Nine Mile Run is not what I expected.
Its entrance is just below the Parkway, completely invisible to the unacquainted. Unlike the Ravine Trail, which greets you with cardinals, aromatic flora, and muted traffic, Nine Mile Run, after drawing people in with the sound of its faint, trickling stream, stops them in their tracks with the sour, blunt odor of sewage overflow. Up close, it resembles the L.A. River far more than any of the three that carve Pittsburgh into a triangle, a creek held within, together, by a corridor of boulders and concrete. Discarded plastic bottles outnumber the sycamores and cottonwoods. The sound of the Parkway reverberates throughout the woods.
It’s not what expected. It’s my fault for having expectations. I don’t blame the stream.
After a fair warning about dogshit on the trail, the smell of sewage quickly dissipates and becomes hard to describe. I remember a conversation I had with an ex-girlfriend, not one of my brighter ones, about photosynthesis—exciting pillow talk, I know. She said she loved the image of a plant, happy and fat off of ingesting sunshine, devouring waves (and/or particles) of it much like we do food. For better or worse, I’ve never forgotten that image, one that wouldn’t be out of place in a pre-school. I bring it up because that image reminds of the particular, organic fragrance—the one that followed the sewage—that I only find comes out in late spring and summer, and only when the sun is its peak hours bearing down on green plants. Closer to the water where fish and bullfrogs have been sighted, a smell is more tangible: Slight chamomile.
Not much further up the trail, the water becomes a cloudy turquoise, greatly obscured by a chain-link fence suffocated by small vines. Our guide tells about the old philosophy of streams, its function to be cleanse and take away sediment, all that is gray, all things we no longer have use for. I find this appalling, wondering about the need to suppress a stream of water instead of building around it and taking away any potential function.
I find the mismanagement of water to be the most abominable form of pollution. But I’m calmed when I take in the scenery: Canadian thistle, creek willows, spider webs refracting light, dragonflies dueling and/or mating.
I thought about my expectations for this place, still trying to manage them and the reality of this place. That’s when our guide speaks of Nine Mile Run as a reclamation project.
Often, we talk about conservation, preservation, the meaning of wildness, the ethics of access. But this is the first time I’ve ever really thought reclaiming natural landscapes. It’s a rather triumphant concept, isn’t it? Urban saxifrage, roots splitting sidewalks and roads, ragweeds growing over railroad tracks, ivies and hops covering homes, modern day hydras that only multiply when divided.
Mercy. I think I need a moment when I think about reclamation. Abbey and Foer have gotten to me in regard to expressing unadulterated passions, about letting your emotions show in writing. The environment is always approached with a zero-sum mentality. Worse than a zero-sum game. We have rationalists, devil’s advocates, and mealy-mouthers. Where is our abundance of advocates and proponents? So much of nature writing involves stopping the hemorrhaging, the sprawl on wild lands. The only direction to go is down. But taking it back, now that’s something.
(And thus we have the have the opening statement of how I became an eco-terrorist.)
I’m getting off track now. But I was wrong to look at Nine Mile Run with such disdain. It’s in a state of recovery. The guide, those familiar with the area look more delighted than anything else, recalling just how much worse it used to be.
Oh, expectations.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Prompt #4: Istanbul.
Recently at Chatham, a large number of MFA students went to Turkey for their field seminar. I initially was set to go as well, but after a long discussion with our director, I realized that perhaps it wasn’t for me. Going to Turkey wouldn’t have been an adventure so much as it would’ve been me revisiting familiar ground.
I don’t talk much about the time I spent in Istanbul anymore. Enough time has passed and no longer do I have strong feelings about a place that was so important to me. The important part is that, at least, I remember the way I used to feel towards it.
A month after my father passed away in 2008, I did something that I don’t think anyone expected: I took a job in another country. With a large part of my family grieving and reassembling their lives, I fled for Istanbul, Turkey. There is a sense of guilt I feel to this day about it, about leaving, but I remember being on that plane from Seattle to Chicago, Chicago to Istanbul thinking that as selfish as it was, it was something I had do for myself. I had to come to terms with a life, without a father, alone.
