A quick guide to driving in Ohio.
You will find that the corn, this time of year, stays bent or even broken just as it has been blown. The remaining ears will not have desiccated, but all else will.
The white barn on the south side of the highway will pull its usual tricks on you. Be careful where you look: that knife's edge divide of brightness from shadow will do its best to fix you.
Cows will have been moved to the other side of the road, away from the piece of land your excellent friend calls Quagmire Farm, no doubt because the turf there needs cropping. You will want to stare at the cows' backs; you will want to think of their backs as woolen, or as pelts, or as furry. You will decide that you don't know what to call them. You will remember having learned on the plane home that cranes do something called kettling. You will want to decide to say to people, "Well, that's a fine kettle of cranes." If you don't stop this mulling, you will wreck your car.
You will decide that you yourself need to learn to kettle this spring.
You will continually fight an urge to stop the car and photograph everything in sight.
You will learn the ways that barn roofs disassemble. Once a corner of that metal comes loose, they roll up like windowshades, curling up toward their peaks or up and over like inverted bedsheets. You will swear there are more ruins now than a week ago. You will know that you're employing the pathetic fallacy again, thinking those shivered silvers might solace your unravelings.
Someone will run a stoplight right in front of you and then drive under the speed limit for the next ten minutes. You will wrestle yourself to patience until you can pass him.
Your hill will still be waiting for you when you return, but the field across the highway will have become stubbled rows.
You will realize that you have come home with no pictures at all, only colors, more colors: all yours, this group, colors without names.
The white barn on the south side of the highway will pull its usual tricks on you. Be careful where you look: that knife's edge divide of brightness from shadow will do its best to fix you.
Cows will have been moved to the other side of the road, away from the piece of land your excellent friend calls Quagmire Farm, no doubt because the turf there needs cropping. You will want to stare at the cows' backs; you will want to think of their backs as woolen, or as pelts, or as furry. You will decide that you don't know what to call them. You will remember having learned on the plane home that cranes do something called kettling. You will want to decide to say to people, "Well, that's a fine kettle of cranes." If you don't stop this mulling, you will wreck your car.
You will decide that you yourself need to learn to kettle this spring.
You will continually fight an urge to stop the car and photograph everything in sight.
You will learn the ways that barn roofs disassemble. Once a corner of that metal comes loose, they roll up like windowshades, curling up toward their peaks or up and over like inverted bedsheets. You will swear there are more ruins now than a week ago. You will know that you're employing the pathetic fallacy again, thinking those shivered silvers might solace your unravelings.
Someone will run a stoplight right in front of you and then drive under the speed limit for the next ten minutes. You will wrestle yourself to patience until you can pass him.
Your hill will still be waiting for you when you return, but the field across the highway will have become stubbled rows.
You will realize that you have come home with no pictures at all, only colors, more colors: all yours, this group, colors without names.
posted by Dr. S at 8:11 PM
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