The Skylounge is perched atop an 80-year old house in SE Portland. It's an Emily Dickinson attic, but with skylights. With a properly stocked mini-fridge, soon to be added, I could hide up here for 40 years and die among piles of notebooks. But there's too many bars nearby to make that an attractive option.
I am considering writing a number of odes to the local watering holes. That may be a lifetime project.
Anyhow, the sunlight flows and the SkyLounge opens...
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And so it goes, visions of white walls and refrigerated air
give way to sky views, trees, wood floors,
you don't escape the heat here, you just live with it,
every room another adventure, every wall has seen
eighty years of humanity pass by,
where did Henry Wyld spend his time?
The floors creak and dive and slant, but they're
always there, the fireplace waits for winter,
the windows don't stay open anymore,
and there's eighty years underneath it all
but it's our blank canvas,
it's our invitation to life,
eventually the newness wears off and
eventually we'll start to ignore the noises,
eventually we'll get to know the crawlspace,
nothing there but dirt and spiders,
what lives in these walls?
I haven't seen a ghost yet, but
I haven't slept a night, either
Here we go, we leave the sterility behind,
we walk out of cleanliness,
we emerge into the city that's always been there
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One journey down, and the road calls again,
only three months later, months where the
world turned upside-down, months where
I did it.
I closed the book, slaughtered the demons
and now life comes back, every word new,
every page fresh,
the blue sky overhead,
I even looked at the sun today,
I walked under trees,
I bought a pastry,
and it's still not 11 AM.
Every book waits to be opened,
every idea thought once again.
It's all new, it all starts over,
and this time, it's not a rehearsal,
no practice, no redoing it,
this is life, ahh, life, and it is
to be lived and loved and savored
and sauntered
and it boils through sidewalk cracks,
rolls down bike paths,
carries today on the backs of a
hundred years,
Welcome to the greener pasture.
Welcome to the better life.
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And... what was the escape from?
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We're always waiting for you when you need us,
we've been down there, hidden from everyone,
Cassady taking care of business on the SP 1950's,
didn't watch out, got caught in the idiot web,
lost his mind in jail,
so remember who's around, remember to watch out,
and remember to recognize when it's the
suburban junk talking,
and when it's the tomorrow vision, the
eyes on a new promised land,
and will we be out of the idiot web?
because it's dangerous in here, no matter
how sweet the candy-coating
tastes, nibbles of a lifestyle I
need to run from.
There's no way to walk out the doors here
without risking it all, and that's the
fate I'm running from.
So now the fundamentals fall into place, and
I can come back out of it for a
bit, return to the ones waiting
once again on the bookshelf....
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Two crazy months and we wind up here. Looking back, it's hard to believe just how many messages came through in April, how many people made it clear that this had to happen. Now, we reach the promised land.
