The Oregon Now Far Away

Due to unfortunate family circumstances, I've found myself withdrawn into books for the past few weeks, doing little else except sleep and fulfill my Army duties. As a result, my thoughts have returned to familiar patterns, remembering the days where every action I took echoed a narrative in my mind. This is the situation I find myself in, a delightful accident that I will try to take advantage of in days and weeks to follow. For now, here is something I scribbled while daydreaming in class. Don't tell my superiors.

I heaved a sigh and looked around. Oregon seemed so much different now. As a restless youth, I had grown to loathe the place, not having or requiring a reason why.

Oregon was too nice, too full of good people, good places, and good ideas. Oregon strove to kill you with kindness, the Ned Flanders of the US. I had become Homer Simpson, hating the place that was driven to help raise me as a believer in good ideals: community, altruism, intellect, and cultural importance.

Now, with years between me and my last residence here in Portland, I realized the foolishness (naive foolishness) of this restless dislike. Portland, of course, was a different locale than my native Bend, though I wonder if my reaction would have been all that different.

Portland is a different beast altogether, though. It distinguishes itself from the college towns (Corvallis), hippy experiments (Eugene), yuppievilles (Bend), and cow-towns (just about everywhere else) by being undefinable. I used to believe it was just a young kid pining to live up to his hero, Seattle, but that is a patently incorrect assumption, albeit an easy assumption to make. The only way I can imagine to explain this city to say that it's as though the original settlers saw that this area was naturally rich in the reasource culture, a very rare, elemental thing, and built a city to properly harness, refine, and trade that reasource. The town is bursting at the seams with artistic energy, from the parade of uniquely interesting people that populate it to the funky businesses that conduct their commerce there.

This is the epitome of the modern city. This city flourishes how they will for futures to come. This city provides a blueprint that all successful places will follow. A city of ideals, dreams, individuality, and safety. This is Portland.

-Kendle "Five-Books-in-Two-Weeks" Kelley