Istanbul had me from the start. After Orhan, the school’s assistant picked me up we took the drive from Ataturk International to Kozyatagi on the Anatolian side of the city. The word metropolis doesn’t suit Istanbul. The city alone contains more than twice the people from my state, possibly even three times more with the undocumented lost in the Eurasian sprawl. Combined with oppressive pollution and an early spring heat, I was overwhelmed. But not the overwhelmed that is typically accompanied by anxiety. The kind of overwhelmed that makes you feel powerless, fatalistic, where all you can do is just watch. Jet-lagged, jittery, surrounded by people speaking a different language, I remember drifting in and out as Orhan spoke in broken English. Istanbul, if you were to consider it a European city (which I do not), would be unusual. Paris, Rome, Berlin, Barcelona all reeked of sulfur and dogshit, tagged in graffiti, preventing you from being adrift and lost in their supposed magic. But Istanbul smelled of vetiver grass, chamomile, and deep citrus, the avenue of my apartment lined with palms and neon-violet flowers. I would wake up later that night and take a stroll for baklava and a phonecard before returning to my pastel-colored apartment and grieve alone and far away from everyone I’d ever known—grieving properly. My room had an outside balcony and from it, I could make unfamiliar constellations in the sky, realizing that Istanbul was and remains the only city that could ever happen in.
There are many things I give Istanbul credit for, but this remains the first and most important. Time would pass in Istanbul and I would become one of them, fall in love with one of theirs. But as with all unfamiliar places, all alien and exotic, a routine begins to develop. That crowded midibus and ferryboat that was so fascinating, such an experience, would become an inconvenience. Crossing from Asia into Europe, over time, becomes a commute. When the time came to choose between my adopted home and my real one, I would choose the latter.
I don’t want to say I never look back—I do. Not as much as I used to, mind you, but I do. I try hard to stay in the now, not let nostalgia get the best of me. I know Istanbul is a different place now and all the components and people of my life from that time have moved on. But whenever Washington started to drizzle, or Pittsburgh gets too cold, I think back to sunlight flashing in Gizem’s eyes, all those walks with her by the cay at Kadikoy and pedestrian, cobblestoned Istiklal Caddesi. I think of the Galata Bridge and the fishermen with their cigarettes dangling out of their mouth, the toothless simit salesmen wishing God would bestow his peace upon me. But mostly, I think of that spring, that morning after that first night, and how everything would be okay.
I don’t talk much about the time I spent in Istanbul anymore. Enough time has passed and no longer do I have strong feelings about a place that was so important to me. The important part is that, at least, I remember the way I used to feel towards it.
A month after my father passed away in 2008, I did something that I don’t think anyone expected: I took a job in another country. With a large part of my family grieving and reassembling their lives, I fled for Istanbul, Turkey. There is a sense of guilt I feel to this day about it, about leaving, but I remember being on that plane from Seattle to Chicago, Chicago to Istanbul thinking that as selfish as it was, it was something I had do for myself. I had to come to terms with a life, without a father, alone.
Istanbul had me from the start. After Orhan, the school’s assistant picked me up we took the drive from Ataturk International to Kozyatagi on the Anatolian side of the city. The word metropolis doesn’t suit Istanbul. The city alone contains more than twice the people from my state, possibly even three times more with the undocumented lost in the Eurasian sprawl. Combined with oppressive pollution and an early spring heat, I was overwhelmed. But not the overwhelmed that is typically accompanied by anxiety. The kind of overwhelmed that makes you feel powerless, fatalistic, where all you can do is just watch. Jet-lagged, jittery, surrounded by people speaking a different language, I remember drifting in and out as Orhan spoke in broken English. Istanbul, if you were to consider it a European city (which I do not), would be unusual. Paris, Rome, Berlin, Barcelona all reeked of sulfur and dogshit, tagged in graffiti, preventing you from being adrift and lost in their supposed magic. But Istanbul smelled of vetiver grass, chamomile, and deep citrus, the avenue of my apartment lined with palms and neon-violet flowers. I would wake up later that night and take a stroll for baklava and a phonecard before returning to my pastel-colored apartment and grieve alone and far away from everyone I’d ever known—grieving properly. My room had an outside balcony and from it, I could make unfamiliar constellations in the sky, realizing that Istanbul was and remains the only city that could ever happen in.
