The Absence

 

A church in Greensboro, Georgia. Photo by me, March 2026.

Above is the handsome 19^th century Presbyterian church on Main Street in downtown Greensboro, Georgia. Last week I admired it from the curb. The proportions of it were perfect and I could not stop looking at it. It is inevitable with me when I admire an old building I think of the quality of the construction and architecture. I wonder why construction and architecture became lazy and cheap and we stopped building quality buildings. I am not alone in this thinking, nor is it novel, plenty of others agree with me. Even churches, which should be inspirational, are today mostly built like aluminum metal shacks, more interested in quantity of square footage and parking spaces over quality. It is not as though constructing a building was any easier in the 1800s than compared to today. I suspect one of the reasons for this degradation in architecture is speed and the desire to have everything faster despite it not being better. Clothing and music are the same too.

Back to my moment in the sun on a weekday afternoon in the grass in Greensboro. What I remember most about that moment was the peacefulness. It was not quiet as Greensboro hummed along beside me on the street, but it was the absence of loud intrusive noise. There were no explosive car mufflers, thumping bass stereos pumping out aural garbage (I am still waiting for a car to pass blasting Mozart or Bach at extreme levels) and there was no cell phone conversation pollution. The streets were not empty, it was a nice day and pedestrians walked and cars and trucks rolled by, but all of the ugly, antisocial modern noise was absent. It was so absent that I noticed it.

Perhaps it was a rare moment and Greensboro, founded in the 1780s, is plagued like every other place with rude noises, but as someone sensitive to noise, it was like time travel to more quiet and civil times. My age is showing, I suppose, I had the same feeling about the absence of noise standing on a dirt road in Oglethorpe County near Smithonia several weeks ago. In that moment on the dirt road, all I heard was the wind in the trees and that has been my favorite moment of this year so far.

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Yesterday there were snow flurries at home. It has been awhile to see flurries flying in March, the transitional month of winter to spring prone to wild and temperamental swings. It was nice.
 

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The cast of the Czech movie Waves.

I watched the 2024 Czech movie Waves last night. It was stylish, smart and entertaining and in stark contrast to most every movie nominated at last weekend's Oscars. Modern American movies are not appealing. They are as degraded by speed, laziness and ugly noise as architecture, music and clothing. This is the era of the absence of taste and civility. I realize I am missing an American culture that no longer exists or it does and I do not see it represented. The more a culture becomes cheap, loud and emotional then, the more unstable and less intellectual it becomes.

Alchemy of the Sky

 

Suwanee, Georgia. Photo by me, November 2025.

A storm approached, diving south from the Great Lakes, on Sunday at sunset. 

Winter howled and then bit early on Monday with afternoon highs in the upper thirties and wind of forty miles per hour. Occasional snow flurries fell through the afternoon on the strong northwest wind and I watched from the windows like an excited child. It was one of the earliest times I can remember snow this far south outside of the Georgia mountains. In the early 1990s there was a Thanksgiving with snow showers the entire day that left a dusting, but snow on November 10^th is quite exceptional in the Piedmont region. More significant and accumulating snow was common in the mountains including Brasstown Bald at 4,784 feet which had a Tuesday morning low of eleven degrees and a high for the second day in a row in the upper 20s. It was not quite so cold here at 1,000 feet with a morning low of twenty-six degrees. The first frost was at the beginning of the month and now the first freeze is out of the way too.

 

It was cold enough for quilt weather. I pulled out a quilt made by my grandmother in the early 1970s. I think of my grandparent's 1800's Victorian house and I remember how cold it was in winter in that bedroom I sometimes slept in during the 1970s. The disorder of the quilt is comforting to me.

 

****** 

 

Rimbaud as a man and boy.

Yesterday was the also the anniversary of the death of gay poet and miscreant Arthur Rimbaud. He died of bone cancer in Marseilles one hundred and thirty-four years ago at the age of thirty-seven. I did not remember the occasion, but he had crossed my mind while retrieving the Christmas tree from storage in the garage. Unbeknownst to me it was the day he died. Sometimes life is strange that way. 

