Landscape as Antagonist Writing Spark

I am obliged to tell you that the landscape I grew up in, Birmingham, Alabama, was in some way antagonistic to my life. This I cannot do without creeping into the realm of fiction. And, having strong inclinations toward lying and subterfuge already, I think I should not start off with such a blatant misgiving.

I am supposed to be kindling some modicum of trust between us.

As a child I dwelt in a hybrid landscape, a mixture of small country town and big flashy buildings. I did a whole lot of micro-traveling when I was a child—micro-travelling being, a car ride that, because of traffic or speed limitations seems like a much longer trip than what it should have been. Crosstown errands with my mom laid the seed of expert navigational skills in me when I was a boy. Whereas some people chose to play video games in the car on their Nintendo GameBoy, I chose to pay attention to every turn, every missed opportunity for shortcuts. Eventually the knowledge became a matrix, a three-dimensional matrix of practically every route to anywhere, including the ability to troubleshoot directions on the fly.

I am an Eastsider by birth, therefore, by circumstance. Although, I have lived in every major borough of this fair city, with the exception of Tarrant, Gardendale and Ensley. My childhood could, if pressed for time, be condensed into the tale of one long car ride, eternally tracing the matrix of Birmingham’s transportation nervous system. However, for my purposes here, two fixed, stationary points of space-time can be used as starting points. Irondale, Alabama and Moody, Alabama.

In Moody, where my dad lives, you are allowed to roam the Earth freely, because there are no real dangers concerning a young boy within ten miles of the city, at least none that he can conceive of. Yes, just woods and a couple of grocery stores, a Waffle House and a pharmacy. Of course, now they have a Wal-Mart, which means they are a real city. Able to be printed in bold lettering on any map of Alabama.

In Irondale, with my mom, I was more of a recluse. I stayed in my room and read books, played video games and was more artsy fartsy as a general rule.

One of the most magical things about my landscape growing up was that there were completely ridiculous, or so it seemed, monuments scattered all over Birmingham that made it seem like an ancient city in some hillbilly part of Rome, back when they were big shots. We have the infamous goat-man statue in five points, but my favorite landmark from my childhood was Vulcan. He is apparently our resident deity, what with all the iron and steel we have ripped out of that mountain he stands on. He is the god of craftsmanship, and blacksmithing and things of that rugged nature. When I was a small boy riding downtown in the car on the expressway, Vulcan would broadcast the well-being of the motorists in the city, the little steel ants scurrying around his domain. If the light on the end of his scepter was green, no one had died in a car crash yet that day. If it was red, well, you were supposed to send some sympathy and empathy toward the light so that pain, by means of increased surface area, would be absorbed quickly and recycled into more efficient, meaningful endeavors, rather than regret and passive hatred.

            The authorities who oversee such matters decided that the light on Vulcan’s wand was too morbid and when Vulcan was reconstructed, they had stripped him of his light, reconstructed into a mute edifice of a bygone epoch. What was the name of the age? I don’t know. What did it stand for? Nothing. The world was supposed to end when I was twelve.