Editor’s note: Destination Appreciation

The editor’s note I wrote up for the Gazette’s 8.4 issue. Portland even gets a shoutout!

During my short time as a journalist, I’ve encountered a lifetime’s worth of unusual and interesting people: from mountaineers to monks, from werewolf experts to wildlife biologists, from career criminals to career Santa Clauses, there’s hardly an unusually positioned element of society that I haven’t rubbed elbows with at some point.

The exotic encounters haven’t stopped since I moved to Cannon Beach. Around here, especially come summertime, it seems, you really never know who you’re going to meet walking down Hemlock Street.

On July 26, I made a new friend from Thailand: Suwannee Sarakana, a Bangkok-based painter who visits Cannon Beach with her boyfriend each summer. A breezy beachside community of 1,700 is a far cry from the hubbub of her hometown, but Sarakana says she loves downshifting here at the beach, where the fresh scenery serves as constant inspiration for her oil and watercolor paintings.

Last week, I gave directions to a South Korean family looking for (you guessed it) Haystack Rock, and learned that their son was attending my college alma mater.

Last month, I had a cappuccino with a German photographer passing through town on his way home from Mexico.

The wandering spirit is also well and alive in Cannon Beach residents themselves. When asked what they loved and remembered best about the late Irv Levine, friends and family described a man with an adventuring spirit who relished long stretches of open road and the feel of what his son described as “the wind in his rapidly thinning hair.” Levine first caught the travel bug during a tour of duty as a Merchant Marine, and in his later years, he took trips to Alaska, Mexico and the Caribbean. But Levine was also firmly rooted here in Cannon Beach, which he stubbornly insisted was the best place on earth, and who cares what the weather is doing?

Perhaps this unusual mix of hometown pride and global curiosity is the natural result of spending one’s days in a “destination.” I’ve lived in touristy areas before, including the world’s most popular vacation spot (think: a 1,000-foot steel colossus and 246 kinds of cheese) and a teensy tropical island that fielded such a large number of cruise ship passengers that the locals had taken to calling them “pod people.”

There are downsides, yes (attempted to “drive” down Hemlock Street this week?), but in the end, I think finding yourself living in such a place constitutes a rather lucky turn of fate. First and most obviously, a tourist spot has got to have a few major things going for it, or everyone who isn’t from there wouldn’t constantly be trying to go there. Second: when the streets fill up, it’s mainly with large clumps of very relaxed and happy human beings ambling slowly along in a blissful oblivion as they munch on local goodies. (In Paris, the visitors wielded huge, crusty baguette sandwiches. In Cozumel, it was plastic baggies of sweet, sweating pineapple. Around here, lately, it’s fragrant, drippy waffle cones.) You can’t help but inhale a few of their happy vibes as you pass them on the left.

Third: living in an internationally beloved town grants you access to a much wider cross-section of humanity than you would encounter in, not to pick on anyone, but, oh, say … Portland. (That is, if to you “diversity” means more than drinking Midwestern beer while listening to super-obscure Canadian garage pop in the company of a bunch of oddly-dressed Caucasian folks on a street named after a guy who everybody is pretty sure fought for something noble somewhere far away a couple decades ago.)

Yesterday alone, I picked out threads of conversation in Italian, Dutch and Japanese from my office window. Who knew such a little place could be so, well, cosmopolitan? ¡Qué maravilloso!

Creating a writing plan

We’re discussing writing plans in the creative writing class I teach, and I worked up this questionnaire to get my students thinking more carefully about just what it is they’re after as writers.

What will it take to keep you at the keys?

The Writing Plan

Whether you’re after literary fame and fortune, want to see your byline in a newspaper, or are simply hoping to establish a satisfying personal writing routine, setting down your realistic intentions on paper is key. We can take a cue from a famous business maxim:

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

Five questions to help you work out a plan:

• What are my (tangible and intangible) long-term writing goals and how do the complement/contradict each other?

• What small actions can I take on a weekly basis to help me achieve them?

• How can I measure my progress, and how often should I measure it?

• What is likely to make success difficult and how will I overcome these roadblocks?

• A year from now, what would success look like to me?

 

And now, to help you ponder, a few thoughts from a very wise writer:

“What separates writers from those who want to be writers? Writing.

 What encourages consistency in writing practice? A plan.

 Any writer who has stuck with writing likely has a plan. It might not be one fully formed and articulated on paper, but a plan’s a plan, no matter what form it ends up taking. When you get to the end of any structured writing experience—a class, a critique group, a weeklong conference—it is always a good idea to take a moment to think about what you will do next.

