Forkin' Hell
So, I haven’t been around much lately. Last weekend was swallowed whole by 14/48, and most of this weekend by a marathon reading of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. Add to that four-plus days of rain adding a bored and highly-distracting child to the mix, and not much has gotten done.
But that isn’t what I wanted to write about – my pretend-online-blog friends just have to accept my occasional disappearances the same way the live-and-local ones do.
No, I wanted to write to you about our vacation, a term I use exceptionally loosely here.
The morning after 14/48 concluded, the girls and I loaded into the car and headed out to Forks, a very small town in the upper left corner of Washington State. Perhaps you aren’t familiar with Forks? Let me elucidate.
Forks is where Hope goes to die. Or, perhaps more accurately, it is the place where Hope can not live, because the only kind of Hope born in Forks is “I Hope I can escape this shitty little town.”
Forks is in post-logging decline. All and I mean ALL of the buildings are rundown because there’s neither reason nor money nor inclination to build anything new. Forks Outfitters, the only real store in town, is either a bloated general store or the runt offspring of a clumsy mating of a Red Apple and a Wal-Mart. Homes are abandoned to be consumed by the local flora, mainly creepers and mold, because there is nobody willing or able to buy them. The people are old, ugly, slow and stupid.
Ok, maybe that last bit is a bit much, but it is fair to say that Forks is the land where the rain is unending, the prospects bleak and the isolation palpable.
It is entirely believable, after spending a few days there (and not for the first time), that Forks will eventually die off, perhaps devolving briefly into a Children of Men-style chaos before being consumed by the Olympic Forest, leaving only the last gas station between Port Angeles and Hoquiam.
And yet I’m still drawn there, and to the other small, dying towns of the Olympic Peninsula. Much like standing on an ocean shore reinvests me with the vastness of this world, a visit to Forks grounds me with the baseness of the human animal. The feeling of hollow survival, of overwhelming inertia, dark feelings which I romanticize, pervades in the wake of these visits.
And maybe that is the real reason it has taken me so long to write, and why it finally comes today. I emptied myself at 14/48, reveled in emptiness at Forks, and then refilled myself with the final chapter of an epic I love.
Thank you, Forks, for helping push my Reset button.
And sorry about calling your people slow, stupid and ugly. But, I mean, bloody hell, just look at them.
But that isn’t what I wanted to write about – my pretend-online-blog friends just have to accept my occasional disappearances the same way the live-and-local ones do.
No, I wanted to write to you about our vacation, a term I use exceptionally loosely here.
The morning after 14/48 concluded, the girls and I loaded into the car and headed out to Forks, a very small town in the upper left corner of Washington State. Perhaps you aren’t familiar with Forks? Let me elucidate.
Forks is where Hope goes to die. Or, perhaps more accurately, it is the place where Hope can not live, because the only kind of Hope born in Forks is “I Hope I can escape this shitty little town.”
Forks is in post-logging decline. All and I mean ALL of the buildings are rundown because there’s neither reason nor money nor inclination to build anything new. Forks Outfitters, the only real store in town, is either a bloated general store or the runt offspring of a clumsy mating of a Red Apple and a Wal-Mart. Homes are abandoned to be consumed by the local flora, mainly creepers and mold, because there is nobody willing or able to buy them. The people are old, ugly, slow and stupid.
Ok, maybe that last bit is a bit much, but it is fair to say that Forks is the land where the rain is unending, the prospects bleak and the isolation palpable.
It is entirely believable, after spending a few days there (and not for the first time), that Forks will eventually die off, perhaps devolving briefly into a Children of Men-style chaos before being consumed by the Olympic Forest, leaving only the last gas station between Port Angeles and Hoquiam.
And yet I’m still drawn there, and to the other small, dying towns of the Olympic Peninsula. Much like standing on an ocean shore reinvests me with the vastness of this world, a visit to Forks grounds me with the baseness of the human animal. The feeling of hollow survival, of overwhelming inertia, dark feelings which I romanticize, pervades in the wake of these visits.
And maybe that is the real reason it has taken me so long to write, and why it finally comes today. I emptied myself at 14/48, reveled in emptiness at Forks, and then refilled myself with the final chapter of an epic I love.
Thank you, Forks, for helping push my Reset button.
And sorry about calling your people slow, stupid and ugly. But, I mean, bloody hell, just look at them.
posted by JJisafool at 1:52 PM
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