AvP

Looking for housing in Portland has been an eye-opening experience, but not in the ways you might expect. I understand that Austin is a desirable city with lots to offer: steps away from nature; a local, unique vibe in the culture; lots of art; low crime; a friendly population; overall good weather; beautiful scenery. But let's face it: it's also incredibly overpriced for what you get. Especially considering that as big of a city as it is, there are very limited job opportunities. And now that everyone is converting shitty apartments all over town into overpriced condos, there is swiftly becoming a very shrunken rental market. Gone are the days when you can survive in this town on minimum wage, or even really twice minimum wage.



So I expected Portland to be very expensive and for house-hunting there to be a formidable and frustrating process. It's a coastal city, everybody loves it, they have severe anti-sprawl laws to prevent suburbs and create density. But it seems like a renter's market. I have no idea what it's like to actually try to buy a home there, but renting? It's cheaper than Austin.

In Portland (at least what I've found so far) you can get a 1,000 square foot, 2-bedroom home, with wood floors, huge windows, a yard, right on the bus line, 2 blocks from the MAX (light-rail) line, a block or three from restaurants, coffee shops, bars, grocery stores, and cafes, for about $1,200. And about 2 miles from downtown. (Incidentally, within the downtown area, which encompasses several square miles, all the public transportation is free! Buses and trains.) And that's not rare. Hell, I've found 2-bedroom, corner-unit condos in brand new high-rise buildings downtown for $1,050!

That tells me either that the economy there totally sucks (which may or may not be valid), or these ads are all fakes, like the ones in the back of the Chronicle, where when you call about them the realtor says, "Oh, I just leased that unit literally an hour ago! But I have this other great unit, just a little more expensive....", or it's just a lot cheaper to live there. For whatever reason.

So why is Austin so expensive? There aren't a lot of great jobs. The traffic is wretched. There is no public transportation to speak of. All of about two neighborhoods are walkable, at least as far as anything useful is concerned. And the voters of Travis County just elected Laura Morrison to city council, which means, apparently, that they share her vision of being anti-density, anti-light rail, anti- toll roads, pro-parking lots, pro-sprawl, pro-McMansion Ordinance.

I just don't get it. I was talking to a friend of mine at work who's my age, and grew up in Austin (5th-generation), and he blames a lot of it on out-of-state real estate investors coming in and jacking up the market to be more along California's real estate level. Even though it's totally unwarranted.

I don't really know enough about real estate to agree or disagree, but it makes sense. The market has to be determined by something, and despite what it claims, Austin is very sprawly and big, so it shouldn't cost so fucking much to live here. When I moved here from Dallas, I was in shock when I learned how much apartments rented for here. And that was almost 10 years ago.

I do think Austin is a wonderful city and has a lot to offer (I'd still rather live here than almost anywhere else), but when it comes to its "progressive" reputation, it really has a lot to live up to. And I get more and more scared everyday that it never will. Being progressive is more than shopping at Whole Foods and supporting gay marriage. It's a lifestyle, and a way of thinking about things that looks to the future and tries to create a better world for everybody, not constantly yearning for a past that's gone and sucking as much money as possible out of people just trying to live in a nice place without offering anything in return. I'm pretty sure light rail is officially dead in this town forever. That's really a shame, and really depressing, because the time to build it was about a decade ago.

My friend at work is funny. He's actually moving to London next year because his wife is an art historian or something over there and makes a decent living. So he told me that he's trying to convince himself that Austin totally sucks now and make himself hate it so that it won't be so hard to leave. Maybe in a way that's what I'm doing too. I just don't seem to have any patience left for anything here. But I know the root is just an impatience and excitement to begin my new life. I'm looking forward to it. I am enjoying what time I have left here, though. In the past week, I've been to Barton Springs once and Deep Eddy twice (it would have been Barton all three times, except it's closed on Thursdays. Grrr!!). Just to lay in the sun and soak it all in. I got very sad at Barton Springs on Monday. That place is so incredible, and the people-watching is a riot. I hope someone, somewhere, figures out a way to save this place from itself. I might just want to come back someday.

"Bring it on."

When gas prices started climbing so swiftly several months ago, I somewhat self-righteously proclaimed, "Bring it on!" to high gas prices. It's going to hurt for awhile, but I think in the long run, high gas prices cn only really bring out positive changes. As it turns out, some website called "Foreign Policy" (linked by Andrew Sullivan) has compiled a list of 5 reasons to love $4 gas. Some of which seem a little dubious, but others (like the mass transit boom) are pretty certifiable.

Along those lines, the Economist this month has an interesting little article about the Brookings Institution declaring Los Angeles the greenest city in the country! Come again?

Los Angeles is, after all, a symbol of environmental degradation. It became car-oriented well before most other cities. “If I lose my car it's like having my legs cut off,” explains the doomed hero of the 1950 film “Sunset Boulevard”. These days the metropolis is renowned for jammed freeways. Talk to the mayor of almost any Western city and they will outline their plans for avoiding Los Angeles' fate.

Brookings's number-crunchers calculated carbon footprints mostly by studying highway traffic and household energy use. They excluded local traffic and industry because the statistics are bad. Top of their green list is Honolulu, in Hawaii, whose residents accounted for 1.36 tons of carbon each in 2005. Los Angeles, at 1.41 tons per person, narrowly beats Portland, Oregon, which is widely proclaimed as an über-green city. New York comes fourth. At the bottom of the table, spewing out more than twice as much carbon per person as Los Angeles, is Lexington, Kentucky.