Writing is an activity that doesn’t have inherent deadlines and a focused structure, so it is your job to take the time to create a structure and set your own expectations and intentions. If you have set goals or intentions for yourself in the past, now is a good time to see how much closer you are to meeting those goals or how much you have followed through on your intentions. Finding out that you have largely forgotten about them is a great wake up call, and a nice excuse to create a better, less avoidable plan of action for the future. On the other hand, finding out that you have met some goals you made gives you an opportunity to see how you can meet even more in.”

-From “The Craft of a Plan” by Brandi Reissenweber

 

There is …

… this one spot on my living room couch and this one certain time of early evening where the sun glints so bright on the doorknob that it almost makes me blind. But somehow, I can’t stop staring, and hard, at that. A lot of things are that way, I guess. I’ve never been too easy or reasonable. But a stubborn and tireless heart … That, at the very freaking least, I’ve got. Inimitable, clicheed, perhaps, but ah, well …

I’ve been considering lately all manner of social experiments I might enact during my 30th year, set to commence the end of August. Top of the list: no lies, for an entire year. It is likely to destroy me and all of my personal relationships, but it will entertain, at the very least. And it’ll be good for me, who is so accustomed to hiding. I hold a lot of ridiculous secrets. I’m curious to know what happens when they come tumbling out. Somehow, I’m also indifferent.

The older you get, I suppose, the less you care about seeming. That’s certainly a gift. I know some lament the twilight of their youth. I mean, Jesus! Thirty!! I can still clearly recall a time when I pitied those who’d reached such a grand and indecorous number. Once, years ago, on a big night out in Rome with hostelmates I’d ony just met, we all decided it would be fun to go in a circle and tell our ages and occupations. It was 21-23 and “student” all round – American, Japanese, Mexican, Korean – till we came to an Austrailian girl in a slightly too short red dress.

“I’m a bit older than the rest of you,” she said. “I’m 29.”

I felt such pity for her. Me, 21 and totally idiotic, knowing at once everything and nothing. I could scarcely comprehend such a terribly old age.

And now. Yes, the hangovers get more brutal each year, and, yes, it becomes ever more difficult to cast off worries, and yes, I carry by this late hour a comet’s tail of neuroses, and yes, the nightmares that have plagued me since childhood are more brutal and full of vengeance than ever before, but I gotta say. I’m excited for this new turn.

Time hits you, like it our not. I think I’ve decided to like it. Fully.

Recent forays into photojournalism

About two months ago, I purchased my first “real” camera lens – a Canon 55mm 1.5 – and I am finally getting the hang of the thing. Transitioning to a fixed focal length lens has been challenging in some ways; I find that I still need to bring my crummy old 18-55 lens with me on photo assignments for the paper, as it works better in tight spaces and lets me squeeze more stuff into the frame. But mostly it’s just wonderful.

When we redesigned the paper six months back, our team committed to seeking out better lead cover art and running it big. As I am the primary reporter-photographer as well as editor, it’s been up to me to find great art for each and every issue since we made the change. This has been tricky at times, but my handy 55 mm makes much easier work of it. I have so little formal training, and much of the photo work I’ve done since getting started in the newspaper biz a year and a half ago has been crash course, trial-and-error type stuff. After some assignments, I come back to the officy giddy and thrilled. Other times, I’m hard pressed to find one usable photo out of 50, especially when tricky indoor lighting comes into play.

I have much appreciation for the photographers of the world – they toil immeasurably, often for little financial reward, and the visual record they leave behind constitutes a vital accompaniment to our collective written history. But I do have to say … Having this glorious, glassy, light-gobbling lens has bumped up the quality of what I produce considerably …  Who knew the equipment and not just the user could make such a difference?

I am getting a particular thrill out of portraits. I write lots of profiles and features and it’s just such a blast and a challenge trying to capture people’s personalities in still format. I find people are either thrilled at the prospect of being photographed or absolutely horrified – few fall in the middle. Those who are game make my job easy, as they’ll naturally pose themselves and seek out fun props. With the hesitant, the trick becomes finding ways to loosen them up. I’ve inadvertently developed a bad comedy routine that I run through when I’m shooting photos of such subjects. It involves all sorts of corny jokes and proddings too painful to repeat here, but it seems to work well. I think it’s easy to forget sometimes that adults have just as many neuroses as insecurities as kids do – as journalists, we expect grown ups to arrive at interviews calm, cool and ready to “give good quote,” but this can be dangerous. The Korean have a concept called “kibun,” which involves having the ability to sense where a person is in space, mentally and physically, and to react to them based on those observations. Good kibun is a journalist’s – and photojournalist’s – best friend.

I am shy to post these, as I know so many amazing photojournalists whose work blows mine out of the water. But I’ve been trying to be inspired and not intimidated by the great work my contemporaries are doing, so here goes. A few recent shots.

