Akron

August 22, 2010

Hiram gleams with the remnants of last night’s rain.

I began this journal, the first volume of it, in Gray Dorm, just across the street, in January, 1969.

Drove to Akron twice yesterday. The first time was to see the new Art Museum, which is impressive, and contains a better collection than I remember from the olden days. The space does somewhat overpower the collection, but that seems to be a trend in contemporary museums. Stunning film about a black woman wandering the arctic.

No one here remembers anything I remember.

Here is an odd thing about downtown Akron: nobody was there, there’s nothing to do once you’re there, and still there’s no place to park. Evolution is toward the institutional and away from the personal: all the downtown stores are gone, but the university and the public library gobble ever more space. Main Street and environs are bright and cheery, empty, faceless. The Summit Street Art Center where I saw the play is not in use, or wasn’t on that summer morning. What the cultural scene is there I can’t imagine. Are there theater companies? The girl in the museum bookstore said there was an important artist’s studio up on Carroll Street.

I stopped by Maytree, twice, once at the north entrance and once at the west. As was the case Friday for the drive down, the emotions I was feeling in the forest are hardly available to me now, and even to describe them feels rhetorical. It is best that some things be kept in the heart. “Hidden” is the word I almost used; perhaps that is what I meant. Maytree is the holiest place on earth to me. Some glamour was on it in the morning, which but intensified that conviction. When I penetrated the jewel-tone interior of the trees I whispered, “Do you remember me?” The wind blew lightly, and there was a great hail of cherries from the realms of light above. I did write my immediate feelings down in the little journal I carry with me. When I rose up from doing so, I noticed a little cat just inside the circle of the forest, who had been watching me the whole while. I think the cat was the Holy Ghost, trying to figure out what to do with such a troubled spirit.

The Ellet High get-together at the Erie Station in Tallmadge was festive and satisfying. Would I go back and do high school again, knowing what I know now? Knowing what I know now, oh yes. I was one of the group about whom everybody said, “Oh, you haven’t changed a bit.” What they mean is that we are still recognizable under the ruins. Others, I had no idea. Y was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen when we were seniors and we began to talk a little. Now he is an old man. Someone is out there with a a great heavy trowel, a steam shovel, leveling everything. Long talk with AC. Once when I was running an errand for one teacher to a class full of varsity athletes–and I could barely look at them for the mixture of curiosity and humiliation which then ruled my days-- AC said, “Hey, Dave,” smiling out of that body which was (and still is) that of a Norse god. He probably doesn’t remember that kindness, but I do. Eddie said he and Linda walked past my house every night. I had always felt a curious, protective spirit out there. Didn’t know it was he.

Drove past Foxboro. It is now yellow where it was pink, dad’s mural doors painted over in yellow paint. Everything else is, from the outside, much the same. I took a deep breath, immensely, unaccountably relieved by that.