Leaves on my front lawn yesterday evening. Photo by me, November 2026.
It was a showery and dreary Wednesday. The leaves are near peak and they are falling. Great weather, but it could have rained more here. I care more about the drought than I do about politics. Still, I have some thoughts which are no better or worse than the pundits or the politicians. The weather, the season and the politics have me turning inwards and those thoughts sustain my misanthropic fantasies when I am falling asleep.
Looking at the big picture, the last
ten years of wild political swings between the two parties are
evidence of how volatile, reactionary and destabilized this country
has become. I do not believe people realize or care about the
consequences and are only concerned with whether their team (red or
blue) wins at any cost. Elections are now an emotional and irrational
feedback loop. Every two years the country is scattered into red
parts and blue parts of a partisan jigsaw puzzle and is never
reassembled, the pieces just become smaller and the politics meaner.
Considering the results of the 2026
midterm election, it would be a mistake to think they were about
social issues and not economic ones. Nothing moves the middle voter
more than having to pay more to fill up their cars with gas to get to
work or pay more for groceries.
In the short term, it means a stalemate
and nothing is accomplished. In the long term, further Balkanization
along emotional and social issues until the country completely
fractures under the stress at some point down the road. Probably not
in my lifetime, but post America is coming.
Earlier this week I watched Shirley.
It is a movie about the gothic writer Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House among others), her husband and a
young couple who move into their house. The movie is set in North
Bennington, Vermont where Bennington College is located.
The 2020 movie is partly an academic
movie, but it is also a mystery involving a missing woman based on
the real life story of Paula Jean Weldon who was a student at
Bennington. Weldon went for a walk in the woods near campus one day
in 1946 and was never seen again and no trace of her was found. Her
disappearance is said to have inspired Jackson and writer Donna
Tartt, also a Bennington graduate, who wrote a novel I am a huge admirer of, The Secret History.
The underlying themes of the film are
about betrayal, manipulation, mind games we play with others and
ourselves and the reclusive act of writing.
I liked Shirley. It was a warm, cozy
movie that was entertaining, well written and not too heavy. It was a
good movie for a fall night post Halloween and the election. Throughout the film I kept being reminded of one of my old best friends from school by the character of Jackson's husband played by Michael Stuhlbarg who also starred in Call Me By Your Name. The actor looks exactly like him as an adult before my friend died and the personality of the character in Shirley was so similar that it was eerie.
Farewell to Salon.com
When Salon was interesting. Screenshot from March 2000.
Farewell to Salon.com after thirty-one
years on the internet. It was an internet outpost in the late 1990s
and early 2000s that used to be interesting, sometimes on the edge of
being cool and a place that made me curious. I was a regular Salon
reader from the late 1990s through the 2000s. By 2010 I stopped
visiting when it became a bore going off the deep of insanity into moralizing and hectoring the same as NPR (oh, how I miss the voice of Bob Edwards in the mornings in the 90s/early 2000s). Had I even agreed with some of what was
written there, the style was so off putting that I could not be
bothered. It had a few good years in the pre-snark years of the internet, but thirty-one was too many.
Salon Radio screenshot from August 2000.
It once even had Salon Radio when
everyone was jumping on the Real Player streaming bandwagon. Remember
Real Player and suffering the buffering at 28.8K speed? Well, Soma FM is still streaming if you are in need of electronic lounge downbeat groovy music and sometimes I do. Secret Agent is the best Soma channel, it reminds me of when Halo Lounge in the basement of the Biltmore was a chill place a very long time ago. I almost want a martini now.
For the past couple of weeks I have
been writing on a side project that I have been calling Coffee,
Fudge & Guns. It is a true story about a kid I knew in the
1980s from school who was the son of a preacher and recently was
arrested for attempted murder in another state. I had some
interesting interactions with him as a kid that perhaps foretold what
would happen in his adult life. I am unsure how to end the story as I
may need to wait for further developments to finish.
The autumn weather has been fantastic with
overnight lows in the forties for the past few weeks. It has been
flannel shirt weather and good for long walks. Still no frost unfortunately. When I was growing up in Georgia in the 1970s and 80s we typically had our first frost around Halloween, but that was different climate from today. We do need rain though
and maybe that will come this weekend. I am optimistic and looking forward to the time falling backwards.
