outskirts
where life really happens
I walk into the coffee shop, Fox in the Snow in German Village, Columbus, Ohio. Nick Drake's Saturday Sun plays over the speakers. The song is half appropriate for today: it’s Saturday, but there’s a fog, which blankets the sky like a fresh snow. A snow a fox would love. I'm here to visit Nick - not Drake - a friend, if you can call him that. I've never met him, but we're familiar with each other due to the conveniences of modern newsletter services and an online community. He's not yet here despite the agreed upon time, but it's no matter. I have a book, Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays, two notebooks, and a writing device. A cortado reaches my lips like a warm milkshake.
I realize I’m mistaken as his name isn't Nick, it's Neil, and it turns out that he wasn't running late, he is here, sitting at a table behind me, on the outskirts of the old masonry-clad garage in which we both now sit across from each other. We pick up the conversation from nowhere and proceed to talk for 75 minutes. About life. About fatherhood. About our careers. About our interests. About life, again.
I walk through Schiller Park after saying our goodbyes on my way to meet my wife and daughters to further explore the city they’ve never visited. They're currently on the outskirts of the city in a thrift shop in a strip mall. We plan to meet at the Columbus Metropolitan Library on Grant. I briefly pause to peruse the books at The Book Loft, despite dropping one-hundred eighty-three dollars and twenty-three cents there the day prior. This time, I somehow come up empty-handed, a rarity for me in a book shop excursion, but the stop provides the chance for some more caffeine, another cortado at Stauf's next door.
I continue my way Northeast towards the library. The fog has lifted, my walk now guided by clouds and damp cement. I draw closer to the building that surely must be the place. A classic library with the inscription, Biblioteca Fons Eruditionis - the library, the fount of learning - faces West, the doors below with a note: "All are welcome here."
Entering the home to so many books I am struck first by the amount of light, natural no less, which pours down despite the blotted sky outside above. I make a small but steady conversation with one of the volunteer docents welcoming guests. Built with the money of Carnegie - Andrew, not Dale, though I may return to him later - some hundred fifty years ago, it was recently renovated, revitalized. Ohio takes care of its libraries, I am told, and Columbus is no exception. I tell him I plan to meet my family here, as their morning’s Lyft driver suggested it was a place well worth a visit. (This contrasts with yesterday's driver's information that Columbus leads the nation in sex-trafficking, and this weekend’s Arnold Sports Festival is its biggest weekend.) A cafe and a Friends of the Library store would await us, my wife was told, which he confirms by raising his left hand, sleeved in the maroon cardigan with the library’s 150th Anniversary pin bedecking his left breast lapel.
Never one to let a library store go to waste, I make both my way and some small talk with the cashier. Noting the fineness of the library, she agrees with my comments on how fortunate she is to have a city who cares for its readers and citizens. I leave to explore the rest of the first floor, she wishes me a farewell, and my reply confirms, I'll be back.
Three Andy Warhols line the wall of the bar height tables to the left of the cafe, named after the chief benefactor. All are truly welcome here as students, staff and those without a home congregate in a peaceful, yet active, display of community. Perhaps they're all just oblivious to each other, but I think - wish - to myself they must share this space familiarly over the weeks and months left behind and those weeks and months yet to come.
I make my way upstairs and find a seat facing the sun-dappled atrium and survey my surroundings. I send a message to my wife that this library is absolutely incredible. I start this essay in earnest. Sitting behind a steel-wire lined guardrail, I have the perfect vantage to spy the rest of my family as they enter from the side or front entrances. Based on where our hotel is located and where they will enter, the chances of them entering through any other door is nearly nil.
But not nil.
Just shy of an hour later, I send another message to my wife inquiring how close they are to the library. They are still at the hotel, the girls about to swim. I must have misheard our earlier conversation while I walked through the outskirts of Schiller Park, distracted by the statue of a child in the sky resting on the steel cable.
I head back downstairs to the library store. My eyes were previously drawn to three things: t-shirt (Books are my Love Language), greeting cards with literary quotes, and a used book called Trunk Music, which reminded me of lyrics from a Sam Hunt song1. We were in town to see him. On his Outkirts Tour.
