Out of the ruins and rubble
Out of the smoke
Out of our night of struggle
Can we see
a ray of hope
We can build
A beautiful city
Yes we can

Here I am, in Dayton, Ohio. One of my neighbors is a Baptist Church. The other is an elderly woman with a boat, a moldy motorhome, and a rusted, broken tractor and plow in her backyard. Across the street, there's a working farm.

This place is so alien, so far from where I've been over the past few years. Perhaps it's appropriate that there are actual aliens at the air force base just a few miles away.

It's a world away from the sun-streaked turquoise waters and blistering beaches of South Florida, where I used to walk in the baking sand, looking for seashells and hoping that I wouldn't get too sunburned. Where I rode my bicycle, alone, past the Dali Museum and the art deco hotels; pedaling past the volleyball games just beyond the Royal Palms that lined the beach.

Though I still have a few worrying freckles from the Florida sun, I wouldn't trade anything for my time spent there as a castaway. For that's how I felt. For a while, anyway.

In my castaway days, I loved the thunderstorms. They'd arrive in the afternoons as if they were a hurried response to urgent, sunburnt prayers. With blue-black skies and jagged lightning, they'd show up just before everything caught fire from the blazing tropical sun. Sometimes, I'd run across the street to the cafes, stand under the awnings, and listen to my playlist. Alone. And every song on it will forever smell like sunscreen and cocoanuts.

Dayton is also blessedly far from Chicago - a skyline of chaos embraced. Of protests, politics, and parking tickets. Where diversity is the adrenalin that fuels its hipsters and tourists like Adderall-laced energy drinks. It teeters forever on the edge of eruption; a high for the young, the brave, the cool - the ones who would gladly have three roommates just to be a part of its mesmerizing craziness and maybe take an Uber to Wrigley field once in a while.

Each place I've been, it's been so different. From watching the sun dip below the waves in the Gulf of Mexico every night to seeing it emerge from beneath the aquamarine edge of Lake Michigan every morning.

And just before Dayton, I'd lived as a castaway too, alone among 144 acres of cornstalks and soybeans. Near the river and the squirrels. I never tired of the whistle of the South Shore train as it raced past, carrying tourists to the station near The Stray Dog. It reminded me of my dad.

"You're moving where?"

My friends and colleagues were surprised. "Seriously?"

They'd wonder why I'd trade the ranch for Dayton. Just like they wondered why I'd moved from my condo high above the museum - overlooking the lake. Like they wondered why I'd ever left my castaway cabin just a few hundred feet from the beach. From my beloved thunderstorms.

I could never really explain why, though. Not in a way that they'd understand.

Because what I learned is that special places aren't special at all - without people you love. And each place, each city, eventually whispered that to me.

That you can be a castaway, even on the most beautiful beach, That, even in the tallest tower, you can't see far enough. That no matter how much corn grows around you, there is hunger.

Without a daughter's smile, a son's laugh - without family - there is no home. The scenery is only special to tourists. Beauty is built.

Maybe the lady next door will sell me her rusty tractor.

Citations:
Beautiful City - Godspell 2011 Revival
2011 Broadway
Arranger: Mac Huff | Composer: Stephen Schwartz | Musical: Godspell

#urban renewal

Building a beautiful city