The Narrative Image: fog

Showing posts with label fog. Show all posts

Monday, February 2, 2009

WARRIOR ROCK LIGHTHOUSE – Sauvie Island

Note: I’ve mentioned this before, but a really great resource for Portland residents who like to hike is Portland Hikers.org: Portland Oregon’s Hiking Network http://www.portlandhikers.org/
The following images are derived from following the Warrior Rock/Point Lighthouse hike as described here: http://www.portlandhikersfieldguide.org/wiki/Warrior_Point_Hike

Even though I was once an art major, I couldn’t think of any more names to describe the colors of mucus that I was able to blow out of my nose. After a week, I was convinced much of it was brain matter. I couldn’t think anymore, most of my parts hurt, and the coughing was starting to aggravate my ribs. When the weekend arrived, all I wanted to achieve was the oblivion of sleep.

But at that unexpected moment in the dark hours before dawn, as I eyed the threshold to unconsciousness... some electric stimulus - a message passed along an ethereal network - the inspiration from a muse, invited me to wander.
The drive to Sauvie Island was an exercise in nearsightedness. Traffic signs gave up their messages only at the last second as obfuscating fingers of fog softened the edges of significant letters. A suggestion of a massive concrete pier lurking off to the right of the road was the only inkling I had that I passed under the cathedral-like arch of the St. Johns Bridge. For all I could see, I might as well have painted all my windshields white and driven through Paris.

Along the beach, the filtered moan of some behemoth cow echoes up the river. The mechanical vibration of its diesel heart is heard best by one's guts. A ship seen only by the imagination traces shock waves in the water – displaced water transfers the message to the river bank, and implies the ship is real.

figments of imagination from some distant country

some vast enterprise, advancing without seeing – by senses someone else imagined

there’s so much water in the air, it’s puzzling that no one drowns

From the river, the sonic fingers of blind ships probe the channel. The mournful lowing, muted by the fog, evokes another kind of wake - not the joyous Dixieland procession that my father longed for – but the somber hopelessness of the lost.

this winter landscape – these skeletons

this vessel of graceful, bounding life - now static – now bound to the earth - matted disheveled fur, like parted hair, revealing a pinkness that reminds me of some common ancestor. The smell strikes me, and I back away – I don’t want to smell like that – I don’t want to get any on me

The air is filled with the noise of flapping. How can the motion of feathers on air sound like such a beating?

people come and people go

for all we know, there’s nothing around the corner

the promise of sunshine, if not today - soon

Sunday, December 16, 2007

MT. TABOR - A TIME-TRAVEL HIKE

My apartment sits at the base of an extinct volcano…at least I hope so. With luck, the tectonic plate that Oregon rides upon has migrated far enough to carry Portland past the molten magma furnace that fueled Mt. Tabor in the distant past. If you weren’t looking for it, you might not recognize that a small amphitheatre and basketball court are built in the throat of a cinder cone.

The following images are arranged in geographical order. The images begin at the public stairwell at the north entrance to Mt. Tabor Park. The route will follow the stairs up to the top of Mt. Tabor, then over the top towards the south. From there, the path will meander down and to the west, stopping to visit each of Mt. Tabor’s reservoirs in order of altitude. While the route through space will be orderly and sequential, the path through time will be random and perhaps jarring.