Sometimes, we enter relationships expecting to be able to fix someone. I think Stefani thought she would fix my affinity for indoors and my corresponding disdain for outdoors. I maintain that converting me into an outdoorsy fellow is a fool’s errand, but Stefani persists. Gardening, an indoor-feeling outdoor activity, is one of our most successful compromises. In the last couple of years, we have been looking for secular community in our not-very-secular town. We became aware of a small community garden operated for free by a local Lutheran congregation.

It tends to bum me out to watch most journalists interview John Green about Turtles All the Way Down. They almost always steer the conversation back to his OCD, as if that single detail explains the book and the writer. All of Green’s work emphasizes how critical it is to imagine people complexly.

Something about Submarine feels like opening a shoebox full of embarrassing teenage memories. It’s awkward as hell. It’s hilarious. It’s tragic, but not in a sad sort of way. It’s a romp through the socially underdeveloped life of Oliver Tate and a few other characters who you grow to hate so much you love.

I live in a micropolitan hellscape. There’s no pedestrian access. I take my life in my hands when I bike to work. The city is full of big box stores and cultural nothingness. Despite an ongoing battle between a number of different cultures and communities, there is a sense of neither community nor culture. But there are random agricultural and industrial areas mixed into neighborhoods. So I took some pictures of it. I hope you enjoy this gallery.