loud & clear | This Actually Happened

beginning of summer, end of the day.
water droplets and bathing suit strings.
sun down, behind Hamp High.
This year, my birthday serendipitously fell a few days before the Postal Service played in Portland for their ten year anniversary tour. Their only album was important to both Tyler and I in our teenage years, so we figured we go and see and sing along - if just for nostalgias sake. 

I wrote about the show (and about summers and memory) over in my column for The Equals Record

"There’s something about this season that makes the people and places linger in our memories with all the shadowy contract of a sun high over-head. They become inky outlines in our mind, of short-lived loves and seasonal friendships that occupy a disproportionate share of my memory. 
Over the balcony, a thousand heads glowed below me, and I wondered what they remembered."


When we got home that evening after the show, we noticed Tyler had forgotten his keys. We checked the door handle and quickly realized we were locked out of the house.  

To the left of the front door was a wide bay window, particular to the type of part-victorian/part-craftsman house common in North Portland. So I pressed my hands flat against the glass and pushed up the lower sash of the window. We climbed through the hip-level opening, legs first and into the living room. 

Now, I'm not particularly clever when it comes to McGiver situations (though I do regularly forget my keys. More than once, my solution has been sleeping on patio until my roommate comes home). Opening that window wasn't an attempt, it was a kind of muscle memory - something tried and true that I knew.  I'd done that trick a dozen times. I hadn't thought of it for years.  It was a relic of myself at twenty-two; standing on the stoop of my first house in Portland.

By the end of the summer, I'd moved out of that house. And, I buried the memory of it along with the mistakes I made when I moved to a new city with old friends.  After that, Portland became something different all together. It became the place I now think of as home.

But, climbing through that window made me think about summers and about the past. And about the the way they quietly hide inside us; waiting to be shaken loose by a locked door or a song. 

(photos) on film with Leica CL | summer scenes in Northampton

9 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. thank you Tania! They're my favorite that I've taken this summer.

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  2. i've been thinking about home a lot. and i'm trying my best now to make a home for me, where i can really settled in.
    and oh, McGiver. i was 5 i think. and never missed an episode

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    1. Niken, I think my little locked-out situation really reminded me how we carry all the homes we've ever had with us in our hearts. good luck getting settled!

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  3. You're wonderful. And how amazing was that show? They were in St. Paul the weekend I moved. Serendipitous, indeed.

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  4. So much symbolism. And perfect way to embrace a new season.

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  5. That last line is so beautiful. I love the possibility that it suggests - the way our past waits to come full circle with our future in ways we never could have predicted.

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  6. It's crazy how a simple instinctual reaction can open up a memories that way.

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  7. This is crazy beautiful. Your photos and words are gorgeous.
    It's nice to look back fondly but be so happy with where you are now.

    Lucy xo | We Resolve Blog

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