Portland is bursting! The bubbling greens and layered blues radiate through bones. Roses look down across the pulsing city and their children blooming down alleys. Fresh, ripe bodies liter Portland like petals. Dreadlocks - sun dresses - tattoos - and patchwork jeans - piercings - buddhist prayer flags - resistance fists - sandals - and steel toed boots - all of it woven together - everywhere. For citizens, the bizarre style is as common on the youth as the old. Portland is the adolescence of our nation. That magic San Francisco feeling went wondering around America, tried to fly somewhere out in the wide, wide world and returned to build a scrapped home where the positive vibrations could nurse old wounds, sharpen teeth, and set sights for a struggle with a growing enemy.
The town is confused about itself, its country, and its planet. And like the new generation, the greatest conflict is inside itself, unsure of where to fit into a reality it finds both exciting and damning. You can read the emotion by the faces of the part-time workforce shopping for comfort in used vinyl, on the hands of unskilled boys attempting to become men, behind the whirl of business late bicyclists, and in the challenging eyes of homeless girls. A song born of frustration, yet still clinging to hope. Unlike Austin, which, supposedly, wants to remain strange for the sake of eccentricity, the City of Roses wishes to becoming an example of commercial and communal justice. Portland, like so many of us, is trying to emerge victorious against modern gluttony, but unable to let go of the rocknroll lifestyle that years of ignorant comfort have nearly perfected. Ultimately, the failure of such a magnificent dream will be the failure of an entire society.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
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1 comments:
Which is why we should all move there.
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