Invisible fishermen
By on June 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)
I frequent this pier because the fishermen upon it are usually rather talkative. Other fishers tuck in corners unseen from the road, precariously pass through closed gates and down steep hills to find distance and quiet. But the fishers upon this pier willingly sharing a small workspace with fellow enthusiasts and quickly engage in conversation. My presence is generally welcomed at this pier to prodding skepticism and inside jokes to which I am not privy. An interview on this pier could easily occupy my entire evening.
On my final attempt to search for anglers I found none. The fishers at this pier were absent. The parking lot empty, the shoulder of the road abandoned save beer bottles and tangled fishing line. In part I was relieved. I have grown tired of this search. At each visit to the Delta, the length of time it takes me to get out of my car has slowly increased. Rationalizing why not to talk to fishermen is on par with rationalizing why not to get out of bed in the morning. Sometimes I leave, feeling unable to take on the ten or so conversations I am about to find myself in. But most days I get out of the car and take the walk down the banks with clipboard in hand. Rarely do I head home on those evenings feeling like I made a wrong decision by meeting ten strangers.
***
Like the fishers, I have been absent; my imagination stifled by static verbs like ‘is’ and faulty sentence structures marked in red. Sometimes my writing gets talked out of existence, other times I can not see through the thick layers of heat that rest between me and any semblance of creativity. But mostly, my thoughts turn to the conversations with strangers I could be having if only I would get out of the car.
Powers of 10
By on May 22, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
“The emptiness is normal. The richness of our neighborhood is the exception.”
—Charles and Ray Eames, Powers of Ten
Slow Travel
By on May 21, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
I took the train to Los Angeles. I thought the 14 hour trip would be excruciatingly long and painful, but now all I can think about is trekking across the country on the rails where I can see the underbelly of American landscapes and farmers will stop their work to wave to me as I pass.
non-linear living
By on May 2, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Something should be said for moving in circles. I remember being a kid and spinning in my mom’s office chair as fast as I possibly could for as long as I possibly could. During the dizziness that followed such spinning my sister and I would challenge each other to see who could stay standing the longest.
The use of an office chair then versus now is drastically different. The chair I sit in now has no wheels, has a straight wooden back, and a narrow seat that seems to barely accommodates my wide hips. I slouch close to my computer screen unless explicitly thinking about working on my posture.
And somehow, this is the straight path. It is the path with a slight incline that keeps me just shy of out of breath but teases me with the promise of an eventual break.
I saw a speaker today who talked about thinking of the past spatially and visually rather than just temporally. He talked about the invention of the railways as the destruction of real time because they introduced universal time.
I think I prefer his notion of history, and I’d like to think about the future in the same way. I have a stack of interests and I can hardly separate one from another, let alone choose which one I most like. How does it change things if I think about making space for all of the things I’d like to do rather than making time for them?
Broderick Boat Ramp
By on April 22, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Acting in part to fulfill my new year’s resolution of becoming a morning person, I have begun to rise early in the day to search for fishers. I enjoy starting the day traveling along levee roads looking for cars precariously parked along the shoulder. Some mornings I see few cars. And as a general principle, I assume that fishers who are well hidden along the river bank are not particularly interested in talking—especially to a researcher at 8am. The same applies to fishers with headphones. I usually pass them by.
This morning I was luckier in my search when I came across the parking lot of the Sacramento River Walk. The lot was filled with cars, all of which I knew belonged to fishers. The Sacramento River Walks reminds me very much of the Los Angeles River. It is not paved, but is similarly used. What I assumed would be a single, paved path stretching along the river was in fact an intricate series of well-worn footpaths, all of which seemed to intersect and loop around one another. They are a sort of impromptu grid of streets, worn in throughout the year. Though I didn’t notice them at first, my eyes soon focused in on the tents that scattered the landscape, tucked amongst the chaparral and slightly out of view. I wasn’t particularly startled by the tents. But having had an extensive conversation last night about dog attacks, the barking dogs (also slightly out of view) certainly freaked me out.
