WHAT IS THE MIDWEST?
The Midwest is a section of my body concealed by the left side of my ribcage. When I lived on a desert town near the Oman border, that left side of me throbbed, and I mean that literally.
One noon I was in line at Bader's Hypermarket when the muzak began to play "the green green grass of home," and I bawled like a baby.
My spiritual Midwest is limited to a long flat "prairie" running across northwest Ohio. A prairie's a kind of desert, like the desert, it's alive when you view it through live memory:
Alfalfa fields, rows of corn, shrubby gold soybeans. Brick churches, white frame houses, grain elevators, used car lots, abandoned gas stations and boutiqued-up thrift stores.
Houks, The Carey Hardware Store. -- In Carey, Ohio on the Feast of the assumption the statue of Our Lady of Consolation, dressed in a gold prom dress, is carried down the street to the Shrine. If it rains the rain falls only on two sides, never on Our Barbie Doll Lady. -- The Carey Public Library is as small as a mausoleum and as powerful as the Monolith in 2001.
On certain days when the sun gleams supernaturally and the sky's a drop dead automotive blue, my sister tell me, "if you look at the right angle you can see cloud reflections across the sycamores at Crawford Park." -- And you can.
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My internal Midwest is a dirt road: On it my grandmother and her mother are walking to church. On it my great great uncles carry their Civil War swords "up Chestnut Hill" at Bradner because it's always Memorial Day up there, and my mother is a little girl in a white dress. She's waiting on the porch for the parade to go by.
5/23/2005 Love to all at Heartlands Magazine from Liz, Elizabeth Ann James. Feel free to throw out paragraphes and lines; this mini-essay works that way too.
One noon I was in line at Bader's Hypermarket when the muzak began to play "the green green grass of home," and I bawled like a baby.
My spiritual Midwest is limited to a long flat "prairie" running across northwest Ohio. A prairie's a kind of desert, like the desert, it's alive when you view it through live memory:
Alfalfa fields, rows of corn, shrubby gold soybeans. Brick churches, white frame houses, grain elevators, used car lots, abandoned gas stations and boutiqued-up thrift stores.
Houks, The Carey Hardware Store. -- In Carey, Ohio on the Feast of the assumption the statue of Our Lady of Consolation, dressed in a gold prom dress, is carried down the street to the Shrine. If it rains the rain falls only on two sides, never on Our Barbie Doll Lady. -- The Carey Public Library is as small as a mausoleum and as powerful as the Monolith in 2001.
On certain days when the sun gleams supernaturally and the sky's a drop dead automotive blue, my sister tell me, "if you look at the right angle you can see cloud reflections across the sycamores at Crawford Park." -- And you can.
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My internal Midwest is a dirt road: On it my grandmother and her mother are walking to church. On it my great great uncles carry their Civil War swords "up Chestnut Hill" at Bradner because it's always Memorial Day up there, and my mother is a little girl in a white dress. She's waiting on the porch for the parade to go by.
5/23/2005 Love to all at Heartlands Magazine from Liz, Elizabeth Ann James. Feel free to throw out paragraphes and lines; this mini-essay works that way too.
posted by Liz James at 10:12 PM
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