Sunday Road Trip Part 2: The Rock Garden in Springfield OH

This was my first thought, as we walked timidly behind the very normal looking bungalow house in the very normal looking neighborhood of bungalow houses and into...this. It hit me immediately, like a shock I thought, "I am never going to create anything like this, I am never going to care that much about just one thing to do something like this." And maybe that's cause I don't ever want to stay in one spot that long. Like, this guy lived here forever. 60 years. I can't even begin to conceive of that span of time, I'm practically a baby compared to that. But also maybe it's because that's a lot of little rocks.

I get it. Creation is hard. There's so many things just like this rock garden, built up by tiny little detailed pieces, a novel, a relationship, a body of work, a life. If I can't imagine creating something like this, then how can I even begin to think about those other things? At least this work of art is simply explained, it's one rock after another, it's a simple long process, rote. Those other things? You can't even draw blueprints for them. You just have to keep plugging away in the darkness, not knowing where it's going, try to create a lighted path just by visualizing it ethereal brick by brick. Year after year, over and over. Where the fuck am I going to be when I'm 40? Imagining that is like trying to conceptualize the entertainment industry in 100 years, insane and fictional and inherently wrong. The entire universe's timeline seems contained in my lifetime, and it's moving just as slow. It's an abyss I'm standing on, looking over, 40. I like abysses, a lot, they are super cool, but like, I'm not ready to just fall in. I want a rope or something. This guy, he made this rock garden his rope.

This day was a good brick though. I guess I feel that way about most days, so I guess something's being built whether or not I know what exactly it's shaping up to be. There was a point this day where we stopped at a bar to get food, and it was a pub in Urbana, OH on a Sunday, meaning no liquor and cash only, and the waitress got the chicken fingers from the back freezer in ziploc bags to throw them in the fryer. We drank beers and ate chicken fingers, watched Nascar and listened to Roy Orbison. Then we got back on the road and drove through Ohio listening to Drake.

 The problem is instead of seeing myself working on building other things, instead I'm just always working on building myself. Don't tell me that's okay. That's not okay. I want to be focused on something else, something permanent and inorganic and real in a way I can actually handle and give to someone. Instead I'm traipsing around in cars, doing and seeing weird things anywhere I can, and I'm a pretty solid product but also I'm a human being and it's sort of illegal to try and get someone to buy me. I guess metaphorically, it's okay. But I want actual cash.

(Has the term Laser Punk been used yet? As the next steampunk? I need more of an education in labels. Like, are we just using Modernist across the board now, or is there a secret new term for the art scene now that only art students and I guess people who actually read criticism know? And Dystopian, that terms been spittled to death. I don't want to be steampunk or dystopian, I want to be Laser Punk. Since we totally have lasers already, and we've had punk for way too long, in my head Laser Punk looks like a kid who works at his dad's used tire store and listens to dance music, only he's about 2 years behind Europe. He has a haircut that looks like a domesticated Yu-gi-oh. He likes painting on super large canvasses. He and his friends used to have a Queen cover band in high school, and he played bass. He has opinions about copywright and internet law.

 He probably lives somewhere in Marysville. He should move to Baltimore with me. Laser Punk Boyfriend.)

I wanted to write something beautiful and fun about this place, maybe about villagers shrunk by the evil church,  or avenging soldiers that came to life after dark. While we were there, I said I should write a children's book about a mouse living in this place. These are things I should do. But instead it turns out this place just makes me aware of how old I am. So very very old. And young. Both at the same time - the fear of old and the ineffectiveness of young. It's like I'm a top someone just set off spinning. Seriously though, how do I build something like this?

