That was my professor calling attention to the blue blue sky, cloudless and bright for what we know will be the last time in months.
The rumor about my professor is, he could be teaching at Harvard but did not want to shovel snow.
Yesterday, I point myself to WFMU on webcast and the second song in is a bootleg of Ken Kesey singing the Frozen Logger Blues in Eugene, 30 years ago. Eugene to New York and back to me. I forgot, this is blessed blessed country.
About Kesey: I have heard the words ten times already and spread it to those who cared, but still when the DJ says it it feels like a kick in the stomach. This man was my neighbor. This man was my Oregon.
Because what I was thinking, yesterday, gliding across campus, was more: A day like this would make an Oregonian out of anyone. In Sometimes a Great Notion he wrote that this was Kerouac's country, or Hemingway's - I forget. Now here is the foolish truth: Great Notion is what sucked me into this great mossy washcloth valley. I was going to thank him for that sometime, and I never did.
I thought it because the sun bathed in a wet-kiss mist, a sun I have never seen in any other place. My pants are muddy around the ankles. The sky is on my side, just for once. Sir I have a hometown too, do you know it? I am faded, fuzzy nearly high from sunshine, too many Ralph and Margarets, faces, pinching glasses, too many words. (I been away a long time.) And thank you, Mr. Sun or who can hear this. Thank you very much indeed.