I do not fully understand Rimbaud leaving Europe and never writing again for a life in exile in Yemen at twenty-six when he had such a gift. He was part poet, lover and explorer. It sounds romantic, but his life was not easy and his death was a miserable one. I suspect there was some self hatred, plenty of disenchantment and perhaps he was a misanthrope, but who is to know for sure? There are likely abundant numbers of modern mind readers who would like to pathologize him instead of simply enjoying his art. I am content with not knowing everything in his heart and letting his exile be a mystery.

“For a long time I boasted that I was master of all possible landscapes and I thought the great figures of modern painting and poetry were laughable.

What I liked were: absurd paintings, pictures over doorways, stage sets, carnival backdrops, billboards, bright-colored prints; old-fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books full of misspellings, the kind of novels our grandmothers read, fairy tales, little children’s books, old operas, silly old songs, the nave rhythms of country rimes.

I dreamed of Crusades, voyages of discovery that nobody had heard of, republics without histories, religious wars stamped out, revolutions in morals, movements of races and continents: I used to believe in every kind of magic.”

Season In Hell, Delirum II, Alchemy of the Word - Arthur Rimbaud

 

Or I do understand him.

 

 

Alchemy of the Word (Altered Video Version) (video, 16 min, color, sound, 1987) 

This video above reminds me of something that would have been shown on Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes MTV show during the same period in the 1980s.



I would love to see the original version of this film from 1975.

Standard Time

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

Radiohead's Daydreaming from A Moon Shaped Pool played as we headed west out of Dawsonville, Georgia en-route to Ellijay. We were on a mission to buy apples and cider doughnuts, look at the mountain foliage and maybe, if the weather held, enjoy a hike. I craved the trails and the smell of fall. It was not looking good for the weather, light rain was on the radar to the west and clouds were banking up against the Appalachians. The weather models had said not to worry that the weather would hold until evening, but reality was not looking so favorable. The trees were putting on their best show, much better than last weekend when we were up here and the leaves were weak with color that looked like dried pea soup.

I was digging my head out of reading David Foster Wallace essays. People have made so many moral judgments about him since his suicide in 2008 and one-sided details of his personal life were revealed that his writing has fallen out of favor. People put others on pedestals and realize that they should not have done so and topple them. Or could it be they learned that people are complicated and imperfect? The time had changed or fallen back one hour. Standard time arrived and it is my preferred time with early sunsets and longer nights when daylight no longer needs to be saved. Standard time should be permanent time.

Decks Dark played.

Radiohead has been one of my favorite bands since the magical period of music in the early 1990s. I first saw Thom Yorke on MTV in Creep with his short, bleached hair and looking oddly sexy. He smoldered. My desire for him was like Cobain in that I could never tell if I only found him attractive from certain angles or if my attraction was fooled by the hairstyle. Yorke's physical beauty has not aged well since and “sexy” would not be a word I would apply to him in his late fifties. He is five years older than me, but I never had sexiness to lose and I was also never a rockstar.

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

The countryside unfurled on the twisty Georgia Highway 52 that is married to the southern border of the Chattahoochee National Forest. The first raindrops smacked the windshield as we passed the sunflower farm that we visited five years ago when COVID-19 was still the threat du jour and people were masked outdoors. It felt silly even then to be outdoors in a mask, but I was pragmatic, responsible as adults should be and fearful. I would not even eat inside a restaurant until the summer of 2022. It feels so much longer than only three years ago.

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

Clouds rolled over the mountains. We passed the turn to Mt. Oglethorpe. I was still hopeful about the weather. Three years ago in a mask felt more distant than the clouds atop the mountain and the early 90s. Getting older and standard time is the past disordered, out of sync, scattered memories mixed up on the floor and leaves on the ground. Life is a straight line, but the human mind is nonlinear.

