The Interiors

Fall clung to the buildings on a rainy and chilly day as I visited the High Museum.

 

With another year of Atlanta Pride, Halloween and the celebrations surrounding them finishing out October is was time for something more laid back as November began. Pride was the usual run of places from Blake's to Heretic and for Halloween I spent the entire night at the recently revamped Jungle which felt much smaller and darker with the new design. As I am still recovering from August's surgery I could not drink or dance so I spent more time sitting and having conversations than I normally would.

 

My head is still in orbit and my body feels like it is missing chunks cut out of me. But, as the doctor told me, I was strong enough to resume playing tennis again, though I have not played tennis in almost ten years. I am in a reflective mood assessing where I go next and not interested in chasing a bouncing ball.

 

I met up with a friend for coffee at Java Monkey in Downtown Decatur two days ago and we talked too late into the night. I went home and collapsed into bed unaccustomed to the new me. I felt older than thirty-nine years old and maybe it was because I had almost died at thirty-nine.

 

Yesterday at the High the perfectly manicured lawn stared back at me like AstroTurf outside the Richard Meier designed spaceship looking building with a welcome ramp waiting to take me aboard. No matter how many times I have returned here, this building will always make me a child on my first visit in 1985 when the building was only two years old. It is still cold, very modern and I do not much care for the exterior of it. I was there to view the Fast Forward: Modern Moments 1913-2013 exhibition that opened a couple of weeks ago.  It was compromised of art on loan from the MoMA in New York.

 

 

It is the interior of the building that I find exciting and interesting, much the same as what I value in friendships instead of outward appearances and status markers. Inspiring architecture, like art or music should represent and reflect back to us our own humanity even on the grayest of fall days or down times in our lives. And there I was to think of the interior, get inspired and sort life out.

 

 

 

This sculpture by Thornton Dial appealed to me and the use of the bright yellow.

 

 

I do not remember the artist behind this piece. I like how it was positioned in the space, visible through the entry, against the wall and underneath the ceiling. It looked like a crazed piece of broken fingernail.

 

I find that so often modern art is shiny and sterile like a decoration in a high-end department store. It seems as though it tries too hard to grab the eye, but when it does it cannot seem to keep it for too long. They are the beautiful strangers on the street or train that you catch a glimpse of, but will never speak and will forget steps later.

 

This painting by Alex Katz has a bench in front of it. I have sat there a few times and gotten lost in those trees over the years. This visit was no different and I sat there longer and went further into those woods this time.

 

I wandered away from the modern art and there was the work of Georgia folk artist Howard Finster. The bike is called the Gospel Bike (1980), that is actual sidewalk from outside Paradise Garden (1981), that's George Washington (1987) and Elvis at Three (1990) hanging on the wall.

 

His art was so acclaimed and first garnered attention in the 1970s. I remember seeing his art in the 1983 R.E.M. video for Radio Free Europe and that was my first exposure to his art. He became hot again in the 1990s and some of his art was used for album covers. 

 

Though I do not find his religious message appealing, I do enjoy his art. If life teaches us anything, then maybe we can learn to overlook what it is we do not like and find what we do like in something or someone instead. Humans should not view life through only a critical lens, there is a place for criticism, but it should not be the solitary perspective a person has in which to view the world. I dated someone that was always criticizing me, always negative and it was a miserable experience for me. Life is too short to be critical of everything.

In the permanent collection I saw this incredible bust from 1525 by an unknown artist. The expression of weariness and exhaustion was entirely realistic. I felt like him over the past few months.

 

What caught my attention was the lean and sexy body of the male depicted in this painting. It might have been the first time I was attracted to someone from a painting. The painting is from between 1650 to 1700, is called Amnon and Tamar and is by an unknown artist. It depicts a biblical scene.

After getting my lust under control, I came across this humorous painting. The female's hair looks to be wearing her instead of the other way around. I wondered if the model that sat for this painting had hair that looked like that or if the painter got carried away.

A rather dull and uninteresting Monet and maybe this is because I am not much of a fan of seascapes. I liked Monet more in the late 1980s and early 90s, but my tastes have changed over time.

My eyes traveled to the city outside. I had spent enough time in the interior for one day contemplating life, the art and the meaning of existence.

 

I exited and walked by a bronze cast of Rodin's The Shade (1968). It was gift from the French Government after the 1962 Orly Paris crash that killed much of Atlanta's cultural movers and shakers at that time. It was a crash that shaped the arts scene of Atlanta, possibly more than any one event.

