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
the promise of sunshine, if not today - soon
