On the road again: Portland, day 2

From very early in the morning until very late at night (well after two-thirty a.m. Pacific time), work consumed almost all of this day.  It was a rough one.

At the same time, it was an exhilarating one.  The work meetings were interesting and exciting and gave me a great deal to ponder.  I like when I have to work my brain hard, and today gave me several opportunities to do that.  Great stuff. 

Dinner was with colleagues and friends at Irving Street Kitchen, a very good restaurant in the Pearl district.  David, one of my colleagues, learned that a friend of his was the pastry chef there, so we had to check it out.  She and they treated us like VIPs, sent us a couple of extra appetizers, and then delivered one each of every dessert.  All were excellent.  I'd definitely go back there again.

In the "I am weird" department, as the meal was winding down, while the others at our table were talking, the music playing just below the volume of the sea of conversation in the restaurant turned to this lovely Death Cab for Cutie song, "Transatlanticism."



I couldn't quite hear it at first, and we couldn't Shazam it, but moments after we gave up I caught the words clearly and recognized it.  The song hit me like a sledgehammer to the heart, and then I got a double whammy as I flashed on this lovely Levi Weaver video, which I've featured before and in which Sarah and Ben appear and something magical happens at the end.



In an instant and for only a few seconds, I ached unbearably for all the people I've ever loved and lost, for those I wanted to love but never had the chance, for those I've known who were so in need of love that they glowed with the pain of their need, for the times when my children were young and small and I could hold them close to me and thought I could protect them always just through the sheer power of my love, for all the times I wished I could hold someone closer. 

I thought then, as I often do, that of all the forces that bind us humans and all the traits we share, love and the power and the ability and the need to love are among the very finest, the very best parts of us.