Photo by Erin J. Bernard

Photo by Erin J. Bernard

Photo by Erin J. Bernard

Blessed Saturday and the Anti-Apocalypse

It has been said that the fundamental weakness of journalism is its tendency to distort reality by focusing exclusively on those precious few things which actually do happen, as opposed to all the zillions of things that do not. This tends to result, often, in a skewed social conception of just how often Big Things (think murders, floods, lottery hauls and disasters of great magnitude) actually occur.
Mostly, really, life is a whole lot of nothing much. If you stop and think about it, for most of us, sensation and intrigue come in pitifully short shrift. The measure of our days is mostly pacing and puttering and watch gazing and laundry folding. It’s tuna sandwiches and static cling and half-smiles and letters that get lost in the mail.
Not today! Today, May 21, 2011, Nothing took its rightful place in the annals of public memory. Today, the Anti-Event To End All Anti-Events enjoyed its moment in the sun.
As a journalist myself, I am tempted to ask: how does one report on the failure of the world to end, as predicted by a noisy and (arguably) fringy contingent of the Christian population and as ridiculed by just about everyone else, including those who fully subscribe to the inevitability of an Apocalypse, well, someday.
Judging by the output of my news-reporting brethren across the globe, you toss out a few puns, or you compose high-minded commentary that is the journalistic equivalent of an indulgent chuckle, a you-must-be-joking shoulder punch.
But that’s a boring question anyway.
Much more interesting: how does one conduct oneself in the face of a looming oblivion?
I’ve often said that if through some improbable turn of events I was able to know in advance that I had an hour to live, I’d buy a pack of cigarettes and a big ol’ plastic tub of deli macaroni and cheese (because they are both SO BAD BY WHICH I MEAN SO GOOD, and because out of a desire to prolong my life and shrink my ass I’ve sworn off these two principle vices) and I’d park my butt on a curb somewhere I’d smoke and I’d eat and that’d be about it.
But in truth, my trial-run apocalypse went more like this:
After dreaming all night of flying and skydiving, I awoke late, at my grandmother’s house, and went for a run. I ate a bowl of Reese’s Puffs. I filled a prescription at Fred Meyers and drank a bottle of fermented tea. I bought a tumbler.
As the morning passed, I found myself pondering a bumper sticker slogan that had enjoyed brief and widespread prominence in the early ‘90s: “Jesus is coming – look busy.”
It seemed like solid advice. And what better place to feign spiritual busy-ness than within the hallowed walls of a church? It’s been more than a decade since I’ve counted myself among the faithful. (And it was a Spectacular Departure, let me tell you. But not here. Somewhere else, I promise.) I do, however, recognize that choosing to accept or reject the premise of God constitutes a wager of a kind, perhaps the biggest wager any of us will ever make, depending how the cards fall.
And, like any gambler, I recognize the wisdom in hedging bets, so when my grandma invited me to go with her to church today, I did.
To be precise, it wasn’t a mass we attended, but rather a funeral, accompanied by a mass. It was for a relative I hadn’t known well, a woman named Lovey. She’d been a cousin of mine, but only by the loose and generous terms that tend to link up all Middle Eastern people who do their living and their dying in close proximity to each other.
The last time I’d seen her was the fall of 1993, when my grandmother and I went to her house for dinner. She served us pot roast, I recalled, of which I’d eaten four helpings. I hadn’t particularly wanted the last two of these, but Lovey, legendary for her hospitality, wouldn’t stop offering and insisting, and it seemed indecorous to refuse.
“Bless her heart,” she’d murmured admiringly to my grandmother as I shoveled down the final agonizing bite. “Just bless her heart.”
When it became clear that she was going to die, Lovey had requested a “traditional funeral,” which at our family’s Maronite Catholic church translated to heaping helpings of Arabic and Aramaic, long intervals of standing and chanting, and a glut of burning frankincense that, when lit, hits the back of the throat with all the choke and kick of a finely ground chili powder tossed to open flame.
I shifted in my cowboy boots and considered the iconography around me as the afternoon wore on. I imagined the stained glass windows quivering and then shattering as the saints stepped from the oversized tableaux hanging behind the altar to take the hands of the faithful and lead them in a winding parade upward. I knew the chances of me being offered a place in that heaven-bound train was scant, but perhaps my mere presence in a church would spare me a painful smiting. All things being equal, it had to at least count for something! I mean, I could have been at a bus stop or a strip club or a casino or something, right? If Jesus was, indeed, on his way, no way was I getting caught somewhere remotely sleazy.
After mass, we congregated in the church’s drafty basement for a traditional Lebanese wake – lots of cheek pinching and eating, gallons of watery coffee tempered with instant creamer. More prayers and supplications, then out with the platters of grape leaves and tabouli as stoop-shouldered patriarchs worked the crowd.
Shivering in that old hall, I supped on a plate of hummus and baba ganoush and considered how I might best spend my (perhaps) last three hours of existence. The mere thought exhausted me. I felt crabby and tired, as I often do after funerals.
So I rounded up the members of our motley carpool, I steered my grandmother’s Buick back to her house and I laid down in my mother’s bed for a nap.
When evening fell, I arose and drank a Diet Coke out on the back porch. The air smelled nothing short of glory-filled, so sweet and luscious I wanted to eat it, fill my insides with it. I gulped it like a starving man. In the park beyond, a baseball game was in full swing. I watched two kindergarteners chase each other around one of those old-fashioned giant Gatorade dispenser thingys. I eyed the horizon warily as a few teenagers passing by cracked jokes about UFOs. I pondered choices I’d made, and would make. And I sensed, instinctively, on faith if you’ll indulge me, that they’d been the right ones.
At 6 p.m., a breeze kicked up. I stood and went back inside. I looked at my grandmother, who sat dozing on the flowered davenport, still dressed entirely in black. A woman of great faith who could surely count herself among the chosen if the appointed hour ever came. I would not be joining her, and we both knew it, but whatever would or would not happen in the seconds and eternities to come, we were still here, together, right now.
“I’m hungry,” I announced.
She rubbed her eyes.
“How about Elmer’s? Do waffles sound good?” she asked.
I nodded and picked up the car keys off the counter.
Waffles sounded good indeed. Blessedly, blessedly so.

