My eyes opened at 11:30 am on Sunday. An hour and a half later, I reluctantly rolled out of bed. 30 minutes after that, I was barefoot and standing at a bus stop with two friends on our way to the weekend market downtown. Sunglasses on my nose, a linear algebra problem set in my bag, $2.50 in change, ready to live it up in a calm sunny way.
Little did I know, there was some living to do. Also some calm, and some sun.
Our plan was to eat some papusas and then find somewhere foreign and sunny to study. Instead, we debated gun rights, ate papusas, and then wandered around for a few hours and overdosed on vitamin D. The streets of downtown Portland are less sleazy looking when it a) not nighttime and b) not raining.
It was Easter Sunday, so everywhere was closed. We bought some purple lipstick and liquid eyeliner and put it on eachother like silly little girls. We took pictures of eachother in a park. Carefree isn't usually a feeling I get at Reed.
Later we were accosted by a drunk man who wanted us all to be his girlfriend and to "take a fucking beer, bitch" from his 12 pack of PBR. As annoying as it is to be bothered, flipping people off is kinda fun.
Then we looked for a coffee shop to study in. Unable to find one that fit our needs in terms of atmosphere, price,and disregard of christian holiday, we eventually stumbled on some picnic benches outside of a closed restaurant. We studied there for a while, before deciding to head back to Reed.
On the way, a woman we would come to know as Esther stopped us in the street. She worked for a casting company in LA. There was a secret concert that they were going to televise, and she wanted us to be in the 200 or so people they cast to be in the front section. I guess she was on the prowl for hipsters.
We got stupid-excited. My friends were yelling things like "WE ARE ATTRACTIVE" and "ELITE." The random-happenstance of the whole thing was unbelievable. If we'd left the table 2 minutes later we would never have crossed paths with Esther. As it was, we were giddy with joy and anticipation for the free concert. Santigold, B.o.B, and Matt and Kim are apparently all fairly well know I have just never heard of them.
We went down to the river front, glowing with victory. We saw two men with a sign that said "5 dollars for 5 minutes of your time. We can ask you any question." It turns out that one man was the uncle of the other. The nephew had been raised in a traditional catholic Vietnamese family and his uncle wanted to make sure that he understood the breadth of experience and perspective in the world. This was his strategy.
We couldn't resist.
The questions didn't push any boundaries for me. The hardest was "what's the happiest you've ever been," or maybe "what was the worst thing that ever happened to you?" Honestly, most of my life is a blur compared to Reed. It comes back into focus when I'm on break and I remember what living is, but right now I can only think about physics.
After that, we blew our $5 on pizza. Then we waited for a bus, where we encountered the absolute worst thing that had happened to us all day: it smelled vaguely of piss.
And that is a pretty good way to tell that the rest of the day was chill as fuck.
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