Meditation on Dayton and a Search for Place
On my last workday in Dayton I opened the backdoor of the Donnelly house in the early morning and was immediately submerged in a green world, and a subtle sadness. A multitude of hues contained every conceivable combination of yellow and blue forming an encompassing and exit-less chamber. This visible excess overwhelmed my descriptive powers with infinite shades of olive, lime, emerald, moss, forest, teal, terra verte, and viridian. The gunmetal grey sky pressed inward with a palpable dampness. Here and there bright splashes of pink and white, accents of redbud and pear trees, announced the official presence of spring, but failed to fulfill the promise of new life. I have often come and gone from this back door in the course of my work as a part-time surgeon and house-sitter for my partner. Eight or nine weeks a year I return to this Midwest city and pass up the long driveway with manicured lawns, well shaded by a guarding army of massive oaks and well tended scrubs. This week, like all the others, has been full of patients, challenging problems, and many grey days. I have had a fun week of surgery, a chance to really help people, but I reach the last day of my stay with an increasing need, a compulsion really, to leave.
On the surface, my recurrent desire to leave this place is irrational. Oakwood is an upscale section of Dayton and exudes old-fashioned beauty and stability. A long-standing town with massive trees and even larger homes has great schools, friendly neighbors, and people never leave. Or, at least those are the first things folks want to tell me. And, more or less, I have found them to be true. The folks I meet at Starbucks or the Dorothy Lane grocery store have gone out of their way to be helpful and friendly without “airs” or “agendas”. Many of my Ohio patients have multiple generations living in Dayton and an unusual number, including the husband of my partner, are successful children who returned to the home turf when it came time to raise their kids. I benefit greatly because of a very successful medical practice but from a larger economic viewpoint, Dayton is dying. Boarded up businesses, an aging and decreasing population base, and streets with multiple holes all point to the many large companies that have left this quiet Ohio town in the last fifteen years. But my “closed in feeling” and the firm surety that Dayton is not my “place” has little to do with economics. The sense of place, the visceral knowing that a physical location is yours-a form of home-is produced by a dynamic ratio of community and environment. In my case, Dayton has neither.
Standing on the porch I breathe cool air, thick and overflowing with the dampness left by last night’s heavy rainfall and think of Southwest Colorado. Although I was raised in the Midwest, from the first moment I entered those mountains, it was home-my “place.” I have “seasonal affective disorder” (two days of grey depress me) and I really do need (or have talked myself into needing) the clear blue sky and lots of sun. The dull light that surrounds me in Dayton produces no shadow and flattens this verdant scene into a condensed two-dimensional picture; I can’t accurately judge. Are the objects near or far? The big things in the distance seem too small-and, I am alone.
After my day in the office, my nights are spent amusing myself in a city where, after three years, I know almost no one. I eat as a single and then hang out at a local coffee shop until it is time to return to the silence and bed. I am unused to being without friends and community. The stark quiet of the empty house is pleasing for the first twenty four hours but then adopts an ominous personality, never overtly threatening but rather, instilling a whiff of dread: perhaps I will stay this way. The lack of T-V and ready companionship jars me into a new appreciation for my need of community.
My art has been about the issues and interrelationships of people and place. In my last exhibition the artist statement suggested, “Places often cannot be remembered without directing us toward people that, in turn, reciprocally return us to places. It is in these special places and people where we find peace, where we return to be reminded of priority and significance, and where we come to know a small bit of the Divine.” I love the wonders of God’s good creation and wait with intense longing for the first greening of spring. The estrangement from place I feel in Dayton only accentuates my suffocating isolation. The green silent canopy around me not only holds me in but also bars others from joining me. I crave contact with the outside. When in Dayton I hold friends on the phone with uncharacteristic small talk and my need to connect electronically barely holds in check the rising bitter notion of being cut-off or worse, forgotten. In the mountains, solitude enters into the soil and births through memory a sense of continuity, reminding me of my community and of love. The fusion of people and place becomes a powerful entity and a small hint of an unimaginable beauty to come. The green of Dayton only accentuates the absence of relationships; the beauty and lushness of these soft hues and fertile soils are lost without a connection to others.
But I can’t help but wonder if even in those special people or places, I miss the point and worship God’s good creation and not the Creator. We live in a paradox: we are created to live in vital community, all the while glorying in His creation and we are to search after the living God and worship Him only. The Psalmist says, “In you, O Lord, have I taken refuge.” (Ps. 31:1) Standing on that Dayton porch I came to the uncomfortable conclusion that I had sought my refuge elsewhere. In our busy world we are seldom alone and misjudge material goods and technology for genuine community. The first move of my heart when finding myself alone is to find refuge in a “better” place or a more “compatible” people, but this is silliness. The damp stifling of aloneness in Dayton should stir my heart towards the only thing that satisfies and not the romantic illusion of another time or place.