Letters To An
Overseas Friend.

Back home now. Didn’t want to write, or draw or do anything, from the road for the same reason I’ve greatly reduced my photographic efforts. Effort documenting takes attention taken away from experiencing*. You know, the dad watching the child’s performance on the tiny screen of his phone which blocks the view of the actual performance?

South Beach, Oregon, is an unincorporated community just south of Newport on the Oregon coast. And unincorporated it is. From the highway you just pass by a few spread out buildings, a lawn mower dealership, storage lockers, a shack that may have something to do with animals. Then we passed by a joint with a loose collection of picnic benches packed with dining people. Beside them was a plywood stand with the world’s largest pot expelling steam. This was a must stop. It seemed most people went for the boil. I went with the crab sandwich, which is now how I assess seafood joints**. A mound of crab meat on wonder bread, a touch of mayo, and some token veggies (although I think the veggies only act to diminish, when I asked to hold the lettuce, the lady told me it is romaine and I’m gonna want that in there. I did. It added a nice crunch. Trust the experts). This was fuss-less seafood. As opposed to the refined stuff I generally see here. Another reminder that there are two different kinds of coasts, I think.

While hopping between rocks looking for tidal pools, I saw a dark whale out in the ocean. A large black blob in the distance which could have been lost in the roil of the breakers if not for its blow. Then you start to discern its tail and other anatomical features. Just hanging out. Good feeding I guess. But also too close to the beach? Is this how they get beached? I’ve seen cetaceans in their natural settings before; dolphins (a pod following alongside a ferry I was on) and killer whales (whilst salmon fishing in the Georgia Straight). While these events were quite entertaining, the dolphins were jumping out of the water possibly in some kind of unison which gave the experience an aquarium like feel, they looked somehow muted or even domestic. As fantastic as our natural harbour is, what I forget is how wild a thing that a coast can be. Watching this dark whale was the most visceral oceanic faunal experience of my life***. Moby Dick means slightly more to me now.


*Although it’s true that drawing or photographing or writing in situ can be an experience by their own right and they can filter an experience in a way that it is an integral part of any overall experience. It’s just that I tend to get distracted by those actions and I suspect I miss things.
**Not that you can get a sense of each item on the menu from a sampling of one item. But if you do a crab sandwich right, does it matter what you do wrong?
***Mostly due to the fact that I haven’t really been out in the open ocean much. I think I would enjoy a cruise.

We are on the sand dunes of Oregon doing a little West Coast swing. I have my idea of what a coast looks like. But you look out from the coast here, you see as far as humanly possible until the planet curves over, and the horizon line created has water on one side and sky on the other. No mountains. The coast I’m used to feels like a facsimile. And the scale of the waves and the horizon’s distance is so much larger than at home that it looks like everything is moving in slow motion. It’s so slow that the bright strip of ocean right under the sun looks like a swift glacier. Or a slow wave.

Nadia bought some porcupine quill earrings from a guy in a shack. His wife makes the jewelry from the materials he gathers. As a part time carpenter, he says he can make anything he’s told to make. But she creates. She can drill a hole into a beach pebble quicker than he could imagine. He considers this a feat of creativity. I think I get that. He’s new to Oregon. Bought a house after looking at a picture of it. His old life was that of a ranch hand in the eastern Sierras. Freeze in the winter and scorch in the summer. Then for reasons he couldn’t fully articulate, he went from ranching 6000 feet up a mountain to sea level selling jewelry out of a wooden shack. The ocean has been nothing but good for his body and brain and heart and he often repeats that idea quietly. Maybe this quiet repetition is his version of “who knew?”

A chunk of conversation while looking over some teas:

Nadia – … Oregon Marionberry tea. Is Marionberry from Oregon?
Jae-Ho – I think it’s from Washington DC.

Turns out Marion Barry is not a household name. At a restaurant in Washington state a few years ago, the waiter recommended the Marionberry pie. I giggled. Turns out he had never heard of Marion Barry and when I informed him of the Marion Barry story, he and other staff Wikipedia-ed him. Sounded made up, I guess.

This reminded me of another exchange we recently had when Nadia asked me about some purple Silly Putty I have:

Nadia – Where is the purple one from?
Jae-Ho – Minneapolis.

Went fully incommunicado because sometimes, you gotta stop and commune with the things that aren’t there.

In the woods, I saw an elderly couple sitting silently on a swinging bench sharing a bag of snack chips. This made me think of Nadia.