A Capitol Idea

Madison, WI

I always felt a little out of place in Madison. Visiting now, a decade after I left, feels particularly odd. If I had a boatload of cash I’d spend the rest of my days in Madison…who am I kidding, I’d waste my life on the beach in Malibu. At any rate this town is at once very familiar and strangely distant. A little background is in order.

College wasn’t in the cards for me. I was not interested in academics. I did well enough in school but my passion went into music and I wanted to make avant garde coffee house noise pop until I learned what that paid. I applied for a position the Marine Corps band (as a percussionist, since guitar players don’t get a lot of marching band parts), looked at small liberal arts music schools, and considered moving out of state to start a band. College was a way to buy some time, so after applying to top universities and not getting into anywhere with ivy I went to the University of Minnesota and sunk my teeth into the science program. Chemistry was appealing because I had a raging post-adolescent crush on my high school chemistry teacher. Was I thinking that I could seduce her if I learned how to balance reaction equations? After a year in the program (which I persisted in strictly in the hope of sexing up said teacher) I found I had a talent for math so I switched and essentially guaranteed that I would be unemployable when I graduated. Then a couple of things happened.

I landed a job as a math and science tutor in a freshman dorm (God love the positive attribution errors frosh girls make of upper classmen). At the same time I became obsessed with Japanese “koans,” or Zen case studies, puzzles that suggest some aspect of the enlightened mind. Then I met a girl with family in Wisconsin and we moved in together. Feeling trapped in the Twin Cities I applied for a transfer in my third year to the University of Wisconsin to complete a math degree and pick up a Japanese minor. Both departments hold exceptionally strong reputations in the Midwest, and with tuition reciprocity I could graduate with virtually no debt. Japanese...I figured if the liberal arts program required a foreign language I might as take the most white-barbarian unfriendly language this planet has ever produced and try to crack open the meaning of some of these Zen koans.

I spent my senior year and a fifth in Madison. Having started elsewhere I never felt like a true “Badger.” My girlfriend Nicole and I moved there sight unseen and wound up physically just a few miles from campus but culturally on the dark side of the moon. Student life revolves around State Street, the main drag, and three miles is a long walk when bus service stops at 10PM and the wind chill is 10 below zero. After a couple of months, Nicole packed up and left (I seem to have that effect on women) so on the other side of winter I landed a job as a CD store clerk where I could inflict my tastes on hapless shoppers and broke my lease to move to Madison’s ex-hippie district. During these completely typical college-era struggles I was furious for not having a car. That’s when I started paying attention to the classics patrolling the city during the summer driving season, in a sort of homage to retro-modern irony paired with a backyard mechanic appreciation of torque or tail fins or carbureted engines.

I’m sure it goes without saying that the town of Madison had nothing going for it before I arrived with my big-city attitude to shape up that little Lutheran burg. Clearly hanging with my friends drinking pitchers by the lakeshore, criticizing experimental films at the student union, savoring authentic middle-eastern cuisine, that was all my idea. When I go back and see all these punk kids I want to tell them what sorry and pale imitators they are. They aren’t participating in an authentic experience like I was. Don’t they have any idea they’re just copying what happened years before, just as those people copied what came years before, just as those people copied what came…except for me of course. Apparently I my little excursion into higher education had been unique in human history. This is precisely the natural tension I feel when I’m there: that I'm at once unique (this was my alma mater) and part of the herd (this is the alma mater of 800 million Midwesterners). It’s scary how true they both are.

The place teems with last-weekend-before-school students (and parents, lots and lots of chaperone parents). Feeling nostalgic I drive by the house we rented on Jenifer Street, wander around the capitol building, and stomped out my former path from State Street (the CD store) past the library and up Bascom Hill to the Van Vleck (Math) and Van Hise (Japanese) buildings. Madison after dark is strangely lifeless during the summer break and as the sun sets I feel suddenly very distant and isolated as though I urgently need to be anywhere but here.

I started my career by inflating a few modest internet skills into computer proficiency based on techniques I picked up out of need while in Madison so I could stay in touch with my friends at home. Strange as it may sound in retrospect cyber sex on green-screen text terminals between Nicole and me in the school computer lab was pretty God damn spicy. IRC turned into FTP turned into HTML and dynamic web pages turned into projects and sales. The rest is ancient history. So thanks Madison for keeping me just isolated enough that I always felt the people that mattered the most to me were somewhere else.

In my final year here I met my ex-wife and brought her back to Minneapolis, so at least I kept a souvenir from this town.

It was on a holiday drive through Madison many years later when we accepted that it was best to get divorced.

The city hasn’t changed much and yet somehow everything about it is vastly different. The isolation creeps up on me as a brisk walk turns into a jog toward the car.

I make good time to the South Beltline Highway bound for Chicago before realizing I'm stuck in a thicket of Labor Day traffic. It takes an hour to go ten miles. Here’s hoping the traffic on the Mother Road is a whole lot lighter. Otherwise in Texas I’ll pick me up a gun (I believe everyone driving though Texas is required to carry and conceal a weapon anyway) and make news thinning out the herd. Despite the stop-and-go conditions the car runs well, maybe a little warm, and I make it home around midnight. I manage to navigate the brick and concrete obstacle course in my parking garage with surprising ease. The suspension on Cherry has been fairly responsive. The old girl handles better than I remember.

Next stop: Parked