Of thee I sing, oh Cleveland

I am a swooner. I just am. People make me swoon. Weather can too. I swoon over good coffee. And cities. I am, perhaps more than anything else, a city-swooner.

I think I might have always been a seeker of special places. When I was a kid I used to make myself a tiny squat in a corner behind a huge houseplant in my parents’ living room. I liked the way the light shot in through the leaves, and that no one could find me there. I liked the idea that even the small animal that was me could choose a space, embed herself and her imagination in it, make it her own. That corner was likely the first clear indication of an obsession with place and space that has followed me across the three continents and 7 cities I have called home. And yes, I fell for all of those cities. Hard.

It might be safe to say, though, that I have never swooned with such intoxication and ecstasy as I did over the city of Cleveland. And my heart, though it has often been broken, has never felt quite so crushed by a departure as the one I now face, sitting as I do in my small apartment in Miami, far from the smoke stacks of the ArcelorMittal Steel Plant, and the grey skies of the Midwest, and the shores of the great Lake Erie. Oh Cleveland. My Cleveland. I long for you.

It is difficult to point exactly to what it is about the city that so captured me. Certainly the exceptional availability of cheap beer helped. And the first real snow falls of the season. (I only understood what Robert Frost meant by ‘downy flake’ after the winter of 2014).* I loved the architecture, even, perhaps especially, the dilapidated mansions of Millionaire’s Row and the decaying industrial warehouses all around. I even grew to love the Browns. Oh, and the dive bars. The not-so-divey dive bars. The Metroparks. The flats. The hot dogs. The utter, insane, giddy joy induced in everyone when, after so many dark months, the sun comes out on the first 60-degree day in Spring.

Mostly, though, I think it was Clevelanders. They are a scrappy, long-suffering, hard working, weird and sometimes misanthropic bunch. And even if they might say otherwise, sometimes, to each other, they love their city. And, after a while, an amazing crowd among them seemed to love me too. And god, did I ever swoon over them. So, so much.

But, woe, oh dear readers, this is my last Cleveland post for the foreseeable future. And thus, because I swooned so, let it stand as a declaration of my absolute, my undying, my completely sincere adoration for Cleveland and for its glorious, bizarre, and beautiful inhabitants. Let it be a call, loud and echoing, into the abyss of the internet. I sing your praises, Cleveland. I sing of your cursed sports teams, of your waterways once aflame, of your art, and your grace, and that strange smell still lingering from the hey day of industry that is sometimes carried by your bitter winds. I sing of your bagels. I sing of the market on your West and the snow banks on your East. I sing of your booze. I sing of your brunches. And I sing most of all for those within your borders, and those poor lost souls, like me, who long to return. I sing of your glory. For it is your own, hard-won glory. It is only, always yours. Oh Cleveland. My Cleveland. I love you.

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*See  his “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening“.