I'm cRAzY about cycles. Not just bicycles, but layers of chaotic, interconnected cycles in nature that weave together all the world's systems into a random order.
Yesterday, the City's green building team was riding the Streetcar on our way to an ice cream social across town (YUM!). As we passed Portland State University's meek Systems Science building, I was delighted to see a diagram of adaptive Panarchy cycles stuck to their window. My recent research at PSU focused on applying these adaptive cycles in nature to the design of sustainable climate protection policy. Combined with a couple of scoops of local Coffee Crackle and Kulfi Cardammom ice cream at Cool Moon, this connection to Panarchy at PSU was a sweet cap on a week of social and ecological coincidences.
The week's events all started at the Riverplace near downtown.
13 years ago, Bunny and I were engaged at the end of this dock. This place is SACRED to me. Every weekday on the my ride into the office, I have a morning ritual here: stopping for a moment, soaking up the sunrise over the Willamette River, giving thanks, praying, then taking a deep drink of Portland's ancient forest-filtered water from a Benson Bubbler and dedicating a day of service to the City. With the grey days of Winter phasing out and Spring cycling in, I've been thirsty for feeling more connected to community and this was my intention last week.
On Thursday, I was flipping through a Portland weekly in a waiting room and came across a recommendation for the annual Clowns Without Borders circus the following night. One year ago, I blogged about how this wonderful performance arrived on our radar with nary a day's notice despite recurring only a few blocks from our home. This year was no different.
Later that night, I delivered flowers to the Laurelhurst Theater and caught a second run of Terry Gilliam's Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. Being a big fan of Gilliam's prolific catalog of feature films (ever since Time Bandits), I stepped into the theater ready to be transported into a bizarro world. And that's essentially the plot of the film: a traveling circus troupe draws their audience individually into a magic mirror. On the other side, they enter an imaginary world filled with their own personal hallucinations and consequently experience a spiritual reckoning that returns them transformed and enlightened.
Friday was cold and rainy. More Old Man Winter. I'm OVER it! Fortunately, we had Clowns Without Borders to redeem the grey day. Lilly and her best friend, Ruby, were full of glee and River was captivated for over 2 hours. They wandered in and out of their own kindred imaginariums, and we followed endearingly.
On Saturday night, BunZ arranged a date to celebrate our friend Aisha's 40th birthday dessert party. We started with dinner at the new Spints Alehouse in the neighborhood. Within a half hour, my good friend Adrian unexpectedly walked in and joined us for impromptu Bavarian beers at the bar. This might not seem like much of a coincidence, EXCEPT that I've been trying to meet up with him for a couple of months AND he also turns 40 in a couple of weeks. I'm turning 40 this year, too, and find much therapy in watching friends turn that corner with nearly all faculties intact.
After multiple slices of cream pie and social networking conversations at Aisha's (RU Facebook-challenged, too?), Bunny and I headed out to the 'Couv to finally catch Avatar before it leaves 3D theaters.
Of course James Cameron deserves many accolades for ushering in a new age of digital animation technology, but I was more captured by the film's deep ecology ethic and ancient wisdom. Even if it replicates a story that's been told thousands of times from all corners of the Earth, I'm still thoroughly inspired EVERY time I hear that Mother Earth holds a divine plan for humanity as natural resources dwindle and our weather becomes auspiciously weirder.
Sunday was the Grand Finale...I hit the road for an epic bike ride through Forest Park and Sauvie's Island. At one point on this rural island at the confluence of the mighty Columbia and Willamette, I stopped to admire hundreds of Canadian Geese funneling into a field. Then continued on to my destination, Cistus Nursery, to meet Bunny, Lilly and River. Cistus stands out from any other plant nursery around Portland. It's dreamy like the jungle in Avatar: fractal layers of semi-tropical plants and their exotic fragrances fill the air. I found a spot to lounge in the sun and wait for my crew as spring petals floated down from the sky. Upon arrival, we toured the nursery and found a gigantic cala lily that emanates the sweet scent of hard candy.
From Cistus, we headed out to hike the beach at the end of the island. Rare warm, clear and calm days in Spring are the perfect time to walk this beach as the surrounding four volcanic, snow-capped peaks are reflected in the Columbia. Occasionally, massive cargo ships chug on by churning up waves onto the beach and leaving a stream of bunker smoke in the sky.
On our return, we ran into an old colleague from PNCA who remarked that he's never seen so many birds in Sauvie's fields as today. Sure enough on our drive back home, we spotted a flock of geese and pulled off the main road into a field filled with thousands of geese - mostly migrating species that we've never seen around here before. Their orchestrated honking was deafening as hundreds more continued to flock magnetically into this one field. Seriously MIND-BLOWING like the Serengeti. Again, it felt like entering a scene from Avatar's enchanting natural world where the definition of community extends far beyond human boundaries.
I know...I know. It's silly and a bit cuckoo to find coincidences between film and real life. But I did mention that I'm cRaZY about cycles, right? Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Annual...Glacial - I love them all. The first few months of 2010 have recalled many fond memories from Winter last year while reliving cyclical patterns (with a slightly different twist): lunar New Year at The Chinese Garden (on Valentine's), River's birthday celebration followed by a sweet stretch of warm sun (at the beach), and a dreamy early-Spring Columbia Gorge wildflower hike (to Tom McCall Point).
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