(1) AWP-PDX. Namely: (2) Ben! (3) Public transportation. Not least… (4) Pedestrianism. (5) Ilya Kaminksy (personal, if not up close) + (6) Deaf Republic. (7) Pok Pok. In particular… (8) the wings but also (9) the papaya salad. (10) ¿Por Qué No? In particular… (11) Everything. But, okay, more specifically: (12) the al pastor taco + (13) the sopa del dia. Body + blood. (14) SE PDX. (15) Mt Tabor Park. (16) Grendel’s Coffee. (17) The Bible Project Studios. (18) Air travel. (Always been a thing with me.) (19) Returning home to J– and S–. (20) But prior to that, a steady stream of pics and vids of the boy being the boy with his mom. (21) Poverty Creek Journal by Tom Gardner. (22) The game effort of a basketball team I root for from afar, by default, and (now) almost exclusively in spirit. (23) Oh, I forgot: the shepherd’s pie at Kells Pub in PDX. (24) Also: walking across the Morrison Bridge, at night, in the rain. The disparate aesthetics: a little scary, a little beautiful, and so on. (25) Also: being interviewed on the sidewalk outside the Oregon Convention Center by Corinne Manning. Part confessional, part therapy session, part self(pep)-talk: a little scary, a little beautiful, and so on. Which is to say: (26) the realization(s) that what we long for can be realized (please see #19 + #20 above); and that (27) something we think we long for (e.g., the “writing life” as implicitly articulated by the “Literary Industrial Complex” — please see #1 above) is often not, in fact, a longing but a thing to keep us from meeting ourselves (our true desires, true abilities) right where we are; and that (28) my son has a somewhat healthier relationship with books than I do: I read them and try to write them; he puts them in his mouth. (29) Another impromptu/instant collaboration: Will Linn‘s mid-March visit to my school, to talk about the mythic impulse in contemporary stories. Which is to say: (30) Serendipity. Opening to it.
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TJ BEITELMAN 