I leave the store with the t-shirt, orange lettering on soft, dark blue, fabric, a can't miss for a reformed Mets fan, a package of cards with quotes from Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain and Jane Austen and two loose cards one with a quote from Walt Whitman about eyes and one by Jonathan Swift about living all of your days. I head back through the atrium, saying thank you to the man who welcomed me, and make my way Northwest on foot. The weather continues to clear a bit, when I notice a plaque from the Ohio Historical Society. It notes the location of the first Wendy's Restaurant. This passes for history in Ohio. I must really be on the outskirts.
I return to our hotel to drop off my goods, grab a book regarding how few weeks we actually live2 and how that isn't such a bad thing, and head to the pool. My wife reads a book about the plague while the girls swim, playing a game named after a man who traveled to the outskirts of the known world. We have a few more hours to kill before the concert and I cannot think of a better way to spend them than realizing I've likely passed half of my allotted weeks on this planet.
We head upstairs to our room on the top floor. The girls wash up and change for the evening. I look out the window at the comings and goings outside the Arnold Sports Festival. There is something captivating about a subculture's (fitness enthusiasts) subculture's (who specialize in weightlifting) subculture (while traveling the world to compete against other similarly-minded folks). I have a great appreciation for taking care of one's body physically but like politics, what is initially best described as a barbell-shaped straight line moving in opposite directions with healthy on one end and unhealthy at the other, reality bends it into a circle, like a weighted plate, where one actually gets less healthy the more one continues around the circle.
When citizens of this subculture's subculture's subculture comes together in one place, you notice similarities within the group which continue past first and into second order elements of the culture itself. Everyone - male and female - wears the exact same black t-shirt, albeit with their gym's name emblazoned. Some are even witty like the Noodle Gym, which advises "As Long as it Fits your Macaronis". Above the back of their t-shirts, everyone - male and female - sports the same army-inspired backpack, filled to stitch-splitting proportions with accoutrements of their chosen path towards their fitness goals. Each of them - male, female, parent and child alike - has a can of Celsius in hand. All of the men don the same beard, the women the same braid. At once, these images hit me with their volume and intensity, and I'm reminded that I see many of these same folks at my local gym. They're usually the early crowd, of which I'm a member, but they stick to the outskirts of the gym, focused on whatever muscle group their workout of the day requires.
Hard as I try, I can't help but scoff, roll my eyes, comment to my wife - and even my kids - at what I witness. I yuck someone else's yum, but I can't stop myself. I think back to my conversation with Nick - no, Neil - earlier this morning. He shared how he gets excited about other people who have an obsession that is completely different from his own. And I agreed with him. Perhaps I'm a fraud. Or, perhaps I just have a limit. I can get to the outskirts of my own obsessions, but not beyond. Or maybe some things are just too silly, or too basic - as the kids (my kids) say - for me to get behind.
Needing some sustenance before tonight’s show, we are fortunate our hotel rests a block from the North Market, a staple of Columbus since 1876 where one can sample various cuisines. We load up on dumplings from Nepalese and Polish food stands while continuing to people watch. It occurs to me that every culture seems to have its own dumplings: perhaps we’re not all that different.
We return to our room and put on an edited version of Talladega Nights: the Legend of Ricky Bobby. From the opening scene, it is made clear that if you're not first, you're last. I'm reminded of my earlier essay on cars, and how I still don't understand how people can become obsessed with NASCAR. While car racing crosses political and social lines (even Brian Lauer loves it), I'm reminded of George W. Bush's quote, "if you're not with us, you're against us." In the movie, Mr. Bobby's archrival hails from Europe. Played by Sacha Baron Cohen, Jean Girard serves as a foil not only because he starts winning races, but because of the way he does it, the way he acts, the way he is. He's French, cosmopolitan, effeminate, and gay to Will Ferrell's southern, rural, macho (his kids are Walker and Texas Ranger, T.R. for short), straight and closed-off Bobby. Yet Monsieur Girard, despite being an outsider on the outskirts, is welcomed into the NASCAR community.
We make our way two blocks to Nationwide Arena. Along the way, we pass local bars along what feels like Columbus' version of Broadway in Nashville playing Sam Hunt over the speakers. We draw closer and the crowd shifts from those at the Arnold to what I will describe as Country (Mid-)Western. While they are different in size, stature, strength and what I can only assume, singing ability, each group within itself is fairly homogenous. The new crowd is a mix of blonde hair dye, heels and skirts on the ladies and the men in plaid shirts and untapered jeans. The new crowd has traded a can of Celsius for White Claw, which is Westlake, Ohio - located on the outskirts of Cleveland - native, Travis Kelce, personified in liquid form though both are equally rancid (actually, all three, four if you’re included include Cleveland3).
