fifty suns

well, the rain is back. with a vengeance. and when it comes and covers the city like this, I can't help but think about the time ava and I decided to stop complaining and take on the rain.
it was june of 2010 and felt like it had been cold and rainy for months. it hadn't been, of course but it had felt like it and it was june, for pete's sake. june. we were ready for summer so we decided to take matters into our own hands. we gathered the necessary materials (white paper plus every yellow and orange marker, crayon and colored pencil in the house) and drew as many suns as our hands could handle. which turned out to be about fifty. in hindsight, we probably should've used sturdier paper and bigger, brighter markers but it was a spur of the moment kind of project and everyone knows spur of the moment projects are all about using what you have. spur of the moment projects are also all about momentum.

we packed up our sunshine flyers and our rolls of tape and took to the streets of portland, downtown portland.

the plan: bomb the city with sunshine flyers. or try to, at least. here are a few of the places we hit:

a signpost on burnside, just outside powell's books. and then the shelves of the self help section inside. because if you are in the self help section of a book store, you might be a person who would appreciate a little sunshine flyer.

the park, near the rose bushes. rose bushes that greatly benefit from all that portland rain, I realize, but would also benefit from a little sunshine every once in a while.

an abandoned building.

the bathroom of the lobby of the ace hotel.

the secret drawers, where people leave all matters of notes, drawings and letters. did you know the lobby of the ace hotel had secret drawers? well, they do.

the photobooth, of course.

pioneer square.

a construction site.

and then finally, the window of the streetcar on our ride back.

but maybe the best part of the story is this: a few days later, we drove around downtown to see if any of our sunshine flyers were still up. there were a few, though most of them were gone. but as we drove by a phonebooth where we'd intentionally covered up a horrible white supremacist sticker, we spotted a note. I jumped out of the car and the above is what I found.

and so, on this rainy rainy day, this is something to remember, this note that was left for us. this is something to remember, this thing that we did. sometimes sunshine is not so much a big yellow ball in the sky but a state of mind.