There are many things I give Istanbul credit for, but this remains the first and most important. Time would pass in Istanbul and I would become one of them, fall in love with one of theirs. But as with all unfamiliar places, all alien and exotic, a routine begins to develop. That crowded midibus and ferryboat that was so fascinating, such an experience, would become an inconvenience. Crossing from Asia into Europe, over time, becomes a commute. When the time came to choose between my adopted home and my real one, I would choose the latter.
I don’t want to say I never look back—I do. Not as much as I used to, mind you, but I do. I try hard to stay in the now, not let nostalgia get the best of me. I know Istanbul is a different place now and all the components and people of my life from that time have moved on. But whenever Washington started to drizzle, or Pittsburgh gets too cold, I think back to sunlight flashing in Gizem’s eyes, all those walks with her by the cay at Kadikoy and pedestrian, cobblestoned Istiklal Caddesi. I think of the Galata Bridge and the fishermen with their cigarettes dangling out of their mouth, the toothless simit salesmen wishing God would bestow his peace upon me. But mostly, I think of that spring, that morning after that first night, and how everything would be okay.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Place #4: July 12. Return to the Ravine Trail, 9:39 PM. Hot, Dark.
Kat made fun of me the first time I ever saw a firefly. It was about two weeks ago, after a soccer game, and we were sitting down to beers at the Waterfront when I saw this flickering, pale green light in front of me. Combined with the hit to the head from the car accident, the humidity, and running around in it, I thought it was a sign that maybe I should get my head checked. Sure enough, I see the long silhouette of an insect—suddenly relieved—its enlarged abdomen glowing. I didn’t know Pittsburgh could get fireflies. I tell Kat that this is my first time ever seeing a firefly. She gives a half-interested, “Oh, that’s nice,” assuming it was just the first of the season.
In the Northwest, we don’t get fireflies. I don’t know that they’re a signal to the start and halfway point of summer. I never captured them in jars at night with my sister, put them into Mason jars, and had an organic nightlight. I do have memories of flipping june bugs off of my mother’s deck, hearing that horrific, heated hiss and dodging the crane-fly, which resembles a giant mosquito that has an affinity for your face. (Go ahead, look at the Wikipedia page for crane-fly and tell that doesn’t look like summer fun.) You can imagine my surprise at seeing a bioluminescent animal in front of me as I’m about to sit down for a drink. I’m jaded about a lot of things, a world-class skeptic for sure, but there’s something about seeing the firefly that just makes me a little stupid with excitement. I’m certain I’ve seen them before about the city just when it started to get hot, but maybe I’ve just dismissed it as optic phenomena, much like those stars and strings we see at times.
On this particular night, they seem out in abundance and Lucas, as payment for allowing him to stay at my place the past couple of days, takes up Beechwood to the Ravine Trail. We decided not to enter the trail this late, sticking near the trim field of crabgrass and white clover before the walking path dips down, where the lightning bugs drift lazily. My sandals are on, but the ground is still wet from the scattered rains. The sun has gone down and there’s only a faint bit of light left, just enough to see where I’m going. As acquainted as I am with trees, I’m still not much of a fan of the woods at dark, especially with looming, near-electric sounds of cicadas moving their wings.
Lucas, like Kat, is from the Midwest and doesn’t share my enthusiasm. It almost feels like this is the playtime he’s allotted me after supper. I’m afraid of capturing of the insect in my hand, mindful about recent readings about messing with nature, afraid I’ll press too hard in my excitement, but will end up with glowing paste in my hands. I learn quickly that simple, soft contact, the firefly will just attach. I even get one between my hands, but I notice in its anxiety it doesn’t seem to glow. I’ve heard about synchronization, where fireflies over time will start glowing in unison. Not tonight though. Regardless, I prefer the asynchronous illumination. Since the first sighting, I see them in pairs and triads, but here in this flat introduction to the trail, there are at least a baker’s dozen. My feet are wet, I’m chasing bugs, it’s late and I’m playing outside and it’s enthralling. Someone needs to remind me I’m almost 26.
