How the Road Beckons

As far as nostalgia goes, I used to have a lot of it, but little fibers of it remain.

I drove my car for the first time in two and a half weeks yesterday, and because it was low on gas, I filled it up. Then... I went for my usual drive around Portland.

I find that I drive mostly for fun. Some places like the Blue Ridge Parkway say that driving is America's favorite recreational sport. Well... I think that is somewhat true. I really enjoy driving. The independence, the control, the fact that you are the sole pilot of your own little steel and fiberglass landship.

I have a hard time explaining this to people, who see cars solely as a means of commute and maintenance money robbers. To them, cars are a "necessary" expense. (I put necessary in quotes because many people I talk to have the resources and ability to ditch the car, metaphorically, and rely only on public transit and carpooling to get around.) To the average commuter, the car is a four wheeled machine designed to accelerate your life and to get you where you need to go. I don't like to see it that way. That is what buses and other people's cars are to me.

The car (or truck, van, motorcycle, or other personal automobile) is an embodiment of the space to which you dedicate your "inbetweeness". You are in the space between two destinations, and to some that would be called the journey. And we all know that old phrase.

My car, her name is the Catalyst, is... well I've already given it a name so far in the description. That should tell you loads about what I think of personal vehicles. I see it not necessarily as a person, or autonomous character, but gendered with a personality. She gets cranky, her underside is rusted, the exhaust rattles like you will bottom out. Her parts are shaky, and the inside is rarely pristine. Its not the most comfortable ride, we are talking about an economy car here, but on the open road with landscapes too grand to imagine, she will get you 40+ miles per gallon.

I wouldn't quite use the phrase the band Queen so wonderfully wrote a song about: I'm not in love with my car. But I do appreciate such an intricate, interlaced, multicomplex gathering of steel, copper, and plastic, which to no end or means of studying I will ever be able to fully understand.

I am in awe of many things in this world, and my imagination is captured quite easily. When driving along the stretch of I-5 going northbound opposite of downtown across the Willamette, I couldn't help but feel as if I were in an average car, rolling down a concrete and asphalt ribbon in the late 70's.  Led Zepplin was on the radio, blaring "Rock n' Roll" and the overpasses of the city streets and signs just felt like I was on the ultimate independence granting journey among the new found youth in an aging decade. A place and essence so enticing that I even role played that I was in that time and city; its soft yellow lights refracting through a haze ridden skyline, a dying timber industry giving rise to a new tech culture, and the face of a city which would lead the charge against so many paradigms about living urban.

A MAX train whizzed past, and broke my spell, and I took the exit back to I-5 north, switched the radio to modern country, and felt the cracking pavement on that nearly 100 year old remnant of a more traditionally industrial time. How the road beckons once more, tempting me to see all the landscapes I can, and never being able to fully know all the places that exist even within my tenuous home states.

Fog Wrapped Lights

Tonight walking home, I found myself thinking about the stars, the clear night, and how happy I was to see the lights of the port as I crossed over the I-5 bridge. It may seem silly, but There is something to be said about a bedroom community.

Attempting a definition here is quite a request, but I feel up to it.

The fog sinks into the road as we cross the river. The weather patterns vary on each side of the Columbia. It must be a microclimate effect with the large body of water. It could be raining in Portland and when back in Vancouver all is clear, roads wet with cold steam from the moisture that lingers in the air. Each light takes on its own shimmer of fog, a chill not quite as harsh as rain, but not as crisp as winter. An in-between.

It seems as though I have lived on the in-between my whole life. Nothing is as solid as it would like to think. Ohio being the intersection of two major landscapes, the city of Asheville being the mixing of two socio-economic cultures, Barcelona being a hub for commerce, tourism, and flavorful tastes from all around Spain. Vancouver fits well into these seeming dichotomies, with being the ultimate definition in contrast to the other; the other being the city of Portland.

When discussing the proposed "Columbia River Crossing" project (a new bridge from Portland across the Columbia into Vancouver), there is always contention with the addition of light rail on the bridge. Some slogans in protest to the bridge and the light rail addition called it "the crime train", which would bring in all sorts of crime from Portland. As if Vancouver wasn't without its fair share of crime.

But this brings up the more important point: What if there isn't a "solid state" where something is definite and absolute? Even the weather does change and mix across the river, usually creating a dense fog which envelops everything. 

Air stagnation is a new concept for myself as well. That is the effect when air cannot flow because of the two mountain ranges essentially trapping it. It just constantly hits these barriers, and keeps rolling onto itself, eventually slowing down, and loosing the force to exit the valley. As much as this does trap the pollution and particulates in the valley, it does create some great calming situations.

