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?

Is 53 too old to begin thinking about what you want to be in life?

I want to grow up to be a ________________.

Doesn’t sound like a very mature statement for a man of my age to be making, does it?

Yesterday, I took a trip with some old friends to the Oregon coast, about 1.5 hours from Portland.

I’ve alluded to the fact of my possible near future relocation to Portland…if you’ve been paying attention.

The problem is deciding what I would do there?

So, I thought about maybe giving lumberjack-ing a try?

I’ve heard the pay’s good. The breakfasts are hearty. The work exhilarating. You’re in nature all the time…albeit with the purpose of tearing it down.

And wouldn’t it be super cool to answer the question of “what do you do” with…

“Well, to be honest, I am a lumberjack.”

Of course, I’m kidding.

I probably wouldn’t last very long in the lumberjack business.

Perhaps not even as long as I lasted in the lawyering business.

So, that leaves me with the lingering question…what in the Sam Hill am I going to do in Portland?

But, then again, viciously pondering that question to the point of delirium, perhaps is not the best use of my brain cells.

What’ll I do?

I’ll do something, that’s what!

I mean, there’s a thousand ways to skin a cat, or make a buck…right?

And if they pass Measure 91, my ties to Latin America may become even more lucrative!

Portlanders are a hearty lot, like the pioneers who saw those tall timbers and decided to bring them down and make something with them.

They aren’t content with the regular beers that the rest of the world drinks…no sir, they want to brew their own brands, with names like Poop Deck Porter, or Bitter Bitch Pale Ale.

They’re really fairly nuts, and that convenient fact dovetails nicely with my plans for financial security…if there even is such a thing.

So, you know what, I think I’ll stop the incessant worry about what I’m going to do and just do…

something.

“Hi, how are you?”

“Fine and you?”

“So, what do you do?”

“I am a lumberjack.”

“REALLY, my cousin Pauly, he’s a lumberjack too…”

and just like that, another meaningless conversation is borne.

From now on, I’m going to be answering that question with a simple four letter word…

L – I – F – E.

How about you?

There are some things I love about Portland. I love the coffee houses. I love the craft beer. I love the art. I love all the hippies and weirdos. Yesterday, I got a little taste of the natural side of Portland…loved it.

But, you know what?

These Portland rains don’t show up anywhere on that lovely list.

I tend to take pride in being a nature lover, but my reluctance to even step outside today is revealing me a bit of a fraud.

After all, what’s more natural than rain?

I finally did make it out to the coffee house where I snapped the photo above and where I sit writing this fine piece of predominantly pointless prose.

I don’t normally allow myself to be hermitized by rain. It does fall in Costa Rica quite frequently.

Maybe it’s because I’m here with virtually no money, relying on the good graces of couch surfing hosts to keep me dry at night…and coffee houses like this one to do the daily trick.

Damn it, I got things I want to do, places I want to go, stuff I want to see, and the rain, well, it just interferes.

If you let it.

We allow a lot of things to interfere, now don’t we?

The natural phenomenon that’s rain doesn’t pay a hipster’s heed to our plans. It just falls squarely upon them…without the slightest tinge of remorse.

We live in a harsh and cruel world like that. In fact, nothing really pays heed to our plans, if you think about it…

Maybe that’s why Steinbeck once wrote that…

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

Well, he actually stole that line from the poem To a Mouse, by Robert Burns of Scotland.

Whether it’s the weather, time, circumstances, happenstances, people, problems, or our own peculiarities…

it seems the making of a plan is part in parcel of the perpetuation of a failure.

I’m here on a mission. My mission is to hatch my plan of moving, repatriating, to this fine city of Portland, Oregon.

This place of hippies and hipsters, voodoo doughnut dolls and wads of weirdness lurking around every corner.

And the rain…lots of rain.

I’ve already had at least one Portlander give me that cockeyed, are you freaking nuts look, as soon as I mentioned that I wanted to move from there to here.

That’s OK. I’ve learned to plan to prepare for failure. And I’ve had a ton of practice.

I know nothing about this move will be easy.

And this rain has me waffling from absurd confidence to flashes of abject fear, as I consider how to do relatively simple things like find a place to live and a way to pay for it.

I keep having these visions of ending up a lowly part of the homeless subculture that openly exists here.

Portland might be the most liberal city in the U.S.

But it still has a harsh climate, as I’m sure any of those guys would attest.

And it’ll chew this Costa Rica Guy up and spit him out faster than you can say…

revolutionary misfit.

I guess, in that sense, they could be considered a renewable resource…

like Portland rains.