Snapshot #1
Description
My friend Cara and I made it to the U.S. border around 1pm this past Saturday, breakfast sandwiches in hand. We lucked out, getting a friendly border guard, and passed through without trouble. In Olympia, we stopped for snacks and vapes, ogling the cornucopia of vibrant, hypernormal food and accidentally buying “sparkling water” that turned out to be pop. We tried to get all the Canada supremacy snark out of our system before going any further… I’m not proud of it, but there are only so many national pastimes, and I’m not much of an ice skater.
The drive was beautiful: sun, trees and sky kept us company as Cara remembered how to drive standard on the fly (and made it through Seattle traffic without stalling once, despite my temperamental clutch!)
We were halfway to Portland when we realized, in a roadside MacDonald’s, that it was inauguration weekend. I was stunned that I could forget such a monumental event; eight years ago, I’d thought the sky was falling. Were we fools heading into the headquarters of the resistance? Would we be surrounded by righteous fires and overturned cop cars?
Well, no. That’s not what happened this time. Things seemed rather ordinary when we finally pulled in that night.
On Sunday, after some ice cream and the obligatory trip to Powell’s, I met up with Evan and Sean, two friends I made at the conference in Boise last October.
I hadn’t known what to expect when I’d gone, but the conference was a heady mix of working-class autodidacts and burnt out academics who came together in a DIY space to put on a theory conference, completely independent of a university. Spending a week in this environment relit a fire within me, and getting another little taste of that over tacos in Portland was a real treat. (Sean just launched a Substack, by the way! Check out his first post: Parasitism, Capital and My Unconscious.)
Then it was time for WORDVOM, an art party slash birthday party slash fundraiser for the Independent Publishing Resource Center! The event featured zines, comics and prints from artists Bebe Montoya, Cooklin, Alden Wild, and Krystal Pérez, accompanied by the vinyl-spinning DJ Barbarella. There were also various word games set up at tables throughout the venue, which is all I ever want at a social event.
You know those parties where it’s super awkward and no one’s really talking to each other, and you don’t know if it’s because people are anxious or everybody hates you? Well, this was the opposite of that. The people who showed up were so dang friendly and created a lovely vibe. One person found out about the event from my Substack Note, which made me very happy, and also very shy! Shoutout to sweeties Rosemary, Ryan, Bree and Vee.
