From the land of Nowhere

So. There are some things that I miss from college days that are sorely lacking in this geography. One might file this under the shock of forcing oneself headfirst into the toilet of the real world. 

I went to the Long Branch Cafe in Carbondale with my wife earlier in the week. We went up to Illinois so that she could finally visit her family, after a nearly three-month absence in which I did nothing but work/have a nervous breakdown/stress some more while she stayed home with the baby/drove around trying to familiarize herself/watch t.v. I'm not exactly a vegetarian, nor am I of the nostalgic-hippy persuasion, but I think there is some point to be made about good food, good coffee, good music, and good conversation, even when it's only overheard. I miss jazz. I miss seeing studiousness. I miss the general professional and (ironically) goal-oriented slackerdom that is graduate school and intellectual hyperactivity. Nothing of the such to be said about this place, though...even though I'm forced for heritage purposes to claim it as a place of origin.

I know H.L. Mencken called the South the "Sahara of the Bozart" long enough ago, before Faulkner's rise, before Penn Warren and O'Connor and all of the great things in literature that have arisen since out of this little patch of earth. Those are rather exceptions. Maybe in a place like Nashville, Memphis, Atlanta, Gainesville, or Athens you can find such environments as described above. Carbondale has the fascinating distinction of being near a sort of nexus of the American physical universe. Somewhere South, yet somewhere quite North at the same time. Droves from Chicago walking between campus buildings and bar-hopping. Locals all around who are either distant transplants, and then the locals who remain and remain...and remain. It's a nowhere, an island in space where some pretty strange happenings go on. The Land of Nowhere, however, is something else. 

I like to overhear conversations more than I prefer eavesdropping. I overhear people all the time while I practice my thousand-yard stare at work or out and about. All I ever hear is talk of money, football, and other assorted bizarreries. Just try and talk jazz with anyone at a bar. All educators speak of is the "dream" of making miracles on a daily basis, in a slow and protracted fashion. I myself find it hard to care so much. I'm starting to think that the limit of this poor language that we speak is to be found in places like this one. As if the slow passage of time here can't find a solid match in world. Or the mundane comings and goings of the general population.

So this is what the real world is like, then, I guess. More later. Time to go and waste right now.