I watched The Sweet East and was
surprised at how good it was after the first eight minutes which were annoying. This film used dark humor that was critical of the
sleazy and narcissistic activist movements of the 2020s who want to
remake the United States in their own image and falsify its history.
The style is that of the period of independent film from the early to
middle 1990s and it was shot on 16mm film. It was one of those films
that slipped under my radar when it was released in 2023, the year
that the ghastly film Barbie was the top grossing film and
Super Mario Brothers was in second place – just dreadful stuff. At
least I loved Saltburn that year.
Simon Rex and Talia Ryder in The Sweet East.
The Sweet East stars Talia Ryder as a runaway teen who has a series of strange encounters with these self-obsessed east coast activists. One of those activists is played by former 1990s MTV VJ, Hilfiger model and former gay porn actor (NSFW link) Simon Rex. Rex is in a supporting role and turns in a fine performance as an Edgar Allan Poe obsessed academic with a bad dye job and a dark side. I wished his role was larger. Jacob Elordi, also in Saltburn as mentioned above, is in this film too in a supporting role.
Overall, it is a smart and interesting movie that dares to take on some touchy subjects and pisses off the humorless like 2025's Eddington did minus the big budget.
Beth Gibbons, Lives Outgrown.
It was the late autumn of 1999 when I was first introduced to Portishead and lead singer Beth Gibbons in the Castleberry Hill loft of a short-lived boyfriend. I became a fan of the band, not the boyfriend, and followed them up to their last album in 2008. Roads is their best and one of the best songs of the 1990s. Take a long drag on that cigarette, clutch that mic and sing along, "Oh, can't anybody see we've got a war to fight, we never find our way regardless of what they say. How can it feel this wrong?" I still get chills when the strings come in at the bridge.
Beth's first solo album Out of Season from 2002, a collaboration with former Talk Talk's Paul Webb, is one of my all-time favorite albums released this century. In 2024 she released her second solo album, Lives Outgrown. For whatever reason I put off listening to it until this autumn. I am enjoying it, its typical of Beth moodiness and the hungry soul lyrics. Like listening to Portishead, Beth's solo works take me out of the everyday world and transport my mind to place more dark, rich and mysterious.
I hope there will be another Portishead album one day and more Beth solo albums too.
A sale at the Historic Macon Foundation last weekend in Macon. Photo by me, October 2026.
There is a hurricane coming tonight.
Hurricane Isaias is visiting this weekend. It is also Atlanta gay
pride as I was reminded a week ago.
Last weekend I was in Macon for an
event put on by the Historic Macon Foundation. I was about to leave
for Warner Robins when the crowd parted and there appeared someone I
had not seen in twelve years like magic. It is funny how random,
small and strange life can be. Twelve years? That could not be right,
but I looked it up and yes, it had been twelve years since I had seen
him at Oscar's in Atlanta during gay pride. So much had happened in
our lives in those twelve years, he had moved to New England for a
time then moved back then moved to Macon which is his hometown. I had
left Atlanta too for the hinterlands in the direction of Athens.
There in an old warehouse with exposed beams in downtown Macon we
hugged and caught up.
“I'll be coming up to Atlanta next
weekend for Pride,” he said.
Perhaps the astonished look on my face
betrayed me as I asked, “Is that next weekend?”
“I suppose that means you won't be
going?”
I had to search my mind to remember
when I had last went to gay pride. “I stopped going out ten years
ago,” I replied.
The gay pride parade down Peachtree Street in Midtown Atlanta. Photo by me, October 2013.
A few days later and looking through
old photos I found that the last one I attended was in 2015 when
friends had come to visit from New York and California. The last
parade I went to was even further back in 2013. Gay Pride and
nightlife I outgrew and traded for different activities. Atlanta
changed as cities are meant to do. Pride changed with the younger
generations and attitudes and I changed as people are prone to do
with age. Yet, I realize change in relation to the city, nightlife, attitudes and gay pride does not mean progress.
