Ottumwa diversion

plus, acoustic living room show news

	Escape, geographically or internally, is my necessary default. Whether through an open driver's-side window or the sanctuary of moments stashed behind the eyes, time is innately set aside to get lost somewhere & possibly stumble onto something moving in comfortable limbo.

Figment of Imagination by Dan Halstead, 1963

	I found this hanging in a secondhand mall booth. I took it down & rotated to try & take it all in. 

With each spin, an image portion would capture me . . . 

. . . in pieces, as if my own series of dreams or flashbacks amounting to any lifespan of just ballpoint pen & paper . . . 

The title gave the collage our interchangeable, cryptic frame.

It even came with a newspaper article about the artist, a dry cleaner from Ottumwa IA. 

The town name seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place why. 

The article also specifically mentioned that particular drawing, Figment of Imagination, which, it read, was normally on display, where the artist worked as a manager, at Sunkist Cleaners.

$25 later, I was driving towards Ottumwa with my find.

	I stuck mostly to county roads, zig-zagging until I pulled over at a garage sale sign at a small house surrounded by farmland. 

An older man came out of the house while I walked past temporary tables made of sawhorses & plywood covered in obsolete keepsakes. He stared into the open distance & said "The Martins have gone." 

I looked in the direction he was looking. Before the expanse of blue & fields beyond, a series of gourds hung from poles across a manicured lawn that yellowed & then disappeared to acres of brown. 

He said, "They always come back, but this year I didn't even see them leave."
 
There was no movement anywhere. Nothing on the road or in the fields — no clouds. The man was looking off, still within a memory, when I pulled back onto the two-lane.

	Closing in on Ottumwa, I suddenly remembered why the town name rang a bell: a movie I’d seen years before, King of Kong — a documentary about an eighties Donkey Kong championship hosted in Ottumwa.

Donkey Kong was my game when I was high school aged. Moments from those years randomly resurfaced as I went back. At the time of the newspaper story, Halstead was about the age then that I am now.

I cruised the town’s main street & around a few blocks, looking for nothing — or anything, really. Of course, there was no Sunkist Cleaners anymore. No arcade. 

	I drove a little further, then settled for a motel to wander from & entertain myself with my usual pastime: eavesdropping & conjuring. Like Halstead explained, “This is more or less the way I relax . . . you get all buggy, you know?”