I was born and shaped in Ohio so it should be easy to understand why I was glued to the polls last night. I wanted Obama to win. I know it's more crucial that he earn the superdelegate votes, but I wanted my home state to step up and show the world it's ready for change. [Show ME it's ready]. Besides, I needed a good excuse for why I didn't attend an opening of a play last night.
When I was twenty-two I ran away from Ohio. With the encouragement of my mom, I left behind what I thought was super-conservatism, a beer-drunk working class, super racism, and heart disease and diabetics gone amok. Except for a few members of fam and friends, the Buckeye State horrified me [not to mention its trigger-happy police]. But one day after tramping coast to coast [I believe it was my stint as neo-soul bohemian in Oakland], I realized Ohio was attached to my back. I thought I shook that baby loose. But it was in every story I wrote, every memory I had. It was who I was and who I refused to be. And there was nothing I could do about it.
So I guess it's no surprise I looked over the result of the polls this morning and discovered Ohio prefers a seasoned-politician as opposed to a politician with a mammoth vision. And my only response was: Why can't those fools see what I can see?! Needless to say, I was ready to stuff Ohio back in the "Forget You" file and move on with my day. Allowing myself the occasional haunting of memory which purpose is simply to inform my storytelling. [Because to think of my state as a means to national change is useless].
But then it tugged at me, like Ohio usually does [as both nuisance and treasure]: it was asking me not to toss it off as a loss, but take a moment and look it dead in the face. So I did, because I'm nice. And there in the dead of its eyes I saw my father caught in the middle of the Cincinnati Riots, afraid for his life; I saw my high school days of the 80s and sitting back and watching the KKK erect a cross in Cincinnati's Fountain Square; I even saw the County Sheriff threaten to release hundreds of felons back into recently-gentrified streets if voters didn't vote yes to build bigger jails.
And so with trepidation I say, Ohio is a complicated place with a lot to weed through. It's easy for me [and others] to view it as the burden that's ruining everything. [I'm semi-joking, of course, but uh... you know.] But it's a place still struggling to find balance I believe, and more importantly, a means to crack the mores of its foundation, and rebuild from the bottom up. [In other words, it's trying]. So meanwhile, instead of filing away Ohio under "Forget You, Punk", I'll continue to rely on it for story, and hope that one primary day it will show the world that when something like Barack Obama comes rolling by, it'll vote Yes We Can.