Half the bars and clubs I used to hang out in have closed or
moved. Bukhart’s is now the Eagle? That does not sound appealing,
the Eagle was always interesting just for its decrepit location on
Ponce, not to mention what went on inside that dark, gritty place
that was a mix of leather queens and the most down to earth softball
playing gay guys in Levi’s.
Somewhere in my mind I have connected Joy Division with the Eagle.
Have you ever paid attention to the lyrics of Shadowplay? I am
convinced that they are about the hunt for an encounter in a gay bar,
a dark gay bar in the middle of a city. The Eagle was that kind of
place. That is my spin, my imagination and the reality I knew.
A rainy night out front of the old Eagle on Ponce de Leon Avenue in Atlanta. Photo by me, August 2012.
I do not have but a few distinct memories of the old Eagle. There was one gay
blogger, Curt, I knew twenty years ago who was this beautiful blonde
computer programmer and was always inviting me to join him there on
Friday nights when I would run into him on Saturday nights at Jungle.
“You must come. Dude, it's hot,” he would say. I doubted it was
as hot as he was. I liked the old Eagle well enough, but it was only
an occasional place for me, Heretic, with a more ready
for anything crowd, was my spot.
One occasional Eagle night, there was that young thing in a too
tight Hollister tee from Panama City, Florida with his sugar daddy.
Mr. Young Thing spun and danced like a cheerleader with imaginary pom
poms directing planes on the deck of an aircraft carrier as the rest of us watched in amusement and embarrassment for
him. It was Pride Sunday night, the night where everyone goes for one
last night to let loose before checking out of the hotel the next
morning with a hangover and their darkest sunglasses before driving
back to whatever smaller and less gay place they live. They swear
they will never do that again and after a few miles down the road vow
that they cannot wait until next year's Pride.
Panama City Beach, Florida the afternoon after when I had met those guys at Splash. Photo by me, August 2009.
I had met the sugar daddy the year before in a raucous night on
Thomas Drive in Panama City Beach in their sole gay bar called
Splash. People I had traveled with danced atop the bar and I met a
stripper I knew from Swinging Richards in Atlanta who was on a
“stripper tour” as he called it. His next stop was New Orleans. I
hung out on the patio talking with an older attorney in a suit from
Lower Alabama. He liked to talk about his dogs and cars. The next
afternoon I sat hung over on a beach towel on the powdery white sand determined to swim too far and too deep in the Gulf of Mexico.
That last visit to the old Eagle was a showery and windy August Saturday night.
Puddles collected, it might have been the remnants of a tropical
storm or hurricane that night but I do not remember, on Argonne
Avenue where I parked. I made my way up into the back entrance through
the house portion of the ramshackle place. I do remember the twink. I
was thirty-nine so I remembered twinks when they appeared. I was
embraced and kissed by a softball playing skinny twink of a stranger
on a stairwell. He was still wearing the his team's tee shirt, seemed
sweet and looked like the type that had a jungle of houseplants in a
tiny one bedroom apartment somewhere off Moreland. That apartment was
probably the first one he had after graduating college.
The Eagle that I remember would seem like an ill fit at Ansley. I
looked at the photos posted on their website and it does appear the
crowd has changed. The Eagle at Ansley appears to be nothing like the
one I remember. They are also charging anywhere from $33 to $97 to
get in for gay pride weekend. That is nothing like the old Eagle.
That is severe inflation. In the past, it was not uncommon for gay
bars and clubs to jack up prices during pride, but now it seems like taking advantage of the community. People go along with it, look the other way, complain about higher prices for everything else including basic necessities, but this goes unremarked about. Gay pride is now a luxury, VIP experience. Fools or suckers? You do not need a high priced ticket to celebrate gay pride, you can do it every day of your life for free.
I am glad to be out of the scene as I am an ill fit that believes that not all change is progress. I have brown hair, not blue,
with some natural gray. I do not have tattoos. I have never done drag
or even watched a single episode of Drag Race. I stopped
watching Project Runway after season four and that was in
2008. I am an over fifty gay man and I have other priorities. Sitting in
a bar that plays thumping auto-tuned music is as appealing as
watching Johnny from Easley, South Carolina twirl in his cut offs and
a neon green crop top until he hurls rainbow vomit in the corner next
to a meth dealer. Gay pride is no longer my scene. Hurricane or not,
I was not going anyway.
