Eugene, Moonbeam

I don’t hear much about Eugene, Oregon, anymore, but I used to. I remember thinking it sounded like the best place to live, but I don’t remember what I heard about it exactly. Was it the mild weather, the green everything, the university, the laid-back people?  All I know is that it must have been good. Having gone and lived there for ten years, at least now I know a lot more about it. Having left there about ten years ago, I might “know” a little too much for some people’s tastes.

To start with a few quick answers: Yes, there’s mild weather. Yes, there’s green everything (and yes, I’m talking about all kinds of plant life). About all those laid-back people, I’ll start by saying Eugene was for a very long time the second home of the Grateful Dead (the first being San Francisco of course). Back when there were Deadheads, groupies often followed them to Eugene and then stayed awhile. And then stayed longer. Walking down the university sidewalks on any given day, I used to encounter what looked like any number of runaway teens with beads and bones woven into long blonde dreadlocks, and often a puppy in tow on a macrame hemp leash. “Can you help me feed my dog, sister?” I might hear (that is, until they banned dogs down on campus – sly move, Eugene). After that, campus was left with the dogless homeless, eccentrics like the guy who wore a saucepan on his head and called himself Zeus, the inimitable joke-book peddler named Frog (still there), and minor other peddlers (“Hey, these look like your size,” one guy with a pair of boots greeted me; “Wanna have your Tarot done?” another couple of guys asked at the corner store).

Side track: I wonder why I so rarely saw full grown hippie dogs in Eugene. I shudder to think that the free-spirited deadheads decided it would be just so awesome, man, to let their puppies run free when they were too old to garner sympathy and spare change. That’s not to say that all free-spirited canine cohabitants were just using furry friends – far from it. But there is a fair amount of twisted logic you sometimes run into when you go deeper inside Eugenean culture. In Eugene, you might see two hippie-looking types in flowery skirts and handsewn tank tops, and one will smile and flash the peace sign, while the other will whine about how mom didn’t buy her that 1969 Westfalia van at the Springfield car lot, goddammit.

Eugene is either the greatest or the worst place in the world to have an identity crisis. If Eugene were a person, he would change his name to Moonbeam.There are so many cultures and subcultures and sub-subcultures from which you can take your pick. I certainly went through my share of them. At first, I was angry-punk.  I listened to meth-lab metal and wore my hot pink tights and combat boots to bed. After a few months, however, I moved to Eugene and it coaxed the free-spiritedness right out of me. I had all the flowery skirts one could ask for, but not the hand-sewn backless tank tops or gnarled dreadlocks. I never got a puppy, thank God - I was too practical for that – but as my group of crunchy friends grew, I became crunchier. I even ate bulk granola, but stopped short at making or selling my own. I stopped watching TV for a while, but I never had a bumper sticker that said “Kill Your Television.” I probably wore a flower behind my ear some days, but I never learned how to make a daisy chain. I did meet someone who would build tiny triangular vortices out of sticks, though, to see if they would morph into wormholes to other universes. Don’t worry, I never built one myself. Scratch that, I did build one - but I never actually believed it would work. (Or did I?)

Good news: unlike some, I got out of Eugene with most of my brain cells intact. I even went to school, but I did not learn how to sew my own clothes, macrame hemp dog leashes, or make bamboo pan flutes. One of the best things I took back with me from Eugene, that I did not get from school, was the most comprehensive introduction to spirituality that anyone can get. I call it spirituality, but to me this does not equate to organized religion.  Here the middle lands of our fair country where I now live, this would be referred to as “that woo-woo stuff.”

Call it what you like.  It has special meaning for me, since I am and always have been a little obsessed with death. Given my obsession, I require a spirituality free from themes like “suffering is life” and “we are all unworthy sinners.”  So without the organization of a church, parish, Bible, clergy, or tablet of rules, what does spirituality look like? Well, it can look like a lot of things. In honor of those Minnesota Swedes, let’s call it a smorgasbord.

For example, after being exposed to so many people who used one in Eugene, I now have my own Tarot deck. Now, I don’t think it holds special powers or can predict the future, but I have used it as a tool to help reflect and point out my own intuitive knowledge to myself. And in Eugene I discovered the Seth books, which I still read – I even buy more and bring them back after I visit. These are by no means my “Bible,” but they have helped me find like-minded people to discuss spirituality with. Most importantly, they have had the most profound effect on my ability to relax when I get all bunched up about someday not being around anymore. I really like that. And I need it. I need to be reminded that there is another world beyond this world.

Back in Eugene, I would meet a lot of people of all ages. Once, one particularly wise woman, many years older than I, told me that Life Is Hard. I think about this often. Back then, I used to wonder what it would be like when I was older, if I was only going to come to the conclusion that Life Is Hard.  Often, I was only too aware of my foot in the grave, but I still had hope that somewhere along the path, life would get easier. Now, I’m older. With my flowery skirts, my vegetarianism, my experience of nature and newfound spirituality, I fully expected to be living enlightened and carefree by now. But that’s now exactly how it’s going.

At least I’m still learning. And in case it’s not obvious by now, I’m not going back to live in Eugene. It may sound petty, but it really is overcast and rainy a lot there, which takes a toll. I don’t want to find myself writing another collection of depressing poetry, and binding it in black construction paper and hemp string and giving it to everyone I know as a kind of greetings-from-purgatory Hallmark card. (Yes, I really did this.)

Oh, and I can’t sum up Eugene without mentioning allergies. Boring, but important. In the spring for eight out of ten years, I would sneeze two hundred times a day from April to June. Before that, I never had an allergy in my life. Let’s do the math: 200 sneezes/day x 90 days of spring x 9 years of allergies is . . . pain. Heartache. Suffering.  Maybe when I decide that life is, indeed, suffering, I’ll consider going back. Until then, Eugene is a wonderful place to visit – and find used Seth books, meet interesting and strangely dressed people (honestly Eugeneans are probably the loveliest people you’ll ever meet), sit in endless quaint coffee shops, get your astrology chart read, and wheeze under a blanket of clouds surrounded by near-tropical flowers, giant trees and all the crunchy granola people who love them.

But I, personally, wouldn’t want to live there (again).

Read on, for more about the other faces of Eugene.