The Lonely City

My latest read [or one of them] is The LonelY City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, by Olivia Laing. It's part memoir, part cultural essay on loneliness and art. Loneliness is a subject of great personal interest, as you can imagine. After I wrote my last post, it made me think about that, the idea of companionship and friendship, and how I've often spurned relationships to where my solitude is a deliberate decision, yet I am also lonely.

We want the type of companionship we want, and anything else just won't work. I attended church for a while and there was this older man who would not leave me alone, to where I quit attending. He would glom on to me to where it was hard to even talk to anyone else. It was creepy. I had to be abrupt, which is hard for me to do.

There was also my previous relationship. I still feel bad that I didn't end it in the best way [suddenly, over the phone.] But it wasn't working for me.

It goes both ways. There are people that I wish I could be close to, yet can't be. I know I've probably unintentionally become the creepy person to someone else. Sometimes I feel like there's a deterministic element to it all.

I really miss the lockdown era at times, I felt like my world had more people in it then, even if they were people from halfway around the world. I"m still in touch with a lot of the people from that time, but it's not the same. There was this feeling that we were all in it together, and that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. There was also this crazy sense of creativity that I can't seem to access anymore.

I don't really hold much truck with the whole "male loneliess epidemic" idea, most of that is self-imposed by indulging in asshole behaviors that the internet has reinforced. People used to be shamed into better behavior so they would grow out of things. Now they don't feel like they have to.

Those are some of my thoughts on loneliness, which aren't super related to Laing's book, which is fantastic. I sometimes treasure solitude, I like doing things alone, traveling alone, and only occasionally wish I could share moments with someone else. But when I do, it's really a sad feeling.

How I'm Living Now

When I'd last posted, prior to this recent 2026 upswing in blogging activity, I was living alone in my tiny apartment. I realize I need to update my readership on the various upheavals during the four year interval. I turned 50, spent most of my birthday on a plane to Luxembourg, where I met several online friends that I'd been chatting with during the lockdown years. Went to a few Nick Cave shows, then explored Vienna before heading home. I was pretty depressed, because I'd been so happy with the people I was meeting, but didn't feel like I would feel that level of connection again. At the time I was really on TikTok, and chatting with a few people from there. I had met someone who lived a couple of hours away, and we ended up in a relationship. This lasted about two years, which is the longest relationship I've been in aside from my marriage. But we weren't on the same page about a lot of things, and I realized after a while that this wasn't going to be a forever thing.

Then something happened to really complicate things, my ex needed help, and I ended up deciding to have her and her dog move back in with me. We drove cross country for three days to my apartment in Oregon. As you can imagine, my current girlfriend was not a fan of this idea, but I didn't regard our relationship as being at the level where either of us had veto power of the decisions of the other person. That was one of the things we weren't in alignment on. For me, things were at the level of "We're exclusively dating," and she was pushing me to make a marriage proposal.

I'm painfully aware that I made a decision more or less to go back to the past, but anyone who has been reading this long enough wouldn't be surprised by that. Anyway, split up with my girlfriend, and ended up buying a house with my ex-wife. We live together as platonic friends. It isn't the same as before, because we've both changed too much in the interim and had a lot of stuff happen. I don't really know what the future holds, if we're going to continue living like this till we grow old[er] or if this is just going to be for the next 7-8 years, if we will go our separate ways after I retire [and have to sell the house because I can't afford it on what I'm going to be taking home as a retiree.]

It's nice having her here, and I am totally enamored by the dog. I know it's made a lot of things more difficult for me, but I guess it's worth it. It's not always easy. But it's been good to have someone to help me through some of the things I've been dealing with. But it's interesting that loneliness is still a thing for me, though now I feel more like I have a home to be lonely in, instead of wandering the streets like a character in the world's most boring film noir.

Labor Day

After going in circles most of the holiday weekend trying to figure out where to hike, I decided to just go back to somewhere I'd been earlier this year, Beacon Rock State Park. Initially, I was going to hike on a different trail there--but the intial uphill stretches made me feel like taking it a little more slowly and I ended up hiking further to the saddle of Hamilton Mountain, where I'd been earlier. It's one of those hikes that is allegedly difficult, but you see old people and little kids all over it. I went a different way this time, longer, but more gradual. There's a great portion called Don's Cutoff that I took--I'd done it previously but only downhill. It was tougher uphill, lots of switchbacks but it beat the loose gravel of the main trail I'd done months before. I enjoyed the signs of fall.

The best part was not encountering anyone for the first 90 minutes, until I made it to the actual saddle/summit area. Even then, there were only a few there [though they were loud.] The Saddle is a favorite spot, you can see so much.

That's Bonneville Dam below. Me being me, I decided to go ahead and hike another half hour to the actual summit, which was harder than I remembered [because I was going the other direction last time.] But I was happy I did even though it meant more people. It's so funny when you get to the goal of a hike like that, you want to stay up there forever because you went through so much to get there, often hours of exertion, but usually you end up leaving after 10-15 minutes. I went back down the way I came. Was pretty beat the last couple of miles. It was almost 9 miles total. I arrived around 8 AM and finished a little after noon. By then, the roads were a madhouse and I made the mistake of trying to get something to eat....all the places were packed and it took forever. I was lucky to be able to make a left turn to get back to Portland. Will probably take it easy the next few weeks, maybe go on a low-impact nature hike. Not much wildlife at this one.

