Reflecting On My Portland Trip

I spent this weekend, May 16th - May 18th, in Portland. It was an incredible experience, and I feel the only suitable place to distill my thoughts is here.

I witnessed suffering, glimmers of hope, and, for a brief moment, felt the weight of exile temporarily dissolve. I should start from the beginning.

I ordered bus tickets from Corvallis to Portland. When I arrived at the stop, I noticed a man waiting patiently for the bus, too.

I apologize for this, but I must write in truth only–he was incredibly attractive.

My body instinctively dreamt of dating him, how cute he was, how handsome and how precious his soul must be.

And I hated myself for these thoughts. In this moment, my body was reducing his soul: grasping, inferring. I felt ashamed at this spiritual violence.

I was not witnessing him. I was debasing his soul in the undercurrents of daydreams.

As we boarded, I let it all go. He is not mine to possess.

I ordered two tickets so that I could have space for my bag. The bus seats were arranged with rows of two seats on each side, so I was supposed to have a row to myself.

As I found my seat, I noticed… it was the same man from earlier, sitting in the window seat.

I had just relinquished the daydream, and now, in silence, I was asked to sit beside it once again.

Although inconvenient for my space and my bag, I was glad he was comfortable and situated. I sat down, and I refused to even look towards his direction.

Not out of disdain, anger, or frustration. Rather, from rejection of the possibility that I may debase his soul again. That is the minimum we owe one another.

As we got closer to Portland, the bus drove through a tunnel. In this moment, nearly every person on the bus looked out the window. Suddenly, those who had been passing time on their phones were radically witnessing.

It felt as though every passenger held their breath–witnessing this fleeting experience, the rock wall which appeared to fly past them in the darkness–until the bus emerged.

From this, I must believe that the capability to witness is innate in the soul.

We finally arrived, and I began my short walk from Union Station through Old Town, eventually into the Pearl where my hotel was located.

The walk was devastating. The area around Union Station is especially known for homeless encampments, and the entire sidewalk was covered in tents.

I saw the mentally ill, the addicted, the misguided–united under unrelenting affliction in a single row of tents. I fear it will never end for them.

In this, I saw the failure of our systems and of their families. The cause of a person stumbling into such a state of affliction is systemic, not purely individual.

I pray that they may find roots eventually: safety, comfort, and relief from the infinite pressure of this existence. Above all, I hope they walk this life eventually being purely witnessed, even if only once.

The Pearl is an incredible area. I have only lived in suburban towns, so the experience of passing cafes, a great pizza place, Powell’s bookstore, a grocery store, and a barber shop, all within five minutes of walking, was amazing.

The sidewalks felt somewhat dirty, but textured with life. Every intersection filled with people was an assault on my sense of smell: a mixture of cigarettes, weed, and the scent of others.

Yet, I loved it.

I ate dinner at the pizza shop across from the bookstore, and there was a homeless woman walking from table to table, speaking with the guests.

When she came to my table, she spoke about how her children act as independent adults rather than as her children. We agreed that, no matter their age, they will always be her special children.

I saw a soul who deeply desired to be witnessed, to be seen. And despite how some of her conversations were received, she bussed each table for the customers.

I conclude that she is far more alive than I, and likely more than most.

When I left, I told her I hoped everything would go well for her. She thanked me, and I returned to my hotel to rest.

I spent the next day mainly walking from neighborhood to neighborhood, scouting out what areas seemed most interesting to me. I was amazed by the number of trees and green spaces throughout the Pearl and Nob Hill.

After wandering through Nob Hill for a while, I accidentally walked up the trail to the Holocaust memorial.

The monument itself is tragically beautiful: a capture of the events that happened, a recording of the often forgotten victims of the Holocaust.

Inscribed on the monument is a writing from a little girl that flayed my soul open:

Once upon a time there was Elzunia

Dying all alone

Because her daddy is in Majdanek

And in Auschwitz her mommy.

