Just a Speck On the Map

Oakdale is not a place you go to; it is a place you leave from.

And yet, nonetheless, you found yourself here; somehow, perhaps, you took a wrong turn. Or maybe, just maybe, you encountered it as a tiny speck on the map and were struck by a dumbed, irresistible curiosity. Somehow in some way, you made it here.

It was meant to be. 

And you found it to be that always-gonna-be-there-never-gonna-change kinda place. It didn’t have the alternativeness of the Bay or the Rush of the Oversized Apple. Oakdale, instead, moved with a near-suspended, otherworldly pace. Even with time’s apparent passage, little changed, little disclosed itself as unfamiliar or new.

Oakdale also challenged - you later realized, on the drive home – your notion of ‘place;’ as you recall, nothing happened while you were there, really.

What was happening didn’t much matter even, but what did was what was not. Vast, sweeping, open spaces, long, rolling pastures, and contented, seemingly immortal, cud-chewing cattle featured prominently in a very real portrait of sheer eternity. What mattered, you realized, was what was between the stuff: the interstices, the absences.

At first you were unimpressed, though Oakdale wasn’t phased. Even if it is the Cowboy Capital of the World, it struts the motto around humbly, just as soon as it discards it. And yet, in these underwhelming moments, you found contentment: a unprecedented but palpable kind that you’ve since lost the words for. Because, you realized, it was incommunicable. And, the more you talked about it, the loonier you seemed. So you just held onto it, privately.

Likewise, you witnessed how Oakdale’s bountiful, yellow-summered pastures and endless serpentine-highways happily obscured the outside. While you forcibly cursed the spotty internet, you were taken by the force of the environs, that is, once you put down your phone.

But where were you exactly? In a Cowtown whose main bragging rights involve being nicely-situated between San Francisco and Yosemite, equidistant from Bakersfield to your South and to Sacramento, the capital?

Why did you come here anyways? You weren’t here for the thrills or distraction. Or to witness sublime metallic monuments that stand as testament to human overcoming. You knew you wouldn’t find them here.

And yet, you gave it time. At first a few hours. Then a day. Then a week. Or a month. You couldn’t remember, really. The place somehow, beyond explanation, enraptured you. In your free time, you swam in meandering streams, walked thoughtfully and solitarily down the main corridor. And you dined, testing as many scrumptious, vibrant Mexican food restaurants as you found (numbering in the teens), in between trips to satisfy incorrigible urges to test the local beef – known miles around.

Oakdale’s heat was its darkside, -you found - if it had one, and so many had to weather it. Countless laborers defied its wrath for pitiable remuneration to furnish luscious strawberries, plump tomatoes, or even crunchy walnuts for prime storefront presentation. The images were indelible, and since all you’ve done is chide your friends for their callous purchase of the cheapest goods by the companies with the poorest labor records.

In some ways, Oakdale smacked of so many other small towns. A dysfunctional mainstreet clocktower rose stereotypically above. And you passed a few of the local parks inhabited by the shelter-less, the exposed and the discarded. You chuckled even at the illuminated church marquees, and thought better than to critique “pray-conditioned” to say “prayer-conditioned.”

But mostly, you found endearing the kind, dutiful staff who stirred each morning to staff the local library, if for no other reason than to prevent a handful of obsessive regulars from abusing their computer privileges for exploring ‘the fringes’ of the WWW.

On what seemed like a whim, you snuffed Starbucks, if only that once (you’d do it again) for a place that caught your eye: Cafe Bliss, where you sat and relaxed and enjoyed a heavenly, brown-sugar-coated blueberry muffin, the plumpest ever (most likely), untroubled by mid-afternoon planning of how to weather the looming, treacherous rush-hour herd’s pilgrimaged traffic.

This is how life is lived here, and the rhythm enchanted you, lulled you, cribbed you, coddled you.

Eventually, you had to leave, reluctantly, bidden by your ostensible ‘duty’ to the world. And while you did ache for home - come to think of it - you realized that you felt an even more ineluctable pang of nostalgia for this place you’d met so long ago (or was it?).

