KIM STAFFORD - On the “Little Towns”
WHEN OREGON WRITER KIM STAFFORD VISITS THE LITTLE TOWNS OF HIS REGION, HE GETS A NEW IDEA WHAT PATRIOTISM COULD REALLY BE….
What does it mean to have talent? What does it mean to be proud? We are taught to act smart and independent in our lives, and to boast our nation’s strength. But when I live my own days, visiting the little towns I love, I know all pleasure lies in weakness, not in power. Our survival as a species depends on softness of a winsome kind. Without helpless devotion, we are lost, but by our weakness, we pledge true allegiance, and find our work. In my own life, I recognize this principle with the following manifesto to my friends in the Oregon country--not the political empire, but this glorious, injured, treasured state of being:
My friends, on this earth together now, I have to tell you
I have a weakness for little towns, especially in the early morning
when the first gold light touches sidewalk and storefront in Scio,
Molalla, Gray’s River and Nehalem, Arcata and Imnaha, Ione and Helix,
and along Klickitat Street in northeast Portland where the heron flies over.
In some dusky trailer on the mountain, where the family placed her,
I have a weakness for an old woman trying to tell me her secrets
simply because I am younger, and I am leaning forward,
listening. I have a weakness for the local sentiments written,
carved, beaded, branded, painted, and stitched on the ceiling
of the Wishram Tavern, for the world’s largest rosary collection
in--where is it--Stevenson? I have a weakness for the youngest
dancer in the arena of dust at Warm Springs, and the oldest
tree holding green along the bushwhack path of the Collowash.
I have a weakness for those restless beads of water shaken by wind
on the blue camas spires at Catherine Creek . Inside a little school,
on a February day lit only by rain and a teacher’s face, I have a weakness
for a young boy or girl who falls silent in the middle of the lesson--not
because the answer is beyond her reach, or beyond his grasp, but because
the question recalls the huge complexity of the world.
When the news
is dark, and my own spirit falters, I feel weak and afraid. There is much
against us, arrayed in numbers and predictions, in agendas and imperatives,
hard stories and sad endings. But then it’s morning, and I have a weakness
for mornings, for my wife, my daughter, the tribe of our friends, and
I have a weakness for that impossible, inevitable work—the quiet patriotism
I don’t yet know is mine.