Monday, August 20, 42 A.D.
Re-installing Myself
So, I've moved.
From the West Central Armpit area of Ohio to Columbus.
Why?
I've thought long and hard about it, asked around, even re-read the great philosophers, but nobody seems to know for sure.
It appears to boil down to two, equally probable possibilities:
1) My wife got a new job
or
2) My cat, Jester, has somehow wrangled a seat in the Ohio state senate
In any case, the fact remains that I now find myself living in the Columbus area.
This has made it harder to deny that I'm an Ohioan than ever before.
True, I was born in Ohio and have always lived in Ohio, but heretofore there's always been a modicum of plausible deniability about my residency and citizenship which I found comforting. For many years, you see, I lived in Toledo - just a short walk away from the Michigan border and virtually on the front porch of Canada. (In retrospect it's amazing that those Ontario postal carriers were able to deliver the mail without tripping over my outstretched legs.) During the 24 years I've lived outside Toledo, I've never once lived more than about an hour's drive from Indiana - an admittedly scary place, but a comfort all the same given the antics of one-time Cleveland mayor Dennis Kucinich, the Columbus zoo's famously bonkers Jack Hanna, and others too numerous to mention.
Now I wake up each day some 120 miles from Michigan and about 100 miles from Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia and realize "I'm about as deeply into Ohio as a person can go without special pressurized equipment. Why, if this poorly-inspected state ever capsizes and sinks, I'll be one of those least likely to be rescued in time by the U.S. Coast Guard...!"
Despite this, I've somehow managed to survive here now for over 3 weeks without quivering to death.
In fact, the hardest part came early on as I went about the cumbersome task of disconnecting all the mental cables linking me to my old surroundings. The cable running from my head to the lilac bush right outside my office window proved to be especially sticky, but in the end it came loose right along with the wires connecting my heart to the forsythia bushes we planted and the recycled umbilical cord attaching my psyche to the generally rural atmosphere I'd been deriving soulful nourishment from for the last 4 years or so.
Now, of course, I face the daunting task of reconnecting all my dangling wires, cables, and cords to something, but I prefer not to think about that just yet.
Much more fun to simply sit and imagine Jester getting litterboxes placed in all those smoke-filled rooms down at the suddenly local statehouse in exchange for his vote on making Jerry Springer the Official State Embarrassment.
(©Now by DJ Birtcher after accidentally
copyrighting the state seal instead)