07 July 2014

[liff] Buttermilk Sky Over Outer East Portlandia

3121.
Inspiration's been hard to come by the last week or so, but all one has to do in this glorious, not-to-be-duplicated Oregon environment, is … well, look up.


This is what I call a buttermilk sky, not so much because it looks like buttermilk, but the texture leaves an impression upon the psyche that my latent synesthetic sense converts into a the feeling that I had drinking buttermilk. I get a palimpsest-like impression in the mouth.

Funny thing is, I never liked buttermilk much. Wife™ loves the stuff. Never got that, never will, but then, I can't comprehend why some people are so avid about crustless sandwiches.


I don't know if the clotted cloud cover specifically heralds any sort of weather, but it will be noted, in the record, that the weather was quite warm and very fair and pleasant (well, if you're a sunpuppy, maybe. Along with buttermilk, one thing I'm not terribly fond of is hot humid weather over about 85F, which is our lot these June and July weeks).


While they weren't dramatic, the textural experience of looking in the clotted blue was impossible to resist. It was also impossible not to make fantasy geographies out of them, something I used to do all the time.

Earthsea? Here's skysea for you.


The Pig'n'Pancake … long time landmark at NE 122nd and Glisan. An old-school breakfast-and-lunch place, open in Outer East Portlandia until the mid-afternoon only … but breakfasts and lunches there are to die for.

They have a Mexican-style omelette that contains black beans. Along with buttermilk, too-hot too-humid days, and crustless sandwiches, black beans are something I don't understand not neither … but they can get me to eat them. So there's that.


Also under the buttermilk sky is what was Jody's Bar and Grill. it is, as the sign says CLOSED FOR NOW, only how now is defined is left open to interpretation. It's a Portland strip club, of which we are terminally over-endowed, so, maybe, oh, I don't know … more naked ladies in the near future? Who knows? Really, who cares? For now, PDX is down one strip club. I think the city will sustain itself on the more-than-50-less-one clubs that are here now compared to the more-than-50 we had then.

I mean you could go out to the Spearmint Rhino and tell us all if you actually spot one.


The character of the clouds, illuminated differently as you looked east, made them less ethereal if not loss dramatic. The above is looking east on Glisan from 122nd; that grove of trees in the distance is the approximate location of the Glendoveer Golf Course.

And another sunset; lately I've noticed a preponderance of this ruddy, salmon hue. Again, not sure if it presages anything at all, but it is impressive, and delicately beautiful.


Keep looking up.

No comments: