Got up early Saturday morning and left Saint Paul.

(Just writing these words is kicking in some mild post traumatic stress right now).

I hate leaving my town.
I don't mind it if it's on a plane.
I don't mind if I get on a single freeway and barrel out of state.
But I hate leaving Saint Paul and navigating the death march known as the Greater Twin City Metropolitan Area. I'd rather inventory catheters.

My destination Saturday was Coon Rapids. Coon Rapids!? I had to fight every impulse in my body just to move in that direction. I was intending to rendezvous with a friend who lived out that way, but the trip represented so much more (See "Trail Of Tears:" Cherokees, 1838/39).

I could have made it to downtown Minneapolis and been comfortable. Everybody knows downtown Big Time. Saint Paulites are trained to revere it. We're taught to genuflect before that skyline. We stare from our side of the river and say things like "now, which one's the IDS building, and didn't it used to be taller?"

But Coon Rapids, what is that? Just a name, just some place weathermen point to on TV. No one actually goes there do they, without a court order?

It was like having to go to Fridley, or Moundsview or some other God-forsaken internment camp. The feeling inside me was of someone forcing my head toward a plate of refried beans. I wanted to pull away, flee. But c'mon, I'm a grown man, it's just Coon Rapids, hang in there, I told  myself.

I checked my Twin City road maps. All I saw were tangled lines, red, blue and green. Looked like a pile of extension cords in the corner of the garage. The maps meant nothing. They were finger paintings, they were swirling spin-paint art from the State Fair, no more meaningful, no more relevant.

I drove around for hours looking at strip malls and bland residential developments. I watched the falling snow swirl around the flat scarred wasteland. Every roadway looked like every other roadway. Every intersection was a clone. I grew increasingly despondent. I came to believe there was no benevolent God in our universe, that we were all truly alone.

By midday I had given up. Lost, tired, upping my anti-depressant dose by half, I stopped at a gas station to phone the person I had intended to meet. I told him I was pulling the plug. There would be no visit today. I asked an obese redhead for directions back to St Paul, figured I could make it by dusk. I looked around at the strangers in the convenience store and understood the loneliness and desperation of Shackleton.

Before darkness had blanketed the town I made it to my side of the Mississippi. I swear to you my heart slowed noticeably, my breathing improved, the world softened, and I once again saw a loving force in the cosmos.

It's two days later now. I feel some shame in writing this. Memories of greater men haunt me. I feel weak and simple. But I only feel this way in your presence. Inside, in my soul, I embrace the quirkiness, the neurosis. Number one, because I know it so well, been with it so long, and number two because it's me. It is who I am. I've made peace with the SOB.    

Posted by TD Mischke at 1:20 PM
Categories: