homesick

it's true, i started this post an entire 18 months ago. in all honesty i couldn't change the date. so i'll just finish it off - and finally post it, for better or for worse.

it's january first, 2010. the first day of a new year, a new decade. and i'm sick, sick, sick right through and through. homesick.

which sounds ludicrous when you realize that i'm in my home state, living in a town i've lived in for something like 9 of the last 13 years, in a similar environment to what i'm used to, and only 70 miles from my actual home town. how can i be overwhelmed with homesickness, this close to home? how can the very marrow of my bones long for the salt air, the drops of rain falling through the conifer needles, the rush of coastal creeks riding high on winter rains?

i have a confession to make. i want to go home. i'm like a whiny child, looking for their mother!

and yet, to admit this - to acknowledge it - is a huge step for me. i want to go there. it's like i've been circling around it, avoiding it, for the past 18 years. but wanting to go home, i now realize, does not mean that i'm afraid of failure. it does not mean taking the easy way out. in fact, it might just be the hardest thing i could do.

because it's easy to be anonymous. it's easy not to have to invest in people you meet and places you see. it's easy to be the stranger.

that's the great secret to moving around all the time, i think - that it's so easy to be the stranger. if you don't mind being alone, then being the new person in town simply means not having any obligations, not having any ties, not having a whole lot of responsibility.

what's hard? facing who you were before, whether you liked it or not. facing people's impressions of you that they carved decades ago, and being strong enough to tell them how you've changed and how you want to be seen. working to change, for the better, an imperfect but beloved place rather than searching for a perfect but unknown one.

for me, leaving is easy. going home - that's hard.

"the ball is round, the game lasts ninety minutes, everything else - is pure theory."

we were fortunate enough to live in germany in 2006, when they hosted the men's world cup.

the first time germany won, i admit, i had already gone to bed. we lived on the middle floor of an old building, right on a very busy street, in a small, unknown town. suddenly, there was noise everywhere. yells and cars honking. i ran out to the front windows - long picture windows that overlooked the street - and the street was flooded with cars, cars with people hanging all over them, all of them waving flags, cheering, blowing horns, celebrating.

you might remember the 2006 world cup - or maybe not. regardless, germany made a little bit of a cinderella run deep into the tournament that no one was expecting. except they weren't a cinderella team at all, because they are one of the top most successful national football teams in FIFA. but that year, at least, no one expected them to do very well - not even the most loyal german.  in fact in 2006, their FIFA ranking was an abysmal 22nd.

they won their group. they won their game in the round of 16. they won in the quarter-finals, defeating no less an opponent than argentina. and these were the games when, post-match, the entire country went nuts. we were coming back from the train station one day in a cab, carrying friends who had just arrived for a visit, when suddenly everything in town - including our taxi - came to a screeching halt. people began mobbing the streets, cars honking, beer bottles in hands everywhere, songs and chants ringing. "what happened?" and our friends, completely bewildered.

"germany must have won again", i said, grinning. you have to enjoy it at that point in time, because you're not going to get anywhere very fast.

sometime in there i realized that there's no comparison to any event in the united states. there is no one sporting event, no one team, that galvanizes the entire country behind it. the most popular sports in the US - [american] football, basketball, and baseball - are sports where the pinnacle of the sport is, in fact, basically an intra-national competition (for the most part - claims of world champions notwithstanding). loyalties are at the state or region or, occasionally, sub-state level. if it's not your state, you may not even care about the outcome, unless there's some super villain (yankees or lakers, say) to root against.

the olympics are a time for rallying behind the american team to some extent - but there are so many events and so many athletes that there's not really one thing to follow.

there's no one sport - the most popular sport - where the title win is at the national level.

my friends and i went to frankfurt for later games in the series. because the country is so soccer crazed, and the tickets were so hard to get, fan viewing sites had been set up all over the country. the nearest one to us was a giant screen - bigger than anything i've ever seen - plopped right in the middle of the Main river. people lined both banks, drinking, partying, laughing, cheering.

