When Gertrude Stein wrote about Oakland that "there is no there there," she was, as far as she presumed, talking specifically about the house she had grown up in, which was, in fact, no longer there when she returned to visit after many years in Europe. So for once at least she felt the peculiar unease of exile, of the disappearance of her childhood home.
Of course many presumably sensible, reasonable people have imagined she was referring to Oakland in general. And even if they're aware of the detail, they may consider this the correct interpretation, in spite of her intention.
There's a certain vagueness that's discernible in Oakland, a disorientation, a sense of placelessness. A palpable malaise that isn't simply an artifact of economic hardship or race politics, though of course those are both factors. (Here the proud defenders of Oaktown will commence to harangue me, so before you slam me against a concrete wall, let me just say I'm not trying to insult the place, I'm actually yearning for the possibility of healing it. Of course there are many reasons to love Oakland--all sorts of funky, even some swanky, neighborhoods with various laid-back attitudes or shiny urban intentions, great Cambodian food, a fabulous record store that never gave up on vinyl, the grandest Art Deco theater remaining anywhere, one of the premier jazz venues in the country, all sorts of homegrown art, music, atmosphere, culture, what have you.)
I'm actually getting at something deeper than the everyday traffic and slander, something underneath all the politics and struggle. Because whoever feels like there's something missing has a point. There is something missing. It starts with a pair of trees.
In the early days of the place, the tallest redwoods ever known stood on the ridge of Oakland's hills among a grove that spanned a swath from East Oakland to Moraga Valley. There were two particularly grand redwoods that towered into the sky so prominently that mariners making their way into the Golden Gate would get their bearings, twenty miles out at sea, by aligning their sights with the two trees to follow a clear path through the treacherous rocks and shoals. So the pair of trees were a beacon, a landmark in the most literal sense, guiding pilgrims and opportunists eastward into the safe haven.
We don't know what those particular trees meant to the tens of thousands of inhabitants who lived along these shores for thousands of years, but it's safe to say that removing them--they were logged by 1860--was one detail in the ongoing devastation of this land, which has left it contaminated, buried beneath layers of concrete and indifference, to the point where good intentions will not be sufficient to correct the damage. And that damage is psychic and spiritual fully as much as it is physical. We need a focal point to return to, to orient us, remind us of the non-human dimension. Disorientation is a disease, a displacement, a version of exile. We are unsettled, homeless.
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