"She admitted that I’d initially done a great job selling our possible return to Flint. We could get out of the rat race and make a difference in a place that needed help. With a laugh, she confessed that geography had made it very appealing in the abstract. Michigan is a warm, fuzzy-looking mitten of a state surrounded by the beautiful blue of the Great Lakes, those landlocked oceans of the Midwest. But while the Wolverine State photographs well from a satellite, the close-ups can be disturbing. My tales of murder, arson, poverty, and general lawlessness had convinced Traci that Flint wasn’t the small town she had in mind. And my frequent descriptions of the city’s economic free fall had led her to question just what the two of us could do to change its downward trajectory. She was getting tired of our life revolving around Flint. I couldn’t blame her."
—Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City
As I read your book I could understand how Traci felt -- but (even though readers of the blog already knew how it was all going to end) I was still rooting for you that you cound that piece of Flint that you loved and remembered and could replant it back in the city in this decade.
ReplyDeleteThat's a really haunting photograph above. Feels like the ghost of Flint's despair, symbol maybe of the loss and longing your book expresses in so many ways. Calls for an anxious blues riff to go with it, and a half-smoked cigarette, and a stiff drink -- as Danny Rendleman said somewhere, they call it hard liquor for a reason. I know, that despair is here, it really is. But just to be contrary, I'm going to try to get you to post a photo of my new porch sometime, too. The Flint that isn't vanishing.
ReplyDelete