Glug, glug...

Iowa is flooded. More particularly DesMoines, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, and Coralville are flooded. Once upon a time, I went to graduate school and lived in those last two towns for six years. I still have friends in Cedar Rapids and I exhibited at the DesMoines Art Center a couple of times, maybe more than a couple. One of my oldest friends still lives in Coralville; at least I count him as an old friend since he's so alive in my memory. Because we're so rarely in touch, he probably only thinks of me around Christmas, if he thinks of me at all, and that's fine. Keeping up with news of this disastrous rain, the creeks and rivers overflowing and the levees breaking, I've been trying to call him and can't get an answer. I imagine he's evacuated. At least, that's what I tell myself. The same is true of my friend in Cedar Rapids, except that I've been emailing her rather than phoning since that's my latest contact information. But to no avail.

Cedar Rapids has been reduced to a giant metal-hued puddle. Everything appears to be underwater. My friend in Cedar Rapids has become a known artist in the intervening years. Remembering that her studio was always in her house, I'm hoping against hope that her work is safely stored someplace. Actually, I probably don't need to worry about either of them. They're both remarkably self-sufficient people. They were even back when I lived in Iowa, so long ago. It's what I liked and admired about them, while envying their self-containment greatly.

Back then I was a mess: a dependent messy mascara-streaked drama queen, with only the flimsiest awareness of what I was. With my past and my genes, this emotional slobbiness was unavoidable, but, understandable or not, I didn't like myself. I wanted to change but didn't know how. And so, as I always had, I combed through books, hoping the answers to my problems would magically appear, embedded in some essay, story, or novel.

Sometimes they did.

While reading a collection of famous letters, I happened across Lord Chesterfield's. He advised his son to always be friends with his superiors. I don't know if Lord Chesterfield Jr. ever took his dad's suggestion, but it seemed like an eminently sensible notion to me. So I assiduously cultivated people who were what I wanted to be, observed them, copied them in some respects, and learned from them. My two old Iowa friends were people I watched closely, hoping that, at some distant time, I would be as responsible, unpretentious, and staunchly individual. I think now I've become a bit more like them. Every so often, I send up a tiny prayer of thanks that we once crossed paths.

I had friends living in New Orleans during Katrina, and every day TV news kept that nightmare luridly alive. These floods are similar in the scope of their disaster, and yet I've had to crawl all over the web to find out basic information. I wonder why. Is Iowa considered too dull a place for our concern? Do only the coasts count in our national attention?

The Iowans themselves don't seem to care if the news trucks show up or not. Black, white, young, old, student, and farmer, standing side by side, the photographs show them stolidly filling sandbags and slamming them against the levees. Today, in an NPR interview, one old man remarked, "Well, I've lost everything, but y'know other people have gone through things like this. We'll make it too. And everything will be fine."

Be well, David and Jane. Be safe. Be fine.

I'll be talking to you soon.