This fine Kevin Hearle poem makes this sixth-generation Californio smile in recognition, and wince at our state’s particular propensity for (literally and metaphorically) paving over the past.
The Politics of Memory
I was born in a state
where everything had to be named twice
to survive:
where Hangtown became Placerville,
where La Brea couldn’t hold its bones
in Spanish, but had to be redundant
and bi-lingual —
The La Brea Tar Pits,
redundant, like the Sierra Nevada Mountains,
in name only;
a state so arid in parts
that what has been forgotten
is blown to dust
in the wind across the alkali flats;
a state where you change the name
and all is forgiven:
where Gospel Swamp
loses both its muck and its religion
to emerge the model suburb
Fountain Valley forgives the swamp,
but what of Manzanar?
In a state where everything
has to be named twice
or be forgotten,
who will remember Manzanar
(a place in exile
from the maps)? The detention camp is closed,
but I was born in this state
and, for now, I know the name.
It must be sort of weird transitioning between Virginia (where “the past isn’t dead, it really isn’t even past”) and California, where the past is mostly forgotten.
Indeed, Sam; growing up the son of an Austrian-born, ethnically Jewish war refugee who grew up in Berkshire before moving to California also had an interesting impact!
But though Virginia is pretty, and England is a joy, and Vienna in the spring is, well, Vienna in the spring, I’m a California boy to my core.
I think that’s a poignant statement about Virginia, and there really isn’t anything truer about my state. Everyone in Richmond (or Charlottesville, or Fredericksburg, or Portsmouth) complains about how much better the thing was that something replaced, even if they couldn’t have possibly been born to remember the original. Your perspective varies upon the breadth, depth, and particular incarnate position of your historical memory, but it is always presumed it exists.
That said, ahistorical regions in Virginia do exist. Virginia Beach is one, and Fairfax is raring to become another.
The Austin Lounge Lizards have a hilarious song riffing on the “twice named” southwestern thing.