Here

Back in Portland, two posters hung over our bed. They look identical: empty white sheets of paper framed in black. But they each have a single, barely visible line of text precisely in their center. The one on my side of the bed said: Somewhere better than this place.

It is the motto of our meta-life. We met in Boston five years ago only to move to DC, to the Hague, to Portland, and now back to Boston with the expectation of another move two years from now. On good days, I feel like my life is a grand quest, with us cast as the fearless explorers (albeit of a modern, domesticated sort).

But on bad days - and there were many bad days in recent weeks - I feel scattered, my mind and body so jangly that the skin under my skin feels like it is vibrating. In our last couple of weeks in Portland, living amongst boxes yet again, our quasi-nomadic lifestyle deeply unsettled me: it's like a perpetual motion machine, with us propelled forward every time we think we come to rest. In those moments, I was drawn to the poster that hung on the other side of the bed: Nowhere better than this place.

With our remaining time in Portland slipping away like it never existed, I tried to collect a few last moments that were purely "here." It being June in Portland, I literally stopped to smell the roses.

Strawberry picking on Sauvie Island 

Sauvie's: a flat delta island just beyond the meeting of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers, a pastoral enclave right on the edge of the city. Most of the farms are u-pick, and the first big crop is the strawberries. It was a good year for Oregon strawberries; at the very start of June, the vines were already dense with fruit, real strawberries that are bright red and delicate all the way to the core. These strawberries are too fragile to ship; they can only be eaten locally. My sister wanted flats of them to make strawberry jam, yet with four of us, the picking only took twenty minutes. (A jar of my sister's Oregon strawberry jam was the first item in our new fridge in Boston. It didn't last long.)

The Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade

A repetitive childhood memory: waiting for what seemed like eons on an overcast day with drizzle for the annual Rose Festival parade to start. Was it an omen that this year, for the first time in my memory, parade day dawned bright and sunny?

We took a break from packing to check out the parade, given that it started within walking distance of our apartment. We only stayed for the first 10 minutes, but as Jeff pointed out, we saw what mattered: a couple floats; prancing horses; elite high school bands from out of state; the classic One More Time Around Again Marching Band (not so elite, but they make up for it with zest); and the Rose Festival Court.

Oh, how I wanted to be a Rose Festival princess when I was a little girl! (No, really, I did! Every year, I would practice my rose festival wave - elbow elbow wrist-wrist-wrist - while watching the then-televised selection of the queen.) Alas, some dreams are not meant to be. As the court floated by, I was reminded of the importance of failure in life. It was oddly reassuring, as I prepared to leap again, to think how life goes on even when you don't quite end up where you hoped you would.

Wandering through the east side industrial district 

Walking to the bus stop after yoga one evening, I heard the thrilling stomp of a drum line. Detoured back across the train tracks and under the Morrison Bridge to find a punk marching band (all drums and crashing cymbals) practicing for the Starlight Parade: bass drums that lit up when whacked, the percussive beat reverberating in the echoing space under the bridge, a small flag team behind them half-heartedly practicing their routine. 

Wandered off again and wound through the warehouses and bridges of the east side, discovering graffiti murals, some new stores, the raw beauty of industrial areas. The drum line had started marching, and I found them again, heading north into the twilight, flags waving.

Biking to work along the East Side Esplanade 

Cool summer mornings, Portland's skyline lit by bright sun, me cruising down the esplanade alongside the river, heart rate picking up, fresh air on my face, bridges whizzing past. It was like my own sitcom theme song/credit roll every morning to start my day. This - this is it.

Beer with friends at the Kennedy School 

On a particularly hot Saturday, we spontaneously met with friends at the Kennedy School just as the day was starting to cool off. Beer in hand, we sat out by the refurbished school's front steps to mellow as the sun took its fine time setting. It was the way to end one's time in the city: languidly, appreciatively, with friends and laughter and a local microbrew.

Somewhere better than this place ...  

Nowhere better than this place ... 

We collected the posters back in 2008 at MALBA, a museum of modern Latin American art in Buenos Aires. It was a participatory installation exhibit, two big stacks of posters that patrons walked between and then took with them. I understood the artist to mean we oscillate between the two perspectives - but I have always intended to live both at once. A dualism of loving the here while dreaming of the there.

Two weeks before we moved, I wrote in my journal: "Preparing to move, time is speeding up - I feel like we are hurtling towards somewhere better than this place at a rate that could fling us off, like centripetal force, to a no man's land between the here and the there - like we will end up in a liminal purgatory, overwhelmed by events and distance, a balloon suddenly deflated and crumpled to the ground." It is a delicate balance, this duality between somewhere better and nowhere better. Despite the passing terror of getting lost between the here and the there, we made it to the other side safely enough. Now begins the process of learning to love our new "here," even as we start to build our imaginings for the next.