Notes From a River

The river runs downhill but this course isn’t the low road. On the contrary, a river, if a person decides to flow with it, represents the highest possible road a human being can take. Most don’t; most can’t. Following a river’s metaphors is a road rarely taken. I invite everyone to try. Rivers are everywhere around us. Watch one flow. It never costs a cent.

I pity people who look at the river and see nothing but extraction and commerce.

Did Narcissus gaze into his reflection in a river or lake before falling in and drowning? I could Google to find the answer but I won’t.

If I could order a sixer of Rainier cans from Amazon as I sit by this river, would a drone’s delivery of the beer desecrate the river?

Perhaps my reanimation as a human being the last two years has turned me more into a man of the river than a man of the ocean. I need to ponder that notion.

I wish someone would order me the special CD release of Bruce Springsteen’s The River and have it delivered to me. I miss that album.

Ford is such a great word of the river. It is a verb and a noun. I love words that can go both ways. Love is one of those words.

I have someone in mind I would like to accompany me on this river.

All that time growing up in Oregon City and I never connected to the rivers there: Clackamas, Molalla, Willamette. Certainly other Oregon City youth of that era did. Perhaps I was too busy playing tennis, writing savage anti-administration editorials and reading Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer. I think I missed out.

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