exposing myself
I could write a long introduction here explaining what this is and why I'm doing it, but honestly, it's not that deep and neither am I. You'll figure it out if you keep reading. Or you won't, and that's fine too.
I went to Venice with a plan. I had a concept, a title, a whole framework about temporal collapse and centuries of memory embedded in stone. I'd spent months thinking about what I wanted to capture.
It took about two days for all of that to fall away.
I arrived during Carnevale, which is about as far from quiet observation as Venice gets. Elaborately costumed performers moved through the city in processions, stopping traffic, drawing crowds, posing endlessly for tourists. That's the point of Carnevale: to be seen, in a city where most people keep their heads down and their business to themselves.
I keep coming back to Venice. Five, maybe six times now, and I still can't fully explain why. It's not like I haven't seen it. I've tripped over the same uneven stones more times than I can count. And here I am... again.
Eight centuries of accumulated stubbornness. That's what Venice is. Nothing gets torn down and rebuilt. Nothing gets modernized. It all just gets patched up, but only enough to barely keep going. The city just keeps being itself, decade after decade. It doesn't budge, except maybe to sink a little deeper into the lagoon.
I'm leaving in six months. I'm leaving tomorrow. I'm never leaving. It all feels true at any given moment, especially before my first cup of coffee.
The anxiety of pulling up roots after 30 years in Portland is starting to get to me. I want to go. I need to go, if just for my own sanity. This country feels irreparably broken, and I can't imagine spending the rest of my life constantly wondering how things could possibly get worse, then dealing with the shock - and the sad resetting of my expectations - when they do.
The process of emigrating to Portugal is an exercise in patience and frustration.
I’ve hired a service to guide me through it, and they've been helpful. But even so, I often feel adrift, unsure of what comes next or when. There's paperwork, and then more paperwork. Documents that need to be apostilled - whatever the hell that means. Dates that depend on other dates. Gates that won't open until others close…
I'm heading to Venice in February. I've been thinking about it for months. Not the logistics, though those exist, but what I'm actually trying to do there. What I'm trying to see and make.
I know what I'm not doing. I'm not documenting it. No one needs another golden-hour shot of the Rialto, another gondola reflection, another mask in a shop window.
Having a birthday on Christmas Day has never felt like getting shortchanged, though people always ask when they find out. My parents were great at making sure we celebrated both. Christmas in the morning. My birthday in the afternoon. Rather than feeling gypped, I loved it. It felt quietly significant... a day that belongs to many but somehow still feels like it’s just mine. It's the rarest birth date after February 29th - a statistical anomaly that's always made the day feel a little more set apart.
I'm turning 63 on Christmas Day, which feels like it should mean something. The math suggests I'm closer to the end than the beginning. Fuck math.
This summer, I'm moving to Portugal. Permanently. To a town on the northern coast I passed through once on a cycling trip. I don't speak Portuguese beyond obrigado and whatever I can butcher with my Pimsleur and Babbel lessons.
A few months ago, my friend Tracy called to tell me that she and her wife were moving to France. Just like that. They'd made the decision and were doing it. Something clicked for me right then and there. What's happening right now in this country is frightening. And it feels unsafe, even for an old, white, gay guy.
I spent 25 years making other people's products better. I was good at it. But once I left (or more honestly, was left), that was it. It was done. And strangely, I barely think about it anymore. Decades of work, all but forgotten. And now we're moving to Portugal... my dog and I, to do what, exactly? Take pictures?
The Forgetting
For the last several years, I've complained to anyone who would listen. Friends, family, the barista who didn't ask. I was done. I wanted out. Almost a quarter century at Nike, forty-five-plus years in the workforce, and I was ready to be finished with all of it. I just never felt quite ready to pull the trigger myself. Then the decision was made for me.
I was laid off last June, and what I expected to feel... grief, disorientation, fear, an identity crisis... never materialized. Instead, what I got was amnesia. Not of my life, but of the work. The meetings, the decks, the product reviews, the organizational politics - it's like none of it happened. I don't think about it. I don't miss it. It simply left, like the Irish goodbye of a party guest.