So it's been a while

And there's a reason for that.

I've done some interesting things, this is true. Hiking the Powerline Trail (not Powerline Pass) was rewarding, seeing my mother in town for my birthday as nice, and every day brings new kinds of stuff to do and see - more gardening, more involvement at the bike co-op, more work on my own personal projects. But there is a reason that none of it needs to get blogged about.

That is because the more I live here the more I feel that, at least until now, this summer will be classified as a wash. That sounds negative. It isn't. It's neither negative or positive. It's a wash. The hikes and rides and sunsets have been beautiful - not life-changing. My work has taught me new skills and ways of thinking in the organizing world, but I haven't changed a thing and probably won't get a chance to due to the foot-dragging of the organization that funds our Get Out The Vote efforts. I've met good people, and we've had good times, but we've for the most part stayed ourselves. None of this is bad. And maybe I'm a fool to be like Spalding Gray in Thailand, searching for a "perfect moment" on magic mushrooms in the Gulf of Siam with my money on the beach.

But the fact is that Anchorage isn't really Alaska, and it isn't really a city. Homer and Seward seemed to me to be actually Alaska. I'm sure Tok and Bethel and Circle and Chicken are Alaska. But Anchorage is just another suburb of everywhere else and nothing feels real or permanent because that's how crap American suburbs are designed. Transient, meaningless, anti-interaction. There are good people here and a beautiful, as John McPhee would say, "out of town". But when a city's inhabitants measure their happiness by how often they are able to leave the city, the city probably shouldn't be there in the first place. Unless they're hiding something. Which they may be - Alaskans love their wilderness and their state's rights, but they'd be up shit creek without federal money. Maybe it's the same way with Anchorage - they say they hate it, but they need to stop at Wal-Mart on the way home, that's just how it is. Can't really blame them.

The point is that Anchorage - not Alaska, emphatically - is limbo. I live in limbo, I work in limbo, I eat, sleep, drink, and shit in limbo. There is no change, no love, no hate. Not that there needs to be. I'm just saying, at least in, oh hell of all hells to the people up here, New York, there'd be something to be ANGRY about.

I am grateful for the opportunity to live and work here. It has and continues to be a bit of an adventure and one that I'm sure I'll look back on as important in some way. Here's hoping.