"Let us all be from somewhere"

Anyone who has known me for more than five minutes (or has read this blog for more than five posts) knows that for quite some time now I've been preoccupied with the ideas of home, place, and where I'm from.  I am from Mississippi.  That's where my people are, that's where I was raised.  This is something I'm prouder than ashamed of, though I've apologized for my Deep South roots too many times before.  No more.

When I moved away to college, I resented Arkansas until I loved it and began to resent Mississippi.  A bad thing indeed when one resents his home.  

When I finally became well-versed in Natural State, felt pride in calling myself Arkansan, I up and left that home behind for the long, skinny state of Tennessee.  Repeat resentment cycle.

I'm an East Tennessean now, by way of Central Arkansas.  My heart will always belong to Northwest Mississippi, as well as every other place I will live.  Let us all be from somewhere, the more somewheres the better.   I think, though, my somewhere will always be a nowhere place just south of the Tennessee state line.  

A Primer

I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go

to be in Michigan. The right hand of America

waving from maps or the left

pressing into clay a mold to take home

from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan

forty-three years. The state bird

is a chained factory gate. The state flower

is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical

though it is merely cold and deep as truth.

A Midwesterner can use the word “truth,”

can sincerely use the word “sincere.”

In truth the Midwest is not mid or west.

When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio.

There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life

goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,

which we’re not getting along with

on account of the Towers as I pass.

Then Ohio goes corn corn corn

billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget

how to be from Michigan when you’re from Michigan.

It’s like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing.

The Upper Peninsula is a spare state

in case Michigan goes flat. I live now

in Virginia, which has no backup plan

but is named the same as my mother,

I live in my mother again, which is creepy

but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,

suddenly there’s a pouch like marsupials

are needed. The state joy is spring.

“Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball”

is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April,

when February hasn’t ended. February

is thirteen months long in Michigan.

We are a people who by February

want to kill the sky for being so gray

and angry at us. “What did we do?”

is the state motto. There’s a day in May

when we’re all tumblers, gymnastics

is everywhere, and daffodils are asked

by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes

with a daffodil, you know where he’s from.

In this way I have given you a primer.

Let us all be from somewhere.

Let us tell each other everything we can

Bob Hicock

Huckabee, Taco Bell, and Turning 23 (not Japanese)

Apparently Mike Huckabee likes his Taco Bell. Or used to, before he went on the mysterious Atkins-meets-South Beach-meets-crystal meth diet. (I jest). Seriously, though, I appreciate him for cleaning up public school cafeterias (on paper, at least) in Arkansas, but I've heard some horror stories from teacher friends about the slim pickings their students are fed in Bigelow, Atkins, and Scranton (two hot dogs and canned peaches!) after Huckabee's "slim down Arkansas quick" campaign.

Anyway, seems like one reporter found a whole heap of reasons to confirm what I've been screaming for months now, Huckabee is not like you, nor does he care very much about your kind. So it's yellow journalism. Still interesting to read.

In another, completely unrelated note, I am turning 23 (I think I'm turning 23, I think I'm turning 23, I really think so!) on Friday. Brace yourselves for a completely self-indulgent post about all the great things I've done in 23 years, perhaps supplemented by photos of the previous night's outings (Thursday night the birthday celebration is going down because it's .75 cent PBR night at the Mellow Mushroom). I warned you.

The Case of the Unidentified Text Messager

Yesterday afternoon after playing frisbee golf with some first-years for a few hours in the most beautiful park I've ever seen, I got home and checked my cell phone to find a text message I'd received from a number I did not recognize. With my phone's caller ID feature, usually a name and not a number appears in the from line of the text message. However, this number was not in my SIM card's memory, but I recognized from the 870 area code, my messager was from Arkansas.

The message informed me that unidentified Arkansan would call me once s/he was finished eating. Now, I'm not one of those people who doesn't respond to unknown texts or calls. I have friends who won't answer if they don't recognize the number, but I'm too anal for that. I answer, and if I see that I've missed a call, I call back. You never know if the call might be an important one.

So that's what I did--texted back. I didn't inquire about the identity of the unknown texter, though, because, well, in the same way it's embarrassing to ask someone her name when you know she's told you more than once before, I feel the same way about not knowing phone numbers that have potentially been given to me numerous times previously. Therefore I responded to unidentified Arkansan texter that s/he should just call me when his/her meal was over. I'm much better at voice recognition anyway.

I was pleasantly surprised when a half hour later I received a call from now unidentified caller and answered to discover an old Arkansas acquaintance on the other end. (It was Jarred Kibbey for my once-Honors Collegian readers). He was in town for the Arkansas-Tennessee game, and he decided to give me a holler since he remembered I live in Knoxville now. I met up with him around 7 last night, pleasantly surprised to discover he had Phillip Worley and Brandon Walser in tow. We visited for a couple hours over at Caitlin's apartment, and it was nice to reminisce about the Conway years and discover what each of them are doing with their lives now. Kibbey's married and enrolled in an MA program in bioethics at Loyola-Chicago. Phillip's in law school at UVA, and Brandon's a second-year med student at UAMS in Little Rock. Looks like kids from the small-town South can really be somebodies.

The kicker to my story is this: While I knew all of those guys when we were at UCA, I wasn't necessarily friends with any of them. Acquaintances, yes. Bosom buddies, no. None are people I'd go out of my way to visit on a school break. But it's really nice to know that they'd make time for me when they were in my neck of the woods. I'd been missing Arkansas a bit for the past couple of weeks, so spending time with some familiar faces talking about familiar places was nice. Next time I'm in Virginia or Central Arkansas, I might have to give them a call.

I Have A Hankering

I went to hear poet Michelle Boisseau read tonight with some of the wonderful people from my poetry class, and I was moved by her meditations on borders, boundaries, and state lines. I started thinking about my own home, and the borders I've crossed since leaving there. I grew up at the tip top of Mississippi, in a town that's no more Mississippi than it is Tennessee or Arkansas. Five miles north is Memphis, ten miles west is the Mississippi River, Arkansas just across the bridge. The funny thing about Arkansas, though, is I never went there until I was 18-years-old, when I moved smack dab to the middle for college. I remember that first semester. The weather seemed much colder there than at home, and I didn't have a coat. My daddy had to send me money so I could buy one. I saw my first real mountain that year, when I went up to Fayetteville with the Young Democrats for something or another. The bluffs overlooking Highway 61 were the tallest things I'd seen until then.

I want to write an Arkansas poem, but I'm scared what it will show me. I discovered lots of things there--cheap beer, Ani DiFranco, liberal politics--and even more about myself. It wasn't until I moved here, to Knoxville, that I realized what a pro I am at repressing. At giving a little, then pulling back and wishing to God I hadn't.

Let's just leave it at this: I think of that place fondly, and I miss it sometimes, when I'm driving home from school and I see a changing leaf. Arkansas in autumn could be my favorite place. I carry the landscape deep inside somewhere, in the sinews between muscle and bone.