Donna picked me up at the train station with her hair in two long braids, and we hugged for a long time surrounded by my bags and guitar. The Portland train station is gleaming high marble walls and old wood benches. We took a cab to her house in Northeast talking and giggling like idiots, and then I entered the Cat Land that is her apartment. There are four people here including me, and sixteen cats, so the cats outnumber us four to one.

At the moment we're sitting here in the large living room, in our pajamas, with coffee and various cats, listening to music. The room is piled with antique clocks, crumbling books, aquariums, art projects, drawings of insects, anonymous metal parts, half-disassembled furniture, and a lot of my old plants.

Yesterday Donna gave me presents, including an opulent abalone necklace, leaf and rose earrings, and some enigmatic hesperides soap. I gave her the shell seahorse earrings I bought in Thailand. After we finished exchanging our Kula gifts, we went out into the world, took the Sandy bus to downtown, ate Thai food, bought strong coffee, and wandered around Northwest.

Portland is so fucking beautiful and so are all the people. It was sunny and windy and most of the streets were just as I left them. We went in a lot of pretty shops and giggled a lot, and I tried on some dresses and shoes but didn't buy anything. We ate dessert and had more coffee at a swanky place on 23rd, and tried to take some pictures because we don't have enough pictures of us together and we need evidence.

Then we drank a bottle of wine and stayed up late talking about everything in the world. Donna said, "Do you prefer modernism or postmodernism?" I thought for a moment and said, "Postmodernism." She said, "Me too! We're in a centerless system and I love it!" I said, "I thought you were going to say, 'We're in a centerless system and I love the center.'" We decided that was a much preferable statement, and it actually makes sense if you think about it, at least if you think like us.

It is so amazing to be back, to see Donna after six months of only telephone and email, to see Portland, clean, finally, and to be in this apartment without all the heroin withdrawal I was constantly dealing with when I used to live here. Donna lives in my old room now and a lot of my stuff is still there but it looks completely different. All I remember is waking up there day after day and wishing I would die. But now everything is different...

We fell asleep surrounded by kittens and now it is the afternoon, the sun is shining and the house smells like tea tree oil, we are listening to Animal Collective, reading Foucault online, and plotting the rest of the day, which, if we are lucky, will unfold according to the principles of post-structuralism.

[and you can see some pictures we took on flickr.]