Return to the ocean

I am on the coast, the Pacific coast, standing in the ocean and my brain is exploding because this is way different. The sun is setting it is a mix of Maxx and Turner and Thomas Kincaid. The colors can't be real. Pelicans hunt from the sky in flocks, the waves crash endlessly, there's a hull of a ship that crashed. I am taking pictures, shooting video. I look at the birds and I think of algorithms and databases. Yes, it's true. Math and physics, and the properties of light when the yellow sun light passed through the light blue of the cloud there's a bit of green then that if I painted it it would look fake.

Portland is both loose and tight.

It's loose because it is open minded, artistic, sort of rustic, and independent. It is tight in the way it is gridded out, clean, almost curated. The people have been so nice. But you have to ask. Everyone leaves you alone.

To me it is more similar to Chicago than to San Francisco. In its gridded out structure, in its manicured parks, in its independent yet blue collar attitude I find cultural parallels. Chicago has one thing to learn from Portland: embrace the bicycle.

Less distortion, more harmony, less work to resolve it all, so I feel peaceful here. Does the meaning come from the difference? Do I learn more when I confront what is more different, like in San Francisco?

Hittin the major spots

I lived here for 2 years about 10 years ago and I never visited these places. Here I am now as a tourist and so it is required. It makes me think, perhaps, that I should have gone before. And when I get back to Chicago I'll be visiting the touristy places I normally avoid.

But again...why? How do places become places for tourists to visit? Like the spots of wilderness we seek out, these places are concentrated spots of attention where we marvel at ourselves. And there I am, trying to take beautiful photos like a million people before me. The reality of the situation fades, and a composed reality sets in, as if, perhaps, just possibly I too suffer from a need to control the environment.

more pics here

Why do we seek the wild?

So I went kayaking in the ocean the other day...paid $45 for the pleasure and it was worth every penny. Got to meet Krista and Nate, two locals who work for Sea For Yourself tours. Krista is 23 and speaks like a marine biologist, though she holds no graduate degree. And why should she? As she told us, most of her knowledge comes from growing up in the area. Nate was maybe 15 or 16, and just as capable and friendly as can be.

I'm in a group of 6, a family from Kentucky, and my friend with whom I am traveling. We get a quick lesson, and head right out into the ocean. I'm wearing a wetsuit for the first time in my life and I feel like a superhero or a motorcycle racer or something. The ocean is calm and it really isn't that much different, risk-wise, than Lake Michigan or Duck Lake at midnight. As we go Krista gives us information about the ecosystems and the wild life. Because we are actually in the kayaks out on the water we can see bright orange starfish in the caves, brown and white pelicans, a sea otter sleeping floating on its back in the kelp beds, elephant seals, gulls, cormorants, hawks, and much more.

Of course this leads me off into tourism thoughts. Why do we seek the wild? Why do we visit places and seek out the animals and plants and environments, not even to touch, but to see smell and hear? It seems as though some have a checklist (saw that, did that, smelled that, good, let's go home.) I don't know what to expect so I don't have a checklist, but somehow I feel proud that I saw these animals in their habitat and not at a zoo or something. What is that pride about?

Miller vs Hearst. Miller wins.

I can't accurately describe how great the Henry Miller Memorial Library is. It would do well, I think, to compare it to the Hearst Castle. Both are tourist stops along highway 1 that travels the coast of California. Both are places that contain art. Both are sort of museums and monuments to a specific man. One I find to be natural, unassuming, open and free. The other I find to be ostentatious, not in harmony with its environment, and more to do with power over nature than harmony. But I need to think more about this. It's too easy to attack W. R. Hearst. Perhaps he should be celebrated for bringing so much European culture to the coast of California.

Henry Miller Memorial Library

Hearst Castle

Inevitable comparisons begin

I don't really want to compare. I'd like to see things as they are, but of course, that's impossible. If there's one thing I learned in grad school it's that it's all relative. I cannot help but see these environments in relation to my own current and past experiences. I will move forward with the caution that these thoughts are interpretations, not judgements, and come from one who is now slightly over-educated and indoctrinated in the academic ideologies. As if you couldn't tell that from this very paragraph.

For me SF is at much higher resolution, and not just in terms of the density of the population on so little land. It is more than that. It is an attitude that stems from a history of open-mindedness and nice weather (my opinion, remember) that has made places like Venice Beach and San Francisco such a mish mash of cultures. Probably being on the westest most side of the country accounts for it as well, as if folks who did not like places like Chicago just keep heading west until they run out of room.

Chicago is so segregated still, so gridded in its layout. So entrenched in the politics of commerce. Here the crazy streets and angles and architecture make for a lot more diversity and unexpected combinations, both culturally and engineeringly, if that's a word.

The sun is killing me

San Francisco is intense. Why? The freakin sunlight for one. Here the sunlight is what, more direct? brighter? clearer? I've heard the fog "cleans" the air and removes the dust particles. Whatever the case, to my eyes the sun beats down upon me and slowly drives me crazy. I am not a sunny person I guess. I mean, I like daylight like most other people, but this light seems to bore straight into my brain making me sluggish and tired. I already long for the brown hazy light of Chicago. This light here is clean, bright blue, sparkling against the pastel shades of stucco and Victorian wood siding. Chicago is brown and red and ochre. I can handle that much better.

The wilderness versus the city: Here the wilderness is embedded in the city, it is a part of the city. The parks here sprout up at the strangest places and envelop you. Once you are in you are removed from the city in a way that Chicago could never do. The parks are wild, paths go everywhere. You walk around a bend and you expect to come across some tribe of natives that has lived in the woods unnoticed until now.

The homeless, the tattoos, the bikes, the scale of architecture...all intense. I never see anyone with one tattoo. If they have any ink it is a serious endeavor, covering most of the visible skin acreage. The bikes are intense, many fixed gears and minimalist designs, then again there are a ton of cruisers and quite a few fold up bikes. But there are far more bikers here than Chicago. I suspect Portland to exceed it even more.

I did live here for 2 years, so it is not all that unexpected, just reinforced.

Next stop: Big Sur, highway 1, and the coast of California.

I learn by going where I have to go

This poem is killing me right now. It is called "The Waking" by Theodore Roethke. It turns my brain inside out. The first three lines alone stop me in my tracks.


I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.


It's the last line there that I relate to this trip. So many times my expectations and the reality experienced are so different. We rely on our personal myths to get by, and it is scary to confront them. And we always learn from going and seeing for ourself. That notion is probably in every self help book out there. What I am interested in is the distortions that occur when we lay one set of beliefs over another. This can be described as aliasing, some sort of cultural aliasing, and perhaps it is the artists and travelers who are performing the anti-aliasing.

read the whole poem here

Thoughts on sampling and tourism

Maybe it's all sampling and rubbing up against different samples. The meaning comes from the difference (Saussure anyone?) Isn't that what tourism is? When you visit a place, and you are from another place, then you measure one against the other. Not measure in the sense that one is going to be "better" but measure in the sense of compare what you know against what you don't know.