A pilgrimage is a journey undertaken in the light of a story. A great event has happened; the pilgrim hears the reports and goes in search of the evidence, inspiring to be an eyewitness.” - Paul Elie
This is not a pilgrimage.
There are a lot of bookshelves, filled with all kinds of books for everyone in the house; pieces of pottery, colorful knick knacks (the evidence of journeys taken and returned from); elementals: rocks and fish tanks and polished drift wood; proof of life: the inevitable innocent chaos children leave in their wake... toys bicycles, the rumble of feet; the inevitable proof of two artists under one roof: public spaces, private space; self-sufficiency – the space where the garden was and will be again once the still mild winter is over; chickens in the chicken coop.
In addition to the pleasure of seeing George and Laura again and of meeting their young children, I also got to spend the evening and into the early morning with my old122 W. Second Street Outlaws(You Know Who You Are!) roommate Jared and his wife Shannon, as well as with Mike and Elizabeth and their friend (and my Facebook friend) Misty. There's a special pleasure being able to sit around a table with other writers, poets, and artists who also happen to be old friends with a common geographical reference.
Laura cooked a fine meal and we drank and talked and traded stories. Jared and his wife Shannon are expecting their first child; true to form, Jared is both exciting and scared shitless – which is, of course, the only appropriate response. He and I went through graduate school together... he and I and our friend Dave, Dave's girlfriend (now wife) Jamie, Eric Collins (evermore known as the Protestant Saint), along with Stephanie Stobaugh, Jessica, Jay, Mike and Elizabeth, and Bobby (and eventually his girlfriend now wife and baby mama Amanda... who I met the first time she ever got drunk... yes, I'm a bad influence....) – musician, poet, and mathematically challenged – were among the core people who made up my close circle of friends during my graduate school years at Morehead State University. There were others that, if opportunity arises, I will speak of. There was Tara, who was also a graduate student, who was often amused by the fact that people would stop by the office to talk to me; there was Joy, Brooke, both undergrads; there was Lonnie, who later died and his friend Phil, who for some reason thought I was a cool guy.
There were so many characters, all of them coagulating at the same unlikely time and same unlikely space. It's the sort of fish bowl community that, if you tried to plan and organize something similar, would implode on itself upon implementation and potentially cause the entire universe to go super nova.
Willow Drive is a safe enough distance from Morehead and the university that George feels safe. He still teaches there, attending to his students and fleeing the ridiculous nest of politics and petty personal fiefdoms (not that there's any difference between the two) that make up the English Department.
The English Department – formerly the Department of English, Foreign Language, and Philosophy – has always been a shark tank. The literature people resent anyone who's not a literature person; the future teachers feel like they're looked down on because they don't want to teach at the college level; the future librarians just try and keep their heads down to get out as close to intact as possible; the linguists think they're better than everyone; and the writers get the shaft from all sides because nobody thinks they have any place in decent (academic) society.
(Fuck 'em all. Squares on all sides. - William S. Burroughs)
I'm fairly certain that the only reason I survived and graduated from MSU was poetry and the circle of friends I encountered while I was here.
Drinking probably helped, too.
( NOTE: Though I'm sure it got me into as much trouble as it saved me from.)
Funny thing is, I always end up back here. And no, it's not nostalgia that draws me back here. I am not – most of the time – a sentimental person. No, this place, like Cincinnati, is one of those places that so heavy with memory, a place that's tied to so many of the profound events in my life. And over the years, when I have returned to this part of the country, it has always been at times of dramatic change.
I first came here as a high school band student, to a music camp. On the bus ride here, I met my daughter's mother. She eventually went to college here, and I followed in order to be near her. We married – mostly because we were dumb and young and stupidly in love – but also because we could get more financial aid as married students than as dependents on either of our parents' tax returns. My daughter was born in St. Claire Medical Center. My divorce from her mother was finalized in the Rowan County Courthouse. I dropped out. I returned. I finished. I escaped. I returned. I fast talked my way into graduate school so that I'd have an excuse to write and not have to work for a few years.
Here was also the place where I met George and where, sitting in his office – then atop the hill in Faculty House 5 – he told me that I could do this. That I could be a writer. It was a 2 minute conversation that changed my life.
It was also here that I met Melissa – twice. And when I ran into her again when I was a graduate student... we both returned at exactly the same time … it seemed like destiny was smacking me in the head with a 2x4 and saying, “See here, you thick-headed jackass. This is your future.”
(And YES, like any thick-headed jackass, it took me some time to realize it. I've always maintained that writers are slow learners. I haven't been proven wrong yet.)
It's not even something I necessarily plan. I just sort of decide to come back and see the place. Seeing it change is always a bit depressing... but like all change, it's impossible to stop. I mean really stop. The most anyone can do is try and shape the direction of that change in such a way that can be more positive.
George pointed out last night, after everyone left and Laura had gone to bed, that journeys like the one I am on have less to do with nostalgia as much as it does a kind of re-energizing. You go back to the places you've lived to find those pieces of yourself you left behind... maybe because you knew you might need it again someday. Maybe because you didn't know anything at all. And it occurred to me that the first leg of this journey is as much about me picking up those stray pieces of myself – breadcrumbs in the wilderness – as much as it has to do with putting the past – and the recent past – to rest.
It occurs to me that while I may have been a lousy husband – because I most assuredly wasn't a very good one – that there's still something in me worth redeeming, worth holding onto. It occurs to me that sacred places have that effect on us; they are places where time and space coagulate, where things stop, merge, diverge, become something new. It occurs to me that I am here, not just to visit old friends whose company I've missed, but to pick up one of those breadcrumbs that I will need in the journey forward.
This is not a pilgrimage.
But then again, maybe it is.
