a tempermental artist

This is a poem I wrote while living in Minnesota during the record cold winter of 1996.

 

Minnesota Is a Temperamental Artist

Minnesota is a temperamental artist;

an elitist, really;

a cynic, some say.

She tests the art-seeker with skeptical eyes;

challenging his desire for the art;

doubting it;

doubting he is strong enough for art.

If he does not become a cynic himself,

and go looking elsewhere,

or stop looking,

If he remains with the artist,

near to her side,

watching her moods,

watching the eyes that squint coldly into his,

and does not seek shelter,

the testing goes on.

Blown to weariness with a thousand gusts of wind,

stung raw with needles of ice,

burned with cold,

burned with heat,

until wise to the deception of the sun;

chilled and burned and opened,

he lies pierced and weeping

before the great falls, the great lake, the great prairie,

and the artist’s wet, silent eyes,

and sees.

The what?!

“The Itinerant Minnesotan” is a nickname that a friend unwittingly gave me while I was in graduate school in Baltimore. I guess he’d noticed my many references to and alliances with all things Minnesotan – and my sturdily maintained Minnesotan habits, such as immediately bringing food to people when something bad happens (no matter what the bad thing is… even if it’s, say, stomach surgery… we bring food. We don’t know what else to do); commenting on how much worse the bad weather could be; a need to be outside on a very regular basis, regardless of the weather…  a strange fondness for cold, miserable weather, in fact.  A strange fondness for misery itself, actually. For example, I, along with thousands of my fellow Minnesotans, willingly allow my hopes to be elevated every year at the beginning of football season, only to be crushed in the end by, as I heard one unsympathetic DJ put it, “a classic Vikings choke.”  Minnesotans have a fondness for misery and a suspicion of happiness (uh oh, this is too good. Something bad is going to happen).  Misery, at least, is trustworthy.

It’s possible that I commented more than once on the aggressive driving I’d observed on my drive to Baltimore from my home in Washington DC.  I like to tell Easterners about the unique dangers of driving on freeways in Minnesota: If you’re on a 2-lane highway and you’re in the left lane, you’re probably thinking you don’t have to worry too much about the cars merging onto the highway from the right, right? Wrong. If someone is merging from the right, the Minnesotans in the right lane will quickly try to change lanes to make room for the person who is merging. So, watch out! Because they are coming over. They’d rather side-swipe you than be in someone else’s way. Truly.  Similarly, my friend probably noticed how appalled I still become when people are unabashedly rude and don’t even pretend that they want to help you. “Minnesota nice” demands the latter at an absolute minimum.

It is true that I have become something of a traveling messenger of Minnesota ways. The message probably includes the following basic points:

• just be nice
• help other people
• being outside a lot is good, even if the weather is bad.
• put on a happy face and don’t whine (If you’re having a bad day, no one wants to hear about it – and besides, it’s noble to smile through pain).