More rain and reading....

I miscalculated yesterday's plans, and should have hiked. The weather was beautiful and I wandered around the Kerns/Sunnyside neighborhoods but had my usual issue of needing to wait for places to actually open. Today it's raining a lot, and though in theory hiking in the rain can be fine in the right circumstances, I'm not up to it today. Tomorrow should be better, and I can spend the afternoon napping, reading, and figuring out where to go.

I started Yesteryear, and it is a fast read but I am not sure whether I'm going to like it, it seems really heavyhanded yet unsure of what statement it's trying to make at the same time. I am interested enough to keep going, so that works in its favor.

I really have trouble just sitting and doing nothing. I don't know when that started, but I get depressed unless I have really solid plans to do something, and to have everything play out as I imagined it. I waste a lot of my time ruminating over past minor decisions. "I should have hiked today." "I should have eaten somewhere else/ordered something else." "I should have gone elsewhere." It is all very exhausting. It may be time to nap soon.

Friday Night

..and I just woke up from a nap. Naps are really where it's at these days. It's where I get my best sleep. Normal nighttime sleep is just bare minimum maintenance. There were times during the covid lockdown when I would go to bed around 8 PM because there just didn't seem to be anything woth staying up for. Things are better now, except I work in the office full time and have to wake up at 5 every morning, and can't seem to turn that off during the weekend. But it makes it better as far as going places and not having to encounter too many people. I'm curious what'll happen when I am retired. My dad has gotten to where he stays up late and sleeps until mid-morning like a teenager. When I've gone through long periods of unemployment, that was my habit too, stay up till around 1-2 and get up around 10 or so. But I like the quiet of early morning, so I may end up just embracing the old coot early riser stereotype. Tonight I'll probably stay up till around midnight watching bad movies and drinking, and hanging out with my dog, who usually decides it's time for bed around 11 or so. Going to hike on Sunday, probably, still trying to decide on a spot. More later. .

Off today, rainy wandering.

I took off today in order to take the car in for an oil change. Was looking forward to wandering around the city, but the much needed rain is going to be hiting all day today. So I'll still wander around, but maybe try to do a few more indoor things here and there. Looks like the whole holiday weekend will be rainy, then of course it clears up in time for the work week. The next few weeks will be rough at my job, probably with some level of overtime. When I first started, it was miserable, it's eased up in past years. We had a really terrible director in our department who was incompetent. My first September there, I realized right away that they had no idea what to do. One year, I worked a 16 hour day, most of it just sitting around waiting for people to decide something. She left [promoted, of course] and we have someone else who is really bad with people and a terrible communicator, but at least knows how to plan and organize work and understands what needs to be done.

I want to hike somewhere this weekend, maybe just because there are often very few crowds here when it rains. But best to hike someplace with a lot of tree cover. I have a hiking trip planned in a month, hope we don't get too much rain for that. I have the rain gear, so I will go on no matter what.

Almost finished with the book Martry by Kaveh Akbar which I struggled with during the middle part [not a big fan of the "rotating POV" format in novels] but it's been worth it. A young Iranian-American writer struggles with identity and other issues, living alone as a college student after losing both parents in separate events. The book has a lot to say about grief and art. I'd been seeing it around, but saw it at the "Staff Recommends" section at the library branch near work and am glad I picked it up. Gotta go soon, have to brave the traffic and rain to get to the mechanic, and the dog needs out first etc...

The peace of wild things...

When I moved here to Portland, I got to where I rarely drove. My apartment had a lousy shared driveway situation to where I usually left my car there unless there was a rare opportunity where all my neighbors were gone. I'd always been a walker, but moving to Portland allowed me to integrate walking as a bigger part of my daily life. Eventually, I moved and got to a better situation with driving. But this allowed me to have a better access to nature in the surrounding regions, other than the admittedly large hiking areas that are accessible through Portland transit. So I got more and more into hiking, and these days I'd say it's probably my favorite thing to do. Some of that is due to the bad habit of social media where I feel compelled to share anything I do that I feel might attract interest to my tens of followers [it's a little more, but not much.] But it's also a genuine desire to feel physically engaged and to be in nature, and hopefully in peace and quiet [though that sometimes is hard to find on popular hikes.]

I prefer hikes with some kind of payoff at the end, and it is almost some kind of adrenaline junkie situation. If it's not at the edge of something, I feel like it's blah. Well, that's exaggerating a bit, but I at least like to see a cool bird or an opportunity to take a cool photo, even if there's a lot of huffing and puffing involved to get there. Or occasionally falling down. The most embarrassing is when I am slowly struggling to ascend or descend [actually the trip back down is often way more precarious] while these families with little kids are scrambling with no problem.] Anyway, here's the view from atop Silver Star Mountain. The best part of it were these ravens that sounded like people yelling.

I fell down once on the way back, sliding on loose gravel going downhill on the trail, despite my hiking poles. Thankfully I only got a scraped arm and some wounded pride. I'm sure the birds got a big kick out of it.