in frankfurt, the town was turned out to welcome internationals from all over the world. even ghana, who also made a surprise run in the tournament, advancing out of the group round with a victory over the hapless united states, was represented by fans on the street.

in germany, everything else is theory. in the united states, we're still just some kind of amateur sports fans.

and p.s.: why on god's green earth, for all our stubborn continued usage of the word soccer, did we retain the name fussball when referring to a plastic table game played in bars?

on being lost

my son is looking for his dinosaurs

all twenty-four of the one-inch figures

bought two years and 3000 miles ago.

he still remembers, and says to

me: there used to be two like this,

where is the other one?

oh, i say, we always seem to lose track

of these small things, checking under

the bed, as if it might possibly be so easy.

it all comes from somewhere

"The romantic movement gave the forests a new meaning for some people, and this admiration for what had once been rejected was bolstered by yet another change of attitude, which can best be called the ‘patriotic’. After the War of Independence the question was continually asked, ‘What was it in this new country that was distinctively American?’ The continent, with its short history and ill-formed traditions, could not produce anything like the rich cultural heritage and the antiquities of Europe. One thing that America had, however, was vast areas of untouched land – forest, prairie, and mountain – and these seemingly unending wild areas were perceived by nineteenth-century naturalists, poets, writers and artists as something uniquely American and something about which to be proud. Chateaubriand touched upon this feeling when he said, ‘There is nothing old in America excepting the woods…they are certainly the equivalent for monuments and ancestors’."


From Americans and Their Forests: A Historical Geography, By Michael Williams. 1989.

rain, rain, go away

last night, at midnight, i woke up to a strange sound.

i thought my partner had turned the fan on. it was a white-type noise, noticeable in its volume, consistent in its tone.

it wasn't the fan. it was...solid and steady rain. pouring rain.

i'm sure it kills folks from other states when oregonians complain about rain. because, after all, isn't it the defining characteristic of oregon, and our existence?

well, yes. to large extent. but not - absolutely not - in july.

once we hit july 5th, we expect - and have earned - our two-plus beautiful, wonderful, dry months. the months that suck in newcomers. the months where, playing at the playground, you hear tourists talking to each other: "it's lovely here. what are the home prices like?"

and you chuckle to yourself, knowing another oregon summer has claimed another sucker.

the thing is, it's so damn beautiful here in july, august, and part of september, that it makes you forget all the pain and suffering of the past 9 months. all the grey skies. all the dreary drizzle. all the mud and clogged gutters and interminable, insufferable rain.

but, our ability to make it through the fall/winter/spring relies on these two to three months of absolutely dry, sunny, warm, breezy, absolutely perfect summer weather.

right now, i don't care that it was sunny in december. or whenever it was unseasonably sunny. because it was cold then, and i couldn't enjoy it. i don't care about sun in winter. i wait for, long for, count on, my two months of sun, warmth, and perfect weather - no humidity, no bugs, no sweat - to get me through.

weeks of sun in december doesn't count, for us. rain in july? just absolutely wrong. so that's when you'll hear oregonians - even "true" oregonians, like me, who love the winter rain - complain about rain.

more from the oregon country fair

because the country fair is best seen, not pontificated about, i can't resist posting more pictures from it.

although these ones aren't mine - they were taken by a very talented young photographer, hannah mcintosh.

enjoy these views of the fair!

of regional rivalry and...utility-kilts

something about being at the country fair, and thinking about soccer, has me thinking that possibly one could map out the PNW based on sales of utilikilts.

i mean, really. are there any other states where they are so prevalent?

there have been a great series of posts lately, from all corners, about the fantastic portland vs. seattle and, by extension, timbers vs. sounders rivalry.

what i find so intriguing about this series is the attempted regionalism that people are calling on. as it says in a recent WSJ article, part of the difficulty of the sounders - timbers rivalry is "how to work up a healthy hatred for fans who, in so many ways, look and think exactly alike."

portland and seattle - clearly the anchors of the pacific northwest. similar climate, similar history, similar economy. so, how do residents of these two lynchpin cities of the US PNW differentiate themselves?

from the wall street journal:

Until recently, Seattleites had plenty of reasons to feel superior: A diet that includes mushrooms and berries foraged from pristine local forests, a commitment to fixed-gear bicycles, fair-trade coffee, facial hair and the best attendance of any city with a Major League Soccer team in the country by a landslide.

