8.8.16 #1

(I keep writing parts of "essay posts" and run out of steam, so I'm going to try some straight-up journaling and see how it goes.)

I've been in Tacoma for almost a week. It's been interesting. The whole place feels so worn down and burdened. The signs are faded, there's a fair amount of trash, the aesthetics are industrial and defeated. I keep wondering what Seattle is like, if there's more life there. In Tacoma, it's kind of sinister. There's a fair amount of homelessness, graffiti, etc. It feels like the land and its people are angry. I don't know what they're angry about. Poverty? Past misdeeds of white settlers? Changing economics? It's just so different from sanitized Salt Lake City, where everything was clean and suppressed. Here, it hangs out in the open for all to see. It's scarier, in some ways. I kind of like it.

I miss home a lot. Tacoma's like bizzaro Knoxville; it's overflowing with vegetation. But it's darker, moodier. I can totally see why vampires and werewolves would live here. It feels punkier, fierce, untamed in a way the South felt so stagnant and resigned. I have one bluegrass CD in my car (from "the everybodyfields"), and I listen to it over and over again. I wish I was home. I feel like I took it for granted. I feel like I didn't give it a chance. Like I judged it too much, expected too much from it. I want slow and sad. I want the places I remember. The plants, the trees. The Smokies (where you don't even have to pay to enter). The people I knew, most of whom have left it anyway. I want everything to be familiar. And easy. I want things to be easy. So, so easy.