From Grids to Grain: Finding Familiarity

Preface: It's been two years and I've all but abandoned my blog! Well, I'm headed off to Europe again, so I guess it's time to rekindle an old flame. I've decided to make a few changes to format and layout, more to come (so bear with me and forgive any excessive emails). For now, here's some kindling: thoughts from the home-front in Ellington. 

The city makes me come alive. Here at home in Ellington, Connecticut I am residing in something far less than most ideas of a “city”: very low development density, three or four chain stores to count (McDonald’s – the newbie, Subway, and oh, what’s the third…?), just as many stop lights, and sizeable front lawns. Today I took a walk to a nearby small coffee shop and bean roaster, Kevin’s Coffee. I have been there maybe twice but I had a hankering for a good cup of non-Strarbuck, non-Dunkin’ Joe and maybe some ambiance outside of the normal nest.

After quite the stroll – I’d tell you how many “blocks” but we don’t have those in these here parts – I arrived at packed little Kevin’s full of the local plumber’s gang, with a few state cops on the side. As I read the menu, I soon realized that the dreamed-of “for-here” latte was a dream left sleeping at the doorstep, so I ordered an “umm medium coffee,” which I had to repeat a couple times to be heard over the masculine din. There would be no Florence and the Machine in the background or Nintendo-referencing drink titles here. Just coffee, straight up. Emphasis on the straight. So I meandered to the one unoccupied table, set down my messenger bag (read: man-purse by many of these folk) and my hipster sunnies, took out my copy of The Pub, Wheaton’s independent literary magazine, and felt completely out of place. And yet so much at home.

My already-sloth-like reading speed was further impeded by conversations of hen’s eggs too small to be worth the work, overly detailed discussions of the local news, and then finally, “How can he read in all this – he must be on the same page!” Quickly I was brought into the discussion of my neighbors the plumber, the English teacher, and the café owner himself – who, by the way, knew everyone else who approached his counter; all but me, that is. The final half-hour of my time in Kevin’s Coffee continued with gulps of yocal paired with sips of Pub, a brew I hadn’t anticipated but got a bit of a buzz from. I left Kevin’s delighted.

I don’t live in the city. Ellington, from consensus with my parents, isn’t even suburbia. It’s just rural. In this rurality, many things look different, cafes, blocks, private properties, but they aren’t all that strange. Rather, I liken these differences to the “other” side of that knit or woven blanket you or your aunt may have in the living room. A nice, planned pattern decorates the front, perhaps a oversized cat with some poetic Proverb-derived saying. But on the back it’s just a bunch of colorful strings. Sort of a mess, really. One would never guess some familiar domestic totem graced the “front,” the side that is casually draped over the back of that too-comfy couch.

Ellington is sort of a mess compared to Chicago. Colors everywhere: curvy roads, inefficient front lawns, questionable side-walks, and too-short coffee menus. But, it’s made up of those same strands that organize the streets, schools, and service venues as Chicago: people. I love people. That’s why I love cities, I suppose. To a kid from Ellington, Connecticut, the city is this amazing network of rewoven strands of supply, demand, hen-keepers, and plumber guys. You just have to turn over the blanket. And, when you cannot turn over the blanket to see that comfortable familiar, you must then hold it close and feel the warmth that either side will give, for the heat comes from you anyway.

So, for those of you far from home, or at home and still feeling stranger than ever, draw near to the mess of strings that comprise the complexity that is your place. While you may feel unsoothed by the lack of a familiar pattern or by the frightening facets of your familiar, proximity may help you discover through presence and thus reveal a simplified space that looks more like your own.

A space possessed with some notion of hope becomes a place, and a place a garden for the growth of an identity that possesses and reproduces the very hope which uprooted unfamiliarity from our dispositions to begin with. Find place by finding hope. Find hope by denying difference. Deny Difference by engaging diversity. Only then can we turn over the blanket to find the product of the mess of emotions and identity complexes, the identity that was alas, planned from the start by the Great Weaver Himself.

And at the end of the day, when I'm whirling in wonder, looking for home, I turn myself over to Him.


C'est tout pour maintenant.