Grey morning of weeping sky
After a cold bed, an empty room
Driving in the rain
Driving in the dark
Squint at the oncoming headlights
I saw a 45MPH sign and I wanted to keep going...
Keep driving through the dark and the cold and the wet
Forever perhaps
Everything is muted earth
Rivulets spill down tree trunks
And wind through the muddy driveway
It is winter
The quiet is me...

In two weeks I will be moving once again. Back to California where the nights are warm and the sky is always blue and the sun heats your bones. Not quite eight months in Oregon, that mystical place of hipsters and coffee houses, artists and rain; and all is changing again. I'll be sad to go (who isn't sad when they have to leave a place?), but the call of the southern coast and the prospect of a job I know I enjoy have tipped the scales. The world is open and beckoning, and adventures are as close as you make them. Been listening to the Kings of Convenience, a jazzy band from Norway who sound like Simon and Garfunkel, and Joanna Newsom, and trying to get a solid 8 hours a night. And I see the shape of a quiet future forming in the June Gloom over the sea.

I discovered this post in my drafts that I guess I never published. It was written while working at Kinko's in Ventura...I find it rather silly. I am very long ways from that time, but somehow it was only yesterday...

Careening carelessly along Monday morning freeways, bleary-eyed and happy at the prospect of coveted sleep...A forlorn Lucky smolders merrily between my lips as I smash the accelerator toward the dark, secret places under the dash in the Travelette. Did you know that a 1968 full-size truck will do 80mph in second gear? I love Internationals. Tired enough to feel very, very happy, and want to stay up forever...I admit I curled up behind a printer for about an hour and a half while Sweet-Cheeks (dont' ask, he's a Catholic) kept watch for the Melting Snowman who always shows up to work at 5:20am. Now that's absurd. So why am blogging right now instead of sleeping?

Today is very quiet and grey. Portland is a mysterious and melancholy place sometimes, filled with thoughtful clouds and plaintive raindrops. Everone here is hip but rootless, cool and interesting but strangely hopeless. Young and beautiful but losing that fragile grip of moral peace. I talked late into the night with my roommate Charles, musing over beers and guitar strings about childhood, vocations, loneliness and the basic human need to belong to somthing or someplace. Our generation is as rootless, restless and as lost as any has ever been it seems; we have no hometowns, no secure jobs, no clear vision of a future that includes anyting familiar. We cling to our scattered friends and memories, desparate for stabilty, left in the end with simply God and Hope and our own independence to get us by. Not that this is the worst situation we could be in...there is pride and trust that binds us in our travels and chance wanderings, like Dylan, Guthrie, Kerouac, Croce, G. Welch, and the rest, past and present. Folk music and thrift clothing, battered old cars and guitars remind us that we are truely American, for this is the American way---not those mid-century men devoid of passion and identity, with thier breadbox homes and corporate jobs, living without a face, no---Americans rode West and lived or died on their wagons, hopped trains or walked because there is dignity in the search for work, not in deflated, broken soup lines, hitchhiked and picked fruit so they could least say they were taking care of themselves. Independence is the core of the America soul, and it is a proud but lonely place. And now that I am a little older and soon to be married, community, Catholic community especially, is paramount. I think there will always be occasional times of loneliness and isolation, but I hope that my (soon to be) wife and I will be something steady, an island for each other and those we meet. It's okay to be lonely or moved by the various tragedies in life, but if relationships with God and loved ones, and charity for everyone we encounter are nurtured and culivated, nothing will be important in the end except perserverance in love and the peace Christ may spread through us.
There is no stopping my deep passion for so much of the music that is tied to the ragged youth of our times though...for all you who have loved Gillian Welch, Dylan or the Be Good Tanyas, I have a new artist for you: I randomly aquired this CD from an elf-shaped girl at a coffee house near where Anna lives; we asked her who was on the stereo and she gave us Joanna Newsom. If have not heard her yet you MUST. A funky, folky, harp-player from a NorCal mountain town with a bizarre voice and lovely melodies...click on her picture and listen to the music video on her website, she's quite something.