In the Northwest, we don’t get fireflies. I don’t know that they’re a signal to the start and halfway point of summer. I never captured them in jars at night with my sister, put them into Mason jars, and had an organic nightlight. I do have memories of flipping june bugs off of my mother’s deck, hearing that horrific, heated hiss and dodging the crane-fly, which resembles a giant mosquito that has an affinity for your face. (Go ahead, look at the Wikipedia page for crane-fly and tell that doesn’t look like summer fun.) You can imagine my surprise at seeing a bioluminescent animal in front of me as I’m about to sit down for a drink. I’m jaded about a lot of things, a world-class skeptic for sure, but there’s something about seeing the firefly that just makes me a little stupid with excitement. I’m certain I’ve seen them before about the city just when it started to get hot, but maybe I’ve just dismissed it as optic phenomena, much like those stars and strings we see at times.
On this particular night, they seem out in abundance and Lucas, as payment for allowing him to stay at my place the past couple of days, takes up Beechwood to the Ravine Trail. We decided not to enter the trail this late, sticking near the trim field of crabgrass and white clover before the walking path dips down, where the lightning bugs drift lazily. My sandals are on, but the ground is still wet from the scattered rains. The sun has gone down and there’s only a faint bit of light left, just enough to see where I’m going. As acquainted as I am with trees, I’m still not much of a fan of the woods at dark, especially with looming, near-electric sounds of cicadas moving their wings.
Lucas, like Kat, is from the Midwest and doesn’t share my enthusiasm. It almost feels like this is the playtime he’s allotted me after supper. I’m afraid of capturing of the insect in my hand, mindful about recent readings about messing with nature, afraid I’ll press too hard in my excitement, but will end up with glowing paste in my hands. I learn quickly that simple, soft contact, the firefly will just attach. I even get one between my hands, but I notice in its anxiety it doesn’t seem to glow. I’ve heard about synchronization, where fireflies over time will start glowing in unison. Not tonight though. Regardless, I prefer the asynchronous illumination. Since the first sighting, I see them in pairs and triads, but here in this flat introduction to the trail, there are at least a baker’s dozen. My feet are wet, I’m chasing bugs, it’s late and I’m playing outside and it’s enthralling. Someone needs to remind me I’m almost 26.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Prompt #3: Clydesdale-Quarterhorse Mix.
Not long after my father passed away, my mother, suddenly not taking for granted how short life is, started doing a lot more of what made her happy. By the end of 2009, she went ahead and purchased a rescued horse named Cici and started making a weekly habit of going down to the stables in Black Diamond.
My mother is a funny lady sometimes. She was born in the Garlic Gulch area, the Little Italy of Seattle that sadly, doesn’t exist anymore. Before she was too old, she moved to the southwest part of the county to Burien, an area that wouldn’t come it’s own city until 1993. Her entire life has been spent in and around the city. Her memories consist of working downtown, summers spent watching airshows by Lake Washington, fish and chips on Alki, and going to the Pike Place Market for her grocery shopping. She is a city slicker through and through. Yet, if you talked to her now, you wouldn’t see that so much. She listens to the country station, vacations in the Inland Empire instead of near the rainforest or the Pacific, fantasizes about cowboys, and spends her time lately at the base of Mt. Rainier where she keeps her horses.
I went ahead and told her one day that her past doesn’t seem to match her present very well. She then told me I was too young to remember, but around where we grew up betwixt Burien and Renton, was a thoroughbred horsetrack called Longacres that was demolished in 1992. Apparently it was quite a sight, the glacier-tilled ground conducive to racing, six-digit purses, and an appearance of Seattle Slew himself running for cancer research. After my mother finished telling the story of how she had sneaked into a VIP lounge and was hit on by James Caan, I went to do some research about the lost track. The Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, an extremely useful tool for my thesis, had quite a bit of information about Longacres. Remembering the nostalgic glint in my mother’s eyes, nothing I read was more unforgettable than this line:
Many had generational associations extending back to Longacres’ earliest days, and for these the loss of the track was a personal threat to both lifestyle and livelihood.
