Walking 12th avenue in Eugene, Oregon with my beads and sour attitude, just getting coffee.

12th Avenue, Turn Left, Left Again, Order Coffee, take random route home....

The changes to West 12th avenue in Eugene, Oregon are interesting but they make me feel blue.  The homes are quite nice, and no one can ever rag on well-tended lands in Oregon. People here love their Land and their properties and though many large rental firms allow properties to look quite unsightly to say the least, most of the time you immediately tell who you are seeing from the care of the grounds.  Herbs, food plants, pollinating flowers.....so abundant, people here suffer from allergies at a debilitating level, my mixed race bloodlines and exposure to lots of park foliages in San Francisco has kept me from having a reaction that strikes....pssh, easily 1 in 5.  And like foggy from swelling, I'm not joking, I couldn't imagine what it must be like to have allergies.  It is a deathly fear of mine, poisoning, because I have not felt it through allergic reaction, it must be terrifying to have the body betray itself purging a toxin.  Positive bio-feedback, I do use this with coffee......

    I walk along 12th avenue on Sunday mornings, it's hard to sleep past 7 am now, some things I do now have me up just prior to sunrise without fail, just in time to see Venus.  I will usually simply try to stave off my sour thoughts and snark with the use of a rosary in my pocket.  Walking, going through the rosary....the route has shown me little details that are filling in a picture of my society, making it all more clear.  First, the walk is beautiful, sidewalks are kind of warped but the trees on public easements are beautiful amazing things. Truly picture worthy mossy giants for a city.  Squirrels are all over the place and the crows are fighting each other for crow stuff.  

Then along comes the new student housing for the expanding enrollment at Lane Community College and University of Oregon.

     Building to the client's specifications and passing the codes, that's what it is, what people want to believe and fool themselves into thinking is beautiful, good, brilliant, adequate, appropriate design for long term use housing is another.  What was built is not comparable to say the 'Towers' of Park Merced in San Francisco, if they are all still there.....code might have changed and some did get damaged once in an earthquake.  No, these are like cheap versions of the Fillmore apartment towers on Geary.  Now, you don't need stone, you can use really firm fibre and press boards and state of the art sealants, and well....that's what it all looked like as I looked at the constructions over the last few months.  Contractors do the job they are asked, people romaniticize the whole thing, like these are stonemasons constructing an edifice to make Ozymandias envious, look out Khufu, move over Dorice, Americans in Carhartt's have arrived. No, they are normal, skilled men that build what they have in the plans and the plans please the clients.....us.

    We are building housing projects in Eugene, Oregon's downtown center to desperately hope, inexperience young people will somehow attract success, growth, innovation, opportunity and......well.....babies, lots of future social security payers, tax live stock, ballot box numbers....that's the lick, dig it man, dig.

     These buildings hug up against the International Oddfellows Order or however it's put, large building.  I kept thinking that the spaces in that building and the one across the street, the Cornerstone building must be spendy.  Well, Cornerstone seems totally empty, and Oddfellows is getting multiple vacancies with months on.  New, housing, with disposable income is moving in next door!  Then I think, this is the truth.....

Yes, Lord Jesus Christ.....have mercy on me.....this is what is happening, the crows tangle, the squirrels chase each other and play with passers by and dogs and cats.....times change and industries permanently die.  The money has moved, it is not there for office based businesses to thrive in Eugene, something is drastically changing, I just don't know the industry, insurance, investment, logistics, marketing, print content, something is giving and those offices have "For Lease" sign up and projects are constructed next door.  So....one day, those 'students' will graduate, and then lease the offices?  mmm....yes.....Our Father who art I Heaven.....mmmm.....walk, walk, turn left, giggle.  

Heh, white projects! Heh, oh god how I remember the fear, the fear of accidentally walking too near a housing project at night, even San Francisco.  Doesn't matter what anyone wants to pretend, projects always suck, poor people shouldn't be pooled together like that, and in a more free market world it wouldn't happen. Shanty towns come from government control over resource allocation period, you just have to follow the money.

.....but you Deliver me from evil....

    The college experience starts after the mortuary, Musgrave or something, the only show in town, can't get thrown in a hole without them from what I've heard.  Dirty ol' town, heh, the old people projects building, yup, next to the insurance firm and largest bank, bam, right?! Cross the street The Kiva, the alternative store that refuses to let Whole Foods in.....seriously, their fan base are like a bunch zealots, can't allow for more availability of food, fuck that, why think even remotely of the future, that's a bunch of capitalist tripe!  Pass the neighboring ABANDONED, businesses that shared a building, boot and shoe repair and the DRY CLEANER, why wear a suit in Eugene, Oregon?! Or rather, why get it cleaned at a convenient, central, downtown location, pssh, fuck that!  Next to that the Cathedral....the Library, it is magnificent, and classic music plays from speaker to scare the homeless away!  Or evil spirits, obeah, and the hoodoo!  At this two lane by two land intersection in the dead center of downtown, at 7am, a lone police car sits, ready to transform and go back to Cybertron, amidst nothing but gloriously modern, sterile public works that the Soviets are being promised by Satan in Hell to rule for a thousand years!  And they probably wouldn't change a thing!

    I get my coffee at Dutch Bros. and they are awesome folks there.  They make me smile and understand how normal people are, totally normal in a world run by madmen.  The music is usually auditory insanity but that's the idea, bright colors, caffeine, shockingly pretty petite sunny females and calm, funny, confident dudes.....you get the sauce and walk off, bam, simple, that's America, gimme' my coffee!  I will be boiled in coffee in Hell one day....yeah, something like that.....anyway on the walk goes....

   New graffiti, if you want to know if you are losing the streets and the youth in a locality look for new and improving graffiti. New, means experimentation and/or outside visitors, so inner corruption or outer corruption.  Improving graffiti means a subculture of antiauthoritarianism that needs a cause, is fundamentally vain, will turn worse if not given opportunities AND is telling you by leaving their fucking name!

    Most of the tagging here, hasn't really developed, and that's good, I know it means it's a fleeting interest or maybe a new trend among a more artsy type of community.  Crew names....not good, crews are decaf gangs.  Yes, decaf.  It's opportunity, young men here need training in stone and wood work, that's all that will matter in fifteen years.  I won't explain why it has to do with products made from industrial hemp and the inevitability of Oregon becoming a hemp starter project.  It must happen so it will.

    Back home Westward bound, thinking of reggae tunes "The train is coming back my friends...weet...wooo" stuff like that, old rude boy tunes, and there they are, women off to pilates or yoga, the roundish lesbian with her dog, and the bum with sleeping bag over his shoulders ambling along looking like hell, it was light at almost six am, it will be scorching today....or maybe not.  Poor bastard, I'm the only that sees you, they will all dodge you any way they can.  Nod to the random, coffee drinking man having a bold, smooth, smoke....older, just hangin', got noting but time it seems on Sunday morning.  

  Oh, yes, it's time for the prayer to Mary....yes, the rosary....the coffee....humanity....the dawn....Eugene, God what are we going to do.....the Sunnis, Muslim Brotherhood, House of Saaud finally have played their gambit and will annex Iraq into a Saaudi Caliphate, like the Turks.  God....what will we do?