The town that charm forgot

That's not quite fair. One of the first things I noticed about Columbus was that the "Don't Walk" signs were lexical, not pictographic, just like pre-1990's New York. I found that very charming. (But also a little disturbing. It was as if the city conceded, "aw, screw it; we know we won't get international tourists. Let's just go with English.")

This post was going to be a supplication to public opinion (I will not type "bleg"): do I say yes to OSU, which is so far my only grad option? On the one hand, I hated it; on the other, saying no quite possibly seals the academic door shut evermore and leaves me open to several months' dreaded ambiguity and a very real possibility of a tour in Baghdad, or Bangui (which is in some ways worse: most of the danger and none of the credit).

In the end, though, I had to face that the needle's been stuck pointing to magnetic "hell, no!" since pretty much the first day of my visit to Ohio, despite my formidable powers of rationalization and self-persuasion. I'm not going. I'll take my chances with what's behind the curtain.

Columbus isn't actually a city. It's tracts of pleasant-but-plain detached homes on modest lots, held together by the weak gravitational force of a downtown core that still stands but exists in shell form. Urban planning is not only not in evidence, but it feels as though malevolent forces actively conspired against the municipality; I find it hard to believe a city could be that ugly by accident. (And yes, annotated photos have been posted, if you know where to find them.)

Some visit highlights:

Day One. I arrive mid-afternoon, with some time to kill before the group dinner. The Grad Committee Chair suggests I check out the trendy, artsy district, and points me in the right direction.

Later that evening:

Grad Chair: "How were your explorations? Did you walk around the arts district?"

E: "No, I think I must have gotten lost and only wandered around the outskirts. I just saw a couple of antique stores and a natural-foods cafe."

...A prolonged and increasingly uncomfortable silence, during which both parties make awkward realizations...

E (brightly): So! Is the weather always this crappy?"

Day Two, early morning. Esquiver chats with K by phone, and confesses her fears about the general background sophistication level of the city, but is persuaded to keep an open mind. She then goes downstairs for breakfast, and has to show an Ohioan how to use the toaster, which is of the commercial "conveyor" variety. The Ohioan has, until this point, been repeatedly and with great hope placing the toast on the little tray on the bottom, where it's intended to fall after going around on the belt. Esquiver knows that not everyone has seen a commercial toaster before, but nevertheless can't help thinking of that time in Chhattisgarh when she saw a middle-aged woman encounter an escalator for the first time. The image stays with her all weekend. (Mind you, that incident really was charming.)

Day Three. A brief rally. For a half day, there is some sunlight and a respite from the Arctic winds, and cute houses and excellent, absolutely excellent, ice cream is discovered. This is, however, too little, too late.

Day Four. German Village is charted and determined to be old without actually being picturesque. I liked it well enough -- it was sort of like Old Town Alexandria, though without the upkeep or civic pride -- but it still just looked...I don't know, hunkered down? Somewhat bleak? As if it housed people who had gradually learned to lower their expectations and ask for less out of life?

I was cheered to also discover, on Day Four, an actual posh-and-craftsy sort of shop, of the kind you might find in Rhinebeck or New Paltz or most of western Oregon. And I went in, thinking I might pick up a local souvenir. Except there were no local souvenirs -- every scrap of glazed clay and every anodized windchime goose was from Vermont or Maine or other parts of the established universe. Now, hey: I do imagine that there are Ohio craftspeople. But, frankly, I also imagine them saying "ugh, this weather! Argh, this architecture! I'm too depressed to create. Let's just import some tchotchkes from somewhere nicer."

As I waited for my cab to the airport, I made polite smalltalk with the doorman at the Westin. When he heard it was my first visit and that I had been thinking of moving there, he asked what I'd thought.

"Well..." I said kindly, "I think I might need somewhere a little warmer. And bigger."

A strange, pained look possessed him, as he broke with the formulaic chitchat and howled, in the most angst-ridden voice I've ever heard: "Oh, God! So do I!"
I shoved a tip in his hand, and fled.

For the week after my return, I nevertheless thought carefully about OSU. I mean, I liked the faculty; very much so. Frankly, I was a little freaked out by the department's grad students, but that was probably due to the combination of their youth and the apparent narrowness of their extracurricular interests. I'm confident that had I actually gone to the school we could have found common ground; other than a certain freakiness that allowed them to choose to live in Ohio, they seemed perfectly unobjectionable. It was when I turned my consideration to the campus -- all football and Midwestern and full of kids who really didn't look like they were there for the learnin' -- that I truly quailed.

And then, of course, there was the town. Grim and spacious. I'd never imagine using the word "spacious" as a pejorative, but neither would I have imagined a "city" with so much cold, dead, dreary emptiness at the heart of it. Stop me before I wax too hyperbolic, but I really felt that I was in the middle of the country. None of this "clasped in the bosom of the heartland" crap, either. I felt marooned on the enormous white ass of America, suffocating in cellulite, and feeling the enormousness -- oh, hell: the enormity; that works, too -- of the massive unmovable beast.

I also felt, strangely, a lot like I did in Amman. Which is to say, in Jordan I felt like that scene in Annie Hall in which Alvy imagines Annie's family looking at him and seeing the bearded Hasid in peyes and tzitzit; at the time, I suffered an overwhelming compulsion to walk up to strangers and say "Hi! In case you were wondering, I'm Lebanese!" (It didn't really help that there was a tank turret pointing at my hotel room, ostensibly for my protection. Really, I ask you: if that were the case, shouldn't it have been pointing the other way?) Walking around Columbus, I had a similar crushingly and distractingly vivid sense of others looking at me and seeing John Waters. The difference? I wanted to walk up to strangers and say "Hi! I'm John Waters!"

So. I'm bidding for my next assignment. More on that soon. And I'll stay on the Penn wait list, though the school's indifference, and, to be honest, rudeness since notification suggest to me that even that limbo might simply have been a professional courtesy to the faculty friend who put in a word for me. If I get in, would I go? Maybe. To cadge another Firefly line: Yeah, there're reavers there, but they're my reavers. I mean, I can itemize the things I don't like about Philly, and it's even a fairly long list. But, crucially, I can itemize it -- that is, my concept of Philly exists apart from the problems I see with it. I'd have no objection to going back for tourism or just to hang out. The notion of minimizing the bad and maximizing the good is coherent.

But Columbus? I can't even make the list. The essence of the place -- or what little there was there (apologies to Stein, but I've lived in Oakland, and there was a whole lot more there there) -- is itself aversive. The idea of returning for tourism or hanging out or, really, for anything is nonsensical.

Ohio may be the most alien foreign country I've ever visited.