On a dark street at 10 at night, the fog rolls in quite quickly. The motions are amazing, and barely noticeable as you walk down the street. All at once, there is a fog. But this is not the scary ominous fog that creates the dark where bad things lurk. This fog invites you to get wrapped up, to get lost and to show you the very filters from different lights which can't show themselves in clear weather.

As you embrace it, the moisture and ground clouds reveal a mysticism to the everyday objects you walk by on your morning and evening commutes. The light on the porch of the house three blocks down now flickers on as you walk by, and reveals a hazy soft light, much different from the luminescent directness you usually experience. The warm light shows you your path, and brings the individual droplets of water in the air to the forefront of your brain.Those droplets hang stock still, only shifting to the slightest breeze.

The port is much like this from a 50 mile per hour bus crossing the I-5 bridge. It reveals to you the warm structures, like a megalithic alter of modernity which sits off in the distance, inviting you to investigate more. The cranes, booms, and pulleys now obscured by the fog and lamps, into a soft radiant orange, an impressionistic smudge in the now smeared outline of the city.

The people on the bus don't notice this, except for a small woman in a heavy coat laden with bags. We make eye contact for a minute, but she soon gets off the bus in town.

A suburb and city have never seemed to capture my imagination this much before. Perhaps you can come visit, and if we are lucky, there will be some fog late at night.

Airport Words & Lines

It's been a strange trip to Ohio and back for the holidays.

First: It was short. I never realized how little time seven days was. I loved the time I had; but, how limited it was.

The nostalgia caught up with me fairly quickly. It really is amazing how much you can build up around a place when you are not there, only to have that idea completely disputed or disproven entirely. But not in a bad way. Recreated to make not what you wanted to see, but what is actually there.

I guess this is pretty universal.

The only way to know reality is go experience it in real-time.

But isn't it something, that we try to create this whole world to describe to others, and ourselves? This entire experience, where it is easily discernable between black, and white. Or black, white and grey. Even the "third way" still limits us to a range which does not exist.

Humans tend to be complex, rich, and fibrous beings, with complicated pasts. Landscapes are that way too. "Place" is a word that is often thrown around now to describe a state of being, along with a location. The almighty geotag.

But what is that place? Can we prick it to map using one pin only? Yes, that is where we "were". But that is only one place, sometimes not correctly positioned, where we were in one moment of our lives. It becomes incomprehensible to determine the paths we take in our geographical landscape.

Perhaps that is why we make "places". To narrow down, and discern where exactly we lay. The lines which comprise our lives make endless amounts of polygons, concave, and convex alike.

That is one goal of my career right now, is to make sure everyone has the ability to draw lines and make the irrelevant shapes which comprise their days. My dream would be to one day compile these lines, and see what we can see. A recording of a human trail.

For if we mapped our routes for the first migration out of Africa, why can't we do it today?

There are only a couple of more people and a larger distance to cover. Seems doable to me.

New Years

And with a flick of a second we roll into a new set of integers, all at 24 official set points (with some in between). What a thing, to consider time. A day, spaced across a sphere... What distance it holds, what wonders we celebrate.

Parachutes and Rails

So here I am involved in the best the transportation world has to offer:

I carpooled to a train station, and am currently taking the train to the airport to catch a plane to Ohio.

There are so many people with luggage going to the airport. It feels like a sea of drifters, except with more happiness and purpose. It's Christmas, what else do you expect?

I love the feeling of being whisked along on rail. It's so much more graceful than bus. The rocking motion, the speed of the ride, and the objects as they blur past you. It's exhilarating.

But what of the people themselves? Where are they going? What are there lives up to? Does it ever make you wonder if they themselves are making new choices, new leaps?

Much like transit, do their lives stay static and fixed, our do you decide to deviate to explore? Stay with the path, but make sure you go on some side journeys to help those aspects of your life which most need it?.

A Supplement to Placefulness & Geography

For wistfully carrying on about place and placefulness, I sure am troubled by it often.

Today I felt different feelings on place and geography, with the realization that the place I am in now simply does not "fit"me well. I guess one could allude to it as a simile for clothes:

A place you are familiar with fits well. Like a new jacket you can't take off, or the perfect fitting pants. Sometimes it takes breaking a place in... For a long, long time. Other times, it happens like magic, where you fall into... place... and its like putting on the correct fitting shirt, and scanning the tags on the shirt on the cash register while you are still wearing it as you leave the store.

Barcelona was a lot like a good pair of sneakers for me. I was a bit wobbly putting them on, not quite finding where I was, and how to deal with the new lumps of sole underneath my feet. But once my feet became adjusted to them, the soul of Barcelona fit me like a malleable track fits a runners shoe. I never took those shoes off, and it was sad that it was mandatory to return those pair of shoes after six weeks.

