Cincinnati presents an odd spectacle. A town which seems to want to get built too quickly to have things done in order. -- Alexis de Tocqueville (1831)
I'm digging in the dirt
To find the places I got hurt
Open up the places I got hurt. -- Peter Gabriel (1992)
With my southbound trip delayed until I can rebuild the travel fund, I find myself back in Cincinnati, the land of flying pigs, tragic professional sports, a lagging and parasitic corporate mindset, arguably the worst alternative weekly paper in the country next to The River Cities Reader (yes, I mean YOU, CityBeat)and a shrinking population. Ah, yes, Losantiville... the city along the Ohio River that has alternately fed and starved my creative soul for as long as I can remember. Long a city full of unkept promises, of high ideals muddied by the low character of its leadership, and certainly the most prototypcially American of all cities in it's sense of exceptionalism, it's classism, it's blatant attempts at historical revision at the expense of the truth, and it's adherence to the tenets of organized capital that have sucked the marrow of the body politic near dry, Cincinnati has been writing it's death warrant for years.
Not deliberately, of course, and not with any of the effort befitting a full blown conspiracy. The problem has never been that people don't WANT the city to succeed. The problem has always been that there are conflicting visions of what success means, and a certain, maybe cultural intransigence on the part of people when it comes to working together. One of the major problems is that there's a seemingly collective mindset so outdated that it's beyond quaint. It's beyond sentimental. It's beyond nostalgia. As a matter of fact, it's nostalgia -- coupled with a Holocaust deniers ability to rewrite the past -- that plagues the place.
But, I'm here. This is where the universe sees fit to deposit me, rather than someplace warmer with a beach, a warm sun, comfortable tidal waters, and large doses of tropical booze. And since I'm here, I might as well do something useful. Because in spite of the fact that I have always been and continue to be critical of the Ohio Valley in general, of Cincinnati in particular, and of the corporate mindset that has always, it seems, held sway*, I still feel a connection to this place.
Not one that I would label as "home," exactly. Not the same sense of connection I have with Mount Carroll or for Eastern Kentucky. And it's nothing like the complete ambivalence bordering on contempt that I have for Bethel, the town where I grew up. Cincinnati is the name of the shadow I grew under, the name of my first urban experience, the name of the place I ran to when I first needed to run.
But I have never been a city person.
Growing up in a small town, even one as helplessly myopic and hopelessly shortsighted as Bethel, does make a person a bit more... stoic. The only place that it seems necessary to hurry is in a city, where life happens entirely too fast sometimes and everyone acts as if they are going to miss something if they stop long enough to enjoy the moment they are in.
Being back here, though, I feel a sense of obligation to the place that I am still trying sate. That means digging in, finding a way to contribute to something. Something meaningful. Something useful. Freelance journalism. Teaching, maybe. Yes, that's right. I'm looking into teaching and tutoring as a way to rebuild the travel fund. And I'm looking into other ways I can dig in.
Stay tuned.
I'm also taking the time begin work on a book expanding on the things I've been writing about in this blog, and to put together another chapbook, tentatively named Whitman By Moonlight.
____________________
*There were only two reasons why people chose to settle and found communities on this continent: religious/spiritual/philosophical compulsion (attempts at Utopian or theocratic societies) or commercial ones. Towns and cities tend to grow and die along the lines of commerce. If you don't believe me, take a drive along Route 66. Then drive the same distance on an interstate. The shift from Main Street to the interstate exit/entrance ramp is profound. It was the same when commerce was done primarily along the railroads and river transport.
I'm digging in the dirt
To find the places I got hurt
Open up the places I got hurt. -- Peter Gabriel (1992)
| Once upon a time... maybe. |
Not deliberately, of course, and not with any of the effort befitting a full blown conspiracy. The problem has never been that people don't WANT the city to succeed. The problem has always been that there are conflicting visions of what success means, and a certain, maybe cultural intransigence on the part of people when it comes to working together. One of the major problems is that there's a seemingly collective mindset so outdated that it's beyond quaint. It's beyond sentimental. It's beyond nostalgia. As a matter of fact, it's nostalgia -- coupled with a Holocaust deniers ability to rewrite the past -- that plagues the place.
But, I'm here. This is where the universe sees fit to deposit me, rather than someplace warmer with a beach, a warm sun, comfortable tidal waters, and large doses of tropical booze. And since I'm here, I might as well do something useful. Because in spite of the fact that I have always been and continue to be critical of the Ohio Valley in general, of Cincinnati in particular, and of the corporate mindset that has always, it seems, held sway*, I still feel a connection to this place.
Not one that I would label as "home," exactly. Not the same sense of connection I have with Mount Carroll or for Eastern Kentucky. And it's nothing like the complete ambivalence bordering on contempt that I have for Bethel, the town where I grew up. Cincinnati is the name of the shadow I grew under, the name of my first urban experience, the name of the place I ran to when I first needed to run.
But I have never been a city person.
Growing up in a small town, even one as helplessly myopic and hopelessly shortsighted as Bethel, does make a person a bit more... stoic. The only place that it seems necessary to hurry is in a city, where life happens entirely too fast sometimes and everyone acts as if they are going to miss something if they stop long enough to enjoy the moment they are in.
Being back here, though, I feel a sense of obligation to the place that I am still trying sate. That means digging in, finding a way to contribute to something. Something meaningful. Something useful. Freelance journalism. Teaching, maybe. Yes, that's right. I'm looking into teaching and tutoring as a way to rebuild the travel fund. And I'm looking into other ways I can dig in.
Stay tuned.
I'm also taking the time begin work on a book expanding on the things I've been writing about in this blog, and to put together another chapbook, tentatively named Whitman By Moonlight.
____________________
*There were only two reasons why people chose to settle and found communities on this continent: religious/spiritual/philosophical compulsion (attempts at Utopian or theocratic societies) or commercial ones. Towns and cities tend to grow and die along the lines of commerce. If you don't believe me, take a drive along Route 66. Then drive the same distance on an interstate. The shift from Main Street to the interstate exit/entrance ramp is profound. It was the same when commerce was done primarily along the railroads and river transport.