Portland: Rose of the Northwest
![[UPDATED with animal identified]One Spark. Just One. And there will be a massacre in the streets.](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/1tAIGv9e.jpeg "[UPDATED with animal identified]One Spark. Just One. And there will be a massacre in the streets.")
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2001-2022
After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
reach my hands and play with pebbles of
destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs
reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive
in the universe.
Comments on this entry are closed.
its a beautiful thing
Hilarious!
Well, it was a decent place forty years ago. There was a bit of a pipeline between several of Oregon’s unis and my alma mater’s School of Design back in the day, so I came to be friends with a few Landscape Artichokes, and would visit them infrequently after their graduation when I found myself on the left coast. The trajectory of its decline was visible in 1978, and unmistakable by the middle of the 80s, though even a cynic such as myself would have been hard pressed then to limn the depths to which the Rose City has descended, and they don’t look to be nearly finished.
I was born in Salem. Mountains and Coast. Unbelievable scenery. That a community of Fools, Halfwits, Arsonists and Thugs now roam freely is catastrophic.
It’s surprising how fast Portland declined. Up until the shutdown the wife and I enjoyed the many fine restaurants and bars. I never felt unsafe. And I work third shift in the central city. Until Gov Brownshirt shut that down and loosed her minions. Destroyed a food and hospitality scene that made life enjoyable. Turned the city core into Mogadishu on the Willamette. The sad part is how sanguine the majority of residents are with the situation. We’re now looking for a place in the hinterlands. Cash our retirements into ammo and supplies and pray the people come to their senses before things devolve into open gunplay.
Regarding the virtual fire drill:
I’m reminded of Bob Newhart and Norman Fell in Catch-22.
“I’ll be happy to see them when I’m not here. If I am here, then I’m not available for them to see me.”
Catch-22. It’s the best catch there is.
Acquaintance lives there, says it’s 10 miles from where they live, and they still do business a few blocks from ground zero. DW and I were there two years ago, and it was a decent downtown, but you could tell it was rotting under the skin.
They are continuing to enable their own destruction. It’s akin to suck-starting a shotgun.
Portland?…..or Orc-land? Meh.
Booking my trip to Portland as we speak!