Unlike my mother, I was not nearly as attached or even all that interested in horses and often declined her invitations to join her at the stables in Black Diamond. I’m not sure exactly when I started going along with her on our weekends off. One thing I love about my home is how despite the fact that Seattle stretches nearly thirty plus miles from north to south, all it takes is twenty minutes, by ferry or highway to be resoundingly out of the city. It wasn’t long before we were in flooded organic farms alongside the Green River, with highland cows gawking at us as much as we did them.
As you probably weren’t expecting, I never had a close attachment to my mother’s horse, Cici. She was temperamental, unfriendly, and forced my mother into surgery after she bucked her off. Realizing that she was not a horse for a novice like my mother, she was sold off and sadly died of colic shortly after being picked up by her owner. But there’s an adage that hung in the barnhouse of the stables: Once you a buy horse, you don’t stop with just one. My mother purchased another, an American thoroughbred colt named Dude, who was simply too young and too massive to ride.
Despite not having any attachment to a horse yet, I found myself curious about them. My mother’s friend and horsetrainer, the Gayle to her Oprah, Marie devoted her whole life to tending and breaking horses. She wasn’t alone at the stables. Every horse owner, stable hand, there was an odd mythology behind them I simply wasn’t getting. This was at a time when I thought horses, simply, were just very dumb animals. (Granted, they still can be sometimes.) But when so many people are strongly attached to an animal, well, you have to admit you may be wrong about something.
This is when I began reading about the history of horses. The thing that captured my attention was how, in this world, there only true one wild horse. That would be the critically endangered Prezwalski’s horse. It wasn’t long before I became curious about the differences between a wild and domestic/feral horses and looked into behaviors. They’re really quite a curious prey animal in that although they’ll flee, they’ll also stand their ground. I would learn from Marie that it’s important too, as a human, to stand one’s ground against them as in their structure, we can be see as a subordinate and prone to be nicked and charged. Instead of being mad at Cici, I became more sympathetic towards her when I realized that horses have impressive memories and realized, much like my beloved Belgian shepherd at home, she was likely abused. I learned about the differences and roles in mares, colts, and foals. Although it’s still in progress, I learned and am still learning above the variance of breeds and what exactly being a cold or warmblood entails. At this point in my reading, well, I found myself actually enjoying going to the stables with my mother.
Still, my interest in horses was relatively at arm’s length and it wasn’t until my mother brought home a Clydesdale-Quarterhorse mix named Dunny that I began to have an attachment. Dunny, due to his breeding and growing up in an environment filled with noise, was not easily spooked. He was and is calm and gentle, if but a bit clumsy. I was a little bit nervous when my mother called him over and told me to keep my hand flat while I fed him. He took it, stood there, and let me get closer and scratch him behind the ear. So it began every weekend when I would take him from his pen, get the scrub brush, and go to town on his mud-matted hair and mane. Occasionally, he’d try to jerk away from the metallic circle brush and step on my boots, but I’d never get upset. At times, with Marie’s encouragement, I’d have to be firm and lead him by his rein with authority, uncomfortable as that makes me at times with animals. This would all end up a bonding experience with Dunny and it was hard, much harder than I thought when I drove off to Pittsburgh for school.
Even though my interest in horses still learns towards curiosity instead of affection, I had certainly come a long way from someone who shot his mother down each time he was invited out to Black Diamond.
My mother is a funny lady sometimes. She was born in the Garlic Gulch area, the Little Italy of Seattle that sadly, doesn’t exist anymore. Before she was too old, she moved to the southwest part of the county to Burien, an area that wouldn’t come it’s own city until 1993. Her entire life has been spent in and around the city. Her memories consist of working downtown, summers spent watching airshows by Lake Washington, fish and chips on Alki, and going to the Pike Place Market for her grocery shopping. She is a city slicker through and through. Yet, if you talked to her now, you wouldn’t see that so much. She listens to the country station, vacations in the Inland Empire instead of near the rainforest or the Pacific, fantasizes about cowboys, and spends her time lately at the base of Mt. Rainier where she keeps her horses.