A sudden, slight breeze blew across your face and made the nearby dry brush whisper so softly. You stepped outside of your parked car on the shoulder of a dirt road and walked the broken dirt, and you wondered if you’d ever encounter a place like Oakdale again.

And you accepted, lamentably, that you wouldn’t. Such nirvana shows itself but once.

But for you, and for others, Oakdale will always be there, be here. It won't be pained if you spurn it; all you need do is return, and the longing will cease nearly instantly.

A stinging revelation struck you as you the radio blared and you skipped town, and you haven’t been able to shake its since. It wasn’t just that you missed Oakdale. That didn’t seem to matter, even. But what did matter and what ate away at you was not your yearning for Oakdale, but that Oakdale, over time, had developed a profound, unconditional, unmistakable yearning for you.

Journal Entry 06/15

Today, I visited Staten Island, which, according to several, is far more Unionized than other places here. It has a bad rap, apparently, but the pace there is far closer to one I'm more familiar with and comfortable in. There was a lot more space too, and the people strolled as though they were unconcerned by being judged to be subpar to what the rest of the city had to offer.

My first view of the place came while on the ferry, complimentary of the city, which has, for whatever reason, decided to generously subsidize all ferry rides. More than likely, there are political and commercial reasons for the decision, but if it makes good financial and social sense, then all the better to eroding the face of a world turning inwards, into the private realm. One could see ships docking off of the immediate shores of the city, barges joined with various cruise ships, transit ships and other kinds of ships, assisting them in their complicated navigation of the heady, generally-occupied bay.

As we docked, I hurriedly escaped the hatches in a herd alongside hundreds of others, with the occasional 'subversive' trying to push their way ahead (for some inexplicable, largely un-explicable reason). From there, the ferry terminal opens to the main political buildings of the city, what here are called "Staten Island Borough Hall," and while I'm unclear of their specific political purview, the terminology nevertheless intrigues for its apt definitional precision; that is, because Staten Island is not a city, but a borough.

After walking solitarily behind one other girl for a few minutes, I readily found my bus stop but ambled around to search out a grocer that might have some rations, the likes of which I was low on myself. The one I found was modest but clean, a place where half of the things were still packaged, little reeking of the ready-to-please quality of the rest of the stores in the city (especially the Hipster ones).

Following a short wait, I boarded a bus bound for the other side of the island, crossing it through one of the main paths "Victory Boulevard," whatever that might have meant. Along the way, I saw various humble, honest storefronts, identified in English or Spanish, none of which stank of the pretentious perfidy of the high class places found in the rest of the Burroughs (although I'm sure they were there to be found). Columned, colonial villas and large, wooded parks disclosed themselves on the ride as well, and I was generally happy to experience a sense of peace that I haven't since departing the Valley.

As we neared the library, I queried the bus driver on the proximity of the stops to the only open library on the Island (on a Sunday afternoon, admittedly, but I'm incorrigible). Promptly, a fellow bus rider reported "Two stops down, you can take two more," for which I thanked her and seated myself again. The Island seemed to exude a different kind of warmness about it.

On my way home, after a trip to Starbucks and a visit to Adorno lane, I climbed up the next 62 once again, and sat next to an attractive girl who boldly sported sweat pants in broad, Sunday daylight. Oh how I wanted to know such a strong, uncompromising character. But like any good New Yorker (or tourist who's trying to fit in), I suppressed my inner desire to make contact and contentedly sat next her, making obligatory glances to my phone to indicate my level of competency with the social moreys of the day.

The ferry ride home happened in a similar way, but only after one of the most beautiful vistas opened up before me: the view of the city, and its surrounding metro areas. But then I thought to myself: was it monstrous or wonderous? And I settled on monstrous, but for the Marx in me: accumulated, extracted, stolen capital stored in concrete, metallic form to be lauded, shown and mindlessly strewn about town in innumerable postcards, paintings, posters and photos, reproduced in a spectral way probably incomparable to any other city in the world.

And so it is living in this city, or for the time being that I am. New York is no great place, but it is a place, and I am here. It terrifies me, strikes wonder into me, and is far bigger than anything I could really manage. But I will try to make do, as I always do.

Love,


Joe