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It felt like Monday was the last day of summer. Upper 80’s. Today’s forecast 15 degrees less, tomorrow 25 less. And tomorrow they say rain, a bunch of it, and I’ve found myself yearning for rain these last couple of months, so it’s all alright with me.

I took a couple of long walks yesterday, just to be outside, the second late afternoon up to Wilshire Park, which is filled with Douglas Firs high in the Portland sky, and all kinds of other amazing trees. I asked myself to walk the circumference four times, not sure if I’d done that before, and your little sweat-ball blogger did it, probably about three miles.

Last Thursday I walked to the Regal LLoyd Cinema and paid to watch “The End of Oak Street.” There were three of us in the theater. I say this because the last time I sat in a movie theater was October ’21 in Encinitas in California, not long after the divorce, and sent-away me by then becoming a boogie boarder and eating veggie burritos every week – dancing with and around sadness. I liked “Oak Street” – it’s a pretty scary dinosaur movie – and I’ve liked it better as time has passed.

Passing. Like sadness. Like the good times. Like summer.

Oh! – here’s a good time:

“Practically speaking, a life that is vowed to simplicity, appropriate boldness, good humor, gratitude, unstinting work and play, and lots of walking brings us close to the actually existing world and its wholeness.”

That’s Gary Snyder from his book “The Practice of the Wild.” Someone I was renting a room from in San Diego gave that book to me as a Christmas present four years ago, and I never really looked at it until a footnote in another book I’ve been reading had me reach into one of the bookcases last week. I read the introduction by a United States Poet Laureate and I was hooked. I’ve been making my way through at a snail’s pace – bunches of books all at once – but periodically I come upon a sentence like the one above, and all over again I get the feeling of being exactly right where I’m supposed to be. In the “actually existing world.”

Yesterday was a very interesting day.

I was, I am, most fortunate to be alive on the planet.

The fuchsias sitting in their pots on the driveway are swaying ever so slightly in a breeze I can not feel, but see. There are four, and I have watered them earlier this morning, an arrangement I made with the long-gone landlords in exchange for a temporary small reduction in rent.

Like some underground creature, living in a den, up early into the light, daybreak companion and lover. Fuchsias and me, nearly interchangeable, who arrives for the dawn, which offers sustenance to the other. The fuchsias, drenched with a watering can, other potted-plants with the hose.

I am collecting their (the landlords) mail too, as they have driven a hard bargain. Though sitting daily on their deserted porch is a sweet benefit. This is a city, more than 650,000 call it home, and still, in the month I’ve been porch-sitting and watering and shedding some of my skin, even, I see the same people, over and over: older couples; women with dogs; rushing-by cyclists.

The fuchsias are big. The world is small.

I am presently entirely immersed in these three books – ‘The Way of Ch’an’ by David Hinton; ‘The Practice of the Wild’ by Gary Snyder; ‘Tripmaster Monkey’ by Maxine Hong Kingston.

I’m enchanted and wildly entangled with these three streaming series – ‘Ballard’ on Amazon Prime; ‘River’ on Amazon Prime; ‘Paradise’ on Hulu.

And I cannot for the life of me get these three songs out of my head – ‘Magic Clap’ by The Coup; ‘He’s A Runner’ by Laura Nyro; and ‘Pollution Woman’ by West, Bruce, and Laing.

I may not be able to ride a bike and chew gum at the same time. Apparently, though, I’m pretty terrific nowadays in the twisty terrain of these threes.

I may have had brown eyes when I was young, when I was a kid. It said so on my license – Brn, Brn. But, they’ve become green over the years. So green that when I stared into the mirror yesterday I almost didn’t recognize the eyes staring back. Mediterranean diet green. Veggies and olives.

I mostly was something of a chicken growing up. You want examples, let me count the ways. But, I’ve become more courageous over time. Braver around people. Braver around bees. Braver on a bench alone.

I weighed more in junior high school than I do now, and I weigh more now than I did eight years ago. I think it’s a peanut thing.

I’ve never been much for any God, force-fed or volunteered. You know Gretel – she of Hansel and – Gretel was something of a tangible, feel it in my fingers and toes and eyelashes guide a while. Even Sylvester Stewart, you know him as Sly of the family of. He was someone I looked up to in a ‘heavenly’ way for a bit. Heavenly hot fun in the summer time. Heavenly everybody is a star.