Ful Stop played.

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

We stopped at the first apple place we saw. It was comically painted red, white and blue. It was photogenic in the drizzle and temperatures in the upper forties. Gray weather and gray times. In the gravel lot in my Columbia fleece, Mexican made Levi's jeans and American made Brooks running shoes I tried to connect apples to the American flag theme. No signal in my head and I shrugged it off. The rain kept the crowds low or back closer to Atlanta in the exposed bulb lit food halls selling craft beer and noodles. We went inside for apples. This was not our regular place that we visit every fall, but new things were needed. Piles of apples looked at us and the disappointment was simultaneous between us. We were of one mind and turned and left without apples. We would buy them down the road. 

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

The sky sagged. It was loaded with rain. A model failure and the rain unleashed on us. Knobs were adjusted to warm the car. Rain streaked windows and the hope for a hike drained. The cold and dim world closed in around our capsule of warmth. At least the leaves were pretty and we had apples. The Cartecay River appeared out of the trees next to the car. Someone told me once it had the cleanest water in the state, but I do not know if that is true. What is the truth from a stranger's mouth and what is false? It is okay to not know everything and it is okay not to believe everything too.

The Numbers played.

When will the next Radiohead album be released? A Moon Shaped Pool came out in 2016. It is not that fans will forget the band or that I imagine the band being worried that they need to release an album to stay relevant, but I would like to hear some new music from them. They challenge my ears, stimulate me, sometimes depress me and they never have bored me.

They are the only rock band that I do not mind maintaining an active, albeit slower, career into their older years. I do not see them as an embarrassment to still be on stage on a tour around the world. The band is not a cashing in, nostalgia act like the Rolling Stones or those other bands from the sixties, seventies and eighties. Radiohead's music always seems to stay new and maybe that is because the music has been ahead of everyone else their entire career and we still have not caught up.

Photo by me, November 2025.

Present Tense played.

Internet rumors are out there that a new album is coming, sometime, possibly in 2026. The band is beginning a limited European tour this month going into December. The shows are sold out. I am ready for new music from the band who is possibly the only band who would excite me to hear a new album. Nine years in my mixed-up memories have passed since the band's last album. I was younger, still not sexy, was spending a lot of time in Grant Park, hiking, swimming, dancing and buying apples in the mountains.

Ellijay, cradled by the ridges, sat in the pouring rain. We circled downtown. Tourists dashed for doors and warm tables. We debated whether to eat or leave in the early mountain darkness. I said something about the 80s and coming through here when it was nothing. I noticed that I am saying stuff like that too often the older I get. “When it was nothing” or “when it was cheaper” or “when it was different” and sometimes “when it was better.” My mother smiled in my mind around 1990 and took a bite of an apple behind her big sunglasses. I held the camera into 1991. Tom Cochrane's Life is a Highway was fun with the windows down.  My mother was funny, easy to be around and I missed her. The present or the past, the carousel of memories was the same on standard time. We retraced our miles home down the highway in the falling leaves.

 

True Love Waits played. 

Me in the fall of 1990 around Ellijay. I am glad I gave up on the mustache.

More Seasoned

 

A painting by gay painter Glyn Philpot of his friend and sometimes model Jan Erland in 1933. This painting fits my autumnal mood as it drizzles outside and I am tucked away upstairs in my office with lamps glowing on the corners of my desk. I enjoy Jan's serious gaze, the hand gripping the barrel of the rifle and the dangling booted foot of the crossed leg. The model is obviously gay too, but there is plenty of dangerous masculine potential like the rifle.

 

On Monday I pulled out an umbrella and walked to the end of the driveway to the mailbox. Oak leaves were scattered on the grass and I had to get out in the rain instead of only watching it through the windows. We have had so little rain since August. During my short walk under the tapping raindrops with temperatures in the forties I turned over in my mind a topic I have been thinking of for the last couple of months. I have been thinking about camping and it resurfaced when I was in the mountains of Rabun County last weekend. 