I went ahead and told her one day that her past doesn’t seem to match her present very well. She then told me I was too young to remember, but around where we grew up betwixt Burien and Renton, was a thoroughbred horsetrack called Longacres that was demolished in 1992. Apparently it was quite a sight, the glacier-tilled ground conducive to racing, six-digit purses, and an appearance of Seattle Slew himself running for cancer research. After my mother finished telling the story of how she had sneaked into a VIP lounge and was hit on by James Caan, I went to do some research about the lost track. The Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, an extremely useful tool for my thesis, had quite a bit of information about Longacres. Remembering the nostalgic glint in my mother’s eyes, nothing I read was more unforgettable than this line:
Many had generational associations extending back to Longacres’ earliest days, and for these the loss of the track was a personal threat to both lifestyle and livelihood.
Unlike my mother, I was not nearly as attached or even all that interested in horses and often declined her invitations to join her at the stables in Black Diamond. I’m not sure exactly when I started going along with her on our weekends off. One thing I love about my home is how despite the fact that Seattle stretches nearly thirty plus miles from north to south, all it takes is twenty minutes, by ferry or highway to be resoundingly out of the city. It wasn’t long before we were in flooded organic farms alongside the Green River, with highland cows gawking at us as much as we did them.
As you probably weren’t expecting, I never had a close attachment to my mother’s horse, Cici. She was temperamental, unfriendly, and forced my mother into surgery after she bucked her off. Realizing that she was not a horse for a novice like my mother, she was sold off and sadly died of colic shortly after being picked up by her owner. But there’s an adage that hung in the barnhouse of the stables: Once you a buy horse, you don’t stop with just one. My mother purchased another, an American thoroughbred colt named Dude, who was simply too young and too massive to ride.
Despite not having any attachment to a horse yet, I found myself curious about them. My mother’s friend and horsetrainer, the Gayle to her Oprah, Marie devoted her whole life to tending and breaking horses. She wasn’t alone at the stables. Every horse owner, stable hand, there was an odd mythology behind them I simply wasn’t getting. This was at a time when I thought horses, simply, were just very dumb animals. (Granted, they still can be sometimes.) But when so many people are strongly attached to an animal, well, you have to admit you may be wrong about something.
This is when I began reading about the history of horses. The thing that captured my attention was how, in this world, there only true one wild horse. That would be the critically endangered Prezwalski’s horse. It wasn’t long before I became curious about the differences between a wild and domestic/feral horses and looked into behaviors. They’re really quite a curious prey animal in that although they’ll flee, they’ll also stand their ground. I would learn from Marie that it’s important too, as a human, to stand one’s ground against them as in their structure, we can be see as a subordinate and prone to be nicked and charged. Instead of being mad at Cici, I became more sympathetic towards her when I realized that horses have impressive memories and realized, much like my beloved Belgian shepherd at home, she was likely abused. I learned about the differences and roles in mares, colts, and foals. Although it’s still in progress, I learned and am still learning above the variance of breeds and what exactly being a cold or warmblood entails. At this point in my reading, well, I found myself actually enjoying going to the stables with my mother.
Still, my interest in horses was relatively at arm’s length and it wasn’t until my mother brought home a Clydesdale-Quarterhorse mix named Dunny that I began to have an attachment. Dunny, due to his breeding and growing up in an environment filled with noise, was not easily spooked. He was and is calm and gentle, if but a bit clumsy. I was a little bit nervous when my mother called him over and told me to keep my hand flat while I fed him. He took it, stood there, and let me get closer and scratch him behind the ear. So it began every weekend when I would take him from his pen, get the scrub brush, and go to town on his mud-matted hair and mane. Occasionally, he’d try to jerk away from the metallic circle brush and step on my boots, but I’d never get upset. At times, with Marie’s encouragement, I’d have to be firm and lead him by his rein with authority, uncomfortable as that makes me at times with animals. This would all end up a bonding experience with Dunny and it was hard, much harder than I thought when I drove off to Pittsburgh for school.
