The art of being (mis)placed

I was kindly asked to contribute an essay to Christianity Today's "This is Our City" project in response to Nathan Clarke's short film that featured installation artist Craig Goodworth. I'm including here an excerpt from my essay, the film itself, a "land" poem by my friend Aaron Belz, and a "guerrilla art installation" in Riga, Latvia that I wish I could have been a part of. It goes without saying that I was honored to be included in a project that impresses with every output (on cities, say, like Portland, Detroit, Richmond, and Phoenix, to which my essay is attached).


The art of being (mis)placed
"... Sometimes you leave your hometown in order to find your place elsewhere. Sometimes you leave your place of birth only to return years later and find that you belong there after all. Or more grandly, as Kathleen Norris puts it, 'A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.' Here is where you belong. Here is where you will stay put. It is your place and it is ourplace together....

My confession? I feel misplaced in my current city. While I know plenty of people who thoroughly love Durham, North Carolina, I fluctuate between total ambivalence and intense aversion to the city. It is a city that irritates me almost daily. After living here for three years, I have made my peace with the fact that Durham will be the first city in my life that I will be happy to leave....

But artists come along and perform an invaluable service. For those of us who feel a tenuous or adverse relationship to our places of residence, artists help us to see that, in fact, God is happily at work here, quietly making grace happen in unexpected ways, gently rebuking our stubborn refusal to see that salvation and sanctification are occurring in this place—this street, this humidity, this church, this grocery store, these people...."

TILLING CHARLES REZNIKOFF’S BACK YARD

(Aaron Belz)

Tilling Charles Reznikoff’s back yard

Brought up a dozen lions andseveral patches

Of wildebeest hearts.

The home itself sat lively in endless shadow,

Its picture windows gazing half-wittedly

In five directions.

Inside, a phone sang triumphantly,

The sole technological hormone driving

Countless blushing shutters.

But my errand had to do withgrass,

So I sat and thought alone in endless shadow,

Speaking to myself

On the bed of wild violet that formed a border

Between Charles Reznikoff’s back yard

And my own,

Making no sound. Making no sound.

Making no sound. As I stood to look around,

Verbs fell everywhere.

His awkward roof repelled them blankly,

Staring wakefully over the wild, half-witted yard

That formed its bed.

Downfall morphed into downpour, and of a sudden

Cartoon-like animals emerged from thickets,

Surrounding that home,

And I must have looked like a startled duck,

Trees above my head whippingmadly,

A car pulling up.

Such a schedule had been in my mind,

Such a tedious map, that could not even hear

The writer at work.