Flowerland on Price Avenue in the Cobbham neighborhood of Athens known for its interesting sign messages. Photo by me, September 2026.
The early 1990s are so still so
prevalent in this year's fall fashion once again and I am not opposed
to that except for pleats and boxy pants. The colors are something I
am glad to see and most of the styles too. I picked up a new pink
flannel shirt at J. Crew in the clearance section over the weekend. I
am ready for flannel, sweater and barn jacket weather. Now if I could only feel as young as I did at eighteen in 1991.
Loafing in Athens over the weekend, a
common occurrence, I thought about my work in progress novel and
changes and inspiration. I have taken a writing break during the
month of September to think and I have been out of state a lot and
that made writing anything more than notes impossible.
The beautiful Seney-Stovall Chapel built in 1885 in Athens on Milledge Avenue. If you have ever seen the 1986 documentary Athens Inside/Out then you have seen this building when it was in a great state of disrepair. It was featured prominently in the documentary and R.E.M. performed inside it for the film. Photo by me, September 2026.
Stopped in Mother Lode on Baxter for
the first time in a year or so, not my favorite store, and browsed.
It is one of those “vintage” places where most of the merchandise
is okay if you are a UGA student looking for an ironic Halloween
costume or believe early 1970s interior design was the height of home
decor – something I do not believe. I fondly remember the seventies, but not for most of the decor. When I hear someone say "vintage", I gag the same as I do when I hear "curated" or "bespoke." All of it is one long miserable smug pose.
Cutthroat from Shame
The soundtrack for the weekend was the
album Cutthroat from one of my favorite bands, Shame. They are a
South London post-punk band who have been around since 2014. Their
third album, Food for Worms released in 2023, is my favorite from the
band. Cutthroat came out a year ago this month and I am only recently
getting around to listening to it. Shame on me.
It is an odd album drawing
references from Blur, early Depeche Mode, Slint, Nirvana and of course Gang of Four. The chorus of the song Plaster reminded me of Weezer, who were good for an album
or two in the 1990s. There is still plenty of scorching pleasure and fun in
the album, but I cannot say I am enjoying the glossy and sometimes auto tuned production. The album is all over the place and is less
cohesive compared to earlier albums. Some will argue that is growth,
the band is maturing and blah blah blah, but it reminds me of
Interpol who lost their way with their fourth album. I still love the band and look forward
to hearing what turns up next from them.
The songs I like are Packshot, Spartak,
Quiet Life, Axis of Evil, Plaster and Cutthroat. Lampiao is so terrible that I
never want to hear that song again. I like six out of twelve songs
and the rest are forgettable.
On a recent road trip coming northward
out of Sarasota we detoured to Jacksonville. After the time in
Jacksonville we were in an awkward spot to get home to northern
Georgia. If only using the interstates to travel it would have meant
going out of the way westward on I-10 to I-75 or heading north on
I-95 to I-16 in Savannah and then getting on I-75 in Macon.
Logistically it made no sense. I decided the old fashioned way of
studying a map and choosing back roads was the better option and
would be more interesting. Off we went across the Okefenokee Swamp in
southern Georgia zigging and zagging through Waycross, Alma,
Hazelhurst and many other towns. It was a fun drive, with no traffic
and no stress. I would do it again and maybe change it a little to
see new towns unseen.
I am still attempting to visit every
one of the one hundred and fifty-nine counties in Georgia which is
the second most to Texas in the number of counties. I do not have
many left as I have visited well over a hundred of them. On this trip
I added Bacon, Appling, Jeff Davis and Dodge counties to my total. I
feel like I have been to more counties in this state than the
politicians that claim to represent it.
On the drive I kept thinking about
simpler and saner times. Country roads have a way of stripping away
the man-made artifices, modern technology and information overload
and the troubles of the world that really have no direct bearing on
my life. The roads passed through the endless pines, the green
fields, by the barns, over the creeks, rivers and swamps and by
houses large and small. I like to think of the countryside as reality
and cities as artificial bubbles.
The American flag at rest on Broad Street in Monroe, Georgia. Photo by me, April 2026.