Even though my interest in horses still learns towards curiosity instead of affection, I had certainly come a long way from someone who shot his mother down each time he was invited out to Black Diamond.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Place #3: The Ravine Trail Suddenly Becomes Inaccessible. 1:32 PM. Hazy.
I couldn't make it to Frick Park this week. I wanted to. Really, I needed to. I have a good reason why I didn’t.
Last week, I was in a car accident. It happened so fast that by the time I realized what had happened it was already over. Two older ladies, out late at night, made an illegal turn and had I not turned a little to my right, it would’ve been a head-on collision. I had my bell rung and my car was totaled beyond repair. Luckily, the medic checked me and found no sign of a concussion.
I was on my way to Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn to visit friends, a while outside of Pittsburgh, until a classmate was kind enough to get me and bring me back. Determined to leave Western Pennsylvania, I bought a next day Greyhound ticket and went ahead with my plans to leave the city. I’ve had a hard month and honestly, a car accident didn’t come as a surprise when only a week prior, my neighbor was cleaning his gun and had it fire through my kitchen wall when I was asleep. I felt like I just needed a break from the city, this city.
A few entries back, I touched on something about urban solitude. There’s something comforting, or rather was, to me about being in a giant city. Not unlike being in the woods, one is anonymous, overwhelmed with what they’re seeing, and despite everything teeming with life, one can feel really alone. I used to think that when this program was finished I’d head to a big city with a vibrant art scene such as Portland, San Francisco, or Brooklyn. I used to think it would be conducive to writing. I used to think that.
After I take the L Train over to Williamsburg, the temperature is already at 86 degrees. Concrete absorbs the heat, sustains it long after the sun goes down. There’s a haze over the East River. The streets are littered with Mexican beer bottles, cans of Four Loko, receipts, and broken glass. It’s garbage day. Open containers dot Berry/Nassau Avenue, giving the neighborhoods a stench not unlike the outside of a factory farm. This isn’t my first time in Williamsburg or Brooklyn, but this is the impression I find sticking with me.
I make it to Taylor’s apartment and she has some news for me: She’s moving to Vermont in one month. Taylor and I are both from Seattle and have kept in touch over such a long time. She’s been in New York since 2002 and has largely become an East Coaster. New York is now in her blood, but Washington was there first. You know where she’s from simply by her arborlust. Not too long ago, I would’ve been shocked that she would leave her cheap residence near the creative hub of the United States. Now taking off to Vermont almost makes sense.
Brooklyn is fun, but it doesn’t do the job that Frick Park has done for me the past couple of visits. Greenpoint is a Polish neighborhood and for a moment, I forget where I am when I don’t speak the language and have to point at items for my breakfast and dinner. The rats on the subway never cease to unnerve me. Bikers seem intent on running me over (everybody does lately, especially when I have the right of way). And it’s hot. Concrete hot. In our last night, thankfully, we spend it in McCurren Park, sitting on a baseball bench. There’s a hum of halogen, stadium lights, bottles and paper shards in the grass. This is as close to Frick Park as I’m going to get. Taylor and I start talking about Kanye West and I think of this line in Refuge that I’ve highlighted and underlined twice:
“Many men have forgotten what they are connected to,” my friend added. “Subjugation of women and nature may be a loss of intimacy within themselves.”
It started in my language first, the day I started saying I was from Washington instead of Seattle. I am connected to wood and water, the mountains and the steppe. Saltwater is in my veins, I long for coastlines, and my desire to be in them is overwhelming on the bus back to Pittsburgh. Washington is what I’m connected to, not the city. Can anyone really be connected to a city? The Seattle of my grandfather’s youth is gone, my mother’s too, and I’m rapidly losing the grip on my incarnation. But it’s not about the city, is it? When people ask about what where I’m from is like, the first thing I’ll mention is the view of Puget Sound from my mother’s home. Is it any wonder why in weeks prior, when I smelled the aromatic grass in Frick Park the first thing I compared it to was an orchard?
While I long for home, it is not easy to have that need filled. Frick Park has become an increasingly suitable alternative as I realize my connection is with the land, not a city. With my car about to be turned into a cube, my alternative is now inaccessible. Just outside of walking distance, I’ve arranged a ride to Ravine Trail in upcoming weeks. Until then, I’m left more anxious than I’d like to be.
