Lughnasa Labor Day Moon
Humidity. Water here is not, for now at least, an issue. The shower can just run. No second thoughts about the well, the snow pack, a possible drought.
Anderson, where I am right now, used to be the employment heart of Madison County with thousands of jobs in General Motors’ factories. All those jobs are now long gone. The houses look under cared for and old, paint peeling, roofs faded.
Some things have not changed. When I pulled up to a light this morning, a guy in a Corvette pulled me next to me, gunned his engine, then sped away as the light went green. This is car culture, a Detroit influenced swath of the U.S. Much of Ohio is similar.
I told my brother yesterday that I could barely stand to be in the state. “It repels me.” And it does. The Klan in Alexandria. The confederate flags and the macho bullshit everywhere. The lack of cultural amenities. A desert of the human artistic heritage.
Yet. My roots remain here. That cannot be undone. I know from Facebook that my high school classmates have spread out geographically and ideologically, some to the left like me, some to the right. They were all my friends. Still are, in a distant sort of way.
It is time, past time really, that I made my peace with this place. Like parts of me in my shadow it will not become different; it just is. Like those aspects of me judging Indiana only hides it, makes it less accessible. Besides, my repulsion is for the political and cultural narrows that exists here, but it is a passage way to my childhood and my childhood was wonderful.
So, I intend to open myself to childhood feelings, to friendship based on early days, not battered by later ratiocination. What hope do we have as a country if we cannot reach across the political divides? Especially when the people in question are friends from childhood.
