I am in the process of deciding how and when to move back to the country. I’ve already made the inner commitment. De Blasio’s passport scheme was the last straw. My heart is breaking to see the former capital of freedom of expression, a place I used to associate with great personal liberty, made rotten by an authoritarian buffoon. I have sat in an apartment alone for the better part of a year and a half. I have been inoculated. But I refuse to submit to an ongoing coercive regime of restrictions, mandates, and boosters. It is very likely that I will decide to receive a third vaccine in the future. But I want it to be a choice. It should not be a forced prerequisite for participation in civic life. This is a mentality that goes against my deepest beliefs in the value of bodily autonomy.
The question is where to go. I’m not going to move to Florida or Texas as part of the Giant Red Exodus. I want to stay close to family and be there for an ailing parent. New Hampshire seems meh, though libertarian, and one guy from there on a dating app already told me I’m going to hell for being both bisexual and Christian.
I’ll probably move back to upstate New York. But not bougie, liberal upstate New York. I’m talking backwoods country. Jesus freak territory. Somewhere I can drive a truck on dirt roads. And still make it down to dinner with a friend in NYC if it ever goes back to “normal.”
Why does the country have an inferiority complex? Why do so many country songs talk about moving to the big city— chasing money, fame, and sex— but feeling like one’s soul has been lost? And if one’s soul is to be found and preserved in the country, or one’s place of origin, why is it so important to go to the city and stay there? Is it becoming less and less important?
The culture war may be finally resolved by an ultra-concentration of liberal elites in major cities and the firm decision by conservative and libertarian political refugees to claim the rural. This is not desirable or even a solution to the country’s woes but it seems as though the map of the United States is becoming ever more a swath of red punctuated by tiny, insistent blue dots. And if you find yourself to be purple in a sea of blue, well then, you’re fucked. You’d best keep quiet or flee.
The climate of political intolerance in major cities is such that I have grown thankful for the solitude of the pandemic— it has made me less afraid to lose friends or colleagues who respected me, because I’m already alone. A few years ago, constantly surrounded by people, I would have felt more acutely the costs of speaking out.
I remember seeing that a business I used to work for had their employees stand in front of the store holding Planned Parenthood signs and posted the pictures to social media. This was in the immediate panicked aftermath of the Trump election. I scrolled past the picture in disbelief, overwhelmed with gratitude that I no longer worked there. Like many Americans, I have complex feelings about abortion. As a libertarian, I do not think women’s bodies should be controlled by the government. As a realist, I believe abortion should be legal because people will do it anyway and it needs to be safe. As a Christian, I regard conception as the beginning of life. There is no doubt in my mind that abortion is murder. I am personally pro-life.
So when I saw that my former place of employ had asked (or required? pressured? I’ll never know) a large group of workers to hold Planned Parenthood signs for Instagram, I was shocked. What would I have said then? Would I have refused? If I had refused, would I have been fired? I have no desire to be political propaganda for a business in which my interest is strictly apolitical. I regard as abhorrent an employee being made to stump for her bosses’ beliefs online.
Yet this is the atmosphere we are living in. And if you do not assent to it, you are essentially living at the margins. Artists, creative people, and dissenters have always lived at the margins. At different times throughout history, so have Christians. This is nothing new to us. But this may be a new time in America. Marina Abramovic, Rem Koolhaas and others have spoken about the idea that the countryside is the future of art, innovation and free thought. It may be so. Artists do not need to be by definition city dwellers or even politically left-of-center. Why have we accepted so much uniformity in creative life?
I recently discovered Rod Dreher’s book Crunchy Cons. In describing conservatives and traditionalists who are also earthy and environmentalist, Dreher suggests that “the good life depends on harmonizing the soul and the body.” I have lived in New York City on and off for over fifteen years. But since moving back from rural Columbia County two years ago, I have had consistent back pain that nothing will abate, not stretching, exercising, or the chiropractor. I do believe the soul speaks through the body.
A flower remedy called Scleranthus exists as part of the line of healing essences developed by Dr. Edward Bach, a holistic doctor in early twentieth-century England. Scleranthus is meant for those who cannot come to a decision— who feel split between two options. I do not think the divide I feel between city and country is mine alone. This is a schism that is being felt across the nation on a psychic level, and part of the agony I feel is from shockwaves of the larger collective conflict. Many city residents are rejecting urban life, while classist disdain for rural people has never been so open and shameless. The whole damn country needs Scleranthus.
I worry about being divorced from the things I love and the areas I have worked in if I move back to the country. I feel sad when I think about being distanced from the fashion industry. But almost every industry feels stuck right now. And what is fashion actually about? What is its inherent meaning?
Beauty.
In its greatest sense, fashion is about beauty. And beauty abounds in the country. It is beauty that I care about, beauty above all, above politics, above ideology. A few days ago I traveled upstate and saw small orange wildflowers, called impatiens capensis in Latin, growing along the edge of a field. I was reminded of Christ’s words:
“Why are you anxious about clothing? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. And yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these.” Matthew 6:28-29
I look forward to buying a truck. Switching on the radio. And hearing the following—