Tales from Oregon Pt. 4

12/18/2008 (continued)

I have these memories of white-washed adobe walls, half in cool blue shadow and half lit up in blinding white sunlight. I have memories of blue skies bordered not by anything visually tangible but bordered instead by this sense of dizzying, awe-inspiring height. A reversal of vertigo, in which I am struck most viscerally, by an immeasurable vertical distance. I am not in fear of a downward fall but instead passionately intrigued by some vertical ascent. I once had a dream in which I was sent to live in this large valley bordered on all sides by towering cliffs, and with some sort of ceiling too high for me to see but impossible to ignore. An underground valley, but flooded with sunlight. I remember that upon waking from this dream I was hit with a strong sense of nostalgia, like this pit of my stomach filled with a thousand memories, not al mine, and I was, for a fleeting moment, aware of myself.

I suppose one of the reasons I came to Oregon to visit my grandfather was a desire to capture that ethereal essence of my early childhood. The part that I don't remember, enshrouded by notions of romantic, California fiction. Oh, I am a Romantic, I cannot hope to deny the way that my mind is inflated by things like poetry, music, and conversations and upon these warm winds rises up into the cool plane upon which it has space and instrumentation to allow its most undefined and mysterious faculties to engage their better natures and frolic amongst the memories of things that have passed and things yet to come. I am fully committed to the notion that humans have the capacity for Romantic escape, a capacity to, in times of stress and in times of peace, rise above the present reality and do...what? I cannot pretend to know.

It's almost 9:00 and I have to get up and take a shower before eating breakfast. I plan to read a lot today.

The End