XX. JUDGMENT
White Magic mostly takes place in Washington and Ohio at the same time: the narrative present is mostly situated in Ohio, rendering the past.
It wasn’t until I’d been here in Ohio for a while that I understood how real life feels now, and how much of my life in Seattle was driven by illusions: of the grunge era, of my future wealth, of the simple possibility of owning a house. When I think about the mirage of Seattle, I always think of the mountains. Specifically, I think of the sight of them that would hit me on my walks around Capitol Hill, when I turned off Broadway onto Roy to walk back to my apartment. Something about the sight of the Olympics on a cloudless summer day seems fake.
Ohio seems real in comparison, possibly because I had no mental image of it before coming here for my campus interview in January 2017. I was shocked to learn that Columbus had a skyline, because my friends in Seattle had been talking about it like it was a small college town, nothing but cornfields and football. I couldn’t, I’m ashamed to say, have pointed it out on a map.
Now my friends send me these memes, which I admit I don’t understand. Having spent most of my life in Seattle and New Jersey, two intensely mythic, misunderstood, symbol-laden places, I relate to Ohio only through reality.
The Fremont neighborhood of Seattle claims to be the center of the universe. In Ohio, there’s an unincorporated community called Center of the World. I think both can be true.
In Red Dead Redemption 2, Ohio gets mentioned in passing:
In White Magic, I quoted the line and said it’s not awful—it’s just real. And now, it has become my only real place. Everywhere but Ohio is in memory and media. I haven’t traveled outside central Ohio this year. I spend every night playing massive open world video games, driving around in my fake car or riding my fake horse in deserts and forests.
White Magic will be out this week. I’ve done a bunch of interviews about the book, some of which are available now: The Believer, the Columbus Dispatch, Fiction Advocate, Foreword Reviews, and others.
I’ll be doing so many virtual events to read from the book and talk with friends. Please drop in if you can. Details are available at my website. Thank you for keeping me company over these last few months.