In making sense of places inhabited, then and now:

How is love for a place born from despair? Maybe the answer is found only in the subtle details. In the particulars. In the markings of chipped paint between slats of wood. Gaudy fences with failing structures. Wide front porches outlining neighborhoods pockmarked with potholes, an occasional empty lot. Adjacent lawns either kempt or unkempt but always between rusted out vehicles and the bicycles of children trusted to lie freely in driveways. In the lichen creeping up the sides of walls. Maybe the answer is found in the creaking apartment building behind the blocks of bars I tried to call home. In the high ceilings, in the comfort of dog paws. Next to the mulberry tree blooming against the graffitied brick wall, not quite art but a relief from monotonous purity nonetheless. Maybe  in the dark stained sidewalks once the mulberries ripen and drop. The same women pushing her cart of groceries. A crowded laundry mat with familiar faces. In the bowing of wood floors where people once danced, prayed, cried, laughed. In the arcs that frame windows and the rasping of age. In the scuffing of floor boards and the decorative trim hidden beneath ages stains.

Here, intermittent pastel houses brighten gloomy winters. Green rectangles and brown lots with tall grass. Missed opportunities. Here, two of the poorest wards in the county touch and blend at their seams, 4000 vacant lots, homes, but that are still homes. Some people call this place a nuisance. A place to avoid. Train tracks divisively act as boundaries, barriers. Newspapers call this city a blight. Chain linked fences around buildings that might be inhabited. Dogs tied to posts. Trash and debris against the flourishing raspberries, blackberries,  and apple trees where I step over littered glass for the sake of canned applesauce to last into fall. I, too, at some point counted down the imaginary days to a time when I might leave, and cursed the ways I ended up here. I, too, wasn’t always able to see the little things.

*

How is it that a place can both break you and give you a reason to be? This I wonder as I drive through a new town, which feels less like a town than it does a commercial advertisement for middle class families. Here, young adults never seem to need to leave home. Here, the wood floors are not bowed, and they are not real wood. The ceiling fans work and my cast iron skillets clash with the electric stovetop. I try to learn how to cook all over again but there is no one here to cook for.  My neighbors have no names, the paint on my walls is pristine, the plastic panels that make up the siding embarrass me with cleanliness. White. Pure. A lackluster idea.

I visit the home of a friend which isn’t a home but a mansion. Named after fast food corporations. Ready to assemble and ordered by mail. Modern. Interpretations of a home. The American dream. There are three stories, not including the basement. Which is also a bar. A game room. A library for dusty books. A theatre. A man cave. There are Jacuzzi jets in every bathtub and a chandelier that looks like it’s made of marble. “But it’s really Styrofoam.” People who live here are sometimes proud of this fact. Some pretend they don’t know. There is an idea of safety. Of comfort. Of gates and locked doors and windows which never need opening. There is air conditioning in summer and heat in winter and all of it is conveniently programmed to automatically adjust, no spinning of dials necessary, no stuffing of door jams.

Here there are no subtleties. No worn out arm rests of chairs where a friend’s mother and her mother use to sit. Children’s toys don’t lay on the sidewalks and neighborhood dogs don’t stop by for visits. There are train tracks here, too, but the cops show up if you watch too long, and there is always a harsh knocking at the door when the lawn reaches my ankles.

*

A thought: Maybe you can’t make sense of one without the other, not love without despair. Perhaps the clusters of budding crocus in spring only make sense against the foundation of the rotting green house on the dead end street. The overgrowth of trees, the unchecked vines. The old Chevy truck with a rusted out bed. The one I’d pile too many people into anyways before the morning it finally broke down. Maybe the relief of the evening breeze found on the front porch only made sense with the crowds of mosquitos I fought to ignore, the car jack holding the roof above my head, the hollyhocks blooming from cigarette butts below. The questionable, shady riverside hide out to wade on sweltering days, to rinse the dirt that covered from head to toe. The cheap, tiny greasy diner where they know your name. Coffee, fish, and grits. A consolation. Absolution. The incessant chopping of wood, kindling just to warm winter bones. Old family photos of people you’ll never know in a basement where you learn to hide. The histories of spaces.

Maybe you have to leave a place and come back to learn how to see. Maybe it’s not a question of space, but time. Where the answers are only known for brief moments. The time of morning right before dawn. When everything makes a little more sense. Fleeting. It’s a pale pink and a velvet gray blue. It’s the soft tingle of bird chirps through the air. When all known places compile through the cracks of blinds to make one.  A momentary relief. A familial sensation. A thread which brings comfort in pretending you are somewhere else. The answer is a haze and then it’s gone, but it is there. Maybe you have to leave a place and come back to learn how to see.

Creative Non-Fiction Stream of Conciousness Essay