[But] In Portland, stadium vendors hawk barbecued-tofu sandwiches, spinach salads and chocolate-covered bacon, putting Seattle's relatively mundane offerings, like veggie dogs, gourmet donuts and cappuccinos, to shame.

While Seattle's scarf-wielding supporters may look edgy compared to the baseball fans across the street at Safeco Field, Portland fans boast at least as many piercings, tattoos and mohawks. In the merchandise line at a Timbers game, Bryan Dean, a 40-year-old industrial designer with a tall blond mohawk was sporting a kilt. He said kilts are "considered quite masculine" in Scotland and Ireland and evoke Portland's identity: "underdogs and kinda blue collar, but also fringe, artistic."

Seattle fans like to poke fun at small differences, like Portland's higher unemployment rate and its relative lack of big companies. "Portland fans are icky, they're the trailer trash of the Pacific Northwest," said Kevin Scudder, a 48-year-old company owner relaxing in the stands. "We have a lot more money up here…though they do have a beautiful coastline."

Portland fans insult Seattle supporters by calling them "customers" instead of fans, and pick on everything from their love of boating to their diversity of political views. "In Seattle they have Republicans," said Heather Mathews, a graduate student at Lewis and Clark, who imagines Seattle fans spend most of their free time "sailing around in their sailboats."

from a sports illustrated vault article: 

Last week's showdown, which ended in a 1--1 tie, was just the latest evidence that the Cascadia region has become the hotbed of Major League Soccer. Two years after the Sounders joined the league, their average attendance at week's end (36,350) was far and away the highest in MLS—which has a leaguewide average of 17,150—and would have ranked ninth in the English Premier League, sixth in Spain's La Liga, second in France's Ligue 1 and fourth in Italy's Serie A. In Portland the expansion Timbers are the new darlings of MLS, winning their first four home games while boasting regular sellouts at Jeld-Wen Field (capacity: 18,627), as well as a chain saw--wielding human mascot who saws a slab off a giant log for every Portland goal and clean sheet.

"And a lot of the malice goes beyond soccer," added Garrett Dittfurth, 32, an analyst at a public relations firm. "Seattle was like the pinnacle of American coolness in the '90s, right? Now things have changed a little bit if you want to talk about creativity, arts and music."

"Then there's that big-city mentality they have in Seattle, and down here we're like, You've gotta be kidding me," added Dittfurth. "They have a lot more of an East Coast mentality than we do, and that kind of pervades on the field. You feel that air of superiority."

and finally, from grantland:

I was on my way to the game, standing on line in a convenience store, waiting to be rung up. The man on line in front of me was delivering a monologue, somewhat directed at the cashier but really to anyone within earshot, about reproductive rights and health education in various Third World countries. In New York, this guy would have been told to go reproduce with himself and get out of line. What happened here? As the man finished his speech the cashier nodded thoughtfully and said, "Man, I've got a documentary you have got to see."

Yeah, I was in Portland.

And that is going to be the last joke I make about the city's politics, fashions, food, or proclivity for fixed gear bikes. Let he who does not live within walking distance from several restaurants serving bacon-wrapped trout toss the first stone at PDX's hipster/hippie atmosphere.

I don't know what's funnier, that two people mention fixed-gear bixes as motifs of a unique identity - yet one is in reference to seattle, one in reference to portland - or that someone mentions a utilikilt-clad portland soccer fan stating that they are emblematic of portland, when in fact they are made in...

seattle.