I stumbed across this little blurb on Wikipedia today while browsing the web in a coffee house in Portland. This spring I have left a short-lived romance with cigarettes behind me, but this still tickled me. In 1604, King James the 1st put forth this entertaining but rather compelling anti-smoking statement, (remember, this was before the invention of proper cigarettes):

Have you not reason then to bee ashamed, and to forbeare this filthie noveltie, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossely mistaken in the right use thereof? In your abuse thereof sinning against God, harming your selves both in persons and goods, and raking also thereby the marks and notes of vanitie upon you: by the custome thereof making your selves to be wondered at by all forraine civil Nations, and by all strangers that come among you, to be scorned and contemned. A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the Nose, harmefull to the brain, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.

The last sentence is the best!

We were just sitting there innocently in the Coffee Cottage in Newberg, OR, making use of their WiFi, when out of nowhere the building was infested by the most audacious swarm of high-schoolers you ever saw. Of course we laughed at them as they paraded around awkwardly, bundling in their instruments and microphones. What could we do but smirk at the plaid pants, safety pins and pink hair? Scoff as they warmed up for 12 hours at least? Then they started to play...and they were good. Green as hell, wet behind the ears, clumsy, foolish and passionately earnest as only teenagers can be, but really good. So we listened, smiled, sang along and picked up their CD at the end of the night. I'm not sure why, but I really enjoyed seeing them stumble through their songs and scream about things they knew absolutely nothing about. It made for a great evening. So: here they are in all their glory---

Blonde Murphy

This room is dark and the morning is slow. It is sleeting outside and I would love to write some poetry but I am supposedly at work. Then too, whenever there is time for poetry the Muse leaves me. Like when you are supposed to be doing homework and you have this great idea you want to draw, but you have to focus---and after school you forget all about the picture. Still, it is sleepy today and so am I. Hopefully there is enough to do to keep me here all day, but after two weeks work already fails to hold my interest. I've climbed under enough cars and cleaned out enough barns to tide me over for a few years at least. Yesterday was a long day, but by the end of it I had a working truck again and the Volvo was out of the ditch, so it was a good day. Now if I want a paycheck, I better go find something to do...

Anna and I have a wedding date! We will be getting married on April 21st, 2007 in St. Paul, Oregon (about 25 minutes from Portland), so please everyone send us your addresses so we can invite you!

speeedshift@hotmail.com

I have a headache today. Just though you'd like to know.

But despite this irritating fact, I have been fixing many small (and also irritating, like a headache) problems with my '72 Ford truck, and I am very pleased with the results. There are few things as satifying as taking a deteriorating mechanical object and shoring it up by unconventional and creative means. I can't wait to take this thing off road...

The sun is shining in Oregon for the first time in quite a while. It is pretty cold, but nice. I am working on the farm now---the winery let me go due to the slow winter season---but it's okay, my boss is a very good man. I have a winter and spring of good old-fashioned farm work ahead of me, and then...well who knows. I am searching diligently for a new job and may end up needing to move yet again...I will miss Oregon if that happens, but I have liked other places better, so it won't be too bad. Besides, there is always some spare enthusiasm for the next adventure. It seems I am always on the prowl for new ideas and opportunities, and what I am actually going to do for a real job!

What changes have come and gone in this last stretch of life, and what is yet to come? Are there words that can describe the thoughts that grow from hours of solitude?Around we go, blundering through the fog, striving and hoping and despairing, only to be checked by the tiniest of moments and realize we are back at the same spot, not really any different, just perhaps a bit rueful. The things we cared so much about last week are now but nice ideas, and the things we thought we forgot about that meant everything then, are once again so important. People, circumstances, sin and time drag us along, but when the night is quiet and no one is around, that same child that wondered at every blade of grass smiles at the adult it has tried to become. What a happy, embarrassing thing, this pause from the world; as we loosen our grasp, drop our load of duties for a time and admit we cannot do everything, we aren't always that strong, that life is just as beautiful whether you feel bad about yourself or not. Hope for the joy that is promised, both in the good things of this earth and those of the next, and the ability to laugh at oneself, to trust in God--- The faces you love the most become infinitely more lovely, the dreams that seem burdensome have lost their heaviness. And as spring approaches, all the world is free and there for the having, enjoying, and loving.

Alright, here are the links to my tee-shirt submissions:







If you get the chance, go and score the designs and comment. Thanks!

This lull in posting has got to stop! It has taken much longer than it should to recover from the brain-dead fatigue of harvest, but I am finally back up to speed (I think). Writing and drawing being creative again, which is really good.
Oregon wintertime is wet and chilly and rather dismal, but there are tons of good folks and fun things to do, so it's all okay. Pictures and adventures to come soon...