strike that

one go

We drove down I-5, Nate and I, in his white VW van, me in the passenger seat in my mom’s green and white striped tank top from the seventies, and Nate behind the wheel with no shirt at all – just his seat belt on his skin in the sticky heat. And there is a shadow of a life I might be having, me and some hippy boy out on a highway, weekend ending but heading away from home. It wouldn’t be Nate though, Nate who’s no hippy, who’s less a friend even than one of those people you know for years without knowing; a former classmate who happened to be driving where I wanted to go, past the grassfields and buttes and the Brownsville Pioneer Museum.

This weekend was the kickoff of the one hundredth Portland Rose Festival, so I saw fireworks on a stretch of grassy lawn by the river, and had a whole sunny Saturday of biking bookended by brunch at one end and tapas at the other, and the Starlight Parade down the Park Blocks. I slept off the marching bands and pineapple mojitos and was digging new garden beds bright and early on Sunday, nestling spaghetti squash and zucchini starts into freshly turned soil, watering the spinach and chard, pushing watermelon seeds knuckle-deep into little hills of earth until Nate and his van pulled up.

I wiped my hands on the grass and threw my small bag into the big back and we talked about John Muir and Los Angeles and the heat at eighty miles and hour all the way to Eugene, where he delivered me into Julie’s courtyard garden with cherries overhead and strawberries underfoot. And today I’m watching my friends present their masters projects, and I’m having long stringy thoughts about the invisible landscape and community and Publishing, and I’m wondering if this is what I’m supposed to be doing, Figuring Things Out, Scholarship etcetera, or if I’m just supposed to be in a van somewhere, feet on the dash, hand out the window, playing with the wind.

posted by tortaluga @ 11:54 AM