Last night, I had a dream I was a car muffler …

I woke up exhausted.

Where I’m sat

Gunning for a whole new website pretty soon, here. My designer boyfriend is going to help out with building it … Just an aside.

I had a thought the other day. I had a lot of thoughts that day, actually, but there’s a particular one that I keep circling back to.

I was watching this unruly gang of about four or five teenagers outside of Safeway the other afternoon. They were sitting on the sidewalk, backs up against the building, sharing a cigarette and eating some gruesome-looking Chinese takeout. And it occurred to me that now that I’m an adult I don’t get nearly enough opportunities to sit on the ground. When I was younger, I sat all over the place. Against buildings, in hallways, in the yard, in parking lots. Didn’t matter if the ground was dirty or what have you. I always enjoyed the feel of solid ground beneath my ass. It was comforting.

Nowadays I have precious little time to kill and when I do sit, it’s usually either in my shitty office chair or the driver’s seat of my car. Or – horrors! – the couch, where the once-adventurous come to die.

My life trajectory has me fairly stationary these days, and that’s cool. But I would like to experiment with new ways of reclining. Back in Korea, I guess I did spend a lot of time sitting on the ground, as that’s the way most homes and restaurants were set up. And of course, on the road, you’re always squatting or crouching in bus stations or in front of hostels or whatever, because there’s just a lot more waiting that happens in strange and unadorned locales. I want to bring a little more of that spirit to my daily doings.

Paros, Greece

The forgetting

She used to picture him dying. The How wasn’t really so important. An angry wave smashing down over him as he stood at the bow of a clipper ship, perhaps, the last salty moments punctuated by gurgles and shrieks; a crashlanded plane, a runaway train, a quick tumble from his cedar-shingled roof one summer dusk onto the waiting spikes of a wrought-iron fence. Or maybe it was something pedestrian: a car crash, a heart attack, a rogue blood clot swimming up from his leg into his brain, the spreading numbness, then silence. His wife finding him. Her tears.

Whatever and however it was didn’t matter in the least to her. All she cared to fantasize about was the stark finality of it, his sudden and utter absence from this world, his unwitting departure to a place from which there would finally be no path back. Because somewhere inside, his returning was what she feared most. She’d pictured it too many times, this day she would find him on her doorstep, head bowed, knapsack spilling open, finally sorry. It would be too late, of course. She would send him away with harsh words and a dismissive flick of the hand. But it was his coming at all that could finally break her, she knew.

The sheer terror of that potentiality was the source of enormous strain, even when years had passed and he no longer knew her phone number or address, no longer tried to send her sad, half-sorry letters or old photographs. She could always map out some improbable way he might get back and it kept both her dread and her hope alive. It turned her hairs white and disturbed her sleep and made her gnash her teeth so hard at night she’d wake up with her jaw aching.

He, who had ruined every single thing and then trotted off to start the whole mess all over again, only with someone new. She didn’t hate him. Not really. She merely wanted him gone away forever, redeposited to a place where his absolute indifference to her existence could be excused. She wanted him erased.

Today Was …