now this, here

This is a painting I did sometime around 2015/16. In a garage-turned-studio in Portland, OR. I have no idea where it is, or what happened to it. So many changes since then, most thrilling, some heartbreaking. This is what I get for being a human. Right?

I guess I have lived something of a gypsy life. Some of that alcohol-related – I don’t like it here, I bet it’s better there. More of it a way-I’m-built thing. Which I certainly honed and carved out as my own – my behaviors, my shortcomings, my choices.

Move to California, move back. Move to Florida, move back. Move to California again, and move back again. Move to Portland, OR, not knowing a soul, no job waiting, never stepped foot there before. Then a blind date, and that worked out pretty good. Then that stopped working, this one not my choice, and I rolled down here, California again, from where I type this today.

This Blog got its start in a basement in Portland, back in November of 2018. It’s continued in a rented room in Encinitas, CA, and another in Golden Hill, and now here, a shared apartment in Banker’s Hill.

This is another painting of mine, also painted in Portland. This one is called “Iowa September”, and it was my interpretation of driving through Iowa that month, lavender and golden cornfields for miles, on my way to let’s find out what happens in Portland. I’m pretty sure it sits with a number of fellow painted nomads in a garage in Caldwell, Idaho. Where I’ve never been, though my son Spenser lives there some of the time. I have been to Marsing.

“Couch Surfing at 70”, which got its start in Portland, which has focused a lot on my life in Massachusetts, is going to say goodbye here, in San Diego. Soon. But, there’s another gypsy coming to take its place. Filled with humility as it steps into a similar blogging space. Call it a kid, amazing with energy and wild ideas, and a heart-mind brimming with wonder.

I’m going to write it here. Here at 148.