There's Blood in the River and It Isn't Mine

First he went with me to Hipster Mass, The Mountain Goats at Mr. Smalls in Millvale, so no really I meant it, actual Hipster Mass. It exists. No one smokes there anymore. There is whiskey at the bar. Girls will go wild. I waited at the bar down the street from his house for him to get off work, and so I might have been a little sparkly and excited. I might have felt that grip of fandom in my chest, turning my cheeks pink. I remember the first time I saw Dylan in high school, smoking weed with the old guys at Nautica. Or the first time I saw R.E.M. Or staring intensely at Scott Spillane a few weeks ago. Like that. Exactly like that. Oh, let me take off work for a few days, drive to another city, meet up with a friend, and then go to the hills to see my hero play in a church with blacked out windows. Let him play at least two songs I had on my short list. More in love than ever.

I think Pittsburgh may beat Cleveland because they have more church based venues. Didn't we just close all those churches? Lets do something about that, people. Also let's build some mountains. And listen to Flashdance a little more. And drink way more than we should, so that we forget the people with us are also drunk, maybe forget we are drunk at all.

Then there was the obligatory trip home, gathering up people, being late to meet other people, handing over of the keys to people who know how to parallel park, more whiskey and at some point I ordered a cherry lambic which was disgusting why did I do that? There were meetings in booths with curtains, and being kicked out by bouncers There was walking in the rain. There was pretty much the whole Southside thing, which is a thing I can get behind, as long as it's not a Saturday night. There is a bath house I have to go back to, because it has the same stone window work as my old high school.


The next morning I set out to explore. Well first we slept till 12, and then ate pad thai, and then I set out. His house is so fucking clean. I had a general idea, and a phone with google maps, but the Pittsburgh highway system exists to mess with me. I found a beautiful abandoned place, but it lived alone, across three lanes of backed up traffic, on 28 North. Which took me about an hour to get to, all because I took a wrong turn right as I left his house. But now I know that Greenwood exists. I guess. I finally made it back to where I wanted to go, only somehow I was in Millvale again. Millvale loves me. Millvale never wants me to leave. It held me close and tight, up and down the one ways and hills and pretty much any way you can get on Grant street ever. I knew where the bridge was that I wanted across the river (which river? I have no clue. There are rivers?), but every time I got to the place I thought I wanted, I took a wrong turn. It was adorable. Millvale is like a puppy dog you really want to take home cause it keeps following you down the street. It was like "Look Bridget, a park! Look Bridget, really old signs! Stay here, love me!"

But finally, ultimately, I made it to Lawrenceville. So I could relax and get really lost there.

The general rule, you know, go to where the water is. Always head towards the banks, that's where the stuff you want to see is. The industrial rollercoasters and chunks of broken rock and train tracks with boxcars sitting on them. Dear Pittsburgh, paint your bridges as much as you want, but I know where you really live.

Lawrenceville was great, except for this one strip that had trash cans painted with the artsy community logo. That part, geez, why do people paint their trash cans? I was the worst driver down Butler, peering down the side streets, looking for the dark dinosaur silouhettes at the water's edge. People were getting pissed at me. Another thing I noticed, and maybe this isn't true really, but I saw very few trucks and SUVS, which given the hills surprised me, and made me feel safe.

I wandered around the train tracks, the soft cold gravelly mud squishing into my ballet slippers left over from last night. I walked between the depots and the sun kept teasing me, until finally it gave in, slut. I said hi to guys in hard hats, and listened to a lot of guitar rock, and at one point I did actually taste that whiskey again in my mouth, but only for a moment and then the wind washed it away.

Someday I will buy an entire city block. Or I will just take it over, with dogs, it will just become mine because I choose it.

I took Butler down to 8, and drove through the strip mall paradise that I can't help but like because the crazy on top of each other bright store signs are backdropped by such pretty undeveloped hills and trees, and all those little broken mechanic shops and bike shops and ancient gas stations. I saw that cellphone tower/giant cemetery cross we found once. I had a conversation with Sam recently where he said that he preferred states with natural borders, and I thought about that as I crossed the state line, how flat Ohio got almost immediately. And how much flatter Michigan is further on. The flattening, the rolling out pancake like of Middle America. The trucks were lined up on the toll road like migrating elephants.