Greetings From The Heartland
Okay, first off I need to say how much I love my sister, Kristen, but her keyboard is in the most cramped and uncomfortable space imaginable. I just don't know how she can live this way.
I'm doing surprisingly well being in MN and I've been keeping my guilt to a minimum. Here's a total newsflash- none of this shit is my fault! There's nothing I could have been or done that would have changed any of this. My living far away did not make my mother ill and moving back would not make her better. It's a relief to not feel responsible but it is also a bit disconcerting. After all, if I am not blaming myself for all the crazy/ bad shit in the world then what AM I doing? Hmm? Riddle me that one, Batman. I guess guilt is just something with which I occupy my time. A hobby of sorts. It serves no real purpose in my life.
However, Old Dutch potato chips DO serve a very specific purpose in my life. For regional comparison, I'd say that the "Dutchers" are a very salty cousin of the liberal east coasters' Utz chips. Sometimes, you just need an assload of salt.
Let's see, what else?
My father asked me (As he does on every face to face meeting) when I was planning on moving back home. This time I answered him with alarming speed. Usually I roll my eyes, shake my head and give him the reluctant "Dad, I just can't see myself ever living here again." This time I shot out a ballistic "Never." Yup. Never. Never, ever. And I never say never.
I miss a lot about being in MN. I miss the sounds, the space, the insecure friendliness masquerading as customer service and even my mother-in-law complaining about how dangerous things are on the east side of St. Paul. To hear her talk it is as if she were living in an urban war zone instead of a matchbox Shangri-La. Don't get me wrong, I know there are drugs and theft in her neighborhood and I don't want to give anyone the idea that even the crime out here is lame, but I just can't work up the necessary fear. I can't be afraid of anything in the TC. My home town? yeah, that place inspires a twinge of terror. After all, it is the only place I've ever been beaten up or received death threats. I guess that tends to color a person's perceptions on a place.
As much as I feel this place in my bones and know that I will forever belong to it, and it to me, I also know that it isn't right for me to be here for more than a few days. I know it like I know all the words to every Replacements or Gear Daddies tune as if they were etched into my brain, whether I've ever owned the album or not. It's the jukebox at Steve's and a certain elder sister's tape collection that burned that sound into my soul. It's the half shoeless farewell concert, hair coated in red and blue mascara, country roads that served as spots for late night coffee klatches, and the strangely seductive smell of Deep Woods off that have made me the woman I am. It's weird to be so much a part of a place and so removed from it at the same time. It is crystal clear that I can't go back. What there is of that belongs to another generation. My time for that has passed. I drove down 94 today, my son in the back seat, passing landmarks from another woman's life.
Stephen Wright has a one liner: I'd like to get a full body tattoo of me, only taller. In a way, that's what it feels like. I wear the mask of a woman who once lived here, but it couldn't possibly have been me. I'm not me anymore.
Neither is anyone else. The landscape here is almost unrecognizable, both physically and emotionally. Nothing is even remotely what it had once been. Even things that on the surface seem to have stayed the same are completely different at the core. Or maybe I just see them differently. In a way, that's a shame, but it is to my advantage to see things as what they really are- whether it is comfortable for me or not.
What is most troublesome to me, at the moment, is the disconnection that I feel. I can't help but wonder if my emotions are just going to bite me on the ass one day and drag me down or if I really and truly have come to terms with these things. How can you honestly tell if you're living in denial?
All I know is, these Nordic types crank the AC up way too fuckin' high. It doesn't need to be 68 fucking degrees inside a Chili's. I'm wearing a thin summer dress and have come in from 88 degrees. A 20 degree difference is way too much. I shouldn't have to carry around a sweater in August. Turn it down, fuckers, turn it down.
I'm doing surprisingly well being in MN and I've been keeping my guilt to a minimum. Here's a total newsflash- none of this shit is my fault! There's nothing I could have been or done that would have changed any of this. My living far away did not make my mother ill and moving back would not make her better. It's a relief to not feel responsible but it is also a bit disconcerting. After all, if I am not blaming myself for all the crazy/ bad shit in the world then what AM I doing? Hmm? Riddle me that one, Batman. I guess guilt is just something with which I occupy my time. A hobby of sorts. It serves no real purpose in my life.
