Name Two Things

Two things that come to mind when Portland, Oregon is mentioned? Books and beer, of course. This hasty pic was snapped at The Brooklyn Pub. x

Pesticide vs. Boing Boing

    Shortly after we moved to Hungary, an industrial accident occured in Veszprém county, western Hungary. Presumably a wet European summer had helped create and exacerbate a rupture in the waste reservoir wall of an aluminum plant. After the wall burst, one million cubic meters of caustic sludge, in the form of a brick red mud, flooded the area at half-past midnight on October 4th, 2010, coating nearby towns with a host of processing by-products, colorful but poisonous oxides, (including a calcium oxide, coincidentally, called "portlandite") which gave the slurry its painterly hue.
  The featured photo above was taken by Spanish artist Palindromo Meszaros and is part of a series called "The Line".  It is a striking photo and a fine visual example of those seemingly diametrically opposed concepts, beauty and disaster.
  One of my favorite blogs, the techno/culture/art site Boing Boing, featured this photo on one of its recent posts. Pesticide soon picked up on the post and responded, in a way, with the following headline, which was as snarky as expected:
"Foreign Hipsters Mesmerized by Beauty of Hungarian 'Red Sludge' Disaster"

  Both Pesticide and Boing Boing are two of my most read blogs, so this snide distillation of Boing Boing on the part of my belovedly Hungarian flavored Pesticide is kind of delighful. It is a privilege to admire the ironic beauty of someone else's disaster. You can be sure the people who suffered through the red sludge spill find little beauty there, even in Meszaros' cleverly aligned photographs. Other sides, once again.

Links to both articles: http://www.pestiside.hu/20120717/foreign-hipsters-mesmerized-by-beauty-of-hungarian-red-sludge-disaster/

http://boingboing.net/2012/07/11/trees-stained-by-a-toxic-spill.html

Doors Between Worlds

It takes quite a while for my own self-imposed rules to settle in and get comfortable. About a year ago I made a rule for myself. I promised myself I would never write when I was feeling too emotionally raw or when my typical mental simmer threatens to boil over.
   For a while that rule felt at home. That rule wore the fucking pants as far as writing was concerned. Tonight, that rule is curled up in a corner sucking its thumb while my id indulges in all out mania. Thing is, I feel so ready to boil over, I think it's necessary for me to spill a little bit here on this blog, now officially in transition, just like me and my family. I'm hoping it will also help mop up some of the mess.
  I'm raw right now. Raw as rug burn. I feel surrounded by doors that won't open, keyless or simply unable to be opened. Something will happen. Some door will open and I fear what might be on the other side. Other sides...it's a motif in my puny little life these days.

The Other Side

The Other Side always looks burnished and bursting with promise. The Other Side seems to be holding out its dear, strong arms to embrace you when you finally reach it.
  Well. The Other Side is beautiful, but it is as complex and imperfect as the place from which you long for it.
  I'm basically happy to be back in Portland. This city, for me, was The Other Side for quite a while. And it truly is a wonderful place and I look forward to giving life to some of those rosy intentions I nursed like pupae before we moved back here. I think, since I've always been an American, the culture shock for a returning expat is not a shock at all but perhaps better described as "alternative culture acclimation process". I was asked several times, three days after returning to Portland, what the culture shock was like. At the time I said, "what culture shock? It's just great to be back". A few days later, I felt myself longing for a walk across the Margit Bridge at night all alone... the warm, buttery sounds of Hungarian rising from the street below, through the giant windows of our urban flat.I had to blink back the tears when thinking about how the dusky, February sky glowed coral pink over Orszaghaz as large, green ice floes cruised under the bridge, heading south down the Danube. Yesterday, I had a passionate, private, full-on bout of crying as I thought about my favorite kavehaz in Vizivaros, just across the bridge in Buda. Current practical and logistical hurdles aside, both of which have much to do with my mercurial state, I expect I will long for Budapest in this way for at least as long as I lived there. Right now, Budapest is The Other Side...I know many will be a bit surprised to know this. A Hungarian might say, "well, you just can't understand, you never will be Hungarian." Well, I never was and never will be Hungarian but I don't need to be to  feel a painful love, a love of a very Hungarian variety for the place right now .However, as many Hungarians know, the pleasure is most likely worth the pain. We shall see for this American.