astoria.mung.net

We headed out early this morning to Oswald West State Park.

By the time we ended parking around 9am, the parking lot was full. I had forgotten there was a surfer culture here, much more nomadic than the southerly surfer species. Mostly suburu hatchbacks, VW hippie-vans and crusty looking Datsuns¹ with plates from Idaho, Washington, but mostly Oregon, all converging here.

With beatific faces, the surfers are making a religious trek, lugging surfboards and coolers of cheap beer.
All of them with a burnt out/in look, perhaps of staring at the sun for far too long or of a dedicated asceticism to something I’ll never know. All worm smooth by the wind, sea and sun. All decidedly friendly to us, since we didn’t have surfboards.²

As we arrived onto Short Sands Beach, the cold mist was burning off, and the sun was getting warm on our backs. The kids were running around, getting their feet wet in the cold, cold water. Dogs were running around, for once at peace with the world: the surf drowning out the man-made noises that must surely drive them nuts and an almost limitless expanse of sand to run on. Me? I got reminded why I live where I do.

1. that always seemed to contain exactly four dudes [↩]
2. I’m told north of here at “the point” nearby seaside, the surfers are downright predatory of any and everyone. [↩]

HelmetJohnPDF

May 31st, 2008 ~4:23pm

Every once in a while, this town can still collapse the socio-economic strata into a mishmash. I was going to say “of a bygone era” but I know that was never true. One of the things that first impressed me about the town was the level of integration between most of the classes due to sheer physical proximity: Everyone had to shop at the same stores, eat at the same restaurants, live in the same neighborhoods and walk the same streets.¹ But given the recent buildup, even though the town has not physically grown outward, it has grown upward, reducing the sense of a level playing field: No one above or below.²

And so word³ came round that some schmuck had stolen Helmet John’s helmet: a brown, scuffed up helmet, held together with duct tape, spit and love. Soon enough, either someone gave him a new helmet or he dug deep into his handcart of suitcases, backpacks, duffel bags, shoe boxes and cardboard boxes and pulled out another one. Perhaps it was a prank or there is some underground helmet for cash market to feed some meth habit, but having marred something so iconic, you have to wonder what’s next?

1. There is little option otherwise, since there are really only two or threes streets that can be walked with any interest [↩]
2. Again, I wasn’t here in the 80’s and only have a bit of an inkling of how in the dumps this place and everyone in it was. [↩]
3. I’m a bit disappointed that I didn’t read about this in The Daily A or find it the Astoria Regional Dispatch reports [↩]

Stalking Dandelions PDF
April 26, 2008 ~2pm

It’s still sunny now (1:50pm). It rained all week and for once it’s sunny on the weekend. So with my trusty “weed-hound,”¹ I go outside and start stalking dandelions.

If you accept the idea of lawns as aseptic expanses of fuzz, then the worst offender aesthetically is the Dandelion.² If you accept lawns are pretty to look at, if they generate a soothing, numb feeling in you, and if seamless geometry has a great deal to do with pleasing the eyes, then Dandelions break up the flow, like phlegm in flawlessly-cleaned urinal, caught in the plastic mesh guard –like an apéritif for the pink urinal cake.

The weed-hound is hungry.

So I’m outside in the sun, weed-hound in hand. At first, they are are hard to spot, camo’d in the grass.³ They squat and crouch along the ground unmoving: they know I am hunting them.

For the first few minutes, I walk quietly around the yard, trying to “see without seeing,” i.e., if I try to look at any one spot, I’m never going to see them. They don’t register directly, only peripherally, just out of the reach of vision. So I stay quiet and loosen up my focus and wait. Being loud or blundering will only make them skedaddle and disappear. But all it takes is spotting the first one. Once you do, you start seeing them everywhere. Where you thought there were only four or five, you realize that there are ten, twenty; more than you can count quickly. Frustratingly, the more you remove, the more that remain.

The pat explanation is that as you pull one up, their leaves no longer provide cover, and so another three to four dandelions are uncovered, blinking in the sunlight. The more sinister, conspiratorial explanation is that Astoria —already riddled with tiny streams, unseen paths; streets that stop, then start 50 feet away— has tiny tunnels which allow the elves, rampart around here, to immediately shove another dandelion up through the dirt, whenever you pull one out of the earth.

The sun is blazing (for the Northwest). Soon, I spot a big one. Its hairy leaves spread out, hugging the ground. It hasn’t seen me yet, so I start lining up my shot. Like any big game hunt, the first shot is usually the last shot. If you wing or clip it, you aren’t going to have much to show for it afterwards. I take my time, wipe the sweat out of my eyes, and slow my breathing down; the trick is to squeeze the trigger between heartbeats. Don’t forget to take into account: Wind, Temperature, Humidity, the Coriolis effect, etc. Aim for the center. Aim for what can not be seen: The Root that lies beneath. Miss that and you’re no better off than if you were planting them yourself.

I squeeze the trigger and follow it with a foot stomp to drive the weed-hound deep into the heart of the dandelion. It’s a silent kill; there’s no struggle. It pulls out of the ground clean and true, root and all. It’s a big one, easily two feet across from tip to tip. One bagged, many more to go. I could spend hours zoned out and zened in, pursuing the shimmery sheen of the perfect lawn. Man’s fight to subjugate nature, right here, right outside my door.

1. http://www.hound-dog.com/weed_hound.htm [↩]
2. The ones out here are actually called “False Dandelions” (Hypochaeris radicata) which is annoying on yet another level: Not only are they a pain in the butt aesthetically, but they don’t even have the decency to be the real thing. [↩]
3. For something that seems to blend in so well, they make the yards and houses on them look abandoned. I don’t know why this is the case. Perhaps, dandelions are signifiers for abandonment, but when I look at my house I know it’s not abandoned but the yard still looks like crap. I have not fully worked this out and don’t intend to in this pensées. [↩]