All Nevers Are Is
The unsolved question of why we do stuff.
Cait appeared on the porch of their house and threw an apple onto the dirt driveway.
A chicken headed for it and started pecking away. Cait yelled “you better hurry before that big one gets to it” as one of her horses started that direction.
I was in the open shed with her husband Tyler getting ready to put the hood on his old Jeep truck. I was not convinced that that the air filter on the new engine was low enough to allow the hood to close. We were crouching to the level of the engine compartment and trying to sight it in.
All the horses came over, one at a time, to greet Tyler for some reason. Each one wanted a different kind of sniff and pet. I didn’t notice the apple getting eaten but when I looked over a few minutes later it was gone.
Earlier in that day I had been trying to write about Portland,1 but it was a struggle. Here I feel this place-magic and it is hard to turn around and place myself back in Portland now.
I understand from some pop science reading that the brain does not understand negatives or tenses. That if you say “not hungry” all the brain registers and acts on is “hungry.” That if you say “did eat” all you understand is “eat now.”2 It is like the natural numbers of mathematics — negative numbers are not stored.3 My brain never really says no.
I want to hold on to the young man, afraid of aging, that dropped into a golden age of Portland and tromped around. But I can’t even remember now what he saw or what he felt about it. If I have to say why he did what he did, I will have to make up his reasons to make the story sensible.
I also want to completely be this middle aged fellow who knows very little about cars or horses but wants to be on this land making friends and watching Tyler and Cait’s son grow up.
As I stand here by the old truck, not too far from my beloved river, I must hold that young man afraid of aging inside of me, a place where I can’t see him and where all his “nots” are naturalized to “is.”
And within that young man afraid of aging is a younger-still growing boy constantly afraid and surprised and disappointed, who tromped around the land not that far from here, afraid of where he was and afraid of anywhere he could go. All of his “nevers” are “is” as well now.
Why we do things is clouded in our brain, the one that is never able to hear “no.”
I gave readers of Old Truck Good Coffee a reason I moved here.
4 And every word is true:
She asked
Why did you move back here?
I said it was good to be around my parents again as they age, but to be honest that would not be reason enough. I have been tuning my answer over the last year but it always feels made up. It was not a decision made by checklist or spreadsheet. My heart made the decision, then my head made up reasons.
I said
This is the place my mind was made and it is more relaxed here. I don’t have to translate rainy winters or ostentatious wealth. My mind is more relaxed and has energy for other things.
I said
And I grew tired of how the city talks, how ignorant the people are and how cruel to rural people their language is. I would rather be around these conservatives, even the loud mouth ones, than the well-meaning progressive urban voices back there.
On the day after the Fourth of July holiday, I was heading out at the Metolius River5 and ended up in conversation with two nice Portlanders around my age who were seriously considering leaping into the deep cold pools of the river to avoid the heat. I was trying to convince myself that I could be the one to entice the giant, highly experienced fish at the bottom of the pool to bite an artificial fly.
In conversation while they petted my dog they asked me, “why did you move back?”
I have taken to answering in the way that I think will best serve the conversation. So I said, "I got exhausted by the all-blue politics of Portland. I wanted to be here where politics is purple and nuanced.”
The couple got quiet and looked at each other. I had no idea where the conversation was going to go.
“We were just talking about that today,” she said.
I felt for them, and thought of my Republican family members, who feel that their party is terrifically lost in the woods.
How can so much of America find it to be a dark, worrisome time and yet we are perfectly split about what direction would make it better? We can not decide on the why. Like me, we all just make up something that works for the conversation and matches our storyline. (That, by the way, is for you and me to hear, not for us to lecture those who disagree with us.)
After the horses had finished the receiving line, Tyler and I partially mounted the hood. Sure enough it bumped on the air filter and would not close. Tyler said it was likely that the new motor mounts brought the whole engine up three inches. The very idea of pulling the entire engine back out to gain three inches puts me in a state of existential wonder. Making three inches of progress requires moving and then precisely replacing hundreds of pounds of metal, but getting miles down the road can be as easy as a foot on the pedal.
I don’t know what I am doing here but I am pretty happy about the work of it.
I did manage to finish that article. Some people quite liked it! https://www.oldtruckgoodcoffee.com/p/to-hear-the-love-song-portland-has ↩︎
It is not of course completely true or we would not obey “Don’t Walk” signs. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090211122147.htm ↩︎
Thanks to Wikipedia for a refresher on natural numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_number. ↩︎
“Understanding” https://www.oldtruckgoodcoffee.com/p/understanding ↩︎
If you live in Oregon and you have not visited these magical waters, please do so. https://wildroofjournal.com/issue-20-gallery-1/ ↩︎