Below the paths, though, is a long stretch of river beach that is scattered with broken slabs of concrete (from where, I’m not sure), and lined with fishers. There must have been sixty there this morning, all lined up along the water’s edge. My presence, of course, was noticed pretty quickly. While interviewing one fisher, the next would eavesdrop a bit and maybe even get involved in the conversation. The next person down the line inevitably saw me coming and had already decided whether or not he was willing to talk.
Sometimes the most skeptical fisher is the one most likely to talk with me for a while, as was the case with one fisherman today. I’ll write more about him soon, but I thought his greeting was particularly funny.
“Research,” he says. “Research is the reason why were are not allowed to catch any salmon.”
perilous mowing
By on April 16, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Excuse me, sir. These wildflowers bloom for but one month each year. Why exactly do you feel the need to mow them down? Is the shoulder of this freeway simply to distracting to passersby? I am very wary of senseless acts of mowing.
Farm creatures
By on April 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Well hello there.
By on March 27, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Hi Existential Media.
Thanks for inviting me to the family. I thought it might be helpful to give a bit of an introduction so as to avoid any confusion as to what exactly I’m doing here.
Generally, I feel a bit lost. This morning I left a frying pan on the stove for an hour before remembering my plans to cook an egg. During that hour I checked my email repeatedly, crocheted for a bit, filed away some full notebooks, and reviewed my schedule for next quarter.
This blog was originally called “Books and Boondoggling: Thoughts on urban, rural, and academic existence.” It is still all of those things, but I hope the new title exemplifies what I have been trying to do all along: focus.
I think a lot about feats of engineering, misleadingly idyllic landscapes, levee roads, concept maps, and getting my shit together.
Aerial Perspectives
By on March 19, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
I have begun to research the Delta in search of information on Fishermen.
Why examine the Delta for this information? In some ways, the Delta is an arbitrary scale at which to look. Environmental processes are intricately interconnected and binding ourselves within ‘the Delta’ is simply a way of making these complexities a bit more manageable. Indeed, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta has defined legal boundaries that make it misleadingly simple to determine what is included and what is excluded from the discussion. Writings on the Central Valley, the Sacramento Valley, and even the San Francisco bay intersect with the Delta. The term is a geological one, referring to the space at the mouth of a river where the channel of a river dissolves into marshy wetlands. Our local Delta is recognized as a site of historic importance and present concern.
In our case, there are two rivers at play. The Delta is the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. Once, the Delta was the place where the rivers dissolved into marshland and salt water intermingled with freshwater. The Delta has since been constructed by feats of engineering—transforming an otherwise uninhabitable wetland into a series of islands and waterways specifically aimed at transporting water to the masses. As Kevin Starr writes, “this eco-region sustains within itself every positive and negative legacy of the way that Americans have re-structured the environment since seizing California from Mexico in 1846.” The Delta is a messy place. The way it exists now in no way resembles the way it existed before the settlement of California. The Delta is so messy, in fact, that the first governance body created to ‘manage’ the Delta collapsed under its own stress. Most Californian’s get their water from the Delta, as do more than 18,000 farmers of the Central Valley who are in need of irrigation. There are literally millions of stakeholders dependent on the future success of the Delta.
(Image from Google Maps. Pretty sure I’m required to say that.)
Ribeye
By on February 22, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (7)
This is Ribeye. He is an excellent cow. While his pen mates are skittish and disinterested, Ribeye is gentle and eager for attention. He’s kind of a flirt, really. I’ve noticed that Ribeye is particularly fond of being scratched behind the ears and on the underside of his cheeks. Occaisionally I let his rough tongue lick my hand. Until recently, I had no concept of the emotional intelligence of a cow. When he attempted to chew through a water hose, I reprimanded Ribeye like a dog. Surprisingly, he backed away, cocked his head to the side a bit and turned his ears backwards. He was visibly shaken by my loud voice. Seeing the emotion in this cow makes for unstable ground. In April, my roommate (who owns and cares for the cows) will take Ribeye to the slaughter house. She’ll sell some of the meat, but most will come back to our house, along with his hide.
I am a vegetarian, but a loose one. I would say that I am an occasional cheater, but I made the rules so I don’t think that applies. My long-standing logic that I would only eat an animal raised in my back yard is about to be challenged and I am a bit nervous.
Also though…baby:
