalk trees.

Ten blocks down Tillamook Street I saw a man attaching a paper sign to a flowered-fabric low-to-the-ground chair. There was a more beat-up blue chair off to the right. I walked over and asked if they were free and the man, maybe 50, said yes and I should try the blue rocker, I wouldn’t believe how comfortable it was. So I did and it was – the chair had me at hello – and I said, bummer, it won’t fit in my car and he smiled and said, “It will fit in mine.” He also said the chair had belonged in his family for 60 years, and inside his house was a picture of his wife when she was five sitting in the blue rocker with her seven-year-old sister.

“Finish your walk,” he said, “come back and knock on the door and we’ll bring it over the 10 blocks to you.” Which I did and we did and he – his name’s Jeff – helped me carry it into the basement, where it is just over there as I type this.

See. Kindness and compassion out to play on a hot Irvington Sunday.

Starbucks.

Right here, Sunday morning. Long chatterings with Gavin walking earlier, big tree wonder, enchanted neighborhood. Outside coffee table, old people one over, golden oldie here. Heat wave coming later, the basement’s cool. Upstairs, downstairs, fetched and fetched. Planning’s so old school. Wildly waiting on another hand-me-down. One of the old guys walks past and I really like his shoes.

Wondering if the thrift shop on MLK’s open. Not a drinking glass in the house.

I actually began living in a Northeast Portland basement studio apartment around two in the afternoon last Thursday. Friday morning my landlord, who lives in the rest of the house with his wife – Rick and Tracy – texted and said he’d like to come see how I have things set up. When he came down I noted that this was less than 24 hours into my life here, and it would for sure look different a month from now. I said I bought a table from a guy who’s delivering it in a couple of hours, and I’ve decided I want something like a coffee table under the window for plants, flowers, buddhas, kitties and other wondrous examples of life. And maybe another chair or two.

The guy came with the table – I bought from him on Facebook Market Place – and it’s way cool, and then I headed over to my new closest Starbucks for a coffee and to scribble a few memos to self. While I was there I got a text from my landlord who said he was out riding his bike and saw a free table-like piece of furniture on the sidewalk at Tillamook and 27th. So, as I pay attention to all offers, I drove over after coffee, and there it was.

I lifted one end and it was crazy heavy and then noticed an older man (older than me even) on a porch eating some fruit in a bowl. I asked if it was his piece of furniture and he said it was and would I like help and he put down his spoon and came over and helped me lift it and slide it into the tight-squeeze back seat.

When he was walking back to his house he turned and said he hoped I would enjoy the piece because it had belonged to his family for 80 years. I told him I would honor those years, and forever treat the piece with reverence.

See. See. My landlord wants to poke around, I tell him an idea I have, he sees a piece of furniture with a free sign on his bike ride, he stops to text me, I follow the invitation and drive over and there it is and the owner’s there and helps me lug it in and shares loving family history and I bow to every bit of the Universe as it comes to fetch us and hold us, and often it’s just saying yes.

I took a shower last night for the first time since March 3.

No wonder I ain’t got no dates.

2135 A NE 16th Ave Portland, OR 97212

At 6:45 Wednesday eve I said goodbye and thank you to my landlady. Her name’s Laura. I spent hangout time with the two kitties Wednesday. They are Ramona and Leroy. They ain’t no Connie and Weymouth.

Over and over trips back and forth SE and NE, sacred possessions hauled down one set of stairs and then down another. Clinical diagnosis is “badly cooked.” It’s in the book, you could look it up.

Not a clue in the sky regards how my life’s gonna go further. I’m consciously wildly grateful just plain old waking up. Broadway Books, four blocks from the basement, said they’d take my three latest books on consignment. Long talk with a guy about maybe a job down the road, an actual invite to a training coming up. A damsel fly landed on my left arm and we hung out at the Rhody Garden quite a while. There was a magnificent bald eagle high up on a Douglas fir branch, and an absolutely stunning copper beech leafing its copper and bronzy self out on the grounds of Reed College. The computer’s in pieces in bags in a basement closet. The state gave poverty-level me a food card, but it didn’t work at Trader Joe’s.

The next one here is gonna be from over there.

Northeast coffee shop time, every quiet street blanketed in the tunnels of lush spring green, I’m switching stations and there’s Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “September” and here’s the wickedest urge to pull over, jump out, the sidewalk becomes a field of wild dancing with moves so cool they’d make the Neverland kids blush. And so jealous to jump on in.

Dozens of downs and ups and ups and downs and so, so, so, so, tired, landlords down to check the kid’s moves, and the day’s just cranking up as a few hours later I’m off to a laundromat for the first time in about 15 years. And it’s cool, the woman staff person’s a bundle of gushing help, even a little handsy. All the while my computer’s crying mercy, You tube and Prime about all that’s left, and just like that, as quick as a dazzled-brained cat, I hit the “place order” and score a new one.

I’ll tell you, me and Janis Joplin – Get it while you can.