The Places That We Do

I'm not sure how the question got to lodging itself in my mind, and then working its way forward through the myriad folders, file drawers, meandering hallways with their dim, flickering lights and pockmarked floors until it stumbled out into daylight, squinting up at the sky until I thought, hey, I could make a blog post out of this! But here I am nonetheless, writing the first blog post of July. It's crazy really how fast summer goes by. Its like winter is the beginning of a novel and the writer is fresh and the ideas tumble forth through pen or fingers like melting ice off of a mountainside becomes a crystalline lake that gives life to animals below. But fast forward to the end of the novel, with a looming deadline and the pressing knowledge that you have to catch those swaying loose ends and somehow tie them all into a big knot weighing in the back of your mind like too much snow piling on a log cabin's roof. This phase of writing is summer, all of the other seasons are crowding in, wanting their share. The writer feels rushed, their creative spirit snuffed out until they're simply writing anything, that zeal no longer there, the pure need to feel that knot tied the only fuel keeping the words flowing. Finally it's done and all is satisfied, and the cycle starts all over again with fall. Which is my favorite season by the way! But that's for another time.

What I had intended to talk about, and what I hinted at in the beginning of this post was a question that came to me sometime last week: how did we end up living in the places that we do? Maybe that seems trivial to you, and in some sense every question ever asked will seem completely trivial to millions of people, but if it matters to a handful, or even just one, isn't it worth asking? Think of where you live right now. Is it in the Great Plains, the Pacific Northwest? The Midwest, New England, the Deep South? All of these places have their own special culture and ways of life, but yet their all contained within the U.S. How did one person end up in Oklahoma and another in Maine? How do families and friends end up states apart from each other? What makes us move to certain places, what makes us visit one place and end up staying?

Perhaps to help answer these questions I can insert a bit of my own family history. Both of my parents were born in the U.P, known as those who aren't familiar with that as the Upper Peninsula, or in even other words, Upper Michigan. Somewhere in the mid 80's they both moved to Sheboygan, Wisconsin to work at Kohler Manufacturing, and they've been here ever since. Both my brother and I were born in Sheboygan and have grown up here. Work is a major factor in determining where we live, and so is college.

This Fall I'll transfer from Sheboygan's community college to UW-Green Bay where I'll major in English-Creative Writing. I'll be living in Green Bay for the next four years, and after that? Who knows? There are a million places I'd love to live. Don't we all have those places we dream about living someday. The key word there is someday isn't it? We can't really say "oh I'm going to live there within the next four to six years, because that seems too permanent and assured. So we insert someday but keep that 'someday' within reach, rather than just letting it float out there like the whisper of wheat fields upon still summer air.

But just as work and college guide us from one place to another, it may very well be the heart that keeps us there. While we inevitably all look back to where we came from, the heart I believe looks back far less and looks ahead more than anything. After graduating from UW-GB I just might decide to stay in Green Bay, rather than move back to Sheboygan. Obviously I have many ties there, but due in part to the writer within me, I feel a restless spirit stirring deep within, dreaming and plotting of far away places where the places I write about will be my own. This writer is far different from my own personality, which fears stepping beyond the threshold of home and entering a fantastical world of new beginnings and shimmering yellow brick roads twisting and dipping away in all directions. But, we must all leave home in order to continue the chapters of our lives and see the words flourish on the page like a fancy quill-tipped pen from long ago arching in thin, black strokes upon paper, making nary a mark of ink but forming beautiful, eloquent words, a silently singing poem playing sweetly in the head in which they tumble from.

So, I ask you then, what places do you dream to live? Just as the writer within me contrasts blatantly with my own personality, so do my aspirations and passions. For instance, for as long as I have held a fascination with tornadoes and severe thunderstorms, so have I longed to live in Oklahoma. My brother pokes fun at me because I have no better explanation for why I chose Oklahoma out of all of the other Great Plains states to live in than what I listed above. I've also used Oklahoma as the setting for many of my stories and am just now branching out to other states. Now I understand that Oklahoma is as flat as a feverishly ironed and starched dress shirt, but that sort of insipid landscape suits me just fine. As for the storms, I honestly don't know how I would react to seeing a tornado for the first time, but I can tell you this it is on my bucket list to see a tornado in my lifetime, and perhaps even chase them professionally. Perhaps you think I'm getting ahead of myself but seriously, I'll dabbled in my mind with having a side job as a professional photographer, and I would love nothing more than to be standing in the middle of a dirt road with trees and grass flattened to the ground, wind screaming in my ears and a mile-wide black mouthed tornado barreling towards me. Just think about it! Tornadoes are nature at some of its most sinister and powerful. To witness that power first hand would be incredible.

Of course, such a zest for severe weather could be due to the fact that living in Sheboygan, which is close to Lake Michigan, we don't see severe thunderstorms, or let alone a real thunderstorm all that often. I like to joke to people that I am deprived of a true thunderstorm, not I wish such severity to befall my hometown, but come on! At least a little danger couldn't hurt right?

Another place I would love to live is New England, specifically Salem, Mass. Why Salem you ask? Because Salem has the highest concentration of 17th century homes. Yes, I know, I'm turning out to be a real shocker aren't I? For the readers out there who know my passions, you'll realize the sarcasm there. I love severe weather and I also love old houses. Now what's wrong with an old house in Oklahoma you may be wondering? And the truth is, nothing. But with New England, the number of old houses increases greatly. To be surrounded by that much history every day would be - excuse the cliche here - a dream come true. The oldest house in America, and I'll be damned if I remember where it is, was built c. 1631. It's actually just one room inside a mansion built a century later. Could you imagine living amongst that kind of history?

I'll reveal another one of my dreams, I've always been captivated by dilapidated old houses. You know the type: paint-peeled wooden siding, foggy window panes like cataracts, sagging roof, sagging porch and inside a whole lot more sagging and peeling like skin slowly separating from aged bones. These houses cry out for help, because although the body fails, the heart still beats strongly within. One of my favorite magazines, This Old House, has a section in the back called Save This Old House and each issue it features an old house in danger of being razed or demolished lest someone come to its rescue. My heart breaks for each of these houses, for a long time ago someone built them with pride for their family, bride or anyone else and paid meticulous attention to detail and construction. Now they're left to fall apart and succumb to the cruel, constantly prodding hands of time like the curious finger of a child poking a purplish bruise despite the cries of the other person. I wish I could fix all of the houses featured in the magazine, and that dream is a someday I intend to make come true in the future. While my mom rattles off all of the advantages of a newly built - or newer built - home I'm yearning for the uneven floorboards, the crumbling plaster, the drafty windows and everything else that lives an old house its beloved character I find so captivating within my many stories.

Well, I should've known better than to start talking about old houses. Look how long I've rambled on about them! But then again, just my writing, they are such a huge part of me, and even know as I attempt to move on from the subject I find images of old houses both from reality and my imagination flickering in my mind like stills of an old picture show reflecting splotched and yellowed against my gaze.

Such as the heart can guide and anchor us to a certain location, so can love. I'll give the example of my cousin, Katie, and her fiancee. Katie is originally from the U.P just like my parents, but roughly two years ago I think she moved down to Lower Michigan because that was where her fiancee was from, and she's been down there since. So whether it's love, our hearts, dreams, college choices, work changes or job transfers that land us in the places we live, there's no doub that we dream beyond the county lines that are drawn around us, like a child daring to color outside the lines, a wild grin upon his face.