the other day...







I took a walk.




a gentleman who had waited patiently behind for me to finish entered the frame. I took a picture as he walked away...



I walked further and found a diorama on the sidewalk. It said "all stumps go to heaven".



Here's a little Portland, OR history for you: it is referred to as "stumptown" because of all the trees that were cleared to make it. When it was time for the landowners to decide on a name for the new city, they flipped a coin. The winner got to name it after their hometown. Portland was this close to being named Boston. But the winner was from Maine. I'm kind of from Maine. I lived there for about 6 years, and sometimes near Portland...1: Boothbay Harbor 2: Pittsfield 3: Old Orchard Beach.

My very favorite Portland, ME memory involves my good old friend, Loren K... Crayons. Cerulean and Sepia?...toothbrushes, cobblestone and some guy named Crazy Horse who had a bunch of notebooks scribbled full of a very detailed plan to take over the US government... we ended up deciding to try to spend a summer in Portland, somehow it ended up being OOB. This was probably due to one of us being broke and not having the dough for the city. It was probably me. I remember we spent a rainy weekend in a tent, until we found a place to live at this Inn on the beach that was owned by a couple of "Snowbirds" (people who spend their winters down south, usually in Florida). Loren got a job at some bar, I got a job at a Chinese restaurant, we were 18.

One of our first nights there, we met "Bill" on the beach. We were drinking a big bottle of bad wine, and there was Bill, rolling around in the sand, just like us. Turns out he was the cook at the Chinese restaurant. It didn't have a proper name, it was just called "Chinese Restaurant", and that's what the sign said.

Bill could not speak English very well, and we could not speak Chinese at all. When he realized that I was to be the new waitress, he promised me that he would cook a real Chinese dinner on my first day. And Bill delivered. I watched him on that first night as he chopped a live lobster into pieces before sauteeing it with fresh vegetables in the wok. The slaughter seemed so much more humane than the way I was used to, with the boiling water and the screaming...

I learned a lot about Chinese food that summer, the most important being that the food that we ate every night at 9 o'clock, the meal that we all sat down to together in between the dinner rush and the drunken bar rush, had little to nothing to do with the food that was offered on the menu. I had always hated "Chinese" food. Now I knew better. Real Chinese food is made with very fresh ingredients that are not overcooked or drowning in sugary sauces. Real Chinese food is simple and good for you.

Halfway through the summer, the owner hired a new kitchen crew. None of them could speak any English and they all seemed sort of afraid. I was convinced they were all illegal immigrants. They used to write notes and attach them to the wall with smeared white rice, it made great glue. There was one man in particular that I got on well with. He was older and jolly; we communicated with sounds, smiles, and gestures.

During that Summer, every day was regimented. Each week was colored by the people that I met and the visitors I received, but there were constants. I usually woke up around 10 am and headed to the beach. The beach was punctuated by trips to the coffee shop and cigarettes. I was really into smoking that summer. There was a shop that sold really nice cigarettes and I smoked them all, the davidoffs, the nat shermans, I even dabbled in cigars. I would try anything that the proprietor suggested. It was a summer of abstinence for me in every arena except for caffeine and nicotine. In those places I allowed myself every indulgence.

After the beach, around four, I would go to work at the Chinese Restaurant. Although this was my first time waiting tables, I was for a while the only waiter. I worked every single day. And they would not give me a day off. In desperation one day, I called in sick. I wasn't sick. Bill would barely talk to me when I went back the next day. I never called in sick again, the disappointment was too much to bear, even in the face of literally endless workweeks.

Suddenly, halfway through the summer, Loren decided to go back to Vermont. I had to get a new roommate, and I found Charlotte. Charlotte was from France, Nice to be exact, and she was really into Rastafarian culture. There were a lot of kids from Europe that came to Old Orchard Beach for the summer, it was almost like a foreign exchange. Charlotte and I spent a lot of time at the coffee shop, which was open 24 hours a day. It was called "The Hobo Jungle" due to the fact that all of the proprietors had spent time jumping cars cross-country and were committed to the Hobo lifestyle. It was our home away from hotel. We spent a lot of time in that place.

I had a friend from England come to visit, James. I had an old friend from JR High come to visit, Benji. I had a brief romance with a guy named John who had long hair and a beard and rode a motorcycle and had children in the neighboring town. And then, the summer was over. It was time to go to school.

That was the last time I lived in Maine, near Portland, which is the town that the town that I live in is named after....

Anywho, I returned home from my walk that evening to a luxurious sunset, this was my favorite picture from the balcony...