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Unexpected Parallels: Oregon Brewers Festival & Cooper Spur

A friend, wise in the ways of beer, convinced me to attend the Oregon Brewers Festival despite my intuition that however big the beer tents might be, they wouldn’t be big enough.

Determined not to pay for parking, I spent nearly a billion dollars in gas searching for a free parking space which I never found.

When I finally did find a place for the car, it was a stupid distance away from the festival.




I saw many shiny buildings which I found impressive, I think, mainly because of their scale and mainly because of their un-natural order…and did I mention they were shiny?



They also had reflections. I suppose reflections are a clever way to keep one from really seeing a building’s true facade.




Without the reflections and the massive scale, it becomes more readily evident that buildings are clever complexes of stacked cubicles…


…or cells.



Some impressions from the Brewers Festival:

The screaming bitter taste of hops

Becoming a whore for wooden tokens

Ideally beautiful girls dressed in tight shiny Mylar potato chip bags

The special blessing of quick moving lines for those able to exploit the standing room only urinals

The periodic primal cacophony of primates collectively rising toasts in a primitive tribal fashion.

The infinite variety of the human form

The word “fecund”


With beer goggles strapped firmly in place, the city feels like a warm and friendly beautiful place.


But really it’s a kind of scary casino where you pay your money and take your chances. My visit this time was benign. The impact to my wallet was minimal. I didn’t run into any desperate drug addicts in the dark, underneath the harsh concrete overpass. I didn’t stumble in front of an oncoming bus.



I got to meet new people and gain insights into how they ‘gamble’.

I salvaged a brief moment of fellowship.



The next morning I revisited Cooper Spur. From the Cooper Spur trail, Mt. Hood looks impressive, mainly because of the scale.

Sunbeams poked through a spinning hat of indeterminate clouds and lighted the shaded, snow-crusted peak like reflections cast from a disco mirror ball.

From picture post card range, the mountain is unquestionably aesthetically pleasing – even awe inspiring.



Yet if the clouds should thicken – if the wind picks up – if the temperature drops - then awe shifts imperceptibly toward foreboding.


And details of character show that this too is a kind of scary casino – or perhaps a shooting gallery.


Where chance encounters can change everything.





Perhaps it is a wishful stage where the boring novel form is forsaken for the drama of the action-packed, compressed screenplay.






A tree survives.


This animation, When the Day Breaks, is worth watching just to see the rooster's hat. I thought this 'chance encounter' touched upon some of the uncertianty I was trying to conjure up with my scary casino theme.

Comments

  1. This is the 5th time the word fecund has surfaced this week. And it's only Tuesday.

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