Experiencing Ohio: The Prodigal Son Revisits Dollville

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 16:44



The Experiencing Belgium desk is once again being broadcast to you from abroad. We (me, myself and I) are coming to you from Central Ohio - Revisiting family and enjoying horizonal horizon lines, big sky, hot and mostly dry weather. Observing life wherever I am from my dislocated vantage point on the world I inhabit from the confines of my tricky brain.

Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders once sang of going back to Ohio. Given the lyrics of that song she wrote I doubt she returned. Meanwhile we here at the Experiencing Belgium desk on location in Ohio just Wikipedia'd the information on Chrissie Hynde I was refering to and discovered much to my surprise that Rush Limbaugh used this uncanny song on his radio show - not surprisingly without permission for quite some time. Ms Hynde much to my pleasure contributed those settled on profits to PETA. Ethical Treatment of Animals is hard to come by from a part of a world that has no ethical treatments for the land it stole from the indiginous people who once had this land a more civilized place than the USA now is or at this rate ever will be. Ethical Treatment of animals is hard to come by from a state that doesn't really have a good history with ethical treatment of its human inhabitants who are daily fed McDonalds at the greasy fried food feeding stations.

So the Experiencing Belgium Desk has gone back to its old Ohio origins. I am not a rock star with an income that persists off of lyrics I previously wrote or songs I never sang on the road tours I never made. From contracts I never had. So why have I gone back - because I can. Despite my attempts to get stripped of my US citizenship for expressing my dissent and discontent with the state of the states by excercizing my rights to freedom of speech and expression and religion - I did not get stripped of my citizenship in the states. The petty brain dead homeland security thugs who welcomed me at JFK let me back in at the border, so I here I am writing to you from my origin on planet earth. Those very brain dead thugs who do nothing whatsoever to bolster my confidence in the third world quality of US airports and skyway security.

It only took me one trip through a UAE airport on even economical Gulf Air to wake me up that all is not well with the airlines in and out of the US of A. Talk about being ripped off by uncle Sam. Dubai is more of what the American Dream is about than anything you can see from the car or plane when traipsing through JFK or Laguardia. Those two airports look like something left over from the surplusses and excesses of the 1950's and 1960's Doris Day like make believe material worlds of forgotten and discarded American Airline dreams - dreams that went down with Pan Am and Allegheny Airlines or Trans World Airlines - to name but a few.

I am a bit ashamed of what greets tourists coming to the states for the first time to see the American Dream and majestic landscapes that called to them. So I flew back to the states to visit dear old dad. The Homeland Security systems that greeted me went through each and every photo I brought from my travels abroad since home last from the exotic Arabia Felix. The security guy was pleased with himself for taking as much time going through each photo slowly so as to take enough time for me to get bumped off my commuter flight to home in Ohio - and ignoring the rest of my baggage contents. Was any security precaution met by his looking at my personal photos as if I were showing him about travels like I would my family? He certainly saw things he had never seen before and lost his somewhat professional demeanor when cultural curiousity and fascination from an unknown and exotic (to statesiders) land kicked in. Those few non-professional travel photos I made while in Yemen do have a power from their contents. It's not my camera use that has the power captivate it is the beauty of the land from the Prophets that mesmerizes the viewer.

So the Homeland Insecurity Thug who intentionally took his time like an Israeli guard before a citizen of Palestine at an Israeli Occupied Forces Checkpoint did get me delayed enough to get bumped off my Delta connection flight. This is why I despise the American airlines - all of them. This whole system of getting bumped off flights is trickery for greedy airlines - airlines who over price tickets and employ security tactics built on fear of terrorism to exact profits from compliant consumer air travelers. This is not a nation this is one big collective strip mall in a once was born out from statesmanship.

"...Hi, welcome to America, we are on an Orange Alert for terrorism, You have been bumped off your connection from a trans-Atlantic long haul flight because of terrorism - Homeland inSecurity takes time you know - even though your flight hasn't left yet - fifty other people were vying for your seat - and in the interest of our profits we sold it to them - have a nice day and fly Delta/American/United/etc again..." But not on the ticket you bought and paid for abroad at your flight origin...

Now I am no fan of Angloland over there in the USA-UK especially Heathrow - like JFK - is best to be avoided when flying. However upon arriving late in the UK at Heathrow my flight from Bru-town airport in Zaventem, Belgium - (built by Hitler and his henchmen) - was beyond late from such a short flight. And yet the kind folk at Heathrow professionally doing their security and airline work told me to run that my connection (on a big old Jumbo jet no less) was waiting on me and to RUN. I did run and run through that massive airport. It seemed they kept that big ol' plane waiting on me and shut the door behind me. Compared to my third world reception at JFK, Heathrow was delux and we all know Heathrow has been so third-world-esque for quite sometime - ask any Australian traveler.

So at JFK I went back to British Airways to inquire about how to get home as my Delta connection was no longer valid. They could get me on a flight out of Laguardia or I could go the next day if I had friends to stay at in New York City! Compare that to my last 17 hour layover in the UAE where I was put up in a five star hotel in my choice of two - one at the airport or one in the city - I chose the city to see more of the UAE while there. The long taxi drive was worth the views of that strange Emerite in the Arabian Desert. The Hotel nice and the food very good and spicey genuine Pakistani fair and halal! British Airways actually asked me if I had someone I could stay with in New York City - they didn't offer me hotel accomodation because they were all out of hotel vouchers for the day. Not that there weren't empty rooms BA just didn't want to pay for Delta's incompetant standby preferred/bumped off customer flight plan services - the idiots who work at Delta would not make eye contact with me about any of this - so I threw my arms around and called out for someone to please get me on my connection from Belgium to back home. The handsome Seikh guy in the blue turban wouldn't look at me or help - how could he? I am sure he knew my situation because I wasn't the first long haul trans-Atlantic person arriving - within time to ketch their flight - because of getting bumped off the list due to being only slightly delayed at the Israelis Homeland inSecurity at JFK. He was just doing his job by its description - he didn't agree with it but that was how he had to provide customer disservice to ensure his job. Actually all of Delta's personel were of the customer service school you especially get in and around New York City - customer service defined by what the employee cannot do - not by what they can do. Funny though how the feminine types always have such flawlessly manicured extra-long finger nails...

