Come Saturday Morning

December 28, 2024

Same same, but different

It’s another rainy day in the neighborhood here in Portland, so we’re still stuck in a loop here with most days having some similar contours - same basic morning routine, same attempt to fit some sort of exercise in around what other events constrain and define the day. Actually though it’s more like a helix or a spiral staircase than a loop, with each cycle bringing us up a tier to a higher, more upbeat level. It can’t keep going on like this for much longer though because we’re not seeing much more room for improvement without rebasing to somewhere warmer and drier. That would make us both very happy when that day comes.

It helps of course that Team Anderson seems to be unusually adaptive. Were adapting as well as possible to the realities of my health situation, we’re adapting to the ridiculous constraints and limitations our tiny home of the moment, and we’re even adapting to life in damp, gray mid-winter Portland. We’re both more ready to take a risk on getting wet in favor of getting some outdoor excercise more often. Before we worked we did plenty of outdoor activity in the winter. While we were still working we nearly always stayed close to home in the winter because we hoarded our vacation time for trips abroad in spring or autumn. We just need to relearn old habits and rediscover old attitudes that we’ve spoiled ourselves by avoiding ever since going vagabond.

So the day begins with me at Umbria again sitting down to quiche and coffee, and Rachael back at the apartment having her coffee and breakfast early so she can clear her system before walking over to the gym. But it’s changed today because I’m not at my street side table at Umbria long before I realize today is different because I’m different. I was better than I ever expected to be yesterday, but I’m better again than even that this morning. Were still on the ascent, with the ultimate ceiling unknown.

Two markers this morning. First, the coffee. Probably as recently as three days ago I was asking the server to leave about a half inch in the cup so I could make it the fifteen feet to my table without spilling it. It was a problem because I wasn’t walking steadily enough yet to manage navigating the short passage between the tables and chairs. That’s no problem at all now. And the other was that my depth perception looking down into the cup was sketchy enough to even be sure how close to the surface the coffee was. That’s all different now, and today is the best yet. I can see clearly now and have no trouble walking to the table with a full cup. A small thing, but progress.

The other thing is more important to me and more heartening, more on the scale of realizing I’ll see birds again. Today is the first morning I realize I’ll see the faces again too. I’m not a voyeur by any means, but I do enjoy looking at people’s faces - particularly ones with a spark of life or character in them that makes them look more attuned to the world or interestingly etched by experience than most. It’s something I’ve done for a long time, and you’ve probably noticed that occasionally I’ll drop in a photo of a server at a restaurant or wherever, a figure I want to remember to help me bring back a special time. For me it’s better than food photos, since I can’t taste anyway.

So today I’m sitting by the window, look back toward the counter and I realize that for the first time I’m starting to pretty clearly see the features of the young woman who’s been serving me coffee for the last three mornings. Today she’s much better defined, less blurry. I can see she’s got the same warm friendly smile and demeanor and erect posture I was already aware of from seeing her closer up. But today I can see from fifteen feet away she’s a redhead with bangs and longer hair down in braids, is probably a decade younger than I’d been thinking, and even has a nose ring. Likely she’s got tattoos on her arms too, though I didn’t notice. I have a flash back to that waitress in Bassano del Grappa that served us three years ago, her face still masked for Covid protection, offering me a sample of her wine recommendation; the local specialty, a Vespaiolo.

For a long time that was my new favorite wine I can’t taste, just because she recommended it. It’s a thrill three years later when I’m back in the same restaurant with Suzanne and Janos and the same woman is our server again, and she’s unmasked so I can see her whole face and bright smile that lights up when I show her the earlier photo from my iPad. Regretfully they’re out of the Vespaiolo this time, but it’s still a fine bookend to a rich memory.

So another piece, more important to me than some, snaps back into the quickly reassembling jigsaw puzzle of the former me. Snap. Going up!

__________

A hour or so later I’m engrossed in composing the next post when the phone rings. It’s Rachael, over at our storage unit across the street looking for something. She’s more challenged by number memory than I am and has forgotten our locker number. It’s 3303 I tell her, and we both get back to what we’re doing.

Another half hour, another phone call, and the plan for the day changes. She found her rain pants and a warm hat in the storage locker, the weather looks improved enough to take a chance on it, so she’s going to risk a random walk in the neighborhood rather than another boring trip to the gym. She suggests I might want to consider the same.

Seize the day! I’m home ten minutes later, and before long she’s bundled up and out the door and I’m gone soon after, back to the river looking for those stupid scoters again. I take the phone of course, and bring the Canon in case a role for it pops up, but the Lumix stays behind - now, and perhaps forever going forward.

