Snoqualmie

And I will show you things, boy, such far-away dreams.

I think I'm quoting the above from a Japanese washcloth that my sister showed me. Or it might have been the coffeemaker.

I've been saying for months now that I'm going to get a digital camera so I can show you all the parts of Portland I've fallen in love with. I've been waiting for a financially responsible moment to do it, but as summer has turned into autumn and is rapidly turning into winter, I've been getting antsy. The maple trees on my street have already turned their brilliant colors and showered the sidewalks with leaves, and this morning I noticed with some concern that the walnut trees are following suit. I'm trying to tell them to hold on, to save the bright beautiful colors until I've got the means to preserve them, because as rootless as I've been lately there's no telling if I'll be here this time next year. Particularly if I don't have any pictures of non-winter Portland to look at during the grey months to remind me to stay.

This is all an elaborate justification for why, on Friday night, I simply could not wait five days for payday and I ordered a little PowerShot 1000 from Amazon right then and there. It's the same camera my roommate has, nothing fancy by the standards of the camera world but slick enough to take 97% of the pictures I can think of. And I can think of some fairly slick pictures, like that shot of my roommate playing the banjo that I took over the bubble tea and the candle so the background was all shadowy and grey and the foreground was all greeny and orby and glowing. Orby is now a word.

I've been checking my order status like a kid waiting for it to be Christmas. Is it here? No. Well, is it in Oregon yet? No. Is it close to Oregon yet? No? How about now? When I walk by the windows of my office I plead with the scenery to stay right there, please, just don't move until my camera gets here. Houses, plants, people, art bikes, the insanely ever-growing clump of memorial miscellany that's taken over the intersection of Interstate and Greeley, I just need three more days and then it can all change. Three more days and then if I haven't captured it, it's only my own fault.

I was in autumnal arts mode this weekend, and hey, this will probably be the first thing I show you. Saturday I finished the most amazing scarf I have yet made, with fall-colored stripes and coordinated tassels, and I put it on and spent an hour shuffling my feet in other people's leaf piles. Sunday was curtains, painstakingly printed with a repeating doodle of falling leaves, and now I can lay back in my bed and watch the cool colors of the sky and the warm colors of the leaves and clutch my snuggly scarf like a long skinny security blanket.

Now that I think about it, I probably should have held out for a camera that can show you how soft something is. 1,000 words may take care of the visuals, but how many more do you need to make up for the sense of touch? Perhaps I will invest in a new keyboard, to make sure I don't run out.