and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

People missed me while I was gone and that is sweet and nice to think about but I didn't so much miss some people and that sort of gets under my skin. No no.. not you. Nothing personal. I'm just saying there aren't so many people I know here in the port city .. so less people to miss, yah see?

Tony said I should talk about the port city. He said enough with the sex, drugs, and rock and roll mike - tell us about your town. Okay, he actually said that since i have no sex, drugs, and rock and roll to extoll that I should babble on about my city since I would at least then have some content, quality or not.

It made me question if someone out there is interested in my town. It made me ask if anyone is thinking, right now, Gee I wish I could move to Portland. No, not that Portland. The other one. The one on the other side of the continent. On the other pond. The small and oft overlooked city of Portland, Maine. Population 65,000 and the largest burg of our fair state.

I went hiking in Virginia and if anything makes you think about your own town it's leaving it. I saw rolling hills and meadows and wild pony and heard the wild elk bellowing through the woods of southern VA and saw lots of dirty hikers all strapped and attached and secured to their packs.. and I thought how different Maine is from a lot of places. How different a lot of places are from a lot of other places.

I like my town. If you were from a tiny place called buckwheat pass or east bumfuck then you might think ptown was a thriving metropolis. You might uoohhhh and ahh at the many restuarants and night places to go to. They say we have one of the highest restuarant saturations in the nation.. If you were from a big place called Chicago or New York you might feel stifled by the smallness but you also might enjoy the air and the freedom to drive where you want to without having to replace your clutch from stop-n-go or you might enjoy the quiet solitude just minutes away from downtown. You might get a woody bumping along the cobblestones and poking into the little boutiques and you might even like that you could see the same faces all about town over and over.

But the weird thing is (and this may be partly due to the few years I have been here) I don't get a sense of the history. I have no doubt that Portland has a long and colorful history of ..well.. of things that happened, people who've lived here.. It seems like a town that would be rich with heritage. However, I know so much more about the tiny towns in Maine instead.. Like the one I spent much of my life in - Gardiner. I know about it's involvment in the logging industry and the shoe factories. I know about it's old covered bridges and the international ice trade. I know about Benedict Arnold's trip up the Kennebec to Gardiner where he purchased row boats and supplies for his men and marched up and over the mountains of the Applachians to attack the dastardly british in the port of Quebec City. I know about the families - about Sylvester Gardiner and the trading post at Fort Western in Augusta Maine.

But I don't know so much about Portland. Perhaps with time and a little curiousity and interest. I'll be sure to keep you posted, of course. And let me know if you find something spicy.