On Portland

Went to London and Paris and had a great time, but leading the pack by leaps and bounds so far this year for favorite destination city is surprising, underhyped, lowdown, weird-as-hell Portland. I can't keep track of all the times Aya, Chris and I looked at each other laughing, wondering why and how we were having such a great time in a place we'd been practically discouraged to visit.

Having easygoing, funny, spontaneous travel partners helped:

Chris, Busby, and Aya

The primary, essential elements of our trip:

Cookies. All coffee should automatically come with cookies.

Plaid. Turns out this is required in Portland. We literally ended up changing into recently-bought second-hand plaid shirts at a bus stop due to city-wide peer pressure.

Book, specifically Powell's City of Books, which beats Moe's, City Lights AND The Abbey hands down. Please note that this picture is of just ONE of many stacks of used, super cheap copies of Metamorphosis ALONE.

Excellent hosts made the city feel immediately welcome, and are perfect examples of the borderline-creepy friendliness of the general Portland population:

Richard, Kelly and Chris

And the place we stayed was not bad, for $10 each per night:

And the hikes. Oh, the hikes!





But it was the mentality that we could immediately feel, the unhurried pace, the unconcerned attitude, the predisposition to helpfulness and friendliness, that made it painfully hard to leave this place knowing that we'd be returning to San Francisco, to UCSF, to tall buildings and on time and no time and all the time, to a neighborhood where your plaid has to be tight and ironic, to a daily push to BE ON TOP.

Of what? For what? Where is my coffee? I miss Portland.

When everything you read starts to sound the same...

...listen!

I read a quote in We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our FamiliesWWTIYTTWWBKWOF, or perhaps just We Wish to Inform You) which turned out to be from George Eliot's Daniel Deronda. Made me want to read more, so I did, a bit:

" (hereby abbreviated Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy: in the force of imagination that pierces or exhalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures. To glory in a prophetic vision of knowledge covering the earth, is an easier exercise of believing imagination than to see its beginning in newspaper placards, staring at you from the bridge beyond the corn-fields; and it might well happen to most of us dainty people that we were in the thick of the battle of Armageddon without being aware of anything more than the annoyance of a little explosive smoke and struggling on the ground immediately about us."

Made me think of a standout passage (for me, anyway) in Augie March, which put words to a sense that I had but couldn't express verbally, as the above passage did again for me today:

"Unless you want to say that we're at the dwarf end of all times and mere children whose only share in grandeur is like a boy's share in fairytale kings, being of a different kind from times better and stronger than ours. But if we're comparing men and men, not men and children or men and demigods, which is just what would please Caesar among us teeming democrats, and if we don't have any special wish to abdicate into some different, lower form of existence out of shame for our defects before the golden faces of these and other old-time men, then I have the right to praise Einhorn and not care about smiles of derogation from those who think the race no longer has in any important degree the traits we honor in these fabulous names. But I don't want to be pushed into exaggeration by such opinion, which is the opinion of students who, at all ages, feel their boyishness when they confront the past."

Which reminds me of another takes-the-words-out-of-my-mouth passage that I read recently (and at this point I am fully realizing that this post is for myself alone and is dead boring to anyone else reading this far), this time from Paul Theroux's introduction to Graham Greene's Journey Without Maps (the book itself didn't do anything for me, but the introduction was surprisingly epic):

"Drinking and watching her, 'I thought for some reason even then of Africa, not a particular place, but a shape, a strangeness, a wanting to know. The unconscious mind is often sentimental; I have writen 'a shape,' and the shape, of course, is roughly that of a human heart.' This thought is unlikely to occur to the long-term expatriate in an African country, who would never think of a map of the whole continent. Such a person, unsentimental for reasons of survival, would think of Africa as the small town or clearing he is working in. Any maps he thinks of would be maps of his district, or at the very most, his province."

Being able to understand my present location, in geography and history, with any kind of realistic perspective has always seemed to me to be a great challenge, and I guess I've always seen it, and still see it, as an ultimate goal to be reached, maybe even the purpose of life. I don't believe that realism precludes optimism, and that's why I admire Augie so much, because he's able to see the world with such an even, realistic perspective, but he somehow finds hope and pleasure in every moment. He sees life as it is, and he loves it. Can we ask for anything more?