Southwest Washington, and mostly Vancouver, is like that shirt. You put it on, and at first it fits just right. You wear it throughout the day, and it sits well on you. Then... that one time you get out of your chair, it just catches on some invisible force on your shoulder, and you can't quite fix it.

This city is perplexing. It is solidly defined in contrast to its "other"... Portland. The city across the river (in Oregon) is very hip, cool, and has a couple of TV shows about it or based in it. It is the alternative scene, where bikes are the thing, weird shops abound in places across from the local supermarkets, and the weirdness of it is just charming enough to bring people in... but weird enough for them to be able to leave after a week. The city is also very, very community oriented. The sections of the city all have their diverse and distinct flavor, and you will know it when you travel between the two (I didn't believe I would at first, but trust me... It happens.)

Vancouver on the other hand is distinctly not Portland. I was attracted to this at first. (Not trying to sound too hipsteresque here...) Vancouver was a welcome relief to "normalcy" compared to Portland. There are distinct social classes in Vancouver, deserts of suburban emptiness, and a quirky small up/downtown area, charming enough to draw in regional tourists. It is also very historical compared to Portland, with priding itself on being A. Older than Portland, and B. More historical sites and a greater consciousness about its history. Vancouver politics are local community politics, whereas Portland works much more in the national spotlight.

So naturally, I loved this contrast. This subtle "We are more normal & more complex than you" sort of feel. The city brings you in with the welcoming "Come this way child... You can rest easy away from the strange city of Portland over here in the safe environment of Vancouver Washington..." Over here there are bigger box stores, more people drive their cars places, and in general a more middle of the road approach to life. But keep in mind, this is all in contrast to Portland.

(I.e. Compare say... Lancaster to Vancouver... Lancaster would probably see Vancouver as the "wierdos across the river.")

So how does this not fit right? Well... It gets a little too... Not historic... Nothing physical or popular in Western historical thought here goes back past basically the 1830's. There is no sense of decline and dismay, much like the industrial rust belt across the Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic states on the east coast. There are no "giants of industry" here, only small firms which employ lots of people. No "one value or staple" can make or break the community. There is a Port, yes, but it has A. Never gone out of business and laid of tons of people, or B. Been a huge employer to begin with.

The identity of the place is very fractured. Many people are from elsewhere, combobulated into this space where they can make a living and provide for them and their families. Their families. Lots of new families are here. And they all identify on loose strings, if any at all. The most thing people here have in common is that they... all live in the same geographical area. Very few, if any, families are staple dynasties, there is no major industry to identify around, and there is not really any "downfall" to rally against. Its like everyone does their own thing, ... together(?) , but not to go anywhere or pioneer anything..., except to make money, and to support themselves, so that they and the neighborhood kids can place nice?

As always, these things are best compared and identified when looking at something else. Here, if you could not tell or are not from the rust belt or the east coast in general, is where I compare and otherize this place via my own home region: The Heartland.

The Heartland is the region which lies south of the Great Lakes (basically south of Canada), North of the Ohio River, and East of the Mississippi River. Westward it extends basically until it hits that other unique region of Appalachia. (And try to define those borders. It doesn't work well. Trust me.)

The Heartland is characterized by its reliance on agriculture as its staple and lifelong industry. Yes, fewer farmers are working in the fields, but people still identify with "the crop" and still see it as a vital part of the region. Many people work in urban centers while living in suburbs, and some small outlying rural towns (Hey! That's like my town in Ohio!) Many people work in business, and technology, and the service industry. This is only because the once glorious industrial powerhouse of the Heartland (and Mid-Atlantic) pretty much pulled up shop and moved abroad in the mid 1970's to 1980's. Since then, tons of people have searched for work in different fields, but! within the same region. People stay put, and rarely migrate outside of the region itself, but mostly from rural areas to urban areas.

The Pacific Northwest (or at least Portland and Vancouver) is characterized in opposite of this by wild boom and growth in the technology sector, along with skilled workers who come from near and far to work in this industry. People readily move up from California, and down from rural Washington, and! westward from the plains states and open prairies. The growth rate of industry here has brought more people than the local region could ever supply, so we get migrants from out of the area, especially from those plains and high desert states to the east, in between the Rockies and the Cascades. And the area just keeps growing! People keep coming into the area for jobs, and don't leave. They set up shop here, and make more people!

