I am Los Angeles, April 29, 1992

It's something about Eugene. You can hear the same story from almost everyone, if you look in the right places. Cafe Paradiso on Broadway or Sweetlife on Monroe; Tiny's Tavern & most certainly from the folks who frequent Rich's. Something along the lines of: "Yeah, I originally had only planned to stay for a few months & now, well three years later..." Eugene is nebulous. It sucks people into this world of its own, it changes your plans; it changes your mind. Eugene is segmented & reactionary, it is also sedentary in its amalgamation. It is notorious for its open-minded, progressive ways but that progressiveness doesn't spread beyond the city limits & quite often is a forced farce within them.

Sometimes I hate the hippies with their earth-tone coloured cars. Sometimes I hate the affluent shits on the south side with their lulling, gentle hills & their shopping centres. Sometimes I hate our mayor Kitty Piercy with her smiles for everyone. Sometimes I hate the health conscience food snobs that have produce a supply & demand environment where now you can find a natural health foods grocer every ten blocks.

On my way home from work today, as I walked under the overpass of highway 126, a new, shiny, red Cadillac slowly passed me with two older women in it. This is the Whitaker district, we have the steel plants & the Mission, we have the drugs & the prostitution & the crime. We have the lowlit, windowless bars with the floozies & the thugs. We have the violence & the aggresion & the tension. We have the dirt & the grime & the shit that the rest of Eugene kicked out of their own district lines. This is Whitaker & as that Cadillac passed, as I was still restless & anxious from a long, long week at work, I envisioned violence. I saw this Cadillac pieced, the windows shattered, the occupants' families resigning themselves to never hearing any word. Sometimes this is what I want. Sometimes this place is home.