Intro: Full Moon in Scorpio

Like all hayseeds from Idaho, I descended upon Portland - May 2 '07 a full moon in Scorpio*, no accident - seeking cultural enlightenment, unrestrained liberalism and pretense, the so-called "hustle and bustle" of city life, bars I haven't been kicked out of, people I haven't slept with.

I struggled to find a way to capture my experience for my first months in PDX, because - as an English major - why bother to have any experience that cannot be published somewhere?

I came upon the idea of employing random scenes and vignettes that evoked my new urban life. Many Portlanders will probably find the scenes from my first few months trite and common (the Hung Farlow building et al), but I've tried to present scenes - whether amusing, or unusual, or fairly common - that represent Portland to me. Unlike most hayseeds, I won't bore my readers with a lot of trifles like, 'I saw two homos kissing,' or 'I saw a hooker get arrested.' Kissing homos and hookers are pretty much my milieu, and I'll only present them when they do something worthy of attention.

Occasionally, as it's my life and my blog, I interfere - as it were - in the scene itself, so it isn't mere observation, sometimes it's experience. Also, I seldom get across the river, so almost all of these little vignettes will take place downtown, Old Town, the Nob Hill area where I live, and OHSU where I temp.

*If your goals require a change of mind, of heart, and/or of action, this is the night to successfully tackle fears that could impede the ability to fully embrace change.