The quality of life tends to be pretty good in urban areas, while rural areas are completely depleted of youth and innovation, because all of them either left for the cities a long time ago, or the new youth (very few) are getting the hell out of Dodge once they graduate high school. So we are left with a once logging boom, which kept much of the population evenly distributed between urban and rural, to a massive growth in urban areas to a depletion of population in rural areas, while still bringing in more people from outside the region to fuel the job and career engine.

I guess this is why this doesn't sit well with me. There is too much changing and diversity of people coming in. The place can not only not decide on a solid identity, but really has no basis to work on yet. The area is in such flux, that the "leftness" of the Pacific Northwest is about the only thing that binds people together, along with their eco-consciousness and desire to have a good education system and pay workers living wages. Progressiveness.

There is dissent, but it is so little, it rarely gets noticed. This in comparison to back east, where the dissent is well known, and there is a battle to the death over ideals and the future. Maybe its because we have seen the boom bust cycles of capitalism, and we want stability from our leaders and for our futures. In Portland and Vancouver, it seems as though there is so much progress, the people don't know the dangers of the bust cycle that may or may not be coming their way. The logging industry felt this, but the effects were felt mainly in the rural areas. When will the urban fall come for the cities of the Pacific Northwest (or the West Coast in general?)

Now that I am done with my Wikipedia entries and horrible over generalizations; here is a little food for thought:

Make it a challenge to seek out these places and stay in them for a while. From my experience, even if the shoes squeak and the shirt snags, there always becomes a happy medium. The longer you live in a place that "doesn't fit you well" the more, and better, skills you will learn to see that place from the perspective of the people who live there. The better you learn how to understand the viewpoint of another human being, and the life and culture they live and participate in. And I think that is a pretty valuable skill to have.

Hotels, Home, and Reference Points

So I'm sure you have found yourself in a place where you are returning to wherever you are sleeping for that night, and just instinctively call it "home". Then a friend asks "Home? Its just a hotel?" And you catch yourself wondering "Hummmm... That's odd. Why did I call that home?"

It seems like the place where you will lay your head for the night is a general term for home now a days. I think it is also a clever short hand for a place that you feel comfortable staying, along with being a hub for your operations in whatever area you are staying. What does this say about people, or at least my friends, in today's age?

Last week I did some trainings with my VISTA group on communication and dialog across cultural differences. Now while the training itself wasn't about place, there was an exercise we did where we had to listen to a person, uninterrupted, for three minutes. It was harder than you think.

The topic of place came to up with one of my partners. She talked about her lack of place, and how she felt deep connections with every place she has lived in her life. She then explained that even though those connections were deep and meaningful, she still felt troubled by the fact that she didn't identify with one place versus another. Is there a societal norm that says we have to choose one over the other? Why can't we feel invested while living on a multi-way bridge between different places?

I guess the ultimate reason is that it boils down to a need for concreteness. In today's quickly changing world, we still have a desire to latch onto and establish a solid base. Perhaps that is our nature? To categorize and settle?

But more and more we are transforming these ideas of roots into moveable roots. Its easier and easier to split and graft different species onto one another across the globe. So ones mobility determines how one sees the world, and what identities and agencies arise out of that.

So more and more it can be said people are becoming more independent in their thinking and identities. We see this in the "global citizen" identity, especially in environmental movements. No longer is ones view tied to a nation or state, but increasingly to the globe.

There is resistance though. Stronger local identities can assert themselves in conflicts, and this is okay too. We are battling millions of years of agricultural evolution, where staying put meant you lived longer and survived. That paradigm is changing at an incredible rate, and change at today's pace is difficult to deal with. So we have to navigate this mine field of local versus global. How do we do it?

It first starts with managing this transition with as little harmful conflict as possible. There are numerous theories and methods out there for this management, but killing and destroying physical beings is not going to stop and win the local versus global debate. Once we can hone this conflict into a non-harmful interaction, then we can start to forge something new.

I like looking at the rapid change in today's society as a new flavor of the human state: hyper-interconnected migrants. We move. Its what we've done for a while now. We have just done it very very slowly in the past. We should let ourselves become hyper-connected migrants. We can share ideas literally at the speed of light, such as I am doing now. This quickness brings more people into the solution creation process, and allows for even more individualized reference points for the world. People can create their world as customizable as they wish via this new digital migratory revolution. They can embody themselves as much, or as little as they wish, because in this new world, having the choice and liberty to determine your own direction is the new norm.

So next time you log into Facebook or Twitter or any other online medium, remember that you are participating in one of the biggest and most customizable ventures our species has undertaken ever. And that it is okay to claim a place, but it is also okay to live on an impossible bridge that connects limitless landmasses and cultures. The world is yours, so be amazing in it.