Tangential

Discovering that ash moved to Eugene within about three months of when I did demonstrates one of this city's charming quirks - it's illusion of intimacy. Eugene has a really small town feel, and you see the same people over and over. Indeed, I keep running into people I met in my first half year enough to count them as "friendly acquaintances." On the other hand, for five years before I actually met her, ash and I lived within five miles of each other and knew many of the same folks, but by accident of personal biographies never crossed paths until 2001.

That first November in 1996, I started seeing Eva and Erin behind the bar while drinking the day sunny at the Vets' Club. Then, we simply knew them as the "Vets' Club Twins," and we knew one of them was dating the guy working the door who looked eerily like Frank Zappa. One of my many friends named Dave later worked with Eva at the Craftworld (the one that's now the Mexican supermarket on 7th), and every now and again I'd go see their band play at the Tiny Tavern. Eva ended up living with some friends of mine who were in my graduate program.

I also see this woman Beth, who I traveled across the country with during the summer of 1996, from time to time. In a testament to what I month cooped up in a car with someone will do to a relationship of any sort, I still loathe her. ms. wobs's former evil roommates, however, seem to have fallen off the face of the planet, despite us knowing exactly where they are.

There's the guy who rides his bicycle around in the dead of winter wearing shorts and no shoes. There's Frog. There's the same hippies who've been there since 1976 at the Saturday Market. You see them all the time, yet they possess vistas of Eugene still unseen by the likes of me.