Anyway, I'm looking forward to spring break. I turned down a trip to California's better half with Mr. Inclan in favor of staying here and exploring Washington (Mount St. Helens is cool, right?) I had my selfish reasons that I won't go into because I'm old fashioned when it comes to journaling and this isn't that kind of a blog anyway... But at least part of it, I'd like to think, was my undying love for/mysterious bond with the Pacific Northwest. Which reminded me of some passages from Sometimes a Great Notion that I can't recall and a poem by Sam Hamill, which I was introduced to in Literature of the Americas a year ago. TerribleTara probably remembers it.
I'm just going to insert the link because otherwise my post will take up more room than it deserves.
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~bgoebel/members/shamill.htm
4 comments:
I absolutely love this poem.
My favorite part is:
Don't tell me
about the seasons in the East, don't talk to me
about eternal California summer.
It's enough to have
a few days naked
among three hundred kinds of rain.
I consider Sometimes a Great Notion one of my favorites books. It really does have moments that describe the Northwest so perfectly. Plus, I fell in love with all the characters.
I really need to read Sometimes a Great Notion again. My love for the Pacific Northwest is so difficult to articulate and whenever I try my audience just says "So you like it because it's depressing?" Oh hell, maybe in a way I do. Julien was telling me that he and his brother watched a "Twin Peaks" documentary once, and someone explains they chose Washington because it felt haunted - and I think that's true and I think Kesey captured that haunted feeling. Or that chapter, where he compares the Midwest to the Northwest and says how on those flat farms people could control the land, but the forests in Oregon were so humbling. There's just something about the way rain doesn't love you back... and the woods and the mountains...and how easy it is to get lost... it's so looming and eternal and Godless. If I could persuade this battered earth to let me make it home gives me chills. Maybe that's the difference between people who can't stay too long and people who, like me, could never leave it for long - maybe we who love it have, at least on some level, always wanted to disappear into something. Do I sound crazy? It's one of those things I'll start to ramble about and then feel embarrassed. But by God, before I die I will be able to explain this love of mine!
Or not.
Maybe it's better that way.
That deleted comment above was just me removing my own lament about font confusion. How the link doesn't match the rest of the post. Anyway, just cleaning up after myself. Not censoring anyone. Geez. blogspot doesn't have to make it look like such a sinister redaction!
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