NY Friends and Mamo visit within a few days

Our first visit of friends from out of state... Gail and Eric just came from New York to visit us. Yay : ) !! and brought my favorite 'veggie' gummi bears from the co-op and other treats, like a very nifty green cutting board and their happy smiles... The last time we had seen them was October 1st when they kindly helped us load our moving truck in Brooklyn, including the old claw foot tub we hope to someday make a new home for, and kept us calm. I had to put the city picture of them in downtown Portland by the 'tall' buildings and in the country photo Eric's wearing a cool yellow shirt with 'Gowanus' the name of our old neighborhood and an extremely polluted canal, now becoming very fancy (ie. Whole Foods spends years trying to build on a brownfield site and condos eagerly wait in the wings to line the infested shores..), that we used to walk over on the way to the subway... Here's a photo Gail took of our address sign and Lima + Banti.

I felt an interesting feeling I can't quite place - having to do with friends from such a specific place and part of our recent lives, who in a certain sense represent that- here now in this very different new place and time of our life. Have you ever experienced that?

It was also our first reason to take a day off... so maybe that tilted my perspective on life.

We went to show them Biggie and to the Rock Creek Pub for lunch. We had a little dinner party with them and Mish and Steve. Neil cooked delicious burritos and we set up tables down by the fields from our house to watch the beautiful sunset.

The next day Neil had to do the route and I took them places our friends Jess and Michael took us to when we were out last summer. To the rose garden, Pittock Mansion and downtown; the industrial area by Hwy 30 which I thought they'd appreciate as crafty artist/builders they are. Gail saw this nifty train car and wanted to cross the tracks to go by the fear caboose and I think in the picture I am fighting her from doing that and she is saying alright little mother hen pipsqueak, i won't cross the tracks, gotcha.. and Eric in the car is saying, any day ladies, rental car is parked illegally... then the Rebuilding Center and Mississippi neighborhood and then had dinner with their really neat friends Dimitri and Jessica, who had moved from New Jersey and were staying with her parents in the Irvington neighborhood where she grew up. (We deliver to a lot of CSA subscribers there and think of it as the Knott St. neighborhood...)

She made these amazing pizzas. Mmm... We talked a lot about life, dreams and work. He seriously explored farming and boat building, but came to the conclusion that it would be too financially challenging to start with two young children (who are very smart and funny by the way). They are headed to Seattle and he's about to start architecture school. We talked a lot about all the neat things we'd each like to do and the difficulty in the end of making the numbers work. That he came to the realization that he was going to have to fit himself into one of the pre-laid down career paths available. Jessica is an artist and illustrator and showed me and Gail how to make crocheted bags out of plastic shopping bags, by cutting them in to strips, knotting them together and crocheting away. Very cool. We also talked about making and selling things like that, as the three of us like to be crafty, but also how much time it can take to make something you want to sell at an affordable price someone can actually buy. Hours versus income. She also introduced me to The Complete Tightwad's Gazette, gave me the awesome pizza crust recipe, and other Portland tips like Knitten Kitten, potholder looms, "Goodwill As Is" by the pound, Interstate Farmer's Market, 4over4.com and vistaprint.com, also screen printing with cross-stitch and puffy paint. It was hard to see Gail and Eric off, just as easily as they are here, poof, they are gone. Off to his grandparents anniversary party in Spokane. Thank you for making a special trip to visit us!

A day went by and the next monumental visitor appeared. I think my Mom actually just visited on Father's Day. I showed her around our house and we took lunch to eat with Neil, Steve and Mishelle who were working at Abundant Harvest, that was really nice. Then we went up to Biggie and she seemed pretty impressed and it was neat to get her outside opinions and view on it. And she got to meet Robin and the cat, Snaggles, photos were taken... she's going to mail them to me, but I don't have any in the computer to put here. We planted some red coreopsis flowers together in with a pepper row. We'd had an idea to somehow make it to the ocean for a hike as it's only an hour away and I haven't been there since we moved here, but she'd been on a trip up the coast on her way up to Portland and there just was not enough time before she needed to catch her flight. She was here less than a day and then also, poof, gone on a plane. Too fast, but very special to have her here, too. Definitely something unusual about people visiting you from the place you knew each other to the place you are now. I guess people leave these traces of themselves in memories of being at your home with you. And that's really nice.

