#pacific city

[aestum]

(by johnwingfield)

[bettergeology]

Pacific City, Oregon (April, 2023)

Shot on 35 mm film, Ilford XP2(?).

[lostsoulsparadise]

(by johnwingfield) | Lost Souls Paradise | Instagram

[blissmontage]

Pacific City, Oregon | Haystack Rock

[rafefar]

Oregon sunset

[travelella]

Cape Kiwanda, Pacific City, Oregon, United States

Holly Mandarich

[titabboy]

A PACIFIC CITY POEM

(Not Pacific City but somewhere very close)

I was lucky enough to grow up in Oregon, an hour from the coastline, where the beaches were cold and gray and foggy and you would always regret it if you didn’t bring a jacket even if it was July or August. I couldn’t really swim back then but it was pretty cold anyway. You have to go through rainforests to find the best beaches there. The place we liked to go had a gigantic sand dune, it looked like a mountain when I was little. Being up at the top leaves you feeling lonely in that kind of Pacific Northwestern romantic way where you suspect someone else probably felt this same loneliness, in this same spot, in another time. Lightheaded. When other people learn I’m from Oregon, they get excited. Of course they are, it’s beautiful and a good place for magical thinking, for better or worse. Recently, I was reminiscing with a friend and they had all of these beautiful things to say about their time there, our time there, that I had difficulty remembering and I got so frustrated! Why couldn’t I remember how happy those moments had really been? I let a lot of things fog up that glass. I felt very lonely most of the time I was living and growing up there, despite my best efforts. When I took some time to look back at my childhood self with compassion (difficult!) I saw that I wasn’t alone and it wasn’t as gray as I remember, it’s just that we have to be the one we need sometimes and that can feel isolating if no one’s taught you how to love yourself properly yet. Still figuring that out, I guess. This poem is kind of about that, I guess.

~~~~~

The light reaches down enough that I can almost touch it with my fingertips. I’ve never been this far from shore, this deep in the tide. My face bobs up and down and I try, without success, to be a fixed point in the horizon. You have to stay calm while drowning.

At the surface, a mountain of sand watches over us. You have been to the peak: it sucks the air out of your lungs and you breathe fog and clouds, the way you are breathing in the sea and salt crashing over you now. What is empty never stays that way for long, if it’s not air that fills our chest it must be light. I cannot let it be that other thing. Breathe from your belly.

It is a steep hike, but it is short.

They say that there’s little time to repair the damage we’ve down to ourselves. We can’t undo or outrun it anymore. Returning is no longer an option, we must lay our fear down at each other’s altars. A sacrifice: whatever we are gripping tightest in our hands must be let go first. Whale fall.

It is a long way down, but nothing stays lost forever.

[a-verse-with-a-blog]

[airplanes924]

[realbacchus]

2023

JANUARY - Depoe Bay, OR.

FEBRUARY - Season, OR.

MARCH - Seattle, WA.

APRIL - Pacific City, OR.

[elizabetharzanisketchbook]

Pacific City Riverside Window Views, 2023

[beneaththemulberrytree]

Pacific City 10.17-10.18

[lostsoulsparadise]

Oregon | johnwingfield | Lost Souls Paradise | Instagram

[hamiltonyumyum]

Can't wait to go back to portland gahh

[redpainteverywhere]

Cape Kiwanda, OR

[fitsofdespair]

the best thing about the x-files is how everything in the first five seasons is filmed in the vancouver area. and they never film anywhere else. episode in florida? vancouver. ecuadorian highlands? clearly vancouver. believe bitch.