Halloween

Halloween!
Portland is crawling with people in costumes. Hundreds of scantily-clad women walking around, turning my head and that of my guest. He and I have different tastes in women, but we still enjoy looking and comparing notes. Since he did not have a costume and was not certain he was up to HOWL or the Erotic Ball, we went instead to the Bagdad Theater in the Hawthorne District. We got our pizza and pitcher of beer and watched a hysterically funny movie.

Halloween!
Tammy's birthday. God how I miss her. God how I tried to save her. Some find comfort in thinking that she has gone on to another, better place, but that comfort is a luxury I cannot seem to buy into. The only certainty in life is death and there is no comfort in that. She is gone 10 months now and it feels like the ache of loss will never go away. I know it will, eventually. I know this, but there is no comfort in that knowledge either, just immense sadness and a pervasive sense of failure. I think, in some ways, it is this sense of failure that drives me south, this feeling of having failed my sister and my family and myself.

Thanksgiving!
I am giving up my life here in Portland to move to California, where I will be near my loved ones. The feeling of relief once I made that choice was profound. The emotions are complex. Do I sense within myself hope for redemption for this imagined sin of failing to keep my sister alive? Who knows? In a few moments it is the Day of the Dead. It seems fitting.