When President Carter died in 2024 I
watched his funeral. Some of my motivation was a sense of obligation
since he was, like me, a son of Georgia, but mostly it was admiration
that made me watch. Carter's presidency has felt like the end of
simpler and saner times in part because it was the end of the 1970s
and also because of the person he was, the son of a South Georgia
farmer. His funeral was more than his own, it was the funeral of the
last vestiges of simpler and saner times in America and decency too. I would like to
think that one day this country will be sane again, but that would
require both sides reversing their charge to the extreme ends of
politics and returning to where some of us live in the middle.
I have no hope of it happening. I love this country, am proud of it,
but I think we are fucked by both sides who are too blinded by their smugness and self righteousness for the foreseeable future and perhaps the remainder of my life. It did not have to be this way.
"Nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselves to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time." - James Joyce writing about Dublin, Georgia on the opening page of Finnegans Wake.
Dublin, Georgia. Photo by me, April 2026.
Dublin, Georgia. Photo by me, April 2026.
Dublin, Georgia. Photo by me, April 2026.
I recently stopped in Dublin, Georgia
in Laurens County for the first time. I had a good dinner in their
pleasant downtown. The restaurant was busy, people were out on the
sidewalks in the evening and it was good to see another small Georgia
town's downtown thriving.
Monticello, Georgia. Photo by me, 2026.
Monticello, Georgia. Photo by me, 2026.
Later, before making the final leg home
we stopped in the square of Monticello. It is another small Georgia
town with a downtown that thrives. I have watched several sunsets in
the past few years from that square on my way back from other places.
The back roads seem to take me through there no matter from where I
was coming. There is something so peaceful and calming about that
square at sunset. The world feels okay there.
I have noticed this many times, but in
small towns life still feels sane and normal for the most part. There
is a great divide between small towns and the cities much like
American politics. It is in cities and large suburbs where people
ignore out of fear or complacency the crazy, the bad manners,
incompetent drivers, dangers and the growing incivility of American
life. Small towns are where the life and the country I knew growing
up still exists in large part. It is weird for me to feel this way as
it requires me to admit that I was wrong for decades of my life when
I thought cities were better.
I wish American cities were cleaner,
safer and more polite, but they are not and it should not be
tolerated or accepted and yet it is. Is it apathy by the citizens,
the local governments and police? Yes and it is up to them to take
responsibility and solve those problems. In bad neighborhoods people
say to look the other way and are told to mind their own business.
Looking the other way is cowardly and shreds any sense of community
which leads to bad neighborhoods. If taking care of one's community
is not minding one's own business and is not in one's own best
interest then nothing is.
Somewhere near Milledgeville, Georgia
John Cougar Mellencamp's Small Town played on the radio. I sang
along. I thought about my mother, she was a huge Mellencamp fan. The
world was okay on that back road and in that reality.
Me on the beach in Sarasota, Florida. April 2026.
With that written and after walking
miles around a lake on Monday, I am putting my long form blog, Notes from Rabbit Tobacco Field, on indefinite hiatus. I am deep into
writing my next novel and I do not have the spare mental capacity to
keep writing long form posts for a blog. I have to concentrate on
novel writing.
Another reason, is that I do not desire
for my blog to become what I disliked about the men of the previous
generation who talked back to the television news and complained
about everything. I notice the men of my generation do it on Facebook
or other social media and I find it negative and annoying. I do not
want to contribute to that type of discourse on the internet nor
waste my time consuming it.
Also, I have been pulling back my time
from the internet in general. My use of the internet for any purpose
has declined significantly over the last year. I spend very little
time on the internet surfing or browsing as if I have seen the end of
the web and it is suffocated with bots and AI. The web I started with
in the mid 1990s that was human, cool, interesting, filled with
originality, was mostly friendly and not so commercial is dead and
has been for a long time. The greatest invention for the average
person in my fifty plus years of living was ruined. It did not have
to be this way. The internet became the ultimate bad neighborhood.
Finally, I like my privacy more than this blog. The internet's influence on society and the current
politics are enough to make a person become a misanthrope and to be
thankful for the gates that we have control over.
This website is not dying, but changing
and will still serve as my primary outlet for my books. I will keep
posting periodic updates about my next novel.
