Nowhere

On Friday, January 12, when Marty was having his business meeting with the Director/Producer guy whom we were visiting, I sat in this man's living room and began reading a book titled Tales from Nowhere, a collection of travel essays published by Lonely Planet. This book is quite good, and I will probably end up buying it online to be able to finish it.

The theme for this collection of travel essays was "Nowhere." Some of the travelers intentionally travelled to some place that they deemed to be some kind of "Nowhere," while others arrived there serendipitously. But, in the end, what, really, is "Nowhere"? Is it a certain type of a place, or is it a state of mind that one may have about a place, or about oneself in that place? I leave you, my faithful readers, to ponder this difficult question. In the meantime, I want to share with you these few words, that I found in the foreword to this book, written by its editor:

If we assess a place as Nowhere because it is impoverished or dull or boring, that is because we are impoverished in attention and appreciation. Virtually wherever we are, if we can slow down, focus and absorb the Nowhere around us, we will be astounded by its intricate depth and riches.

This led me to think about the little western Pennsylvania town where I live, and about which I bitch rather frequently (my bitching about this place is nothing in comparison to that of some of my colleagues, though.) This place epitomizes the mediocrity and dullness of rural, small-town America. This is a place where there is nothing to do (ok, I will admit that there are things to do if you are into nature, hiking, camping, and canoeing in the summer), there are no good restaurants (when an Appleby's opened a few weeks ago, people were ecstatic, and this says tons about my little town), no decent shops, no good supermarkets with a good variety of great foods, the multiplex movie theater shows the lowest of the low-quality Hollywood blockbusters and nothing else, ever. If you walk around the Wal-Mart, you run into a zillion highly obese people who think that it is OK to go out in public in torn-up, visibly soiled sweat clothes, and you'll encounter men with mullets, wearing camouflage clothing. There is a discount grocery store here, frequented by individuals who look like they are the products of generations of interbreeding, where people buy loose tobacco by the tubload, along with rolling paper and filters - because it's cheaper to roll your own than to buy the generic brand of cigarettes (quitting smoking would be way cheaper, but that is definitely not on the agenda of the folks who buy that stuff.) Never mind the amount of chewing tobacco that gets sold at that store.

I guess that one could focus on all the negative qualities of my little town and deem it a "Nowhere." Would that vision mean that one is "impoverished in attention and appreciation"? Is it at all possible to find the "intricate depth and riches" of what many of my colleagues like to call a hell-hole, from which they yearn to flee after they retire?

One of my colleagues is from this area, and she gets somewhat offended when people bash her native grounds - I don't blame her. I am from Lille, a city that many French people like to portray, in a way, as the Pittsburgh or the Cleveland of France (note here that I love Pittsburgh, and that I do not know enough about Cleveland to be judgemental about it), and I have always felt that those people are very unfair to my hometown, which is actually a very attractive and vibrant metropolis. It may also very well be that a place can be so unattractive, desolate, and impoverished as to become a thing of utmost beauty.

In light of what I quoted above, I will definitely try to "slow down, focus and absorb the Nowhere around me," and, perhaps, I, too, "will be astounded by its intricate depth and riches."