Cumberland

As we passed over the hills of the Cumberland Plateau, I thought of Ireland.
Sinead O'Connor's voice and the green of approaching spring enhanced the picture. The lake of Fall Creek lay before us like Innisfree. Cumberland: Hadrian's Wall, Castlerigg, the Lake District we explored exactly a decade ago come to mind.

We had returned from New York City. From Spamalot. From the demon mind of Joe Orton-- Alec Baldwin entertaining Sloane right before our eyes. Evil Priss!

Fall Creek Falls: photo by Jameson

Therapy-- the upper westside gay bar-- left us sick on cosmos after Brokeback crashed. Riding over Cumberland, we could not recall how we made it back to the hotel, ten blocks of midnight Manhattan unaccounted for-- nor how my glasses wound up in the hall.

Better to recall Sartre's mistress Simone de Beauvoir's affair with Nelson Algren. A Transatlantic Liason of fifteen years, including trips to Chicago, Mexico, Paris, New York. Better to recall their climb to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun, my climb there in Teotihuacan three decades ago. How relationships are enhanced by other relationships-- De Beauvoir's insight.


We are soaring over the Cumberland plateau as the countryside gives more healing than antibiotics. The ducks' quacking eclipses Jack's hacking. Our neices pucker their gift of red wax lips. We hike along the gorge, glimpsing a waterfall as high as the Empire State Building.

See it. (click)

Empire State Bldg from our window
Photo: Jameson

Romanticism wins over cynicism, for now. The way up and the way down are the same, Heraclitus claims. The Tao crosses Cumberland.

...and leads to St. Patrick's Day in Savannah; then to the Ocean, to Saint Simon's Island, South of Cumberland Isle.


Happy Trails,

Jameson