The teacher who founded Foxfire. Image from a 1974 documentary produced by McGraw-Hill.

 

I passed by Foxfire on Black Rock Mountain too and it reminded me of what happened to its founder at the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School and the scandal in the early 1990s that time has forgot, but that is a story for another day.

 

My camping gear has sat stowed away on a shelf in the garage for the last four years without being used. I have been too busy with the house, I have been too busy writing, I have been traveling, I have allowed life to get in the way. It hit me, it is very likely I will not go camping again in my lifetime. For most people that would be okay, but it made me sad. It was part of a more significant realization too.

My brother, my grandfather and me at Lake Allatoona in the late 1970s.

I camped as a child in the seventies at Lake Allatoona, then camped in my tree house at home and camped in a tent in the woods behind my house in the eighties. I camped as an adult in various places in the mountains. I loved sleeping outdoors to the sounds of nature and a crackling fire and that smoky, rustic scent that only a campfire emits. Now getting older or more seasoned by time, I realize that my body would be less enthusiastic and agreeable about sleeping on the ground or a cot. I could still do it, but I would probably not enjoy it. I realize my limitations that have begun to settle in over the last year. With aging, I am in my early fifties; it is natural that there are activities and places that you will never do or see again. It is not from a lack of desire but more of a result of practicality. Aging has not bothered me too much, but never going camping again bothers me.

 

I do not want to camp in an RV, that is not camping but driving an ugly, gas guzzling motel room on wheels. True camping involves a tent or a tarp or just a sleeping bag. It means not sliding between Egyptian cotton sheets and not using electricity to keep yourself from becoming bored or to make a pot of coffee. It means using a fire to cook meals, heat water, to see after nightfall and to keep warm. Camping means putting the modern noise away and to stop existing as an overstimulated human zombie.

 

My tent and one of my bikes when camping in the Bankhead National Forest in Alabama. Photo by me, 2010.

Also I consider the decline of society as civil norms breakdown and I read of horror stories of how camping has changed. Consideration and respect for others in public has been stomped out under heel like a dying fire and unfortunately that is not exclusive to camping. The experience of camping is not the same with people using camping as an excuse to get drunk and party, bring loud untrained pets, drag along loud electrical generators and impinge on the solitude and peacefulness of nature. What's the point of going into the woods if it is louder and more disturbing sleeping near rude and messy strangers than staying at home?

The only viable option I could see is hiking in for miles and doing back country camping. The likelihood of that also remains low. My camping gear will stare at me in my garage tempting me for some time longer and for as long as I can I will continue day hiking and sleeping at home.

 

Photo by me, September 2025.

Happy Halloween from Lula, Georgia and in the spirit of the time, Camille Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre.

 

The Georgia Drought October 2025

 

An October Monday in the Georgia woods. Photo by me, October 2025.

It was a fantastic day in the woods on Monday with my favorite smell of dead leaves filling the air and the sound of the crunching under my feet. Yet, there is a serious problem. In the photo above there is normally a flowing a creek on the left. All there is now are a few puddles between the banks.

A skinny doe with ribs visible emerges from the woods near Suwanee, Ga.. Photo by me, October 2025.

You cannot argue that the weather has not been ideal for outdoor activities for the last several weeks with low humidity, comfortable afternoon highs and cool nights. I took a five a half mile walk on Sunday and six miles on Monday. I have been pruning trees and catching up on maintenance, since the grass is going dormant, that was shelved over the worst of summer. The deer have been foraging in the woods and have been in my front yard at night scrounging for something to eat. It is so very dry here.

The last significant rainfall at my house was on August twenty-first and since then there have only been a couple of days of brief showers and nothing significant. We need rain and lots of it to relieve this severe drought in Georgia. Unfortunately, if the long range models are to be believed, there is one chance of very light rain this coming Sunday and that is it through the rest of October. 

 

A Sunday walk in the woods. Photo by me, October 2025.

