Portland, how I love thee...
One of the reasons I love Portland so is much is the sky. It's always beautiful. I've always loved clouds, and the clouds here are Clouds with a capital C.
Now, I love a bright, blue, clear sky as much as the next person. It's invigorating, that expanse of blue, makes you feel like you should be getting stuff done. But, since I'm not so much a getting stuff done sort of person, I prefer a sky with some it's ok to be lazy clouds in it.
Clouds create a texture in that vast expanse of blue, a buffer between us and infinity. Clouds are friendly. Even when they're decidedly not friendly, when they're ominous and roiling, black and grey, crackling with tension, they're still fascinating.
And in Portland, clouds have a beautiful relationship with the horizon. I remember driving through New Mexico, stopped at some rest area somewhere and looking off into the distance at the hills, watching the clouds flirt with them, coy shadows caressing warm umber like a hand running along a muscled arm, and falling a little in love with the place. But the sky and land there had their own relationship. It was wild and inaccessible. Buildings sticking up into the skyline looked awkward, upstart silhouettes interfering with the well established love affair between earth and sky. It wasn't a very human friendly place.
New England sky had been tamed, like a fat old cat at a warm hearth. Our boldest sunsets looked like paintings that had sat in sunlight for too long, brilliant colors slightly muted, lines smudged and bleed together. Lovely, but uninspiring. Buildings sat on the skyline, smug in their solidness, heavy in their immutable strength, and confident in their right to be there. And the sky meekly acquiesced.
Portland skies speak to you. They reach down and touch you, play with your hair, blow golden sparkles into your eyes with unpredictable shafts of light. They are never the same. Even the gray spring rains bring clouds that are constantly shifting colors. The clouds make everything beautiful through a clever combination of sharp contrast and smudging.
The gold light through a liquid lens turns rust into orange lichen, steel into gray basalt, white paint becomes impossibly bright, shadows become black velvet, river water a silver chain. They take a city and turn it into a fairytale. A soggy, beer soaked fairytale. The best kind!! The sky here decided it rather liked these upstart ants and their awkward, inorganic tunnels. That it could work with them, play with them. And, if it got bored, crush them. Like a purring cat with unsheathed claws. It keeps you on your toes, always looking up, half wary, half awed. Never boring.
Now, I love a bright, blue, clear sky as much as the next person. It's invigorating, that expanse of blue, makes you feel like you should be getting stuff done. But, since I'm not so much a getting stuff done sort of person, I prefer a sky with some it's ok to be lazy clouds in it.
Clouds create a texture in that vast expanse of blue, a buffer between us and infinity. Clouds are friendly. Even when they're decidedly not friendly, when they're ominous and roiling, black and grey, crackling with tension, they're still fascinating.
And in Portland, clouds have a beautiful relationship with the horizon. I remember driving through New Mexico, stopped at some rest area somewhere and looking off into the distance at the hills, watching the clouds flirt with them, coy shadows caressing warm umber like a hand running along a muscled arm, and falling a little in love with the place. But the sky and land there had their own relationship. It was wild and inaccessible. Buildings sticking up into the skyline looked awkward, upstart silhouettes interfering with the well established love affair between earth and sky. It wasn't a very human friendly place.
New England sky had been tamed, like a fat old cat at a warm hearth. Our boldest sunsets looked like paintings that had sat in sunlight for too long, brilliant colors slightly muted, lines smudged and bleed together. Lovely, but uninspiring. Buildings sat on the skyline, smug in their solidness, heavy in their immutable strength, and confident in their right to be there. And the sky meekly acquiesced.
Portland skies speak to you. They reach down and touch you, play with your hair, blow golden sparkles into your eyes with unpredictable shafts of light. They are never the same. Even the gray spring rains bring clouds that are constantly shifting colors. The clouds make everything beautiful through a clever combination of sharp contrast and smudging.
The gold light through a liquid lens turns rust into orange lichen, steel into gray basalt, white paint becomes impossibly bright, shadows become black velvet, river water a silver chain. They take a city and turn it into a fairytale. A soggy, beer soaked fairytale. The best kind!! The sky here decided it rather liked these upstart ants and their awkward, inorganic tunnels. That it could work with them, play with them. And, if it got bored, crush them. Like a purring cat with unsheathed claws. It keeps you on your toes, always looking up, half wary, half awed. Never boring.
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