We reach our seats when my wife and I realize that buying tickets as a Christmas gift to a concert in Ohio the following March is one of those far-less-rare-than-they-should-be parenting decisions filled with both excitement and regret. With two openers and an older child on the outskirts of being a teen, we experience both parts in equal measure. This is the joy and burden of having two kids. Our youngest is in it from start to finish; our oldest not so much. And she made her feelings known not with her words but in her actions. Or her lack of action. She sits beside us, slumped in her chair, her hooded Foo Fighters sweatshirt (which she stole from me) pulled down over her eyes and proceeds to feign sleep for the next three hours. Don't worry, reader: we take pictures and video to use during her future birthdays.
On the flight back to New York the next day, I take a bite of the turtles and butter pecan fudge we bought at Schmidt's Fudge Haus and remember the comment the lady behind the counter made about how we just missed Arnold Schwarzenegger over at Schmidt's Haus of Sausage as he was in town for the Arnold’s. We were likely just on the outskirts of German Village at the time.
We arrive home mid-afternoon to warm weather and sun, a welcome surprise. I think back to the juxtaposition of the communities we encountered this weekend, of watching Talladega Nights, of approaching my mid-forties and my oldest approaching teenhood. I'm reminded of Tracy Chapman's Fast Car becoming Luke Combs' Fast Car, becoming our collective Fast Car during the Grammys. I'm reminded of the city ads that greeted us when landing in Ohio: ColumbUS, the US intentionally capitalized, the emphasis theirs - and ours.
I start my Monday with the last pangs of back spasms - the outskirts of my mid-forties and all - and take to a book gifted to me by a fellow dad I met recently for brunch in the city. I met him, like Neil, through The New Fatherhood. He's from Luxembourg but was in town for work. Over brunch of shared Pancakes and Eggs Benedict, we exchange books - not the one I read now - and discuss what we like to read. I suggest we make our way to Strand so he can pick up gifts for his son and partner. It is there that he gifts me Pyramids, a sci-fi - or is it fantasy - book by Terry Pratchett. I've never been into either of these genres of books. When I mistakenly classify sci-fi for fantasy or vice versa, I see how what is typically one section of a bookstore can divide so deeply. These books that take us to the outskirts of reality appeal to many, but since a young age, I remain in this galaxy, in this dimension, in and of this world.
A week later, I struggle to make progress through the book. I push on, past my comfort zone, attempting to see what may be around the corner. Maybe it's the copious amounts of effluent and effusive dialogue, the character names that I struggle to read and comprehend, the footnotes and the footnoted footnotes (no, I like those, and those, too). But strip all that out and add a few lines worthy of a chuckle, and I'm left with a story that doesn't pull me in. Sorry, Péter.
I am reminded of the George Orwell quote, “to see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.” He refers to seeing what is obvious, what is clear and without clouds, within one's realm of visibility, within one's comfort. And I think he's absolutely right. But it's not just about what is under one's nose, directly in front of him, which, to avoid is a battle we all face. But to see what is outside one's field of vision, to go where the weather reports describe one's ceiling as unlimited, this is where the magic happens.
My kids too old for Bluey, the latest kids' show ostensibly designed for adults, I recall a Yo Gabba Gabba! episode when Fuffa sings a song begging her friends to try it since they'll like it. How can we ever know if we like something, or meet someone knew, or reach a new period of life, or at least draw a more evidence-based, real-world opinion as to why you don't, if we don't make an effort to get outside the familiar, outside our comfort, out here on the outskirts? The outskirts are where we earn the right to determine our own opinions. They are just close enough to our current likes - familiar friends, working out, music, books - but far enough to stretch us, too - strangers becoming friends, kicking it up a notch, appreciating the music but maybe not the scene, trying a new genre.
I’ve said before that I sit here on the outskirts of middle age. My oldest sleeps upstairs on the outskirts of becoming a teenager. I think about my thoughts on spring's eternal hope, that it isn't about acknowledging this time but being within it. The same applies to the outskirts. To which I say: I am here for it.
Referenced essays for further reading:
Raised On It, though my wife disagrees when I tell her. Only one of us is right: me.
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I’ve never been, only driven through, so I must withhold comment.
On SciFi I couldn't agree more - I figure I'll get around to it when real life stops being bizarre in it's own right.