I realized yesterday that my life in Charleston is starting to become a part of my distant past rather than recent past.  I was 25 the last time I lived there.  I was 22 when I moved there.  It's strange.  It might be because the time I spent in school is more of a giant hole in the fabric of time than a part of my life, in terms of experiences, friends, romances, etc.  Lost time.

I don't miss Portland as an entity at all at all.  There were times that I wanted to stay, but now that I'm gone, I have no nostalgia for it, no desire to visit.  One of my old classmates posted one of those Portland buzzfeed lists online the other day--stuff like craft beer, salt and straw ice cream, the japanese garden, food carts, Powell's, and vegan everything.  The list left me completely unmoved.

But there are small things that I randomly come across in my memory all the time.  They are all things that you dont realize are special at the time--drinking coffee at Fresh Pot on Mississippi in the summer time while watching the hipsters walk by was a frequent one.  My first six months there were scary and amazing, living with Anna (now Avery) and having nothing but the clothes on my back.  We would craft and watch Twin Peaks while waiting for the rain to stop, before going off to work at our respective restaurant jobs.  That kind of the stuff, the personal things and the newness of the city, being broke with other broke people, THAT stuff was great.  It was probably the last time in my life where being super-poor was not only ok, it was expected.  I lived in two basements during those first six months, with weird people who I went out of my way to avoid sometimes.  I slept on a twin mattress for the first time since I was 7.  I tanned on a private beach on Sauvie's island with my roommate and a bunch of models who worked with Gus van Sant.  I sneaked into hot yoga classes that I couldn't afford, just to get away from the spring chill.  I walked from my physics class at Portland State all the way back home to North Portland, for no reason, just to walk.

That's the stuff I miss.