in olympia so about three weeks before i left china the chinese government committed an enormous atrocity against my ability to procrastinate and i was left with the worst means of postponing papering, homeworking, playbilling and translating. in effect, i had acquired an addiction to Sex in the City by my lovely roommate across the hall who had the entire six seasons on dvd for thirty RMB and the Chinese government who had suddenly deemed Blogger a threat to the morals of the Chinese people. i'm guessing that even though the status of its censorship is labeled "indefinate", it should be back up when tibet's residual anniversary hype has subsided.

i understand why the world's altruistic cause is tibet: tibet doesn't use brute force to fight the "oppressive" chinese government, it has been romanticized by european-ethnic writers and peoples for six hundred years at least, and the dalai lama is a genius at hobnobbing with the right wealthy and influential people.

i'm a bit displaced here, in the pacific northwest. when i arrived at the san fran airport, i saw a mexican restaurant that was sterilely trendy with some bright colors and stock designs up to date, and i became soothed. i looked around and i saw black people and hispanic people and many of them were being alive and charismatic, and the gay people were too, and maybe so were the rest of the people, and i felt at home. then i arrived to the pacific northwest, the land of no eye contact, a place of no hello's if eyeballs meet; maybe if you're lucky, you'll get an abrupt head tilt, so short that it's not even a nod.

people in olympia all look the same, they dress the same, they have similar interests, they eat the same, they share mannerisms, but if a handful of them were to be displaced in houston, they would suddenly be difference that their appearances portray they strive for. ironically i'm not sure if a majority of them would actually like it though, the real mental and physical difference, which is why they collect here, to be around others like themselves. this is true of peoples of many places because we most often connect through similarities, especially when displaced. so even though a majority of olympia folk come from outside, they come for the feel of the town, what has already been built by people like them. unlike houston where people come for the purpose of work, i think many come to olympia for an idea. people choose to live in a specific place for a purpose, whether it be because of a new job or a certain type of community, etc.

garrison keilor once said that the lutheran pioneers who founded minnesota arrived in utter exhaustion; they stopped, looked around at vast whiteness and therein proclaimed it god's country. they were just too tired to go on. as i was taking to 574 and the 603a down I-5 from the airport, i was face against the window with blight and sprawl whirring by for three hours, and i wondered if everybody here, in all these suburbs of tacoma and seattle are only here because of destitution. maybe they just don't have any motivation to move. when i left i knew i wanted to escape the tone of sadness that i had attributed to the weather, but now i'm not so sure.

so i'm back in town and stuff, shedding the time difference, eating raw things, writing on the school computers because Baine laptop is energy deprived and with an enormous dent around the power charging socket.  ¶ 6/03/2009 02:09:00 AM