I suppose my mom sits up pretty high on any list of influencers so far, both with her human presentation and the DNA thing.

There were four cats along the way on my walk Sunday morning. I believe they served as lookouts; as gatekeepers; as ambassadors of the quiet – the walk slow and gentle -and it would not have been the same without them.

(Here are two lines from a poem by Han Shan — “I sit silent and alone beneath cliffwalls, a full moon adrift and dazzling in sky.”)

One of the great benefits of hanging out with cats on walks is that there’s no explaining. Not a syllable of explanation necessary.

Cat #1 Sunday morning was in a second-story window, south (Oakland) side of the street, all of its neck-following focus on me making my famous kitty noises (yes, through glass), waving my arms, trying my best to be a decent companion. NE Stanton St. Cat #2 is sitting on a windowsill on a porch on the other side of a fence from the sidewalk, offering small meows of hello and, I think, gratitude for the genuine attention and clear adoration received, my emotional default line. NE 7th Ave.

Cat #3 literally bounded off a porch, something urgent in its energy and call, talk talk talk, rushing over to rub up against, offer its stretched neck for luscious scratching. It’s raised butt too. Down NE 7th Ave. The fourth cat, seemingly casual strolling with a young woman and her small, leashed dog, took one look at me when I sang my goofy gato hello, turned around, and followed the others away. Blase’ on NE Tillamook.

What’s not to love about early Sunday walks.

This house is up the next block from where I live on NE 16th. I snapped this yesterday just before 6p, on a walk in the heat, drowsy, silly, strolling along. I often notice this house, and yesterday my eyes went up to the third floor, the little deck on that dormer up front, and the thought slid into my head that if I was invited to come on in and up, I’d go to sleep there for a week. A whole week. Just go on up and sleep through all of it.

Wednesday morning, the day before, I was sitting in the recliner and thinking I would begin reading ‘Desolation Angels’ by Jack Kerouac – my copy on top of the bookcase just to my left. I’d finished ‘The Dharma Bums’ the day before, and ‘Angels’ slides right in next in line. However, my eyes drifted down to the second shelf, and landed here:

Maxine Hong Kingston’s ‘Tripmaster Monkey. Like ‘The Dharma Bums,’ a book I’ve read before – Kerouac and Kingston two of my three or four favorite authors. “Bums’ affected me lots more than previous readings – the word that comes to mind is “Profound.” So, no surprise ‘Monkey’ shouted out my name – “My turn, Buddy.” and there I went. Gobble up the magic mushroom.

‘Tripmaster Monkey’ is wild, amazingly hip, crazy cool, dense, demanding, “laugh out loud” jolly, important, and wicked fabulous. Exactly like its author. It picked me yesterday morning – “All for your benefit,” I think I heard in the morning air. The sudden urge to get permission to go up to the third floor of that special house and sleep for a week didn’t and doesn’t feel all that different.

My life, each next page, is showing up and presenting itself – now this, now this, whatcha think of this? – me with a (golden) ticket to ride. And each new bit is feeling pretty darn big.

I just felt like telling you this.

…Turns out with virtually no spending the trickle away of savings is just a trickle. Away. My heart valve may give out completely long before the money.

And ditto, in terms of company, for everyone leaving me alone. I’ve had the same number since 2006 when I bought a flip-phone at T-Mobile in Medford, Massachusetts as preparation to drive from that side to this side for a job in San Francisco. One Walden to another. A 781 exchange.

Back, it seems, when people had interest in hiring me. Bringing me aboard a team. Oh, listen, Lou Rawls in the background, “When it gets real cold outside”…and maybe it was just as painstaking and I just don’t remember.

So, in summation, thank goodness for YouTube. And a trickling savings account. 

…There’s two weeks before the landlords return, Kate a bit more than that, no current appointments, Tuesday nights and those Wednesday/Saturday teacher flips, like totally, all these gosh darn books, the state has big, caring arms around me, this chair waiting the move-in Thursday when ‘here’ became home, so yeah, everything’s been done and now it’s simply patience.

Coffee, books, the cushion, the porch, a wealth of screenings, these hips and knees still getting around, how about the generosity of stillness – you could say a job knows where to find me. 

And…