Part 1:

Prelude and Problem

As I was walking home from the shop the other day, in the pleasant sunshine and late heat of a long summer evening, I surveyed the sky, took in my surroundings, and thought to myself, as I often do…

“god I hate this f***ing town.”

(I told you it was coming)

I do. I hate it.

And if I’m being honest (and I am), I’ve felt this way for all of the twenty plus years that I’ve lived here.

Now, now…. before you get all riled up and defensive, we’ll go ahead and put the onus on me.

It’s not Greensboro… It’s me. (Hi. I’m the problem. It’s me.)

And it is. Because whatever Greensboro has or hasn’t, is or isn’t, does or doesn’t…it’s more about my relationship with it. And how it makes me feel. Or rather doesn’t.

It is a place. And I live here.

Outside of that?

I think the best analogy would be that for me, living here is like being in a long term relationship with a person that you’re just not attracted to. You feel nothing. No stirring in your nethers. No flush of heat or excitement. No familiar joy or sensible mutual respect. Not even a vague sense of safety or stability. Just… nothing. And it doesn’t matter how many people tell you it’s pretty or nice, or it it reads books, or has tattoos, or if it sends you nudes, is blonde or brunette, is buxom or petite, shaves or doesn’t shave… It just fills you with ambivalence. Sure, you could fake it through some naked romps (and in twenty plus years certainly have), but even in the throes of that skin to skin, your head is far away. Imagining something else. Somewhere else. Anywhere else.

And oh, trust me, I’ve played all the mental games. Meditated on place and peace and gratitude; the understanding that it could always be worse and that every day is a gift. Looked around on sunny days and thought, “Hey, this isn’t so bad. It’s actually almost pretty today.” Gone on long rides in the country and runs in the woods and felt those slivers of post-coital satisfaction. But it’s always brief, and after a minute or two of lying there in the sweaty afterglow, I start to feel a panicky and urgent need to grab my clothes and get the f*** out of whoever’s apartment this is.

A little history.

I actually went to college in Greensboro back in the mid 90’s, and I still don’t really know why. It just kind of happened. Maybe I fell for the school’s waning overtures of Quaker progressiveness. (Like I knew or know sh*t about the Quakers) Maybe it was some stunted and bizarre idea that as a southern boy I needed to remain in the southeast. Maybe it was that the school was the first to accept my college application. Or maybe it was seeing Laura Watts during my initial tour. You know… THE Laura Watts? The one I had a huge crush on in middle school? The one whose last name was my first name? The one who I can still picture blowing her bangs out of blue eyes with a cute pursing of her lips? The one I told I loved when she came to my “Goodbye Atlanta” party in 7th grade and who I never saw again? The one who was definitely no longer in Greensboro by the time I arrived?

But whatever the reason, it’s where I ended up. And had, by all accounts, a perfectly pleasant college career. Good friends. Good teachers. Good times. And when it was over, my sights were set, if not forward, then at least far away, and I had no intention of ever coming back.

Here I am.

Some of that is probably (definitely) a tendency toward unhealthy passivity in the face of certain situations in my life. The kind of passivity that likes to lead to building resentment and eventual, dramatic self-immolation. The kind I’m probably (definitely) still working on. And some of that is just circumstance. Things happen and we don’t always end up where we want or expect. But whatever it was, when my now ex-wife broached moving back to Greensboro in the early 2000’s and went on to inform me that she’d actually already applied for a job at the school we’d both successfully left behind us, I just shrugged and said “Huh. Ok. As long as we don’t settle there.”

Twenty years later…

She, incidentally, has long since settled here, and I remain a root-bound shrub in a cracked plastic pot, living in fear that those few tendrils I’ve let break free into the soil beneath are going to anchor me here forever.

Because do you know what it is?

There is just nothing that I really want to do here.

Which I realize begets many much larger questions about existence and happiness, and what we ultimately want in life.

But I mean it. There is nothing that I want to do here.

Oh, sure… there are things that I DO. But they are necessity driven more so than anything. Option C become Option A, because Option A isn’t actually an option.

For instance; yes, I want to ride my bike. It’s one of my absolute favorite things in the world. But the act itself is not necessarily enough to make me feel anything. And in fact, when I’m riding my bike down a decidely unattractive road in Greensboro that I’ve ridden too many times to count and that is, if anything, only becoming dramatically uglier and less hospitable every day, I actually do start to feel something. And it’s not good. And I start to actively not want to do this thing that is one of the few things that I genuinely want to do.

And maybe some of it is burnout; the tacit understanding that familiarity breeds contempt. But meanwhile, Dorothy and I are closer and radder every day, and we’re going on like, year fifteen or something. (Also, she feels the same as me about this place.)

So what is it that I want?

It’s a fair but loaded question.

I want a vista to view a sunset that isn’t a strip mall parking lot. I want a lake or river that isn’t some shallow gross-ass doody brown puddle you’re actually not even allowed to swim in. I want a hill to climb that isn’t just 100 meters of uninteresting, unaffordable houses in a supposedly affordable town. But more than any of those small things, I just want to feel a little awe. I want to feel inspired.

And Greensboro NC, but moreover this entire region… For me? It consistently fails to do so.

And yes, I could and should find inspiration in the mundane. In the simple act of moving and breathing. In one of the multitudes I supposedly contain. But as introspective and brooding as I would like to think I am, I am also so externally driven that it borders on an extreme shallowness. A sunny day can be the difference between mental health and a menty b. I try to be grounded and present, but halfway through another out and back on a local trail, I start to yawn and consider cutting it short. Pulling on my cycling or running gear on any given weekday morning, I mentally vet my available route options and more often than not decide that riding the trainer and disassociating in my living room is just as compelling a choice. And when I’m walking back and forth down the garbage strewn sh*thole that is Spring Garden Street, watching cars use the bike lane to pass, and listening to Dodge Chargers fart themselves to a hopeful oblvion… I admit, I’d pretty much rather be anywhere else.

A customer put it pretty succinctly a while back: Imagine finding therapy, and it being a genuine source of aid and solace in your life. But imagine that the commute to and from said therapy was unpleasant enough that by the time you arrived home, you were in a similar state of disquiet as when you left.

Is Greensboro really that bad? No. Yes. Of course not. Probably. IDK. Everywhere is bad. I’m not so naive or melodramatic that I don’t have at least a little perspective. But “it could be worse” has always seemed a weak way of conceding that “it could be better.” And I say all of this less to sh*t on the town that I’ve built a life in (I do), but mostly to process and to try and put my finger on why I feel and have always felt such consistent and pervasive antipathy toward the place.

Which begs the question; what do you do when the city you live in consistently fails to inspire, and if anything, just fills you with a numbing sense of dread and torpor?

No, I’m legitimately asking.

Because maybe some of you don’t know what the f*** I’m ranting about…

But maybe some of you do.

Next up: Sisyphus and Solutions