The Ghost of Route 6

Yesterday upon return from the Marcus Cinema—(which is, I’ll politely call it annexed in the Coralville Mall between the Children’s Museum and the ice rink, accessible from the outside through a glass door moronically defiled with a sign that reads across the top mall opening hours and, below, instead of the hours, has a QR code which you must scan (after connecting to the mall WiFi, of course) in order to access the mall opening hours) wherein myself and Mother went to a Studio Ghibli screening (My Neighbor Totoro, if you’re curious) and she surprised me with some newfound adventurous rulebreaking trait that people like herself typically find late in adulthood by pulling out two raspberry dark chocolate bars from her tiny purse shortly after the lights went darker—we were discussing, on the drive home, the imposition of ‘skylines’ onto the natural world, which interfere grievously with an individual’s capacity to view and appreciate a sunrise or sunset. I regaled her with my woes about the horizon line being obstructed from every neighborhood I lived in over there, and surely every neighborhood I’ll live in for the foreseeable future, unless, of course, somewhere in West Brooklyn grabs me by the ankle and pulls. This conversation was brought on, predictably, by the sunset we were at present driving directly into, the car on the empty open highway which spilled towards us like a tongue, leading directly into a blazing gaping hole—or, a bug bite, an overripe tomato, a crown, a knife wound, an albino pupil—I could go on and on listing auto-constructed epithets for the Iowa sun, which is, as far as I’m concerned, the brightest, reddest, fattest sun there is. 

The brightest, reddest, fattest sun there is was doing a spectacular job of showing off the rural landscapes. I slouched further towards the window, having to peel my face off by the time we reached the driveway—watching the lull of the land, a solid whisper, a mound, what a word, mound—fat voluptuous hills rising and receding like someone’s sleeping chest. Anyone who didn’t grow up landlocked can’t fathom the lack of proximity to water. To this I say, I have the ocean, the whole raging golden thing, right in my backyard. The corn is lovely and seductive in the way it sways and blows, sleepily giving spectators in cars a marvelous show, but the wheat—the wheat like molten gold, like a gob of spit from Midas, a body of water the gods themselves would hesitate to dirty. This land is land and water. This agricultural ocean has fed generations of red blooded Americans and non-Americans alike. It’s calm and quiet most of the time, the thick shag of growing stuff like a blanket, easing the earth to bed—but it isn’t without nightmares, doesn’t go long without tubes of wind and terror descending from a blackened sky, which spreads across the Truman-Show-level-of-picturesque blue—so clear it’s almost pointy—in clouds resembling soot smudges, God spilling his inkpot, letting it drip off the table for a second to remind the gold carpet of mortality. At this we let the adrenaline carve us a smile and squat in the ditch, watching the havoc wreak its rhythm. 

From the car window, the dusk shed enough shadow across the world that I could see dust—from the gravel roads running parallel to the interstate—billow up all by itself, hovering over the rows of corn like an environmental ghost. Mother postulated it might be fog, made possible by the impossible humidity percentage (Iowa’s summertime gimmicky catchphrase amongst the locals is Iowa: air you can wear), the levels only increasing with the encroaching evening. One wakes up in the morning and can step outside into a different kind of local ocean—bare feet on the grass makes a sound too wet to feasibly mean Midwest. The dew is cold, somehow, and always rises in thick layers of fog (which always looks like steam) off of the stretches of grass. In the slopes carving down on either side of the interstate are lush spreads of wildflowers, the most common array of colors in the Southeast region being yellow, pinkish-purple, and blue. They creep up the side of the hills, sometimes all the way to the field fences, depending on the farmer’s pesticide use. The flowers are always the first thing I smell from the airport parking lot, the dense, syrupy air so solid it almost coats the inside of your lungs. It can be nauseating to the virginal nose, but it’s one of the only scents I know how to miss. 

In the evening, I wash off the pollen and aerated dust in the shower with the broken fan and terrible water pressure. John Mayer propped up on the plastic ledge waxing philosophical about missed trains and megacolossal citylove that cracks your brain in half. I calmly watch the drain. I know I can’t stay here forever, and I know I’m in for something ridiculous and character-building and hopefully not devastating (but if it is, I at least pray it’s in the right way). For a while I’ve intentionally staved off the inferiority complex charmingly named rural-Americans-who-leave. It’s been a long time since I’ve apologized outright for being from where I, well, am from, despite holding the private opinion that it’s actually maybe the best place in the world, at least for those of us interested in divinity, humanity, buzzing gas station lights, monarchs, people who are both nice and kind, the sky, aphrodisiac qualities in the weather, creative inspiration, etc. It’s been a long time since I’ve apologized outright, but it’s hard to keep it out of my voice, especially when being prodded into the corner—I told him this, a long time ago, appealing to the only part I was unsure of, the only area I thought might be a blind spot, in terms of stripping completely and totally naked and still being, well, accepted.