Taxonomies of Passersby
A photo of my blurry face taken by Riley.
I have crossed three borders in the matter of two days. Something happened in the ten seconds between being thanked for visiting Oregon and then being welcomed to California. I felt home again, although home is at least twelve hours from those poppie bunches on a blue sign off the I-5.
There is this thing about place and how one fits within it. There are different spaces of places or vice versa. Seattle is a city that has this well aged elegance. Clear marked sections all the while remaining this kind of outdoorsy flair. I think it is because most people were wearing the kind of things that define them as those who like hikes up down and around mountains and tall trees.
Oregon is rougher around the edges. It seems like a place full of small towns. There are lakes and rivers and farms. Also wild fires.
California covers a lot of ground. Mountains, lakes, oceans, deserts, and all kinds of people. There is even a town called Weed.
There were many small towns that showed me all the previous ideas I harbored about small towns were too big. I imagined Woodburn, Oregon’s youth. I imagined them wanting to get out as fast as they could. But they are from Woodburn and I am not. It felt suffocating to realize how many people there are. So many strangers and passersby. There are people more, less, and equally qualified than me to be me. There are better daughters, sisters, friends, girlfriends, drivers, bakers, and philanthropists. On the other hand, there are people that make me look like a professional dry cleaner with authentic framed autographed photos on the wall.
People look different depending on where you are. It is like seeing a dolphin in the ocean and a bobcat in the hills. They each belong to their environments. People from Oregon look like Oregon. I don’t look like Oregon. Today, I saw three separate individual men in their twenties pass me by on Sunset Boulevard. They had the same look more or less. Curated messiness that costs more than what should be acceptable. They all belonged to Silverlake, and the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area for that matter. However, they would not fit the population aesthetics of, say Bakersfield.
When I was in Alaska and had the opportunity to speak to someone in my peer group who was also not from Alaska. They mentioned something I have been unable to shake from my brain. They said that when you encounter a new place, the people that live there make it seem like a zoo. It makes sense. Like Elephants in a Zoo enclosure are seen in a place that mimics Africa and the Pandas are always surrounded by bamboo. People from a place are in their respected habitat.
Alaskans are a casual dressing population, who drive trucks for the purposes of trucks, and they have a chip on their shoulder regarding the lower forty eight. Kind of like how an older brother reminds the younger brother that they are older and taller, disregarding any important attributes like brains and good looks.
People in Seattle wear a lot of Nirvana Shirts and are very nice. The minimal population of Oregon I interacted with seem to be very trusting. They like to talk and want to make sure you drive safe. The people of California who live where I don’t have this element of calm placidity. A life where you wake up early and avoid driving into town because it is town which means riff raff and traffic lights and distracted pedestrians.
In the matter of three states and two days, I learned I can drive a van. It also came to my attention that I think it is so very possible to exist in environments of all kinds. The rugged ones and the medium rugged ones too. It made me re-imagine what Los Angeles is like. It is like a lot of things, except mine.
