I had to go to the Columbia River Gorge today for various non-vacation reasons, but it generally feels like a vacation there anyway.

At one place I visited, there were guinea fowl chasing each other in dust and cottonpuff clouds. It was summertime hot in the car. The year’s first tank-top day ended in hail and bluster just a while ago.

I ate lunch in Hood River, up on a deck. Hood River is practically built into the side of a cliff, with steep and tilty streets, and the deck of the restaurant seemed ready to topple into the river. Not really, of course.

I sat and ate my gussied-up club sandwich, stared at the river and ruminated (in both senses) about the subjectivity of language, especially vis-a-vis my copy of Much Ado about Nothing. It irritates me that the back of the book lauds the quality of the edition (something I would heartily argue with anyway) and the brilliance of the editor. Isn’t that for me to decide? Why can’t things just be descriptive?

But then I thought of my own writing and realized that nearly everything I say is negative, anyway, so where do I get off? How is negative somehow more palatable than positive? Really, Lyza.