Hitting bottom has bad connotations.
After all, that’s what junkies and alcoholics do…
right before rehab.
Well, I’m not a junkie and I’m not headed for rehab.
Well, maybe, if there’s one that could cure my addiction to nonconformity. But then again, I like my addictions…especially that one.
I do enjoy more than an occasional drink, but I don’t really see myself as an habitual drinker…
Well, okay maybe habitual, but it’s a habit I seem to be in control of…
most of the time.
Any-fugin-how…
Recently I’ve been feeling around for some semblance of bottom-ness.
But rather than looking at that as a bad thing, I believe there’s a better, maybe even more realistic, perspective.
Let’s call it seeking a better bottom.
There are times in our lives, “seasons” as the song goes, when we need to turn, turn, turn…
Turn around and start anew, or start something new.
Now’s one of those times for me.
A little over a month ago I got this crazy notion to move out of my comfortable digs in Perez Zeledon, shove the few possessions I still cling to into a tiny storage room, park my car for the foreseeable future in a semi-secure location, and catch a plane to the future.
That plane, along with a cross country train ride, has landed me in what might well become my new home…
at least until the next bottom, er, uh, beginning.
It’s a place, no, better, a state of mind, called
Portland…
Oregon.
Portland is the perfect place for a would-be writer-blogger-misfit to hang his or her hat.
There’s an infinite supply of hip little cafes where you can steal away to write and not feel the least bit self-conscious about it.
It’s home to the world’s largest bookstore.
And there’s abject weirdness around you 24/7.
It’s sorta surreal…
and I love it!
Will I return to my beloved Costa Rica?
Well, yea, in two weeks in order to prepare for the big move.
I’m also doing the unthinkable…seeking employment…
Something I haven’t done in, what, over 20 years?
I put in an application this morning to work in a little sustainability-minded cooperative grocery.
I guess I better hurry to the tattoo and piercing parlor to prepare myself to look the part.
It’s all good.
Change is good.
Bottoms aren’t really all that bad, or at least they don’t have to be.
It’s that little man (or woman) that keeps whispering in your ear from behind your eyeballs that makes them seem so.
But I’ll tell you a secret you might already know…he/she lies!
No use in fighting them.
Complaining about them.
Seeking therapy in order to avoid them.
Or lamenting their inevitable arrivals.
Best to realize they’re just another life-event-experience floating by on that stream called consciousness.
Life’s not a bitch, despite the saying…
It’s a transient…
ride.
Definitely better than the alternative, isn’t it?
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