Posted by Jai Narayan on July 31, 2004, at 8:29:43
Our Town yells, "I am Alive!"
This is a working town. We see the trucks coursing through our state highway arteries as the town works. A heavy log truck, while straining down our winding Canal St., grunts up Jake brake screams as the sleeping heads wake to the startling sounds and inhale the blue gray fumes. This is a live town. It’s thriving in spite of all the companies that have died of recent years.
It’s a town filled with salt of the earth Vermonters, new age healers, truck drivers, progressive politicians, colorful artists. And hanging over all the green trees and the winding blue river is the tall stack of the nuclear plant, the giant peering down at us as we sleep. The air may be filled with particulate that cannot be seen, dancing up on the south winds guided by the winding river valley to dust the slumbering heads and secretly gain access to the lungs. We are a live town; we work all night, we work all day. Walmart trucks are chugging up Canal Street at 3 am. I am awake at this witching hour and I can see the scars on the arteries. The metal beams like exposed ribs glistening, stretching across the lymphatic Whetstone. The town cries, "I am alive!" It is a charming place, this town. It has a magnetic draw deep in its bowels. If you squint your eyes so that the lashes are touching you can see the sparks flying between the two continents that are joined under our ribbon of river. Yes, we are deep, magnetic, mysterious, pretty and alive. The magnetic draw has caught many of us in her grasp, and we are rooted and unable to leave. If we escape, it’s usually only for a few years. Then we are back. We are older but still eager to jump into the dance. The dance of trucks, construction, noise, sweat, beauty, struggle, love, hate, political placards, protests, storms that sweep our sleeping giant of a small town. How does a town draw so much from so many? What is this thing? We stumble to define it. We scratch our heads and throw out words like construction sticks hoping to build a house of definitions. Why? It must be the deep stones, the rivers, the healing springs, the continental divide, the geomancy. We look deep into the earth to find the reason we all are here and loving this town of sticks and rocks. This jade colored jeweled town with ruby brick structures. Our karma unfurls and the dance of our lives intertwines, sometimes clashing, sometimes embracing in lust. "We are alive!" we cry, our heads upturned to the crystal blue sky studded with pastel pink clouds. It’s a miracle any people can just drive through and not get caught. We are alive and thriving in this sleepy little town.
Jai Narayan
poster:Jai Narayan
thread:372592
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20040729/msgs/372592.html