Geography 112 uses a Geology textbook and is basically a Geology course. Not even a dumbed down one, we seem to be going through the whole book. The bone thrown to Geography is that our assignments for the "lab" portion of class frequently involve maps, calculating coordinates, bearings, declination etc.
We were studying land formation and terrain types. The craton was mentioned.
cra·ton (krtn)
(Geology)
n.
A large portion of a continental plate that has been relatively undisturbed since the Precambrian era and includes both shield and platform layers.
from thefreedictionary.com
I don't know if Columbus, Ohio is actually on the mid-continental craton but my thought was, "I'm from there, that's where I'm from, that's my home" as the teacher went on to describe how flat a craton is, flat and low and old and never-changing, the surface of thick, broad, solid crust born gently from peaceful circular eruptions perhaps billions of years ago, or perhaps of violent origin but worn smooth and low by glaciers and pulled tight by the distant tuggings of subduction zones. Flat and low, ancient and never-changing.
I didn't cry but my eyes were as damp as they ever get for myself, young man of few problems. They are again this morning because of a complex of memories and associations. Following the election news anxiously my mind kicked up the Carpenters song, you know the one, the only one we all know. Because it feels like that, here. I'm out of it all, on a slope of suburban homes in British Columbia, among mountains and inlets, islands and mists. In a province, provincial. Anyone who's lived here knows how far the rest of Canada feels, is. Even Seattle is somehow ten times farther because of that grim border.
"On top of the world, looking down on..."--and my mind adds, poignantly if lamely: my craton.
Four years ago exactly I was in Toronto. I'd driven my father up to the University there to pick up an old project of his, for some reason contained in a stack of folders high on a dark shelf deep in the offices of an also-ran Old English dictionary, staffed by eccentric and very kind aging women. My father got along with them so well I suggested he purchase hornrims and join their team. It was really striking. He's an awkward fit anywhere else I've ever seen him, but that place was a jigsaw puzzle with a single him-shaped gap. They all chattered away and I tuned out pleasantly until the ranking Canadian addressed me. Wasn't it election day, would we be back in time to vote? Especially as we were from Ohio where voting might make a difference. We joked about our votes' cancelling one another out (forgive him, he was a teenager when the Cold War began and his mother was a proto-hippy) and then admitted we were hitting the road immediately to get Dad to the booths before they closed.
(Yes, just him. I thought voting was statistically pointless and still do, even now. Not the thing to admit on this particular day, but logic's on my side. Also the mail-in forms I picked up in Washington turned out to only be good for Washington residents.)
He talked with them so long we had to hop in the car at once and drive fiercely through fierce weather to get him to Whetstone Rec. Center just before closing. I'd been promised bookstore time that morning but it wasn't to be. Driving from city to city for used books was the chief joy of my life back then. The lost cities of the craton.
My sympathies were of course with Gore, as Nader had no chance, but I was pretty apathetic about it all. Many of us were, no? We hoped he'd win, but if he didn't c'est la vie. The next day we woke up and it turned out it mattered. Maybe it will turn out it didn't so much this time, but once you meet someone your eyes track them in a crowd, you can't help it. 2000-2004 met everyone.
They widen the river artificially downtown for impressiveness, just downstream from the confluence of the modest Scioto and petite Olentangy.
I'm pausing.
Olentangy is apparently another craton for me. I'm thinking of a thousand sites along it, streams feeding it that have soaked my feet, some emerging from dry sewers I entered at ten. A slope I had to carry my bike up through gray twiggy mud. The place where the birds mill around eating gnats. Bridges, dams. Olentangy River Road. The Olentangy Village Tavern, which was a Chinese restaurant of all things; closed now. Their cashew chicken, their Moo Goo Gai Pan...why was their chicken so delicious? Their House Special Fried Rice that gave me mild allergic reactions I attributed to MSG. Turned out to be the shrimp. Shellfish get me high in an unpleasant way. Each week we had a pizza night (Dante's pizza, half pepperoni, half gross anchovyesque basalt things) and a Chinese night. And Mondays were macaroni, in the brown clay dish.
The bike trails wove around the river and emptied into streets for stretches. You had to use sidewalks downtown. Then you were in trees again, under bridges my sister's boyfriend helped graffiti the knees of, then you were in that smelly part of town, where trash-burning and chemical emissions are allegedly promoting carcinogeniture. There were patches of unbearable stench, you put your face in your shirt or something. The trail ended in a little loop, one section of which kept flooding. Also there was an abandoned shopping cart there. Eventually someone pushed it down the bank, I last saw it in the water. For years that cart was there. Presumably it still is.
Columbus isn't entirely flat, it is after all a river town in its laughable way. The worst slope came right past OSU, in an open area so paved it reminded me of the LA River. That's where the heat always got to me.
This mood is conflating my paleolithogram birthplace, my childhood, my early twenties, Democratic rule, and for some reason the 1970s. And I haven't even been drinking.
Also I'm being absurdly loquacious. Not enough sleep, I suppose. I'm reticent when rested.
On the other hand I love it here, love my life here. I didn't think homesickness would ever get me. And surely the philosophical outlook should make one indifferent to matters of mere space and time.
Just a mood then. One remembering other moods.
Trailing off to silence.
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