Naughty and nice are not mutually exclusive. Photo by me, Greensboro, Georgia.
More people I have known died in 2025.
Is that too blunt or too obvious? It is not a mystery that the older
I become, the more it happens and that is the logical and detached
way to approach it. The longer life lasts the more it resembles a classic BMW in need of repairs
beyond the routine maintenance, but the backfire of death is no less
of a surprise each time it is heard. Preppies in the snow put their hands up to cover their ears and wait.
Too many people have died too
young. Dear Generation X, what are you doing ?
I read the obituaries and tried to reconcile the adult to the
kid I knew. I am often surprised to read the twists and turns of what
people became. People do change, or maybe I never knew some of them
that well past the superficial observations in a red brick school in
a country town. A boy pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose,
twirled his number two pencil and did multiplication on his fingers.
A teenage girl leaned back in a rocking chair and laughed too hard on
the wrong beat as she tried to grasp the conversation of adults. What
did we learn?
Funerals are the wrinkles on the face
of a life. Gray hairs in the mirror are the honest rebels stealing
from the self-image that mistakenly thinks you could still pass for
thirty. Forty? Not even. Whatever the kids are listening to and
whatever slang they are inventing is whatever the kids are listening
to and saying. Translators are not made for that duty. You still think 2006 was a week ago as you tune into
99X or River 97 and drum your fingers on the steering wheel to
Everytime You Go Away by Paul Young. You squint at the red light that
is poorly timed and notice that the restaurant that was there on the
corner your entire life is now a vape shop and tattoo parlor serving
burritos without a permit and when did they build that Dollar
General? Only yesterday your child was six and you were late for
soccer practice.
The end of a year always makes us consider time and where it went. The mind has difficulty with time's salamander slick and slippery nature.
Andrew McCarthy in 1987's Mannequin.
Damn the changes, damn the politics,
damn the numbing disease of cheap nostalgia and damn it all to hell,
but I am thankful that my waist size is still a thirty. Now the light
is green, the radio plays Starship's Nothing's Gonna Stop Us and you
want to believe it. You are convinced. Traffic flows like it did
before millions moved here to ruin paradise and Andrew McCarthy sure
was pretty in Mannequin. You strain your voice singing, “We
can build this dream together.” You swear you did not once tell
that minor piece of trivia in a Thomas Drive bar in Panama City that
the lead singer, Mickey Thomas, was from Cairo, Georgia. That is Cairo
pronounced like the syrup and not the city in Egypt.
My 2025 was like sitting down to eat at a
favorite restaurant, eating my favorite foods and leaving full but
not satisfied. I do not know what it was about this year, but it
lacked novelty. There were new sights, sounds, places and aches in
the joints. I was not bored; that seems to be a condition I never
experience, but perhaps I became immune to the news, the messed-up
weather, confused flowers and the next batch of woods toppled for
luxury apartments over a Panda Express. Gas was cheaper and I spent
an hour looking for the ear hair trimmer. The year was over before I knew it.
At fifty-two, I noticed my age like a
phone notification that I could not swipe away. I felt a little
slower, less nimble and it took me longer to recharge. It now took me
two cups of coffee and a handful of Costco supplements before my
brain began to percolate in my skull. Silence for the first hour of a day was a requirement or I became the grumpy old man who I never wanted to imitate.
Home Away From Home in Fort Lauderdale. Photo by me.
The secret “home away from home” in
Fort Lauderdale was sold this year. It was a unique and special place
for sixteen years. I will miss talking to the lizards on the patio, curious stray cats and morning coffee walks to Sebastian Street Beach. I doubt we will find another place like it.
Novel 4 (it really does have a title)
came along nicely from January to December. It is something new,
something current and has nothing to do with me. There are always so
many miles in my year, on foot and by car and do not think that has
not been an influence on me. Novel 4 is the first book I did not
begin writing in Fort Lauderdale. I had a notebook of ripe ideas and
then sentences formed in my head on a cold day on the square in
Gainesville in January with a stomach full of barbecue. The
characters Adam, Hastings and Evan were born without the need for
painkillers.
