contracountrycontrarian amy about half an hour ago, i was having some difficulty remembering what it was I got inspired to blathe about around noon today. then i was in the car on my way to tutoring (my tiny job) and the john mellencamp song about small towns had come on. i was having a reaction, like maybe i am from a small town, it certainly wasn't big, nor anywhere near a city. i went to school there. but maybe i'm really not a small towner -- what i am is an inhabitant of the country near a city. belonging neither to the towns around me, nor the big city, but perhaps my small neighborhood. i think i centered that thought a few years ago... I imagined the Native Americans who could have lived in and around my neighborhood. I told their ghosts that I was preserving their memory. Around me is the largest swath of forest preserve in Kane County. I'm a land-belonger, not a city dweller, or a small towner, or even a suburbanite, although I draw from all these locales, too. There's something rather poignant about the whole situation, this belonging to the land. Not to culture, or even to nature (that's for the birds, and the deer, raccoons, coyote), just the land and the ghosts I seem to make a promise to. last time i checked on the internet, the Indians who lived here were more raucous than the ones who settled peacefully by the river. my brother, though, belongs to a small town, nearby, which he insists, and always has insisted, on visiting quite often. he doesn't like where we live, i guess. at least not as much as i do, i would suppose. what reminded me of this topic, though, is a poem by Billy Collins about a country house that the owner feared would be burned down by mice getting into the strike-anywhere matches. ah yes, living in the country! that's really what it was... 090607 ... jennifer amy? 090909 ... amy nada yep, still here, more or less. living where i grew up now. really investigating this "bloom where you're planted" phrase. 090910 what's it to you? who go blather from