Strawberry Fields Forever

Nothing is real. Except for my sun/windburned face. That's what I've come away with from this day of spending eight hours in the strawberry fields, directing people where to pick the berries, weighing their findings, then collecting the booty. In the interim, I read 100 pages of Harry Potter 6, 40 pages of Donald Miller's "Through Painted Deserts," and a large chunk of Paste Magazine.

Nothing is real. I spent a large portion of my day at Hogwarts. No, I was not visiting Franz Hall at UP. (I suppose the previous statement isn't that unusual as a large number of my classes at UP occur in a building that I have mistaken for Hogwarts.) In one moment, I was watching Harry hide under his invisibility cloak while spying on Draco Malfoy to attempt to confirm his theory that Malfoy has taken his father's place as a Death Eater. Then a customer would come. I'd apparate back to Garden Valley.

"Start at a flag or a stake, pick away from me, then move the flag to where you end so the next customer knows where there is fresh picking."

The customer cannot understand the idea of the flag. Actually, not quite true. They feign comprehension, and the majority go through the motion correctly. But some are not of adequate intelligence to pick their own strawberries, I have concluded.

Nothing is real. I'd read a large portion of Harry Potter, and as I want this book to entertain me on my journey to Alaska in two days, I decided it was time for something else. I open a Paste magazine from March or April that I never had the time to read entirely during the school year. I read two in-depth articles, one on Arcade Fire and the cover story, a feature on Modest Mouse.

This band interests me for several reasons. Firstly, they have received very good reviews following their latest album released this spring (which I failed to snag a copy of from someone in Corrado...swak). Secondly, they added former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr to their lineup last summer. I couldn't believe this when I'd heard it. I'm no Smiths expert, but they're a band very much of the past, and they seem to be rather normal. Modest Mouse is fairly young (although I discovered Marr is in his 40s, only a decade older than the other members. I thought the gap was more profound.) and anything but normal. Thirdly, Modest Mouse is from Portland. Frontman Isaac Brock lives down the block from Shins frontman James Mercer in southeast (can't these indie rock leaders afford a better/safer neighborhood?).

The article talked about how Brock has resided all over the northwest, including in "rural" town Cottage Grove, OR (about 40 minutes north of Roseburg). Apparently he owns some chocolate pasta factory there where you can go on a tour everyday starting at 9 am. Chocolate and pasta are two of my favorite things. That intrigues me.

The headline for Paste's feature was "20,000 Leagues Under Normalcy." I'm currently listening to their second newest album, 2004's "Good News For People Who Love Bad News," their self-described "pop" focused album, in other words, a more normal album than their others. This album is out of this world it's so weird. So, I suppose, fourthly, I am currently enjoying Modest Mouse because they are very weird. Despite my own utter weirdness, I don't always enjoy this quality in music. It has to be authentic weirdness, I suppose, and Modest Mouse definitely has this reality.

Nothing is real. I spent the rest of my day in an ancient Volkswagen bus currently traveling across Oklahoma and the panhandle of Texas. The van gave a lot of troubles, but Donald Miller always had some cheeky way of handling it all. Life gave a lot of troubles. Don used the word "why" dozens of times. He handled these dilemmas with the same humor, though not always having an explicit answer. Then someone wanted to weigh in their berries, and I would shake myself back into southern Oregon.

Hogwarts isn't real. The Modest Mouse music swirling to my ears is not real; it's only coming out of my computer. Don Miller's roadtrip was his retold memory from years ago. For me, it's not real. By process of elimination, the strawberry fields are the most real concept from my day. But to me, they seem the most elusive. I was not a part of these fields. I was part of these other realms with so much more intensity than the real world.

Nothing is real. I live in two completely different realms--the farm life in Roseburg to the urban Portland world. I feel like I cannot ever truly subside anywhere. Thus, perhaps the Beatles had it right. Nothing is real.

(Forgive me for taking this song completely out of context. It is an excellent song longing for simpler times. This interpretation strays from their original meaning, but it's how I want to interpret the art at this moment.)

Currently listening to: Modest Mouse - The Moon & Antarctica
Currently reading: Through Painted Deserts