What is it about those islands off Vancouver, CA? because now all
these years later my dear friend and muse, Simone, who I met in '74
Eugene, Oregon...
(yes the same counter culture capital of the
world I spoke of earlier, or will speak of later depending on the order
you read this disembodied memoir)...
when I was planting trees with the Hoedads, a legendary collective of feral hippies who replanted logged mountainsides with tiny conifers we carried on our backs in yellow bags, perfectly matching the yellow rain jacket and yellow rain pants we always wore, as you could only plant when it was raining because otherwise the ground was too hard and you couldn't plant when it was snowing either, as the ground was frozen, and so we would be holed up in our black plastic tee pee, way up in the woods, sittin' round the fire, cookin' soup and singin' old country pickin' songs that were popular at the time...
so that same Simone I mentioned at the beginning of this sentence, the very same one who is still my dear friend and muse today, even though she lives on a far away island just off Vancouver CA, and must ride the very same ferries I rode in '78 with the renegade B ( I don't want to say her real name in case now she is a respectable upstanding member of society and sadly no longer an outlaw), the same ferries that my dear Tibetan friend Tenzing Tsewang rode before he died at his mailbox on Saltspring Island...
that same Simone is the friend who spoke the words (quoted elsewhere in this dismembered memoir) which offered me such great comfort - 'he has ridden on ahead'
she is the one, yes the very same one, who once sent her poetic art missives across the oceans in painted envelopes heavy with stamps, to land in my letter box so I could reply in a similar tone, long before it was fashionable, long before it was co-opted into artsy fartsy blogs like this one, long before people just didn't send letters anymore...
that same girl/woman/artist/poet, now simply and affectionately known as Mon (who paints designs on silk scarves and sends her missives now by ether, not post), lives on one of those islands off Vanvouver CA...
and I am thinking I really must go there one day soon for tea...
when I was planting trees with the Hoedads, a legendary collective of feral hippies who replanted logged mountainsides with tiny conifers we carried on our backs in yellow bags, perfectly matching the yellow rain jacket and yellow rain pants we always wore, as you could only plant when it was raining because otherwise the ground was too hard and you couldn't plant when it was snowing either, as the ground was frozen, and so we would be holed up in our black plastic tee pee, way up in the woods, sittin' round the fire, cookin' soup and singin' old country pickin' songs that were popular at the time...
so that same Simone I mentioned at the beginning of this sentence, the very same one who is still my dear friend and muse today, even though she lives on a far away island just off Vancouver CA, and must ride the very same ferries I rode in '78 with the renegade B ( I don't want to say her real name in case now she is a respectable upstanding member of society and sadly no longer an outlaw), the same ferries that my dear Tibetan friend Tenzing Tsewang rode before he died at his mailbox on Saltspring Island...
that same Simone is the friend who spoke the words (quoted elsewhere in this dismembered memoir) which offered me such great comfort - 'he has ridden on ahead'
she is the one, yes the very same one, who once sent her poetic art missives across the oceans in painted envelopes heavy with stamps, to land in my letter box so I could reply in a similar tone, long before it was fashionable, long before it was co-opted into artsy fartsy blogs like this one, long before people just didn't send letters anymore...
that same girl/woman/artist/poet, now simply and affectionately known as Mon (who paints designs on silk scarves and sends her missives now by ether, not post), lives on one of those islands off Vanvouver CA...
and I am thinking I really must go there one day soon for tea...
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