mirror world close to home

In Gibson's recent Pattern Recognition, his protagonist Cayce (!) is an American who travels to London and refers to it as the 'mirror world'. Everything in the environment is familiar, but the details are distinctly different. I'm in Oregon, and feeling something a bit like that. I left SFO last night in the cool darkness, arrived in Eugene (!) in the rather icy darkness, rented a car and was off...down dark narrow roads into thick tule fog. Weird, back home the fog has the good graces to stay mostly out of the way. Thirty miles of backroads to Corvallis, GSM coverage pretty good in Eugene but completely gone after the first 15 miles. Wow, okay, guess I'll have to live without a phone for a day. Did I mention backroads? I think I've been living in the pseudocity of Silicon Valley too long -- I haven't driven 30 miles through the country for, ummm, a while? That's kind of sad, actually. Well, then into Corvallis about 10:30pm, small town brick downtown, streets rolled up and silent, reminded me of Holland NY which was unexpected and poignant but not unpleasant. Best Western hotel, basic concrete block building but styled in the direction of antebellum colonial manor house, functional and familiar but in a twisted, prefab, sterile sort of way. One of those paper toilet seat bands, sanitized for my protection (phew, thanks!).

Morning, a wakeup call from an actual person, more fog, and Ice On My Windshield, whoa. Trees actually changing to bright reds and yellows, as if they were actually planning to have winter here. Starbucks. Okay some things are pretty much identical. Wait, Marionberry muffins? Mirror world food. Over to the university, where there's a parking lot with actual parking spaces. Beautiful tree lined avenues, spacious green lawns, sun rising over red brick buildings.

Later, back through the countryside in the slanting afternoon sunlight. The Willamette Valley, lovely and with fly fishing shops. Sheep and llamas grazing along the airport road. Really great, excellent microbrews at the airport restaurant. No line at security, no line at all.

Do people really live like this? Cool. Different, but cool.