My heart is in the next room, asleep. I should be in there with her, but this machine body needs time to cool down before it can rest. I was standing guard in a near empty convention center in Atlanta, Georgia — a city about which I have nothing positive to say — when I finally understood that my body machine was was the only appropriate sacrifice.
I’d tried other things. I watch these other writers, believing they’re blazing a trail I’ve walked. It’s their trail too, and maybe it will lead somewhere else for them. I was a teacher. A journalist. A barfly. A wanderer. A factotum in factories, warehouses, offices. Always writing. Always scribbling. Decade after decade.
But the needs of the body machine — and more importantly — the safety and security of my heart sleeping in the next room, opened a road that led me to the river.
This body machine and the poet it carries is being rebaptized by fire and by water. My heart is being baptized, too, by time and the river.
To love is ultimately a sacrificial act. Over the years I’ve listened to people speak of what they had to give up for love. But that is not sacrifice. Sacrifice is giving your body machine to work to make someone else’s life easier. There is art in this, and craft to be learned.
I am building my body into a new machine. The engine is a poem. The heart is asleep in the next room.
Recent events, most notably former President Trump’s Vice-Presidential pick, JD Vance, is catapulting regionalism back into the national spotlight. At this point, his politics have taken a backseat to what actually catapulted his name into the national conversation: Hillbilly Elegy, a book that has been (in my opinion, righteously) criticized by Silas House and bell hooks, to name a few, for its exploitation of Appalachian culture and Appalachian people.
My purpose here is not to add directly to this discussion; for one, I’m not Appalachian, though I spent better than a few years there, have friends there, and a connection in that my daughter was born there. I love the mountains and appreciate the culture, the music, and the complex history. But I am not OF the place, which is an important distinction that I make. Geography has played a major role in my writing for decades, whether I’ve been traveling or living in a single place. When I lived in Phoenix, the desert crept into my work; when I lived in Northwest Illinois, my Big Sky Country obsession was stamped in my language.
The Geography
But I grew up in the Ohio Valley. Bethel, Ohio, where I am from, is roughly 13 miles from the Ohio River. The house I grew up in was about 10 miles from the river, the closest point of connection being Moscow. I used to ride my bike there when I was a kid. As a young man I bounced around Cincinnati, Ripley, Aberdeen, New Richmond, Moscow, Maysville, Ironton, and Portsmouth. I spent a lot of time along the river. And while my current job along and on the Ohio is the first time I’ve made a living on the river, the entire geography of my childhood was shaped by it.
The Ohio River Valley takes up parts of 5 states. (researchgate.net)
The Ohio River Valley – defined geographically by the 981 mile long waterway that begins in Pittsburgh, PA and ending in Cairo, IL – is a unique region from the Midwest, the South, and the Appalachian regions, which has birthed unique artistic, musical, and literary styles. The richness of this aesthetic comes from the diverse populations that came to the region from rich and troubling history of commerce, diaspora, colonization, and the consequences of living around such a profound nature boundary.
Even though artistic regionalism has gained marketability… and as a result, respectability… the Ohio River Valley is overlooked. The river, in general, is overlooked, even though it’s still a major commercial artery and, in some places, a tourist destination.
Defining “Gothic”
In trying to describe the unique nature of the Ohio River Valley Aesthetic, I found myself pondering the word “Gothic”… not in the sense of vampires, but in the sense of the 1930 painting by Grant Wood. It’s been interpreted as both a defense of and a critique of rural life.
Wood’s painting spoke to me the first time I saw it in an art book. You don’t always notice the details in the first viewing. But it’s difficult to miss the fact that all the windows are covered, even the Carpenter’s Gothic style upstairs window, covered in a blanket of stars.
What does it mean, the covered windows? What does it mean, the blanket of stars? Let’s then consider what I mean by gothic. The term gothic was first coined by Italian writers in the later Renaissance period (late 15th to early 17th century). The word was used in a derogatory way as a synonym of ‘barbaric’. They denounced this type of art as unrefined and ugly and attributed it to the Gothic tribes which had destroyed the Roman Empire and its classical culture in the 5th century AD (www.vam.ac.uk) Over time it’s taken on the imagery of vampires and monsters. And when I apply the term gothic, as in the Ohio River Valley Gothic, I’m taking in not only the monsters, but whatever washes up in the river. The Ohio River continues to be a major transportation artery, though it’s mostly commercial traffic. It continues to be a driving economic force for the towns and cities that have sprouted up along her shores. All manner of things come down the river. Some part of all of it stays. The rest of it carries on down with the current.
There is art and music and writing in the Ohio River Valley that is distinct from the Midwest, Appalachian, and Southern geographies that surround it. Like the river, it has elements of them all. But there is a unique voice and vision that is, for lack of a better word, “gothic.” We have our ghosts. We have our stories and songs. But to understand them, and what makes them unique, you have to start with the river. And in order to understand the river, you have to start the the GatorHorse.
Almost got into a car accident on the way home from work. Rolling down 3rd Street, just outside the Watterson, a critter was crossing the street in front of me. A possum.
The car behind me had been aggressive since 4th and Winkler. Kept trying to pass on a two lane street. Shined their brights. That odd angry swerving people sometimes do, some kind of intimidation dance for automobiles that always amuses me. When I slowed down for the possum they laid on the horn. I responded with a finger. When I turned down Wampum and into the neighborhood, they followed me. Part of me wanted them to keep following me. They stayed behind me a block, went on straight when I turned again.
Sometimes even when the cruise is good, I end up cranky. It starts out as a role I play; the cranky boilerman. One of many faces, one of many masks. I try to find ways to be kind. But something about me just scares some people, especially a couple of the kids who work concessions. The cranky old boilerman. The fire troll.
And though I could work harder at being nicer, it would be disingenuous. I leave crumbs and clues to my humanity. Little jokes. Poetic quipts. But when people are determined to not like me, I lean into it. Hard.
The car behind me would have hit the possum without a thought. I like possums. They look mean but are mostly benign in the world. They’re like me. I look mean. But I’m mostly benign.
Since COVID and the Breonna Taylor Protests, what was left of the thin veneer of civility in this dirty old town has worn away. An underlying kindness has washed away like the mud left on the wharf after high water. Washed back into the river. We’re becoming a tourist destination. Polite, but not kind. Under the mud that washed away, there’s an aggression. It comes out in people’s driving.
These faces we wear. I read recently on someone’s Facebook status update: THE REAL YOU IS WHO YOU ARE IN PRIVATE. It’s a nice thought. Comforting. But really, there is no real anybody. We are composites of experience and biology. I’m many things to many people. They all think they know the real me.
There is no real me.
The me that stopped for a jaywalking possum is the same one that half-hoped the aggressive tailgater would follow me home.
Time on the river is washing away the layers of mud. Former composites. The cranky boilerman waiting on word from the blue heron, the watchman expecting messages from the wharf possum… faces I wear when needed.
But when I cross the street, I hope someone finds the civility to not run me over.
