We drank coffee and watched people walk by in the rain. We looked at pretty things on Broadway that were too expensive. And we went to the New Seasons on Killingsworth and bought delicious bread, cashew brittle, soymilk, apples, brown sugar, Stumptown coffee. And I snuck a few pieces of crystalized ginger from the bulk bins. Killingsworth is uncharted for me, crumbling buildings, glowing shops, windy corners. "Let's take acid here!" says Donna.

I remember the first few years I lived here, how it took my breath away, the streets at night. Natalie was visiting and we were driving down North Mississippi. She was talking on her cellphone, rolling a cigarette, and driving stick, at the same time. It was raining, Thanksgiving night.

"Portland is so glowy," I breathed. I was nineteen.

She never understood why I loved it so much. Kitty bought heroin at Saturday Market and then got her purse stolen along with the drugs. Donna and I were so curious: "What is heroin like?" Dreamy, she said. They were traveling around the country doing a fire-eating show.

"I like the people, but I don't like the town," she said.

The lines of this city are perfect, like something I'd draw, if I could draw it.

"The place, I'll make it all the same, I'll make it in my head, I'll draw it out of my memory, I'll gather it all about me, I'll make myself a head, I'll make myself a memory, I have only to listen, the voice will tell me everything, tell it to me again, everything I need, in dribs and drabs, breathless, it's like a confession, a last confession, you think it's finished, then it starts off again..."

-Beckett

That goes through my head all the time, like a mantra.

And this, which I wrote on April 25 2002, about the Ladd's Addition rose gardens:

"The center of the universe: in a city, deep within the tree canopy, the place where you know you're lost, the sunlight making everything look unreal. Layers of intersecting rows of houses, trees, streets, alleys: the result of this math equation, when everything cancels out, is a rose garden.