Middle of Everywhere - Mary Bray Pipher [135]
When former Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn was diagnosed with a terminal illness, he left Washington, D.C., to return to his small Texas town. He said, "There people know when you're sick and care when you die." That was querencia at its most basic.
The big questions for this decade are, Will we live in real places and have homes, or will we allow ourselves to be defined as consumers in a soulless global landscape? Of course, these aren't either/or questions. We will all be part of both a world culture and a local one, but the amount we participate in each will vary enormously. We have choices.
When Jim and I flew home from Alaska, we could see the northern lights exploding halfway across the bowl of sky over mountains of ice and snow, glacial rivers, and pale tundra. But as we watched out of our small thick window, we were watching alone. All the other passengers had their eyes on a video. It seemed a metaphor for our time, a crowd of people focused on a tired rerun of the news while missing news of the universe.
Refugees often come from places where, at least until the war or tragedy that drove them away, there was a true community, and they fere better in America if they find a new true community. What they need is a hometown. There is a great deal of difference between true and false communities.
In Nebraska, Oakland is a true community and White Clay is a false one. White Clay is a town built near the Pine Ridge Reservation. It has four liquor stores, a post office, a secondhand store, a grocery, a pawnshop, and an auto parts store. Each building is made of cinder blocks and has steel mesh over the windows. Nobody lives in White Clay because they enjoy it; they are there to make money.
Its civic events are shootings, fistfights, stabbings, and beatings. The shopowners keep loaded shotguns behind the counters. White Clay has only carry-out liquor sales, so the Native Americans drink in the town's abandoned houses. There are no festivals in White Clay, no churches, schools, parties, or farmers' markets. White Clay is what will happen to the whole world if we don't stop it.
In contrast, Oakland, Nebraska, is a sleepy little town that is a true community. Many of its children have left, but they come back for holidays and the Swedish festival. My generation of "Oakies" has created many new holidays. There is the Oakland Christmas party in Lincoln, the Ya Shoor bike tour, and summer parties on the Platte. Oakland is filled with characters with character. It is far from any action or centers of power and there is not enough money in town for anyone to bother to come steal. So it remains a simple good place.
Scott Russell Sanders writes, "I cannot have a spiritual center without a geographic one." He contrasts inhabitants to drifters. He speaks of the "malnutrition of the soul," of die "dissatisfaction and hunger that result from placelessness." The words provincial and parochial have traditionally had negative connotations, but they can also mean the sacredness of one's town.
Place is identity. There is a marvelous Francis Picabia painting at the Art Institute of Chicago called Four Faces. The faces are barely outlined. The painting is of the landscape of the islands, mountains, and the trees. His point is that we are landscape internalized. Our souls are etched with the geography of a particular place.
As we become global citizens, we need a home to hold our lives in place. We need to turn off our televisions, go outside, look at the stars, and visit with our neighbors. I think of myself on book tours, month-long marathons of speaking, signing books, giving interviews, and passing through airports and hotel rooms. By the end, I yearn for home. I weep at the smell of my father-in-law's pipe tobacco. I long for the sight of a jonquil