Telepathy and Airmail and Love and Stuff

Portland is good and friendly and it feels like living in a never-ending music festival. There are bands and food stalls and vintage shops everywhere and I'm pretty sure I won't be leaving without getting some kind of a face tattoo.

On Saturday I was cycling around the city when Fiona texted me. There's a letter for me at home, arrived via airmail. She'll leave it by the telephone. I sat down on a bench at a farmers' market and wondered who it might be from. Dearest Annie...

No.

Farmers' markets, I'm going to warn you, are for couples. Do not go there alone. Do not sit there, alone, thinking back to how this was something you used to do together. Things get divided in break-ups, you know. If he's going to keep making elaborate breakfasts then I'm going to keep wandering around sunny markets. He can keep New York, and I will keep the Wild West. He can keep the cinema, and I will keep listening to lonely country music late at night when everyone else has their heads down getting some well-deserved rest.

But really, late last night I was at a party, with a guy called Tom from Los Angeles who owns the cowboy boot store down the road. I wasn't going to accept the invitation — I did not come here to party, Los Angeles, I came here to brood — but my mother's voice rang in my head: sweet suffering Jesus, Annie, just go.

We arrived early and stood in the kitchen with a handful of people and I wished there was a dog to stroke. Tom broke the ice and said: “Annie has a great story... do you want to tell it or should I?" I didn't quite know what he meant by 'story' but seems my special superpower is oversharing I jumped right in with all the details anyway. I took them to Everest and back again, right up to the anxiety attack at Shanghai airport when I realised I was going home to no home. That's the story you meant, right Tom?

Er, not exactly, no.

Oh.

But my audience was understanding. Especially the blonde girl from California who later grabbed me on the sweaty dance floor and ground her body up and down against mine – ice well and truly broken. “Oh girl,” she said. “You are in so much trouble.” Alright California, I know.

Yes, Portland is good and friendly, even if I can't always tell if I'm happy to be somewhere good when I'm sad, or sad to be somewhere good when I'm unhappy. It shifts, and there are better days and bad. I made David and Fiona laugh three times today. Three times! Each time I went upstairs to make a note of it in my journal. Dear Diary: I just made David and Fiona laugh. Am I getting my sense of humour back or do they just have gas?

Another thing I like to note is that despite this sorry, sorry break-up stuff, I'm not always missing the feeling of love. I can feel it in this house that I'm staying in and I felt it when Jacob helped the widower with his dead wife's stuff. I feel it in the emails from friends, when unexpected letters arrive via airmail, and whenever a stranger gets in touch.

I can feel it inside me, too, you know. I felt it, eventually, on that bench at the farmers' market, where I broke all the rules of our no-contact agreement and telepathed at him very hard. “I don't want to divide up the world,” I said, with my head down and my eyes shut. “I want you to have everything you want. I hope that right now this very minute you're having an elaborate breakfast and wandering around a sunny foreign market.”

Then I opened one eye, checked the time, and added: “Even if it's three in the morning wherever you are, over on the other side of the world.”