However, Old Dutch potato chips DO serve a very specific purpose in my life. For regional comparison, I'd say that the "Dutchers" are a very salty cousin of the liberal east coasters' Utz chips. Sometimes, you just need an assload of salt.
Let's see, what else?
My father asked me (As he does on every face to face meeting) when I was planning on moving back home. This time I answered him with alarming speed. Usually I roll my eyes, shake my head and give him the reluctant "Dad, I just can't see myself ever living here again." This time I shot out a ballistic "Never." Yup. Never. Never, ever. And I never say never.
I miss a lot about being in MN. I miss the sounds, the space, the insecure friendliness masquerading as customer service and even my mother-in-law complaining about how dangerous things are on the east side of St. Paul. To hear her talk it is as if she were living in an urban war zone instead of a matchbox Shangri-La. Don't get me wrong, I know there are drugs and theft in her neighborhood and I don't want to give anyone the idea that even the crime out here is lame, but I just can't work up the necessary fear. I can't be afraid of anything in the TC. My home town? yeah, that place inspires a twinge of terror. After all, it is the only place I've ever been beaten up or received death threats. I guess that tends to color a person's perceptions on a place.
As much as I feel this place in my bones and know that I will forever belong to it, and it to me, I also know that it isn't right for me to be here for more than a few days. I know it like I know all the words to every Replacements or Gear Daddies tune as if they were etched into my brain, whether I've ever owned the album or not. It's the jukebox at Steve's and a certain elder sister's tape collection that burned that sound into my soul. It's the half shoeless farewell concert, hair coated in red and blue mascara, country roads that served as spots for late night coffee klatches, and the strangely seductive smell of Deep Woods off that have made me the woman I am. It's weird to be so much a part of a place and so removed from it at the same time. It is crystal clear that I can't go back. What there is of that belongs to another generation. My time for that has passed. I drove down 94 today, my son in the back seat, passing landmarks from another woman's life.
Stephen Wright has a one liner: I'd like to get a full body tattoo of me, only taller. In a way, that's what it feels like. I wear the mask of a woman who once lived here, but it couldn't possibly have been me. I'm not me anymore.
Neither is anyone else. The landscape here is almost unrecognizable, both physically and emotionally. Nothing is even remotely what it had once been. Even things that on the surface seem to have stayed the same are completely different at the core. Or maybe I just see them differently. In a way, that's a shame, but it is to my advantage to see things as what they really are- whether it is comfortable for me or not.
What is most troublesome to me, at the moment, is the disconnection that I feel. I can't help but wonder if my emotions are just going to bite me on the ass one day and drag me down or if I really and truly have come to terms with these things. How can you honestly tell if you're living in denial?
All I know is, these Nordic types crank the AC up way too fuckin' high. It doesn't need to be 68 fucking degrees inside a Chili's. I'm wearing a thin summer dress and have come in from 88 degrees. A 20 degree difference is way too much. I shouldn't have to carry around a sweater in August. Turn it down, fuckers, turn it down.
posted by Bree O'Connor at 11:33 PM
5 Comments:
Surahoolies! Common Ex '92! (or '93!)
we're all living in some level of denial.
welcome home.
touch the roots, feel the earth, take some home with you.
then, minnesota is just a bedroom away.
this is my home and i love it. but i didn't know it until i had left for a while and came back. but it's definitely not for everyone...
Yeah- Surahoolies! Thanks for the flashback, KEN. Nothing is more MN than Surahoolies. Except, perhaps the Surahoolies combined with a Grain Belt and a maple nut long john...dude, I so need to do that the next time I'm out here.
I love MN, too. I just feel like a fish out of water here. I don't really belong in NYC either, but at least there I have a bowl to swim around in. AND they've bought me one of those funny little aquarium signs that reads "No Swimming". Yeah. That amuses me.
"I'm not me anymore"
Most excellent discourse on the "You Can't Go Home Again" theme. We're Seattle residents, emigres from Ohio. After 32 years, there's still a tug, and an emphatic separation.
Thanks for stopping by, Phil.
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