More Digital Potlatch! We’re now up to Part III of the four-part series of GRACK! columns having to do with a very important trip to Iowa to visit my wife at a time when we were living in different states. We call this “grow or die.”
After over a year of living apart, during which time she’d made three trips to Taos, I finally made it up to Dubuque. She’d done so well for herself that my first reaction was to feel threatened instead of congratulating her. All I could think was, I’ll never get her back to New Mexico now! I was probably even a little envious, and very, very stupid… This is still a love story, however, not a tragedy, with a strong emphasis on healing through Nature.
The following episode details the emotional background to these events. With any luck, you’ll get something out of it besides an urge to tell me what a fool I was to ever doubt the woman I love, and how undeservedly lucky I am to have her in my life. And don’t forget to click the audio player below to hear the raven.
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Run to Ground, Part III
A lot was on the line, and man, was I aware.
The pressure had been building for a long time and came in several flavors: after the better part of three years in Taos without a break, I was subject to deep, mysterious swoons when exposed to scenes of wet, green places at the movies, for example. (Scotland or Vermont, with mountains, could be especially deadly.) This was usually followed by a terrible brief bout of homesickness for the environs I left behind to move to New Mexico, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that I was able to access even deeper memories of why I’d wanted to do so in the first place. Homesickness is like that, of course, having more to do with sickness than an actual “home.”
In any case the old homestead was gone, sunk beneath the waves of time and real estate appreciation. But there remained a sputtering longing, like a candle with a dampened wick, for what had gone before. If I was close to suicide from worrying about finances, the sputter grew (however briefly) to a glowing crucible of molten angst. The possibility of success in my art, however, signaled by things like unsolicited praise from someone I respected, was usually enough to bring me to a sudden “God, what was I THINKING?” And the razor-sharp horizon below the the deep blue sky of air so clean, it almost hurt to breathe, would bring me around until the next time. If Iowa, especially the northeast corner along the Mississippi, could turn my head after the mind-shattering enlightenments of the mysterious Southwest, then I was either feckless and homing for the distraction of the womb, or else I needed to be dumped out and poured back in again.
Greater than this (though not unrelated) was the tension of dealing with my relationship. For several years, the “either/or” had nearly driven me insane: would she come back, or did I have to first go someplace else? Was it only money (or the lack of it), or something in the blood? Should the hero trip go forward, or did I have to rewind all that mangled videotape? Did she love me or did she not, was really how I saw it from whatever crumbling vantage point I stood on. That wasn’t fair or even sensible, but I was lonely, confused, and drained. I wanted my energy back!
All of this went into why I took off from Taos with a well-used credit card and 50 bucks, but there was one thing more: she had her problems in Dubuque and needed help. Not necessarily financial, though that would be a godsend if and when it did appear, but heart-help, romance, confidence, and joy. She’d made three trips to Taos in a little over a year and seen the way I lived without her. But I had never made it to Dubuque, never laid eyes on how she’d adapted on her own. For this to be a real exchange, I had to suck up everything and go. I did, I went, and when I first walked through the door, I let her down.
Not openly, at first. But after my year-long barrage of clippings, anecdotes, and self-serving propaganda about how much better things surely were down here, the fact that she had fought so hard to make a home for herself and succeeded so well against all odds seemed to blow my rescue mission all to hell. Rather than being happy for her, I felt threatened, and it showed. That I was loved was as plain as being beaten with a plank, and still I staggered from one misunderstanding to another.
Adding to the instability of my tottering preconceptions was the fact that Dubuque was almost wonderful. The city is the oldest one in Iowa and has character to spare, at least in the neighborhoods on the bluffs and down beside the river. My wife had found a little house within walking distance of downtown and several colleges. The streets were narrow, curved, and steep, the houses clustered close together. Here and there the trees opened up and one could see for miles. With all the little shops and restaurants within walking distance, it felt a little bit like Europe, which set me back a bit. The air was damp and smelled of fallen leaves, and the Mississippi flowed beside a giant levee just a few blocks farther on. I could gaze across to Wisconsin and Illinois. Everyone was friendly and the rents were cheap. What the hell was going on?
The rest of Dubuque, the larger part, was like remembering why we’d left the East, however. While much gentler on the nerves than suburban Maryland, the newer sections still seemed to me a place where quality of life is judged on how upscale the nearest franchise is and whether parking is easy at the mall. That was much too mean and shallow, I knew, but the truth lay in how closely “normal” neighborhoods resembled those in almost any other “nice” Midwestern town. The more I saw, the saner I became.
The glory of the city had to be the Mississippi, a natural feature so overwhelming it couldn’t be civilized, and grounded one to the earth. It was as if the Mother of us all said “I will never go away” and made a place for eagles, herons, ducks, and geese to tie the water to the sky. Next to casinos, downtown streets, and all the institutions that make up our modern life, in the midst of all that’s right and wrong about this country, rolled a force so undeniable, so huge, that I could scarcely imagine driving across the bridge to Illinois without stopping in the middle for ceremony or a sacrifice. That’s how it affected me, and that’s what told me I was on the right track, after all.
We took a day and drove up north along the river. The hills were tall and steep and hardly felt like Iowa. We stopped and got out several times to tramp around and marveled at the views. In Guttenberg, we spent less on dinner at a quiet restaurant than appetizers cost in yuppieland. Only when we’d driven all the way to Lansing did the spirit seem to peter out in rural poverty and unexpected bleakness of a sort: “Promise me you’ll never want to live here,” she said, remembering all the times I’d researched backwoods hideaways on realtors’ Web sites for that very place. That much was easy, and would have been, regardless of how much I might have wanted to find a simple, satisfying place to make a stand.
I only got to be there for a week, but the days on Harvard Street were like a tournament of revelations. I’d come to set important things in motion, and because I had no choice. Now it seemed not only that I did, but that there was movement in a river I had never seen before.
All I had to do, perhaps, was learn to turn and swim downstream.
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