Mormons gave me West Nile
This town is surrounded by farms and fields. I've watched the corn grow and now the stalks are dry and rattle in the wind. Last year there was a maze (or should I say maize?) cut in one of the fields for people to get lost in but I think this summer was too hot for it. I haven't seen any signs. It's easy to buy local products here and it makes me happy. The tofu that I fried last night was made in Lawrence, the blackberry pie that I had for breakfast was made by some women in a little town northwest of here. I could even buy some tasty Oatmeal Stout from Free State. But I miss my home, as stunted and dusty and rednecksurreal as Joplin, Mo is.

That isn't really what I wanted to write about--but I've just had this feeling of being on hold as long as I've been here. It's like when you're waiting for someone to come to your house, you don't feel like you can start any projects or concentrate on anything serious, you just have to wait and tidy the kitchen.

Anyway, had I been in Joplin today I would have gone for a walk around the neighbourhoods north of where I lived. It's an odd mix of historic Victorian style houses and a few boxy traps with dirt yards and, I don't know, last year's Christmas tree lying beside the porch. There would be kids on bicycles, cats creeping through ivy, oak and sycamore trees growing close to the street so that the sidewalk is buckled and littered with twigs.

Instead I went to a walking trail that is down the street from my apartment. This is a forested trail alongside what might have been a small creek but it has dwindled to a grey-mudded stinky runoff ditch. I was apprehensive because I'd never been there, I was alone (except for the one girl who instinctively jerked her purse to her body as she passed) and I didn't want to be the next person on Channel 6 recounting how I'd been chased by vagrants lurking in the bushes. But I walked on, dragonflies darting around me, sun and shade striping the concrete. I stopped a few times to listen to branches squeaking in the wind, to watch rusty-bellied squirrels watching me. I saw some poison ivy vined up a tree and turning red while everything else is still green. And as these things go, just as I'm about to return to the road, here come the two Mormon boys in their white shirts and ties, waving to me. And I'm thinking, 'I know there's a porn somewhere that starts like this'.

I shouldn't make fun of them. They were nice guys and I didn't have to stand there and listen to them. But I don't easily extricate myself from people wanting my attention. I answered their questions, I listened to their story, I nodded along, all the while batting away huge mosquitoes coming from the stagnant muck behind the trees. It was a ridiculous moment that went on for too long. I should have just told them I was out walking to contemplate this pagan holiday, that tonight I was going to raise a glass to the Green Man and toast John Barleycorn, but in the end I gave them a fake name and address for my "second appointment". I can hear Twisted Sister in my head now singing "Yer gonna burn in hell!" If I come down with fever and severe headache you know how it happened.