I Carry Ohio

The day before I left one of my best friends came into town to see me off.  She gave me a small glass bottle, and I knew immediately what was in it.  Ohio earth, “with some from Chimayo sprinkled in for the hell of it.”  It was with her that I’d first gone west, first driven down Route 66.  By the time I made this journey, settling here in California, 70 to St. Louis, 55 to 44, 44 to 40, 40 to Amarillo, and on out– those roads had become familiar.

Sitting here now, on the couch in the living room.  Typing away at what feels like an ungodly hour.  I slept poorly last night and I’m on Central time, at best.  I’m subverting writer’s block by writing here.  5,504 words into the third novel.  A week and a day writing it.  It’s been a rough day and a bad night.

About the picture: This was at the end of our

second day traveling.  We’d made it only as far as Missouri the first night, and all through the day I was waiting on the land to turn into this mythic realm I’d been waiting for.  It turned into that very realm about an hour outside of Amarillo.  The land had long been flat but now there were minute valleys carved into the earth and it was ranchland as far as you could see.  We pulled off the side of the road for a minute so I could just look, take it in, and it wasn’t enough.  We took the next exit, one direction of which emptied immediately onto a dirt road.  Took that and stopped in the middle and I looked out at the sun going down and at a nearby windmill.  That night there was a lunar eclipse and I got up at 5:00am to see it from the hotel balcony.  During that trip I continued a trend– bring and read Blood Meridian wherever I went.  The start of that comes from a time that I ran away from home (at the age of 21) and found myself in Nebraska.  But that’s another tale entirely.  As if I haven’t gone off a narrative path already.

I’ve been avoiding certain subjects for weeks now.  Before leaving Ohio my uncle died of cancer.  I was there when he passed and up until that point I’d largely been sheltered from the death of loved ones.  Without him I would have no recognizable writing.  If I had gotten anything written it would have been something else entirely from what it is now.  He was  a Vietnam vet, a combat medic.  He beat his initial prognosis by over a year.  Time and again we were called in to begin our goodbyes and he’d turn around.  Between him and my father–a firefighter for 24 years– I’ve been convinced of a familial disposition toward immortality, now of course diluted to a more human damned toughness.  Besides that, I’ve never lived but 20 minutes from my family.  There is a lot I left behind.  A lot that the death of my uncle forged.  A lot that I’ll miss beyond that, even.  Rooted in place, in home, in Ohio.

Place counts a lot for me, and being here after everything has put me somewhere between a state of shock and detached sensitivity (yeah, figure that out.  I’m full of contradictions lately).  I love looking east and seeing the squat mountains, pale with haze in the mornings.  I love walking to the house in the evenings, looking at those same mountains.  The palm trees I’m ambivalent toward.  So different, so picturesque.  At night I always think it’s raining, and I’ve come to realize it’s the sound of the palms in the breeze.

I’d like to bring that bottle of dirt with me to a few other places.  Monument Valley, White Sands, to Nebraska.  Places that are important to me.  The largest portion will always be Ohio.  But hopefully by the time I leave here I can do so with a little of it with me.