Last week, I was in a car accident. It happened so fast that by the time I realized what had happened it was already over. Two older ladies, out late at night, made an illegal turn and had I not turned a little to my right, it would’ve been a head-on collision. I had my bell rung and my car was totaled beyond repair. Luckily, the medic checked me and found no sign of a concussion.
I was on my way to Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn to visit friends, a while outside of Pittsburgh, until a classmate was kind enough to get me and bring me back. Determined to leave Western Pennsylvania, I bought a next day Greyhound ticket and went ahead with my plans to leave the city. I’ve had a hard month and honestly, a car accident didn’t come as a surprise when only a week prior, my neighbor was cleaning his gun and had it fire through my kitchen wall when I was asleep. I felt like I just needed a break from the city, this city.
A few entries back, I touched on something about urban solitude. There’s something comforting, or rather was, to me about being in a giant city. Not unlike being in the woods, one is anonymous, overwhelmed with what they’re seeing, and despite everything teeming with life, one can feel really alone. I used to think that when this program was finished I’d head to a big city with a vibrant art scene such as Portland, San Francisco, or Brooklyn. I used to think it would be conducive to writing. I used to think that.
After I take the L Train over to Williamsburg, the temperature is already at 86 degrees. Concrete absorbs the heat, sustains it long after the sun goes down. There’s a haze over the East River. The streets are littered with Mexican beer bottles, cans of Four Loko, receipts, and broken glass. It’s garbage day. Open containers dot Berry/Nassau Avenue, giving the neighborhoods a stench not unlike the outside of a factory farm. This isn’t my first time in Williamsburg or Brooklyn, but this is the impression I find sticking with me.
I make it to Taylor’s apartment and she has some news for me: She’s moving to Vermont in one month. Taylor and I are both from Seattle and have kept in touch over such a long time. She’s been in New York since 2002 and has largely become an East Coaster. New York is now in her blood, but Washington was there first. You know where she’s from simply by her arborlust. Not too long ago, I would’ve been shocked that she would leave her cheap residence near the creative hub of the United States. Now taking off to Vermont almost makes sense.
Brooklyn is fun, but it doesn’t do the job that Frick Park has done for me the past couple of visits. Greenpoint is a Polish neighborhood and for a moment, I forget where I am when I don’t speak the language and have to point at items for my breakfast and dinner. The rats on the subway never cease to unnerve me. Bikers seem intent on running me over (everybody does lately, especially when I have the right of way). And it’s hot. Concrete hot. In our last night, thankfully, we spend it in McCurren Park, sitting on a baseball bench. There’s a hum of halogen, stadium lights, bottles and paper shards in the grass. This is as close to Frick Park as I’m going to get. Taylor and I start talking about Kanye West and I think of this line in Refuge that I’ve highlighted and underlined twice:
“Many men have forgotten what they are connected to,” my friend added. “Subjugation of women and nature may be a loss of intimacy within themselves.”
It started in my language first, the day I started saying I was from Washington instead of Seattle. I am connected to wood and water, the mountains and the steppe. Saltwater is in my veins, I long for coastlines, and my desire to be in them is overwhelming on the bus back to Pittsburgh. Washington is what I’m connected to, not the city. Can anyone really be connected to a city? The Seattle of my grandfather’s youth is gone, my mother’s too, and I’m rapidly losing the grip on my incarnation. But it’s not about the city, is it? When people ask about what where I’m from is like, the first thing I’ll mention is the view of Puget Sound from my mother’s home. Is it any wonder why in weeks prior, when I smelled the aromatic grass in Frick Park the first thing I compared it to was an orchard?
While I long for home, it is not easy to have that need filled. Frick Park has become an increasingly suitable alternative as I realize my connection is with the land, not a city. With my car about to be turned into a cube, my alternative is now inaccessible. Just outside of walking distance, I’ve arranged a ride to Ravine Trail in upcoming weeks. Until then, I’m left more anxious than I’d like to be.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)