Joni Mitchell, vintage, the old stuff, stuff of my untoward youth, on the CD player, loud, so I can hear it over the water running in the shower I am about to take. I can sit here and think I’ve done nothing since waking but, in addition to writing in my morning pages book and on the blogs, I made and drank Illy coffee…
Photo by Paul Danese Still morning here in the Coast Range. Been up for a few hours, sipping my Illy espresso — they make a …
Still daylight here in the foothills of the Coast Range in western Oregon. In fact, I think there’s a long way to go. There was a parking lot full of cars already lined up at Bald Hill Park when I drove home an hour — I think there’s some kind of solstice celebration at the top of Bald Hill peak every year…
It has taken me all damn day to get the room of my own, the one in which I write, returned to a modicum of order so I can begin to focus on writing again. Piles of books, piles of random newspaper clippings, and newsletters and mail and receipts
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Highlights of My Thousand Miles to Nowhere, Somewhere and Back…
— Stumbling on/into Klindt’s, the oldest bookstore in Oregon, in The Dalles and finding a set of Lawrence Durell’s Alexandria Quartet for $12 just as R.E.M. is playing “The Great Beyond.”
— Doing “drive-by shootings”– photographs from the car while moving. Hold up the camera, point, and click. Vistas, clouds, rain off in the distance, the sunlight on the top of an old silo, a way-too-huge flag on the twin towers of a cement factory that rises up out of nowhere.
— A crow that I can pretend is Edgar Allan Poe’s raven, perched on the top of sign on Route 30, outside Haines, Oregon, announcing that I’m at the 45th parallel, the midpoint between the North Pole and the equator
— The way the leaves moved in the slightest breeze on the quaking aspen outside my window at the Sandman Inn in LaGrande, Oregon.
— At the same Sandman, overhearing a shard of conversation between army guys-on-tour and a couple who live near Antelope, Oregon where (as the husband says) “that Rajneesh guy used to live.”
— Eas-as-pie wireless in the Sandman; picking up wireless from hotels blocks away in downtown Boise before the genius light bulb goes on in my head and I think, aha! close the drapes!
— The Idaho Black History Museum in the Julia Davis Park across from the Rose Garden where I talk with the director (her sister is in the Lion King on Broadway) while I buy my son a $5 Juneteenth T-shirt for his birthday.
— The “Homage to the Pedestrian” art installation in The Grove in downtown Boise. Every time a person walks by, bells, whistles, clapping and light drumming start. I could never figure out if it was canned/pre-recorded or if the actual act of an individual walking by generated a unique set of rhythms each and every time.
— Getting that hour back as I return into Pacific Daylight Time just north of Huntington, Oregon.
— The sign at Exit 383 at Weatherby, Oregon “Panning for Gold, Next Exit.” Panning for gold translates into a pack of RVs and campers and tents alongside the highway and a bunch of humans with picks and shovels digging into the soil that made up two very tiny hills of dirt that look like they were leftover from some outhouse construction project.
— Randi Rhodes and her big, wonderful, sassy, obnoxious politically savvy mouth when I’m finally on I-5, close Albany, Oregon, and can pick up KTTH, 990 AM, The Truth once again.
— Cleaning out the car, starting laundry, realizing I have days and days stretching out in front of me where basically I don’t have to drive much again…
Ten Reasons (So Far) Why Road Trips Are Less Than Wonderful These 21st Century Days
1. The roads are too damn crowded. Even in the wide open spaces of Eastern Oregon’s Malheur County, an irresponsible, big honkin’ Chevy Tahoe or Ford F350 Super Cab with the requisite “Support Our Troops”
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I ran away from home, drove 500 miles to Boise, Idaho, because it wasn’t Oregon and because a few people have told me over the years that it is a nice place, a surprising oasis in the desert that is both the land and the cultural outlook of Idaho…
Combing through my archives of writing today and found this in the Anthracite Diaries section of my old blog, Stream of Consciousness. It’s a brief essay about being in my hometown on September 11, 2001 …
I watched End of the Century, the movie about the punk rock band, The Ramones, last night. It had gotten interesting reviews and it was, overall, pretty fascinating. I tend to like movies about music
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Today, Robin—the angel of feather dusters, the goddess of order and a mopped tile floor—came to clean. I look forward to her visits. Well, I look forward to after her visits when I sit in the living room and look around me at the what she hath wrought…
