As I flew from Chicago to Phoenix to Portland, I watched as the terrain below first went from green to yellow to dusty red. The flatlands of my adopted home dried away to the dry hills of the southwest like a blanket stretched taut then rippled and bunched into the safety of a childhood fort. The red turned green and bumpy as we neared, the transition of degrees of flat to bumpy, green to red to green only extreme in hindsight and jumping only to my tired eyes when I napped. I knew sleep was a precious resource in the next few days and I hoarded what I could...
♥ Noder Sprats could eat no fat
The rest could eat no lean
And yet between them both, you see
They licked their platters clean
Given the subtle transformations of the landscape, the disorientations at my new surroundings was odd. While the landscape was no surprise, the feel was. Taken for granted was the variations in mass personality between the label of American and the shift between Chicagoan and Oregonian. Here, there was not quite the big city feel. Gone was the more serious mid-western staunchness, replaced by the green grove of the Pacific Northwest. Signs stood about reminding people to not break the "chill" by bringing weapons to the airport and I idly wondered what world I was in now...
♥ Humpty Dumpty sat on a field
Humpty Dumpty refused to yield
All the good noders
And all the quirky men
Managed to put him together again
Green became the word for it all -- the dominant color of the landscape, the overarching philosophy of the people, the feel of the air. It clashed, somewhat, with the vibrant color of the others that made the voyage -- the neons, the bolds, the pastels, & the subtle patterns that threaded gold delicately through the coarse. Despite the clashes, the breaks, the accidents, and the stains, we came together -- some for the first time, others rooted in history long -- for a short time to make something greater than ourselves and bring life what we can only shadow play most days, weaving together a quilt that kept us warm.
♥ Hey never ever
The cats and the feather
The marks all over the moon
The big dogs laughed
to see such sport
And we're all wondering
who had sex with whom?
Mixed together was the old and the new -- People I knew intimately, people whom I knew not at all, but I'd danced this dance before and soon we all had the steps down, even with the new variations. Now, however, we didn't really look back, nor forward, but soaked in the presence of each other in the now. Not to say this was entirely smooth -- this, like most of its kind, was part family reunion & part family feud. But sweet goes well cut with bitter, and, in the end, I wouldn't have changed it all for the world.....
♥ Baa baa, black sheeps,
when did you last poo?
What, dear master,
three days full?
Instead I'll talk of crushes
With people in the house
One for the Mistress
One for the Great Dane
and many for the little girl
That lives past the plains...