Moving On

My back hurts this morning, as it did yesterday morning, following a day spent purging books from my library. Connie and I are moving to Portland, Oregon, June 1, and one of the most expensive items you can move is books. We already have more than our shelves will bear. My desk is stacked with books--new ones bought in the last two months that I am still reading, and others I've moved to the desk because I want to refer to them when I'm writing.

The move to Portland is something we have contemplated for a long time but assumed it would be several years before we actually did it. I thought I would continue to work in New York until at least the age of 67 or so and then we would retire to Portland. As those of you who have kept up with this blog know, my work for the church has ended. It is time to be somewhere else, somewhere less intense than New York City. We love New York, to coin a phrase. Connie has lived here over twenty years, I've been here twelve (with two years for both of us in Boston along the way). But Portland offers wonders that New York lacks, particularly access to the natural beauty of the mountains and rivers of the Northwest. The Columbia River Gorge is less than two hours away, as is the Pacific Ocean in the other direction. In twenty minutes from our apartment, we can be in the western hills among cedars in the Japanese Garden (the best, most people think, outside of Japan). From our living room window, we overlook a park in the city that contains stones from Souchow, China.

The cost of living is lower in Portland, which is important to us semi-retired folk. There is great public transportation: it costs nothing to ride buses, streetcar, and rapid transit in downtown Portland. We can walk the length of the city in thirty minutes. Great restaurants, interesting indie movie theaters, the Portland Museum of Art five minutes away, an auditorium that hosts theater and performers right next door, a bistro up the street.....and by the way the rain thing is not as bad as you've heard. This last month has been rainier in NYC than in Portland.

I plan to write for the next year or so, although I am hoping to do some consulting and editorial work for publishers on a project basis. We will see if I can bring in some money writing. Connie will also be writing, finishing her next book and continuing to work on selling her previous manuscripts. We look forward to a creative, stimulating life in our new city.

For me, it feels like a new beginning in so many ways--a chance to return to the creative writing I have always done but seldom been able to focus on. There are two or three projects in the works. Last week I sent some poems to a magazine for the first time in thirty years! My web site, http://webworks.ken-arnold.com will have updates on where publications are expected, as well as work online that I hope will be stimulating and even provocative. I will be posting a new piece there in the next week.

Some of what I'm reading right now--books you might find interesting if you don't know about them:

Messenger: New and Selected Poems, by Ellen Bryant Voight. A writer of clean lines and good sense (and senses--she sees and hears so well).

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, short stories by Haruki Murakami. Murakami is presently my favorite writer. His novels are an adventure, the stories sharp and surprising.

A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine, by John K. Nelson. After my visit to Japan last summer I became more aware of the intricacies of Shinto, which lacks the institutional weight of most religions (never mind the state-sponsored Shinto of the war years--this is different.)

The Art of Setting Stones & Other Writings from the Japanese Garden, by Marc Peter Keane. Lovely prose.

Carried Away: A Selection of Stories, by Alice Munro. The new Everyman's Library collection. As good as anyone can be.

Love in a Fallen City, by Eileen Chang. Novellas and stories by a Chinese writer I'd never heard of. Touching and hard-edged, as was her life.

The Savage Detectives, a novel by Roberto Bolano. An acquired taste. He died young and this novel is a big sprawling legacy, beautiful prose and tough going.

Back on the Fire, essays by Gary Snyder. One of my favorite authors. Essays mostly about nature and the world in peril.

Next week I plan to return to my reflections on Christianity and the body, once my own body is feeling a bit better.