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March 15, 2006
Warning: Long Entry Ahead Because I Finally Have Time to Actually Write And So I’m Going To
I spent today drinking in the sky.
My friend Karma lives on a dairy farm in southern Idaho. Every time I visit her, I marvel anew at how much sky there is here. You can stand anywhere and turn in a complete circle, and with the exception of the odd building, you’ll see miles of nothing but land and sky, with snow-covered mountains where they meet.
I tried to take some pictures of it, but I don’t think a camera can capture the sweeping space. There’s too much left outside the frame. As I said to Dave over IM, probably the best I could do would be to take pictures of clouds, with maybe a little bit of dirt at the bottom of the image.
I grew up under this kind of sky. I miss this kind of sky. I can occasionally get the sense of it in Moscow, but the sky above the Palouse is nothing at all compared to this.
I know there are people who find this much sky terrifying. Who are afraid they will get lost in this sky, that it will swallow them up. To me, that sounds like a dream come true. When I see a sky like the one I saw today, all I want to do is lie down and lose myself in it.
Which reminds me of a conversation I had recently with yet another friend (and the resulting conclusion arrived at hours after the fact, of course). She was talking about discovering she was unhappy. And that she was trying to fill the void created by unhappiness with food. Which wasn’t working, for obvious reasons.
I pondered that comment for a long time. Carried it around with me. And then I was struck by a thought. Actors, to truly be complete, have to confront and even play in our inner darkness. We have to play to our fears, play with our fears, play in our fears. We have to open up to them and explore them and really get to know the darkest parts of ourselves. So we can recognize and represent those same things in the characters we play.
So maybe, maybe the answer isn’t trying to fill the void. With food or booze or things or sex or religion (not faith, faith in my book is an entirely different entity). Maybe the answer isn’t to make the void go away. Maybe the answer is to play in the void. To explore it. To embrace it. She’s an artist too. Maybe the answer is to revel and roll around in that void because it’s as much a part of her as her ready smile and her belly laughs.
I also spent today sitting at Moxie Java, reveling in the free wi-fi. I am so spoiled. (I never thought I would use that word in relation to living in Moscow, but there you are. I’m full of surprises. Even to myself.) In Moscow, we have wi-fi all over. In cafés, coffee shops, the university. In Boise, I had to buy it at Starbucks, which seemed insane to me, but here, it’s hard to just find a location that offers it at all.
On the way back to the farm, I decided to stop and take some pictures from the viewpoint near the Perrine bridge. For those of you who don’t know, this is a bridge spanning the Snake River canyon. It’s roughly ½ mile from where Evel Knievel, probably one of the least useful people of the 20th century, unsuccessfully attempted to jump the canyon on a specially built motorcycle.
The canyon is much more interesting than that fact would imply. Until you’re about 100 yards from the edge, except for the bridge, you don’t even see any indication that the land stops. From the edge, you can see that it not only stops abruptly, it doesn’t start again for quite a ways down.
Anyhow, it’s beautiful and I’ve wanted to photograph it for ages. So I pulled off at the exit designed for turrists like m’self. That’s when I saw the car.
Small white car. Three kids ages roughly 8 to 13. One mother type. One grandmother type. One flat tire. No cell phone, as it turns out.
The kids were understandably suspicious of lone driver parking and walking up to their vehicle. The grandmother said hello. The mother was jacking up the car. I said, “I can’t imagine I’d be any better at this than you, but I do have a cell phone. Do you need to use it?”
The mother spun around in relief and said, yes please. Seems she’d left hers with her husband today. So she made several calls while I chatted with the grandmother and the kids, who had warmed up to me the minute they realized I wasn’t a child-snatcher or lone wacko out to kill them at the side of a busy highway. Tall red-haired wildwomen don’t come their way often, I guess.
The middle child, a boy of 10-ish asked if I was a member of their church. Random kind strangers also don’t come their way often apparently. It’s interesting to be faced with that question. Even though it doesn’t matter who does the asking. It’s not like my answer ever changes. It’s always no. But the assumption floored me. What kind of world do we live in, that children grow up thinking they can only get help from/relate to their own kind?
Then he asked where I got my shoes (I’m wearing my Columbia snow/hiking boots because, well, you just never know at this time of year when the stuff you’re walking on will suddenly turn to ice). He named a local store and I said, “No. I got them at a store where I live. In Moscow.”
He responded “In Moscow?” in a way that made me wonder if he was thinking of Russia or distant lands. Someplace far away, but one he’d heard of. That’s when the mother stopped trying to unscrew one of the lugnuts and turned around again. “You’re from Moscow?” she said.
“Yes.”
“I’m from Lewiston.” The grandmother, it turns out, still lives in Pierce. It’s such a small world. Or maybe just a still-sparsely populated state. Idahoans may not all know each other, but eventually, it seems, we’ll all meet. And I can guarantee you we can find each other in a crowd.
After the mother was done with my phone, I bade them good-bye and headed toward the canyon to take my pictures. I don’t have the cable to download them here, so you’re just going to have to wait to see what I’m talking about. While I was under the bridge, drinking in the air and the light and the beauty, it started to snow. From a clear patch of sky. In the sun.
Posted by sally at March 15, 2006 05:30 PM
©2006 - All content copyright Sally Eames-Harlan unless otherwise noted