The weather reminds me of Southern California with cool nights, warm days and little rain. California weather is nice in California, but the trees, shrubs, flowers and animals in Georgia are accustomed to much more rain. Also, like California, the risk of wildfires is high and increasing every day with the trees shedding dry leaves onto a bone dry landscape.

The persistent trough in the western United States and the ridge in the central and eastern portions of the country are the culprits. Until this pattern breaks there is little chance for rain here. Eventually the weather will balance itself and the pattern will reverse, but it is unknown when and it needs to be sooner instead of later. In the meantime, people need to find some common sense.

A nearby house sets a tree on fire from their carelessness. Photo by me, September 2025.

Last month, a neighbor set a pine tree on fire with sparks from their backyard fire pit. Thanks to the local fire station for a quick response otherwise this could have easily spread. Some people are so disconnected from the natural environment around them that they seem to have no idea how dry it is and how dangerous outdoor fires are now. I heard fireworks in the distance an hour ago as I wrote this. If we had an effective state government that was not beholden to private business all fireworks sales would be suspended until the drought was over, but there has been no meaningful guidance from the state during this drought. The only mention I have been able to find is this AJC article from October 2. Someone from the state needs to step up to the cameras and microphones and tell the citizens to stop being clueless idiots.

Summer Fever

The hottest day of the year cooking in Statham, Georgia. Photo by me, July 2025.

It reached 102 degrees in Athens on Monday, 100 on Tuesday and also 100 in Atlanta and I am elated July is over. The heat and humidity make July my least favorite month, I do not even like the name. The good news is that only one third of meteorological summer remains and perhaps this week was the peak of the heat. I am hopeful that there will not been another stretch with temperatures around 100 in August.

 

I was in Athens, Statham and Bogart on Monday during the worst of the heat. Many areas had been without significant rain since late June and driving the old Atlanta Highway the yards were brown. It was dry enough that even the crabgrass had given up. Horses and cows munched on brown grass in huddles underneath trees. The kudzu wilted and any type of breeze was nothing more than a dream. No humans wanted to be outside either, conversations with strangers were about the heat and the shade was a precious commodity. 

 

Statham, Ga. Photo by me, July 2025.

 

Statham, Ga. Photo by me, July 2025.

I spent some of the afternoon rummaging through the top floor of an old brick building without air conditioning in Statham. The heat index was around 110 degrees. It was not the best day to be doing such, but I cannot resist wandering through old buildings when the opportunity presents.

 

The sky turned black by late afternoon in Athens upon leaving Trader Joe's.  Relief filled the horizon as I saw the storms with red and magenta on the radar depiction on my phone. To the east over downtown Athens the rain poured. When it is that hot, the atmosphere boils up storms that unleash the torrents. Such is the summer fever and hopefully it has broken.

 

Photo by me, July 2025.

Driving out of town, a puny storm wet the roads to make steam rise from the asphalt. Dog days be gone and good riddance to July.
 

The White, Cold Heart of January

A snowy view from the second floor of my house. Photo by me, January 2025.

It was only supposed to be flurries here and it mostly was for over three hours, but the atmosphere was so dry that it became a high ratio snow and it gushed. At the three in the afternoon the snowfall began it was twenty-three degrees with a dewpoint of twelve and those were unusual circumstances to produce snow around here. A typical snow here is one with a high moisture content, produces big and fat flakes, is sloppy, heavy and occurs under conditions with temperatures in the low thirties and dewpoints in the upper twenties to low thirties. Yesterday, the conditions were different with an Arctic airmass in place and the snow was dry and productive. It has been a few years since a snow of this type occurred here and when it does, it creates havoc with quick accumulations that land on roadways turning them quickly into sheets of hard ice.

Photo by me, January 2025.

Photo by me, January 2025.

The storm's arrival at rush hour stranded people on the untreated roads over the hilly terrain of this area. Cars unable to climb these icy hills  were abandoned and if people were close enough to home they walked the remainder of the way. I observed many stunned and bone chilled cold people on foot coming up my hill from the river on a road that has no sidewalks, but plenty of curves.