It's a short article, and interesting, if you're as obssessed with this kind of shit as I am.

Singing Hallelujah With the Fear in Your Heart

After a couple of weeks of indecision (and me waiting with baited breath), it's official: another one of my Top 5 Favorite People in the World, Collier, is also moving to Portland in August.

She's going up there in 2 weeks to find us a house to live in. We developed a list of ideal criteria on the phone today.

And also on the Collier news front: She's getting a book published! She sealed the deal with a publisher in New York last week. It's not coming out until 2011, but it's coming out.

So she's going to spend the next year writing said book, in our house, in Portland. While also tending to our garden.

Congratulations Collier!!

Jinx

I'm so hesitant to say anything because I'm sure something horrifically unspeakable is just around the corner, but I am so happy right now. For one of the first times in my life, everything is going my way. I actually got something I worked really hard for, and deeply wanted. I feel successful, like I really earned something I care deeply about, and like I'm on a train going in just the perfect direction. I'm so excited to start school and to start training and studying and doing something so meaningful to me that I can barely stand it. The excitement and drama and discovery of a new city awaits me.

Through an unexpected turn of events, it also looks like my dream of living in a tiny house with big windows and a garden in the back, with nearly everything I might need only mere blocks away might come to fruition.

Aside from being a therapist and a teacher, I want to be a prolific gardener so bad I can't stand it. I have this ideal in my head of this person I want to become without being self-righteous and indignant and angry about it. I want to just be it, and be content and loving about it.

Tonight at work I was so bored I made an arbitrary list of what being a good steward and sustainable citizen of the world would look like. For me. I'll never attain it, and probably won't even try that hard with a lot of it, but nevertheless, the list exists and it's something nice to strive towards. If you make your goals so easy to reach that you actually can, what fun is that?

1. Red meat - only twice a month.

2. Farmer's Markets - at least twice a month. No more shopping at profit-driven, lifestyle-selling, elitist supermarkets like Central Market and Whole Foods (this, especially, will never come to pass....).

3. STOP DRIVING!!

4. Stop buying anything new - only second-hand stuff.

5. Stop buying stuff.

6. Get a water filter and never again let a plastic water bottle touch your lips.

7. Flourescent bulbs (so easy, and yet I still haven't done it...).

8. Eat seasonally. As a religion.

9. Grow a goddamn garden already.

10. Learn to cook more stuff, and a wider variety. The freezer should be empty. Except for frozen fruit for smoothies, because that's okay.

I don't know that I've ever felt this at peace with myself, or where my life is at, before. Obviously I still have my doubts, my fears, things I get angry about, my regrets, the past I can't let go of. But that's okay. We all have those to some degree, but I've learned to forgive myself, to stop beating myself up so much, and to accept life as it happens.

This is all very new and strange and weird to me.

Everything Begins

I think it was largely due to waking up at 5:30 yesterday morning and not being able to go back to sleep (despite not having gone to bed until almost 1:30 that morning), but nevertheless, I had knots in my stomach all day yesterday. I don't know that it was just anxiety, necessarily, but something like being a little nervous, on edge.

There is so much to do before mid-August, when I'll head out West. So many decisions to make, and business to take care of. I won't deny that I'm terrified, but I also get a little thrill, a rush of adrenaline, when I think about it too much. And even though it's still almost 3 months away, every moment that I spend with the people I love is that much more poignant and meaningful. I wanna hug everybody and never let go. One of my favorite people in the world is leaving for the summer to visit her mom in California and then go to New York. We're going tubing together today, and to see Sex and the City on Sunday, then she's gone. She even stayed an extra day in order to see the movie. But that's too soon.

And I'm so not prepared.

Today I'm also picking up some boxes to go ahead and start shipping some smaller stuff with Jody, who's leaving next week. Stuff like books, CD's, DVD's, small pieces of furniture that I won't need for the next couple of months. My room will be barren and sad, no longer surrounded by the artifacts of my life for the past 10-15 years.

I don't think I'm really prepared for that, either. It makes it all too real. I don't think I've really admitted how real this is yet. And how fast this summer is going to go.

But I'm not going to spend all this time being morose and pitiful. I'm going to love it, and revel in it, and be so thankful that I am going to be so sad to leave. That's a gift. How many people have as many people in their life capable of completely breaking their heart as I do? Probably not many.

I've decided to cherish that, not lament it.

It's a new chapter. I'm chasing my metaphorical (and maybe literal!) fortune. And chasing myself in a way even I don't completely understand, and maybe never will, but that's okay. Life needs a little mystery.

Something else I've accepted and embraced instead of being so goddamn angry that I don't have all the answers. That was the Old Me.

The New Me craves that mystery, that confusion, that unimportance of "knowing," and understanding. Or maybe I've just accepted the irrelevance of it and made peace with that.

Today I'm thinking about selling my car and a good chunk of my possessions. I want to invest in a good street bike and become one of those biking-nut-pseudo hippy dudes. i am, after all, moving to the most bike friendly city in North America. I have many plans, both physical and mental, for myself.

Who knows what the future holds? But at least I'm embracing it; taking charge, but still letting go. I'm always learning and I can only hope to keep falling down.