A Happy New Year (Ohio in Pictures)

Ohio is cruel and lovely.

Tuscarawas County loves Wal-mart’s convenient one-stop shopping.

Brother and I shot billiards before he left for Europe.

After Coby flew away, I stayed in his apartment pretending I was Buddy Glass.

My neices brought me books and I read to them. One was about a farmer and his boat, and all the animals that wanted a ride. The ending was not very satisfying, but Anni Joy dragging a book across the room and looking up at me expectantly was extremely satisfying.

Old friends are true blue. T and I walked around the block just killing time.

I drove out Crooked Run thinking about the thousands of times I’d driven it before, bending and swaying through the countryside toward home. But I did not go home. I pulled off at the old graveyard and went back to town.

Insert New Year’s here:

I greeted 2009 like this: “5, 4, 3, 2, CHAMPAGNE IN MY EYES!” I did not kiss a girl at midnight. Instead, I spent the first two minutes of 2009 blinded by a beverage. Maybe that’s why there’s no picture.

But there was music. Like “My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year)” by Regina Spektor.

Then, just like that, I had a plane to catch. Suddenly, Ohio felt just fine — warm and kind and lovely. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay right there shivering in the snow. But, I blinked and she was gone.

Time is always teasing me — slowing to a crawl when I want to be somewhere else, racing away when I get there.

I woke up over Kansas… or Colorado, they look the same until you hit the Rockies.

See?

A short layover in Denver, then on to Los Angeles.

Tools for traveling by plane: Canada Dry and Beefeater Gin. Also, Chuck Klosterman essays and Elliot Smith

I took a $40 cab ride from LAX with a man who smelled like cigarettes, looked like Santa Claus, and insisted on relating mildly racist tales of his thwarting robberies. (He got a “sixth-sense about this fella,” so he pretended to put the car in park, but actually put it in reverse. Sure enough, the guy pulled a gun and took his money. But, when the robber tried to step out of the car to flee, our hero stomped the gas and ran him over, breaking his legs. He swears he’d have “finished the job” if the thief had tried anything else.) I was careful to clear the vehicle after I’d paid my fare.

I lugged my pack up the back steps to my apartment on Bronson, feeling worn and threadbare and very far from home. Of course, my unlockable-backdoor was locked. After ten minutes of banging, rattling, tugging, and swearing, I shimmied through this tiny window.

Remember when I got Champagne in my eyes? Leaving Ohio was a bit like that.

But then I went to the theatre and remembered why I’m here. My eyes will go on stinging, but less and less.