east west

collapse the light into earth

At least there are blue skies. Yesterday I went outside and just stood on the front porch, eyes closed, trying to absorb it - let's quite literally save it for a rainy day. The mountains are overwhelming in their whiteness, especially when they come out of hiding. take-your-breath-away-huge.

A comet was here this weekend. I forgot to see it. That I FORGOT to see a comet is something unfortunatelycharacteristic of me now, which would not have happened five years ago. I remember specifically driving south on route 72, headed towards cornfields and cornfields only, simply to glance a better view of the sunrise before my 8AM. And now I find that I have my head down while we cross the willamette in the morning and the sun breaks through to outline the sky in gold.

I'm reading a book called Prague, by Arthur Phillips. It's actually about Budapest, but that aside - there is a character in the book that I am simply amazed exists. My words won't do it justice, but he focuses on qualifying nostalgia. Putting it to words, tracing the patterns, figuring out the "why?". If we tend towards emulating the 1950's right now, what did actual twentysomethings in the 1950's emulate? The 1920'? And what did actual twentysomethings in the 1920's emulate? How far back does this go, this leapfrogging and longing for a time and place that we weren't even a part of? Do we take it all the way back to the Napoleonic Wars, to Charlemagne, to the era of the Caesars?

(Tangent #1: Sometimes, while listening to Simon & Garfunkel especially, I will have this memory: I'm on the BQE, pulling in closer to the city - the Manhattan skyline breaks through, and I feel like I am finally home. The thing is - this is my father's memory - when he back home to Queens after Vietnam in the 1970's.)

(Tangent #2: The final week of my advanced english class in romania, I gave my students this assignment: They were to simply respond to C.S. Lewis' quote "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." Now that I look back on that, what a difficult assignment, to try to flesh out a response to something so intangible in an equally intangible language.)

(Tangent #3: While home for Christmas, we were driving north up I-81, headed towards a lunch in Harrisonurg with David & Laura. I couldn't stop looking out the window - see the contours of the mountains, they look like velvet, why do they undulate like that, why is that barn there, see how the undergrowth parts to show the red clay, the oaks are so delicate, there are my beloved locust trees, I wish we could hear the cicada - and we passed a sign that said "VIRGINIA HORSE CENTER - EXIT 288". I can barely explain this, but felt such intense emotion in seeing this sign - what a wholesome land.)

posted by jessica @ 12:53 PM