An adaptor, colorfully and appropriately dressed for the occasion and looking sharp because I can see clearly now.

I’m gone and back in maybe two hours, mission accomplished. I’ve gotten some exercise and fresh air, gotten my new bird for the day, and completed the experiment I was intent on. I walk down to the end of the walkway beyond the Fremont Bridge again to the spot where the cormorants hang, hoping to see a new bird but also to keep experimenting with using the phone camera as a spotter.

And I do come away with a new bird, but it’s still not those stupid scoters. In fact there are very few birds on the river at all this morning, even less than before. A half dozen mallards, one cormorant on the water and the crowds on the bollards, but that’s really it for the river view. not even that one single glaucous winged gull I saw down this way last time. I wonder if it’s not the water level, which is very high, swollen by runoff from recent rains and snow in the mountains and foothills. I wonder if we aren’t edging in on flood stage.

Finally a smaller bird. It’s not that I can’t see them this morning. They’re just not to be seen.

It’s crowded on the cormorant bar this morning.

It’s clear that the spotting technique will work well though, and I do come away with a bird when a loose flock of bushtits drifts in and hovers around the treetops of some alders (and thanks again Andrea, for teaching me how to tell my birches from my alders), flitting around randomly alone and in small groups, hanging upside down, or briefly assembling up on the crown of the alders before moving on.

And I don’t actually have needed a camera to know I’m witnessing a bushtit invasion. Once you know bushtits and their behavior they’re unmistakeable, recognizable from a good distance as long as you can see their tiny shapes flitting around in a very loose pack.

But the phone camera is great, and I come away with a bushtit photo like I’ve never quite been able to catch before, of them briefly assembled before dashing off again. I can capture it because the phone is so fast. Fast on that first shot, fast on being able to rapidly keep taking different photos by moving the the frame or changing the zoom or readjusting the focal point by touching the screen with your thumb. I must have taken forty quick shots in maybe a minute, and come away with a lot of near misses but the one I’m pleased with, even in this pretty weak lighting.

I head home partly because I’ve come to the end of the path, partly because the weather is starting to look ominous, and partly because I have to be back in time for the afternoon date Rachael and I have planned with each other.

The window’s starting to close, time to head home.

This brings back a flash of memory from about 15 years back. This is the curb I stared down with fear at on that morning, trying to find the nerve to step down with my crutches on the way to the Daily Cafe on my first outing since rupturing my quad tendon.

Returning to the apartment is an interesting experience too, another plus for the phone camera over the Lumix. It’s faster and easier to filter through the day’s catch now than it was with the Lumix. There, I’d get the SD card reader from the camera bag, download the card to the iPad, and then start culling through the photos for the ones I care enough to keep or work with. And typically there are many of these because I’ll have taken multiple shots of the same subject, hoping one is just that cut above the others. And with the phone now, it’s become even more extreme. In my hour and an half I come back with nearly 200 images - those forty bushtit shots, for example, because it’s just so easy to fire off many shots quickly and hope for the one.

More photos, but faster than easier. Prescreening them on the phone works now because this one’s screen is a helpful bit larger and especially because the display is so clear that it takes no time at all to whip through them, pick the thirty or so worth a closer look, and then email them all to myself so I can download them to the iPad from there. It takes about five minutes. I do it while I’m going to the bathroom. And I don’t rely on anything from the camera bag, which by the way may not be going to Europe in the future either because there’s not enough left in there to justify its space. We’ll find some other spot for the SD card reader we’ll need for Rachael’s GoPro, and for the battery and charger for the Canon if it even makes the trip.

Oh, and about the Canon. I’m out with the Canon strapped around my neck for an hour and a half and come back with about 200 shots. They were all taken from the phone. There wasn’t once that I thought I might get something better with the Canon’s much more powerful zoom.

So that’s a thought to mull over this spring. It could be that when this is done I might put out a feeler for anyone that thinks the Canon might be the right tool for them, someone that might have the patience to carry a tripod with them for example. We’ll see what we see.

Date night

We’re not back long when it’s time to step out for the sort of date we haven’t shared in a long time - a film and then a walk to dinner. It’s really been ages since I’ve sat in a movie theater, maybe not since down at the Loft in Tucson last winter, but in the past film was another core part of our shared existence. We loved independent and foreign films, and back when Portland had a great foreign film festival we were one of those types that would devote much of the month of February to it, seeing anywhere from thirty five to forty films in two or three weeks.