Officially moving from Brooklyn on Sunday October 1st, 2006

With Jeff here, we're all loaded up and ready to hit the road.
We are eternally thankful to Gail M. + Eric M. who came to help
us early in the morning with fresh Margaret Palca muffins.
They kept us sane, freed the claw foot tub and helped make it all fit.
Got to say goodbye to Sidney, Joey, Justine and to Lucy who was
moving from the Can Factory the same morning. As Justine said,
"The time of the elves is ending." We had a great sunny brunch
we G + E outside up on 5th Avenue (no time for a final co-op trip..)
and then headed out over the Manhattan Bridge, through the
Lower East Side, out the Holland Tunnel and through the stink and
polluto puffs of New Jersey for the last time!

Bye-bye Concreteland !

The Old American Can Factory + the five year lease

I was invited to move to Brooklyn in September of 2001 to have a five year lease on a huge studio space.

It was lined up the weekend before the - I can't figure out how to write about that. I don't like the numbers nickname. I called it the day the world blew up. Maybe that is a limited view, but those explosions did seem to start the downward political movements that have not stopped.

I had just gotten back from a summer film job in NYC. I'd spent a lot of time downtown, because I'd stay at the production designer's apartment in Greenwich Village. Our schedule was so intense and filled with people that I often ran downtown late at night because it was - for that city - very clean, still, quiet and safe. There were no people at night and I could run all the tension and density out. I liked those tall buildings then. They oriented where south was, since most of the time you'd be north of them. And there mass and at night- just dark, absorbing, massive past real comprehension.

The day of the planes I had to work on a Dremel Tool commercial in a suburb of Milwaukee. It was sunny and surreal and I felt ill. Everyone was slightly quieter but just went about silly commercial crap. But I guess I don't know how you take a time out in this world.

How you take time to be scared or sad.
You don't. You work.
You move the economy forward.

I didn't feel scared about moving, maybe at the time it deepened the connection somehow. I worked hard to save up as much as I could and then cut it - it's hard to stop working when you're making money in one spot and have nothing lined up in the next.

It was the third week in October, I drove a truck out with a new furry friend, an ex-street tough named Meow Meow, who'd been roaming my neighborhood meowing alot and looking for love... right before I moved.

2,000 sq' of space all to myself at first. Not sure exactly how I patched it together in the beginning. I worked some film jobs and as a prop shop, making things for film. Then built out to studio spaces to rent as art studios.

This is too step-by-step explanatory.

I moved to this big space in this big borough of a big five part city.
A city I loved visiting, going to see and adventure everywhere I could.
I felt tough and thrilled. I thought, if I was a writer, I could move here.
I could have a tiny little apartment and live off of the people and the
energy and write.

I don't think I really thought about nature as an entity to have or not have back then. I just thought - space.

If you want any of it - do not move to New York City.

And then I was offered this BIG space

And I needed to move away from the situation I was in. This was the magic rabbit hole. How could I not move? There are those moments that feel like fate and you look around to see if there is a more logical or more comfortable path to take and seem to find none and so you jump in. (not anymore, but...)

Neil came aboard my makeshift pirate raft in the can factory in 2003 and let me know my cat's name was really Jeff. Jeff? I resisted. Firmly. But it was true.

Jumping forward in time for now... we need to get away (peel ourselves away) from this dense city. This incredibly unsustainable economy, layering of humans and all possible matters of profound pollution that are not even acknowledged here by the majority who own million dollars apartments and want nothing of it.

You can have all the money you want, you can drink fancy water shipped from other countries, insulate yourself in wealth, filter the air in your private apartment big or miniscule and take nothing but car services for daily travel, but you are ALL breathing the same air. When you step out side. And you must. And oddly, in all the inumerable posh restaurants and even in Bergdorf's, they are still not pumping in air from the Green Mountains of Vermont, straight to you. You cannot buy that. Rich or poor, you cannot buy healthy air in New York City.

And there is no move towards planting on all possible rooftops and surfaces. It is of this moment and for this moment and when it crumbles, hopefully you have enough money to jet away in time.

At the same time there are brilliant people here, driven, fascinating humans of any type you can imagine to meet. Of every background, ethnicity, belief systems, income. In that human sense, there is nothing else like it and that humanity is amazing.

For us we need out of here and have only stayed this long to save for our future. To breathe clean air, hike, animals, garden or farm, build our own little cob house, a root cellar, hold the reins on our own modest economy.

To live sensibly with an understanding that really we are just animals. Perspective.