Take my advice if you are a citizen abroad or planning on visiting the US don't do so at this time wait at least a few more decades. Nowadays you will be treated like the criminal you are at the border by Homeland inSecurity Inc. You will thus miss your connection flight and it will be your fault for being a foreigner or a US Citizen who dared go abroad for awhile. If you flew through the UAE you will see what airtravel as defined by the likes of the Americans way back when during the Pan Am age - perfected by amazing airlines like the Emirates or Indonesian and Singapore lines. If you saw those places and airlines then you know that making a US domestic connection is a life risking venture upon third world airways to transport patriotic fat American asses from family styled Casino weekends in Las Vegas.

So here I am back in what I am now calling Yo-Hio. Yo-dude-Ohio - land of astonishingly over weight people hobbling about on two diabetic and swollen ankled feet. Though there appear to be sidewalks they don't get used as walking is grounds for suspect by Homeland inSecurity services inc. Sidewalks are only used by bicycles with training wheels - those kids who then fall with training wheels in place are naturally selected out of the gene pool when they fly off their childs bicycle into the automotive traffic one meter away.

Actually I am here in yo-Hio for my dear pa Kettle is 80 years old. Back in 1989 the doctors gave him six months to live so don't believe anything your doctors or your health care insurance company or commercial TV ads for prescription drugs have to say. My brother and I believe dad will out live us all. That said I confess I needed some big sky, green fields, delapitated old barns, and a bit less people per square kilometer than what is available in Belgique or even Wallonia.

As I had been set up in a flat in Brussel Sint Joost ten Node (Bruxelles Saint Josse t'Noode) or as I called it Quartier San Jose - which just happens to be one of the smallest quartiers in Bru-town and is the most densely populated part of Belgium with the most varied global community residing there - and all contained on built up narrow streets with less than a meter wide sidewalks. I needed some space. Horizontality. Time to be alone - and yes amigo some monolingualism - and of course the certainty of summer which Belgium does not offer.

So I am here in the badlands of Ohio's tarmac parkinglots and strip malls and fast food fry venues along side freeway lanes of aimless traffic littered with corpses of roadkill deer and racoons. Fortunately if you know where to go you can avoid those places and seek out the remnants of an Ohio that Charles Burchfield once found glorious in its mundanity to paint. Thankfully he did paint so we don't forget what Ohio once was and what it could be. I bet he had no idea that Ohio would get progressively worse and not better.

And Ohio is worse even in these more recent times. I was last in Ohio two years ago. Back then people who had great jobs during the end of the Clinton years had been made redundant and were under employed. Most have now moved on into other accomodation and lost their dreams of home ownership. Or at least become disillusioned by it. Although you don't dare say two words - Inflation - or - Depression - Ohio is looking like the present 21st Century version of those misfortunes. Ironically it was Ohio who tipped the scales for Bush II last but nobody told him or more probably they did and he didn't care having gotten what his daddy wanted.

Yet despite all the obvious visual clues about the economic situation in Ohio there seem to be now more than ever more and more retail shopping strips set behind vast acres of asphalt. More roads for more such shopping places are being built or laid out and possibly, perhaps waiting optimistically for an economic tide to change. It won't be long until there is only one farm left in Ohio - after the Amish country secceeds from Ohio to form their own independent territories of the past within this present depressive Ohio.

I think I woke up one morning in Sint Joost from that zolder/grenier apartment to see another depressing Flanders Sky which never in all those years I spent under it felt anything but foreign. I looked at my two passports and thought the blue one gives me the ability to live in the desert or at the artic circle - along one of two Oceans. Or safely locked away in an inland sea of rolling prairie grasses - or at least what was once an inland sea of rolling hills of prairie grasses. I have changed my sky but my mind is still the same. Summer has begun and the heat rises. The sun dries things out until the rain falls and then a hot sticky humidity sets in to these here southern lowlands of North America on the southern side of the Great Lakes. Autumn in all is majestic colorful foliage will come if Judgement day doesn't preceed it followed by a Winter coldness Flanders hasn't seen in ages. I don't know where I will be when but it doesn't matter now that the internet is everywhere - I can be anywhere - even where I am not where I say I am. Though I am not that interesting to fabric such lies. I am here in Old Ohio to be close to dad - to reaquaint myself with my brother and sister and their families intentional and unintentional that they find themselves in.

Ohio when you are away from the rampant excesses of it's military industrial complex economy is astonishingly beautiful. The sky bigger than I remember. The clouds mesmerizing to glance at. The night sky when away from the rampant light pollution of suburban sprawl is unlike anything Flanders has seen in many, many years. There are better places to be with a blue passport. Arizona or Californian or Nevada deserts. Mountains in the pacific northwest which are really like its own Ecotopia nation. Or southern life in hot and humid climates close along the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. There is Appalachia or Rocky Mounain life at high altitudes. Or just getting high and getting by in the interior of Ohio as a metaphor for the whole of the midwest or just a pipe dreaming state of mind.

You can find more out about Experiencing Belgium on experiencing Ohio at
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