Today we’re seeing A Real Pain, a film I’m attracted to from the reviews. I’m uncertain as to how the experience will go though. Will I really be able to enjoy the film experience in anything like the way I’ve long enjoyed quality independent films - admiring the photography, the faces, the street scenes, the music, the roll of the credits at the end so I can watch for filming locations and music titles? And with part of it set in Poland, will there be subtitles? And a small and unimportant point that still matters to me: I’m not drinking alcohol any more - at least until I’m off the prednisone but possibly ever after - so do they stock a nonalcoholic beer at the bar?

Yes, they do: a nonalcoholic kolsch. And when you can’t really taste it anyway, the experience of slowly sipping a beer in the dark watching a film feels pretty much exactly the same to me.

And the film? First of all, I really wondered if it was too soon, and I think maybe even a day or two earlier it would have been. Tonight though, it’s all there, just like before. The entire film and the characters and images on them are clear. There are subtitles in a few spots and I can clearly read them. Foreign films are still in the picture then! And when the credits roll I can read it all, except for some very fine print at the bottom at the end - well enough to see it’s largely been set in Warsaw and Krakow, and the sound track I’ve been enjoying so much is a selection of Chopin polonaises and etudes and nocturnes that are some of my favorite music.

Afterwards we walk over to Allora, the restaurant we’ve booked a table for ourselves. As we walk we share our reactions to the film, which tonight are quite different. She’s found it too depressing, picking up on different aspects of than I did. But that’s how good independent films are though - there’s much more going on, and when you come out there’s more to discuss than just reliving the plot twists and action. There’s something to actually talk about and compare notes on while you walk to dinner or back home or whatever.

We get to Allora at 3:55. They open at 4, and when I test the door it confirms they’re still closed. Looking in the window I see folks inside, but it looks like the staff just finishing up their own meal and preparing for the job. So we spend the next ten minutes on a liesurely walk along the edge of the North Park Blocks, pleased to find how comfortable, open and cleaned up it feels from when we saw it last.

Artwork in front of the Pacific Northwest College of Art, on the North Park Blocks. Somewhere in one of these journals I have a photo of the Rodriguez leaning against the sculpture, steel on steel.

Looking south along the North Park Blocks. It really is striking how many spaces in Portland are dramatically changed just since last winter.

Yup, we used to dine there from time to time. It was the Park Kitchen in its early days, but we stopped going when it went too upscale. They shut down for good six or seven years ago when they were fined a $ million for tip and minimum wage violations.

Allora is open when we return. We’re their first customers to arrive, and there’s a shock of recognition when we step inside. The place looks almost exactly as I remember it from years ago. We take our seats at the table, shuffle around a bit until we get Rachael on the warmest side, and then I take the phone to get a few snaps of a place I’d forgotten the looks of.

Allora’s restaurant interior is almost completely unchanged since we first started dining here nearly twenty years ago. It’s empty now though, because the door just opened and we’re their first customers of the night.

I ask our server about this cartoon, which I’d forgotten about but immediately recognize. She says it’s original, drawn by the owners’ young daughter when the restaurant opened twenty years ago.

And this is completely unchanged too, from the grand opening. I was aware I was shooting a selfie here btw, but seeing Rachael in it too was a surprise.

We really enjoy our meal and the entire evening experience here, reconnecting with our past a bit in this old familiar setting. It gets us reflecting on and remembering other details and habits of those early years in Portland when we telecommuted from home a few days a week and then drove down to Salem to stay in a motel for a couple of nights to show up in the office before taking off together on after work bike rides. We’d drive back driving back to Portland at sundown two days later, often heading straight to Justa Pasta for dinner when we hit town again.

We had our routines in Portland then, and Rachael reminds me of one I’d forgotten of. On many days we’d break for lunch and one or both of us would walk to a bakery near here that’s no longer in business and we can’t remember the name of it. We’d queue up to order our to go deli sandwiches, she’d get a frosted cookie and I’d get one of the awesome fig ones I’d love to see in my hand again, and then we’d walk back home and sit on the walls backing the fountain in new Jamison Park, eating our sandwiches and watching the activity in the park, a much quieter place in those first years before it evolved into such a kid magnet. A wonderful time of life to be reminded of again.

Right again, Rocky. It was the original Pearl Bakery, on Davis. I found it in an old photoessay in the Oregonian from when the place closed in 2019, the year after we went vagabond.

And the meal is excellent, perfect really. She and I share an arugola salad, then we follow with the mains - salmon for her, a generous serving she plans to take back part of for tomorrow’s lunch as is her norm; but doesn’t because when we look at her plate at the end of the meal there nothing left to pack away. I have a selection from the daily specials list: rabbit agnolotti, just my kind of dish. It reminds me that I really hope we do make it back to Italy some day. And surprisingly enough Rachael agrees that she’s got just enough capacity left to share a tiramisu as long as I take the lion’s share. It’s not a problem.