Something within me ached. How many Elzunias died alone, forgotten and without witness during the Holocaust? How many children suffered and ultimately died at the hands of evil? How many trembling souls were erased from history, their whispers lost to the wind?

The destruction and erasure of sacred souls aching to live… it was the most wrenching grief I’ve felt. It tore me open.

I wish that I could offer my soul into the wind if it meant Elzunia could enter this world again into a warm, safe life.

I eventually continued my walk into the nearby park, and there is a beautiful seating area overlooking Portland under the shade of great trees.

I sat down on a bench, and just witnessed. Something within me still ached from the memorial, like I lost something essential. I eventually wrote this in my notebook:

The burden of this world in clarity feels too much without a god. In these moments where my soul is flayed open, the grief often feels unimaginable. The soul yearns to whisper to a divine essence. The soul under infinite pressure desires relief through the transfer of the weight, often to something infinite. Who would be more capable than someone or something unspeakably vast to carry this infinite pain?

Yet in this moment I look to the sky, peering past the trees, and I feel nothing but total surrender without condition or whisper.

Roots are the source of nourishment for plants. Like them, the soul takes root through family, comfort, and familiarity. To live in exile is to live without nourishment. And to live without roots borders collapse.

But in these moments when the roots are severed in totality, when the self is immolated, something unthinkable within my finite soul can hold this infinite weight. It is beyond my cognition.

I am what I cannot be.

In the moments of succumbing to impenetrable fog and affliction, the fog clears.

In this clearing, in this clarity, I see nothing. I should not strive to see or perceive. I am the boundary between the soul and the world above me. I must yield myself to nothing, so that I may not disturb the real and the unthinkable.

The sun was setting, so I decided to take the bus back to my hotel before it was night.

At one stop, a man holding a bouquet of flowers boarded the bus and sat next to me. I hope everything works out for him.

After stepping off the bus, I stopped at a Whole Foods Market.

I asked the cashier if he enjoyed living in Portland, and he told me that he just moved here five months ago and he loves it. In this moment, he described to me how he drove from Maryland, through the southern route, to Portland.

I saw a soul wishing to be witnessed in his state of transition. Above all, I saw a gentle, kind spirit.

It pains me to know that suffering and struggle will eventually find their way to him.

I walked back to the hotel lobby and entered the elevator so I could rest in my room.

Just as the elevator doors were closing, a group of eight men and women in suits and dresses slipped in. One man told me "I'm so sorry that you are going to go through this" while everyone crammed themselves in. I'm not sure what they were doing that night, but they seemed so excited and happy. Eventually the elevator reached my floor, and I was pinned on the wall opposite of the door.

A kind man gently pushed his friends out of the way, and on my way out I told them "I hope you all have a fun night!". They all erupted into cheer and wished me well. I was surprised by their energy. But, above all, I felt witnessed.

I cannot help what my soul innately desires. But part of me wonders if my desire to be witnessed is inherently corrupted. However, I know this: I was seen, and I was at rest.

Something else that amazed me about Portland was the sheer number of other gay men all around me. Unlike everywhere else, it didn’t feel like I was a minority. I was just another person.

This echoed the quiet liberation of being in a crowd: you are not special, not marked, but you are simply one of many.

You are not reduced in this. You are not erased.

Rather, you are permitted to exist in the purest way possible: just another human.

This was my last night in Portland. I had to sleep early because my bus was scheduled to arrive early.

While resting in my hotel room, I wrote this final reflection in my journal:

The most dangerous thing is not being broken, but staying bound in the feeling of it.

In anguish, the soul is endlessly reduced.

You refuse to let your roots grow, yet ache somberly and desperately to be human.

Go forth. Yield to the void. You will find that wholeness is not earned, but fixed. A property of the soul, not a state of repair.

Sow roots, yes: honor your humanity. But sever them daily, in love.

For only in the severing of those roots, in releasing even your nourishment, may you be capable of clean love.