The last few days the mercury has been climbing past the better cold mark and into the melty marks. Sun is streaming through the eastern windows, well, the only windows in the attic. I went on a purpose driven joy ride yesterday; that is I went to get stuff but was joyful about driving around, dirty snow piled high on the margins of the road, they sky gray as opiated dirty cotton.
I plugged in one of the many thumb drives in my fancy pants modulated dash. I’ve done my best not to get to acclimated and that includes the jeep as well, as though, any minute now, I’ll go back to my shack, the mighty mighty jeep and my dogs. Yet, when I pulled out a thumb drive and it was all music that belonged in Oregon I was swollen with joy and not some maudlin mawkish you-can’t-go-home.
Femmes, They Might be Giants, Thin White Rope, Giant Sand, Mission of Burma, Alabama 3, Van Morrison, Will Oldham, Silver Jews, stuff like that. I know, some of that stuff is not what you’d consider Oregon Music. You sat by the banks of some sunny river or creek, watching the scantily clad girls or boys dive in, immortal, laughing up water and the tinny box was belting out “ Doo right, yoo Do right, when they ask what’s wrong I say I’m ok …” or “ He left a note that read ‘I’ve gone out the window; I’m dead´” or “… And we will walk and talk in gardens all misty wet with rain…” For me that river was the Columbia.
For me, Herschel’s great daft head was out the back window of the mighty mighty jeep smiling at motorists, a bit of whipped cream frothing around his muzzle (which had to scare more than one motorist. See, Starbucks got sued by an employee who handed a biscuit out a drive thru window to a large dog who thought the hand was the intended treat. My Starbucks guy was mortified, apologizing to Herschel that he had no treat for him. I suggested a cup of whipped cream. There was always one waiting for him at the Starbucks. Fat muzzled dogs have to get all up in a cup of cream to eat it proper.). Or Levi running down the beach, or Otis looking in the woods for the deadest grossest thing to roll around in.
Yesterday, at least, those quit being painful memories, or, if not painful, memories of longing, and I could have drove like that for a long time if I had anyplace to drive too. In my misspent youth I would drive out to a place called rose lake; it’s become something else, something I don’t understand, I mean no sub-division or anything, it’s just been moved around and parts cordoned off and parts a shooting range and none of it looks familiar, or some of it does but it’s in the wrong place.
I might go somewhere this weekend, anywhere that the tunes take me. I say I might because I can’t go alone. It’ll sound silly to type this out loud, but left to my own devices I might really struggle with coming back. Of course the company I’d like to keep will have the same problem.
Hmmm I guess maybe I’m done, the bits that come next are bits I can’t start or they’ll go on forever.
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