The more I read and the more I see, the smaller the holes in the fabric become. Read and see, read and see.

procrastination station

why didnt i just take care of it why dont i ever just take the little steps that i know need to be taken on time why am i so afraid of action of following through of tying up loose ends of getting it right am i that concerned that things will be too difficult why am i so terrified of difficulty this is my problem this is the root of it all this is why i suddenly find myself with two hundred and eighty eight dollars worth of library fines for a tiny book on lenin that i never even read its all george orwells fault he wrote animal farm he forced me into my brief and blinding wave of intense need to find out all about the russians why did it dissipate so fast why couldnt i just admit to myself that i didnt want to slog through lenin book why cant i let myself like what i like and stop forcing it i always end up paying now im paying real money so much money and they are holding my transcripts hostage those bastards they are using my need for their gain i never liked the people who work at the library anyway why are they always so glum why arent they ever reading books when i see them why is that guy at the front desk of morrison such a jerk doesnt he realize where he gets to sit all day i bet not a single soul in the world has missed that stupid lenin book who wants it the computer wants it no one is aware of its absence except the nagging hounding computer it sends me mail it demands my money it holds my grades back it holds me back why cant i just sit the computer down and explain the situation i feel i am being reasonable i dont think the book was ever really worth that much and i doubt that i have caused nearly three hundred dollars worth of wear and tear on the computer system ill pay for the book ill pay for the paper ill pay for the emotional damage done to all the students who had to see the word missing next to book title as they frantically pored through the library catalog during the last year ill pay ill pay why didnt i just take care of it why did i look at it sitting there on my shelf so many times and not extend my hand why was i so afraid of it why didnt i listen to everyone else WHY DONT I THINK ABOUT THE FUTURE

Belated Euro Pictures

All in random order, some representative snaps of a truly lovely trip:

Bloomsbury, where we stayed, and the (fictional) location of Black Books!

My favorite cantankerous old buzzard

Possibly my favorite part of air travel

Me and Nelson's Column

And enter we did

Abject terror at the London Dungeon

Interesting

Trafalgar Square

All of London at our feet and we're on a playstructure at Regent's Park

The martyrdom of St. Pancras

Camdentown, London

Joan Turner.

The Man Himself

Awesome old 8mm camera we found at Granddad's. "You'll never get your paws on that, it's going straight to David as inheritance." - Granddad

The (very young) Turners. My mum on the left!

Completion of the ropes course!

Arrival of The Others

My favorite picture of Ross and Nicki :)

Low tide at the beach where my dad grew up

These old faithfuls had their last hurrah on Grimsby Beach

Olga, the beautiful spy

Ross and my dad's little sister, Jude

Seige

Waiting for the train, a bit too much Irish coffee

This is the best hat I have ever worn

Busby lies in wait

Ben overcome with Parisian emotion

Busby > La Tour

An anthem, to be sung at full volume while rolling through the English countryside:

I hope that our few remaining friends

Give up on trying to save us

I hope we come up with a failsafe plot to piss of the dumb few that forgave us

I hope the fences we mended

Fall down beneath their own weight

And I hope we hang on past the last exit I hope it's already too late

I hope the junkyard a few blocks from here

Someday burns down

And I hope the rising black smoke carries me far away and I never come back to this town again

In my life

I hope I lie and tell everyone you were a good wife

I hope you die

I hope we both die

I hope I cut myself shaving tommorow

I hope it bleeds all day long

Our friends say it's darkest befor the sun rises

We're pretty sure they're all wrong

I hope it stays dark forever

I hope the worst is'nt over

I hope you blink before I do

I hope I never get sober and

I hope when you think of me years down the line you can't find one good thing to say

I hope that if I found the strength to walk out

You'd stay the hell out of my way

I am drowning

There is no sign of land

You are coming down with me

Hand in unloveable hand

I hope you die

I hope we both die

::Mountain Goats - No Children::