 

 

If you are a native to northern Georgia, like I am, then you will remember the similar scenario that occurred on January 12, 1982 and it was called SnowJam! I was a couple of months shy of turning nine, but that was a fun storm as a kid and a horror show for adults. In some ways, it is reassuring to think that as much as life has changed in those forty-three years, that we Georgians make getting stuck in the snow a memorable adventure.

Photo by me, January 2025.

Photo by me, January 2025.

 

This was a minor snow here, amounting to an inch, that was a big headache for some. So far this winter, there have been five inches of snow here and within a short period of only eleven days between two storms in the white, cold heart of January. This is above average and compared to the two previous winters there was no snow, not even a flurry.

The cold has been exceptional too. This morning it was eleven degrees here and three degrees above zero in the mountain valley town of Blairsville. The U.S. Forest service stations at Cohutta dropped to six degrees and the one at Brasstown (not to be confused with the state's highest peak, Brasstown Bald) achieved four degrees. The temperature was below freezing here from 6PM Sunday to 1PM Wednesday for a total of sixty-seven straight hours. We reached a high this afternoon of thirty-four for only a couple of hours.

The U.S. snow depth map for January 22, 2025. Courtesy NOAA.

Aside from the cold, the most impressive aspect from a regional perspective was the record breaking snow from the southern tip of Texas, along the Gulf Coast and South Atlantic Coast. For most in the coastal areas this truly was a once in a lifetime storm and in some places it was record shattering.

Today's visible satellite imagery showing the snowfall through southern Alabama, northern Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.

New Orleans received over nine inches breaking a record from 1963 by seven inches.

Mobile, Alabama saw eight inches.

Snow meets beach on the Florida Gulf Coast.

Pensacola Beach, Florida had seven and a half inches.

The small southwest Georgia town of Camilla accumulated eight inches.

Milton, Florida broke the state record for the most snow ever with 8.8 inches.

Savannah reported three inches of snow, but I suspect most of it was probably sleet.

This was a rare storm in that areas further to the south saw more snow than areas of the region to the north. Atlanta's record was not so impressive as it snows there more often than the other places listed. Atlanta broke the daily record  for January 21st from 1983 with 1.1 inches. I was ten at the time and do not have any particular memories of that snow, which was probably more where I lived in the northwest part of the state. We may have called that SnowJam 83! as every snowstorm after 1982 for several years was called SnowJam!

The Reunion Project

Photo by me, January 2025.

 

Just after six in the morning last Friday, the snow poured and kept at it for hours. It was a beautiful snow, wet and heavy coating the landscape in thick white frosting. When the snow tapered off as a period of freezing rain, there was four inches.

Photo by me, January 2025.

Photo by me, January 2025.

Photo by me, January 2025.

It was the most snow we have had in a few years and the greatest storm of the two we have had at this house since purchasing it. The snow lingered on the ground until Monday and by that time I was ready for it to be gone. Snow excites me less the older I get as if my lifelong romance with it has melted. I hope this is the only significant snow this winter.

Photo by me, January 2025.

Living on a winding road on a hill above a river there was no possibility of getting out on Friday. By Saturday a plow cleared the road and it was safe to get out the during the day before the refreeze of the slush by nightfall. In Monroe, Georgia, where there was less snow than where I live, I found a snowman outside a church.

*

This month I began writing the first draft of my fourth novel. It is a story independent of my four previous books, meaning it has nothing to do with my life, though of course it draws from my experiences. The folder on my desktop where I store my writing is labeled The Reunion Project, so I will call it that until enough of the story is written and the real title comes to me. As much as I would like to write a novel about Atlanta punks in the 80s, this book is set in the present day. The present is too interesting to neglect. At this stage, I have no idea of how long it will take me to write this novel.

 

Information Society, Walking Away (late 1988)