And then we walk the six or seven blocks back to the apartment, a little uncertainly at first because it’s just dusk and we’re sort of at the margins of where the neighborhood turned sketchy. We walk north up ninth street on this long-familiar block, still looking the same with a row of perhaps a half dozen wine barrels spaced evenly along the storefronts and giving the street a slight feel of a Spanish or Italian wine village.

Rachael flinches and veers away from the wall when we pass a couple sitting on a window sill between the slots. But it’s fine - it’s not some troubled couple or a threat to us of any kind. It’s just a couple, sharing a smoke, softly chatting. Slowly, surely - or actually pretty damn fast, it seems to me - the Rose City is finding its way back again too.

So we turn west on Glisan and head home, watching the crows stream in across the darkening sky above and return to their roosting sites for the night. Really, this has been the most excellent date night we’ve shared in a long time. It’s quite wonderful.

But there’s something else I realize as we walk west. It reminds me of my late lunch with Elizabeth last week, when I walked back the three or blocks from Via Delizia at almost this same time of night and struggled with it some because of a night vision problem I haven’t talked about much. Everything gets dark, blends together, objects or staircases or whatever emerge from the shadows so I have to move fairly slowly to be sure I’m not missing something or coming up on it too fast.

It’s not like that tonight though. Things aren’t distinct exactly, but it’s definitely much better than even two nights ago. It’s not back to normal by any means, but the night vision is coming back.

Snap. Going up!

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Bob KoreisA scoter? Must be a typo, but then you use it again. Okay, so wtf is a scoter? Find it on Cornell Lab's All About Birds site. looks like a duck. Oh no, not just a scoter, but white winged, black, and surf scoters. Scroll down some more and see it's about the size of a crow? Seems small for something in the duck family. And then there is this terribly helpful comparison: "Larger than an American Wigeon, smaller than a Common Eider." 🙄 I guess it's meaningful to some.

Along with simply counting birds, I think you need a chart to check off birds grouped taxonomically.
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3 weeks ago

Scott AndersonTo Bob KoreisCould do that. The scoters are a funny bird - a smallish sea duck - and some of them have a really funny look if you get the right view on them - especially the clownish orange beaks on them.

I probably should have been talking about the scaups though, another water duck of about the same size. Both will come inland and upriver in the winter, but the big numbers are the scaups.
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3 weeks ago

Rich FrasierNice writing, Scott! A pleasure to read, and a pleasure to hear that you’re still improving. Makes my heart glad.
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2 weeks ago

Scott AndersonTo Rich FrasierWe’re feeling pretty giddy nd euphoric ourselves. Watch for us in January - we’ll be there, but downtown and sans voiture.
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2 weeks ago

Patrick O'HaraI agree with Rich. Great writing. The jigsaw puzzle/helix analogy was interesting. Glad to hear your spirits are up. Like my father always says, "You're only as happy as you wanna be."
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2 weeks ago

Andrea BrownSeeing is believing, isn't it? At this rate you're going to kick us off of our flights and go get the car yourselves!
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2 weeks ago

Karen PoretSo heartwarming to read this at the (almost) last day of this year. Your writings, adventures, and outlook gives us all HOPE. You are a very fortunate person, Scott. Many thanks !
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2 weeks ago

Scott AndersonTo Karen PoretDon’t Rachael and I know it. It really feels like we’ve been advancing from one miracle to the next for over a week. Today is probably the first day since returning from SLO that I feel like I’m just starting to slip back out of this week long euphoria into my normal personality again.
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2 weeks ago

Karen PoretTo Scott AndersonMaybe because you are back in Oregon and out of CA :)

Thinking of how we are all ( mostly) wimps in the cold and wet weather as we get older ( despite our superior physical abilities..yes, a plug for aging helps :) I do wonder how ( even though I was only 20) could stand the bumpy and rickety ride in the un-heated Volkswagen Thing all those years ago from SF-PDX!
The Dutch ride even in the rain. How they balance an umbrella, much less while looking at an iPhone is really a surprise to me.
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2 weeks ago

Scott AndersonTo Karen PoretI know. I really have no plans to ever do this drive in the winter again. The umbrella comment reminds me of Japan though, where we saw the same thing years ago - men and women riding into the Hiroshima Mall with their umbrellas over their heads; and once inside they’d lower them and pull of to the side, looking sort of like they were sheathing a weapon.
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2 weeks ago