Warmth.

It's dark out.

The quiet sizzle of the highway simmers outside the library's fifth floor doors.

The urban lights twinkle like distant stars, shimmering through the suspended vapor that hangs in the air.

A kick drum starts! Beats manifest themselves through your headphones, as you recollect the past day. People you've briefly met in passing have lost their coarse outer shell, and offered a concession for the betterment of the group. "There is good in this world" you say to yourself, unbelieving in a feeling of transcendence you haven't felt in a while.

The air turned brisk, the rain came. Winter is here.

But this time you haven't plummeted into the depths of the dark. Or at least not entirely.

Last year you clawed your way out of the pit. God, it took forever, but you did get there. The summer sun most likely had something to do with it as well.

That sun. It is what keeps you going. The direct sunlight felt only one week ago. This time you plan on keeping it held for a little longer, and refusing to let the time change get to you. We invented a way to capture electricity and keep it burning for light. You can use that to keep you going.








Everyone here seems to turn joyfully inward when the rain comes. Its actually kind of enduring. It must be the way people cope. The area grows on me more and more by the day, and maybe it isn't the geography.

I've been using place as an expression for lack of a personal network and support structure. I've been accusing the "local feel" as being the reason for my ills, but I believe it has been the fact that I simply have had to struggle through the first year of a new place. But why was I struggling?

The place does not foster the connections in the ways other places do. But I don't have a reference. I don't know if it is simply the fact that I am in a major urban area, or if it is a strange Northwest phenomenon? The South is never this cold. The Midwest is not this cluttered. The city has never been this awkward, nor the area so segmentunited.

I guess it is the people that make the place, but it is the place that makes the people. Its cyclical, with no discernible beginning or end, nor specific actors to blame. That is the ceaseless mystery of place.

It fascinates me so.

Manufacturing of Place, Identity, and Exploration

I know that "manufacturing" is a long word, but it makes the most sense to use in this context. Manufacturing is the process of creation of new material, whether it be physical, mental, or emotional. We manufacture things all the time. It is the constant pulses of our brains which write and re-write to lead us to think and create.

All I can do is smile. The time among old friends, reminiscing about the long concluded days, makes me think about all of the things that are going on, and how to make sure we recognize that our thoughts are manufactured. That we are aware of the constant bias our mind employs against us and our memories.

The songs we sing; the media we watch; the books we read. Many (if not all) of these include the descriptors and qualifiers to why we go to where we go. Place is a hugely important and essential piece of the human condition.

I once had a friend in High School who listened to the Augustana and got me into the band. They have this beautiful song called "Boston" and it got me thinking about how much of our world is manufactured.

The media constructs the environment of what we think about where. So many stereotypes and truths are formed by the simple images and presentations of what we are given on a daily basis. It is what our mind does with those is where it matters.

Our minds are such beautiful machines. While we may be fed images, sounds, and video of our world, but only we can interpret what it all means, and what we will do with it. We go out to explore, exhume, and experience. And how you go about doing that is exactly what matters.

There is no "right" or "wrong" way to experience a place. The only important aspect is to pay attention to "how" you experience it. Stop and realize exactly what it is you are seeing, what you may not be seeing, and how/if you'd like to see everything you can.

I was in Spartanburg, South Carolina to conduct a VISTA training for a friend and her VISTA team, and I felt exactly at home. I fell in love with the town then and there, and vowed I would live there. What is it that makes me lust after a new place the first time I see it? That didn't happen with Vancouver or Portland? Maybe it is because I knew I would stay?

Homecoming has become a special time for me. You do something again, it becomes tradition, right?

Visiting the college for the second time provided closure. The fact that I did not know anyone there. That I was not going back. It was a distant place to be recorded in the halls of memory that are my neurons and synapses.



So where do I belong? Am I going to be living segments of life upon the film of 80 odd years I'm supposed to live? Permanence is a terrifying thing, but I feel as though it is the only way I can be happy. I don't like living on bridges, but my introduction to the "real world" has been exhausting, and I don't know if I'm willing to give it another shot. It feels as though my roots have been stretched to their limit, and that two-thousand miles is simply too far for them to stretch.

Maybe I'll be a touring plant, visiting back to the only soil that can hold me from time to time to revitalize myself. Journeying drains people, and I guess now that we are out of the time span of months, we will move into the extended adventures of years.

A touring plant slowly putting the pieces into place to see what fits, and what doesn't. The bridges aren't quite in view yet, but I know they are coming, so maybe I should just enjoy the ride until they rise over the horizon, and work with them then.