Weirdest moment:
Standing on the shady side of a street in
Warner Robins outside a restaurant. That middle Georgia heat and
humidity had stolen the birdsong and my patience. A car creeped up to
me and with the sun reflected on the windows and I could not see
inside. A scratchy voice called, “Hey white boy.” I looked
without looking and gripped my phone a little tighter. The voice
called out again, “Hey white boy,” and again I ignored it. My
eyes moved behind my sunglasses and I widened my stance. I was not a
boy except for maybe in the way some southerners mean it. Three more
times the voice called with the same words. Trouble and I was no
fool. The car went into reverse and backed away with the possible intention of hiding the tag.
Favorite moment:
Watching the fog in Normaltown in
February. Yes, it is more than just a lyric in the B52's Deadbeat Club. 2025 was still goo, shapeless, untethered and iridescent. I
could have been in any moment in my life when winter was spooling off
into a gray pile of yarn. Maybe I was drifting in the early 90s with
a hole in the sleeve of my sweater and wearing a barn jacket and
boots. There was a whiff of Polo from the green bottle in the air. A
water tower was the appearing and disappearing UFO down the street. I was happy.
Worst moment: Sitting in a Johns Creek Hospital room and waiting with
my grip on the arms of a plastic chair. Helplessness bred in
hospitals is the worst.
Best Festival:
Flannery O'Connor's grave. Photo by me, October 2025.
I went to too many. It was a tie between Athfest and that one down in Milledgeville where I hunted down the grave of Flannery O'Connor. Death was on my mind at every turn this year or so it seemed.
My favorite movie:
Eddington. It satirized the times
better than any other movie that tried. It was smart and the only
movie that made me laugh out loud.
My favorite new to me music:
The White Birch album by Codeine. It
may have come out in 1994, but I had not listened to it until this year. I found it by way of Slint and Shipping News.
Cheap nostalgia at $20. My actual Bon Jovi ticket from 1989.
There is no singular defining moment to
a year, the same as there is no precise moment that defines a life.
To follow a path in the woods, return a smile, accept an invitation,
or jump from a window and roll to the ground, life equalizes the
regrets and the joys. News readers, nervous funeral orators,
biographers, politicians, historians, TikTok influencers and
novelists will lie to you. Maybe, if I am going to lie, then it was
the Bon Jovi concert at Lakewood in 1989 when I held a flickering
lighter in the air like a torch held in my sixteen-year-old hand to
I'll Be There For You, but I am drowsy from the decades of
remembering those tight jeans and how he was not. A previous lesson learned and only reinforced. All of life goes
into the dryer the same as all of it went into the washer. Moments
are agitated, churned and rinsed in the same spins until it is a soup
of consciousness. They lived, they died and some of it was good,
better than it should have been and what more can anyone want besides
more time?
What do you do with a used-up and
expired year? Nothing really. You go to bed, wake up and open the
next year. The Christmas tree comes down slower than it went up and
goes back into the attic. The mind and the hand learn to write a
different number. In a year, the preppies in the snow will come inside and gather around the fireplace again cradling whatever is the trendy drink.
Monticello, Georgia. Photo by me, September 2025.
2025 is the sunset on the hood of a car
speeding faster than it used to; you cannot have it again. 2026 is a
missed call from an unknown number.
Jump scare. Yours truly. I keep Rabbit Tobacco Field dim to avoid scaring myself. Mood lighting is your friend. December 2025.
Merry Christmas, happy holidays and
have the best 2026 that you can.
And finally it is Preppies In The Snow. Ralph Lauren and Vidal Sassoon would be proud. Last Christmas by WHAM!
Addendum
All dressed in black, he won't be
coming back Save your tears, you've got years and years The
pains of seventeen's Unreal they're only dreams...
As I was putting this post to bed and
proofreading I learned Chris Rea had died. He was not a household
name, but there are not many of them in the days of niche
entertainment and the absence of a shared cultural reality. If you
are a Gen X kid/fortunate 70s child you would have heard Fool If You
Think It's Over in the summer of 1978 on Top 40 Radio. I first heard
it on Atlanta's Z-93 in my mother's Camaro and sliding around on the cold leather backseat of my father's Cadillac through the eighties on
B98.5. We had a copy of it in our music collection. I filed the song
away as a meaningful one of my childhood. I loved the song then and
still do.
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