As for my own crash earlier this year that I survived, it is unknown how it will define me in the years ahead. No amount of time in the museums, having coffee or celebrating events will illuminate the dark interiors for me.

*All photos by me, November 2012.

Recovery Toll Road

 

September 17, 2022

Tomorrow will be five weeks since my surgery. I am gaining strength and weight. Since coming home from the hospital I have gained five pounds, but I still need to put on eighteen more just to get back to where I was prior to becoming sick. I still have a ways to go and each day I feel stronger and my stomach wound heals more. I will estimate my return to normal life at about 85% now. I cannot do everything yet, but I can do some things now such as doing light household chores.

This Friday I return to the doctor and by Saturday I will be finished with my medications and no new ones are expected to be prescribed. I still have lots of pain pills, but I only took maybe four of those and haven't had one for weeks. I generally don't have pain even though my stomach is still partially open. Mostly, I suffer from some discomfort at time where the skin is growing back together when I sleep or bend over too far or raise my arms too high. I've yet to lift anything heavy, I don't want to risk opening my stomach back up even though that is unlikely but I have been warned about it being possible. Basically I feel pretty good, I certainly feel much better than I did when I was fighting the bacteria that was eating a whole through my body. I feel stronger, but that is relative to where I was before and I know my limitations.

Flip Burger on Howell Mill. Photo by me, September 17th, 2012.

 

At Tuk Tuk Thai Food Loft on Peachtree Street. Photo by me, September 22, 2012.

I have been out to eat twice since coming home. It was nice to be in a restaurant as I have only been around people on a few occasions except when people have visited me at home.

Photo by me, September 15, 2012.

I tried to attend a small arts festival in Druid Hills on September 15, but I was worried about the crowd bumping into my unhealed stomach and I overestimated my energy. I sat on a bench instead.

The bandages over my stomach are so thick and poofy. They are like a stomach diaper. September 10, 2012.

Earlier on the tenth of September I went to Piedmont Park. I must have looked like death, a woman stared at me by the lake. As someone that is accustomed to walking all over the park, it was shocking how little I managed and I mostly sat on a bench taking in some sun and air. I am amazed at how much muscle mass I lost, even in my legs.

My overall mood is bewilderment. While the physical toll is one challenge, there is the mental toll to what happened, how close I came to dying and how long this recovery will take. Life changing seems like an understatement and I still have too much to do in life.

Nearly Dying

August 2012.

I had been sick since May. I told only a few close friends and people that had seen me sick. I kept my sickness off of Facebook or Twitter. I was too private to complain about my health on social media and I did not seek sympathy. Having been violently attacked four times in life, everything that happened growing up, broken bones, permanent nerve damage in my face, being called every name in the book in multiple languages, witnessing so many horrific events in person and going through so many shocking incidents - this illness seemed minor by comparison, at the time.

I was not showing signs of illness all the time, just at certain times and sometimes I appeared to be doing better. Yet, when I looked in the mirror or at photos or stood on the weight scales I knew I was sick. The only constant was the weight loss, especially in my face. I attributed that weight loss to my daily swimming laps. My clothes hung off me and my belts did not have enough holes in them.

The initial diagnosis was gastritis (an inflammation of the stomach lining) and indeed that was the case or at least part of the problem. I took the medications for it, changed my already healthy diet and reduced my coffee intake from ten cups a day down to one; that was a serious change for me.

At times I was okay, other times I was vomiting, tired, having extreme pain, but then it would go away again. It was presenting itself like chronic gastritis would normally present itself so I thought over time this would improve and never get worse.

Then on August 22 everything changed. I was sitting at my desk and I got a stomach cramp and went to lie down on the bed. As soon as I laid down, the pain was so intense on the right side of my abdomen that I jumped off the bed and screamed. The pain was like a hot knife tearing through my body. It was the worst pain I have ever experienced, I began to sweat intensely and the pain grew so strong that I vomited.

I thought I was going to die.

I  knelt in the floor next to my bed and kept repeating over and over that I did not want to die. I was doing this to control panic from taking me over and from making the situation worse. I had my cell phone and I called a friend.

He was working until the next morning and it was already late so there was no one else to call to take me to the hospital.

I contemplated calling 911, but then I did not know how I could get downstairs to let the paramedics in the gate or inside the house. I was stuck in the floor upstairs. I knew I would have to wait until the next morning for my friend and hope that I did not die in the meantime.

For ten hours, I sat in one position without moving until my friend arrived. His initial diagnosis was a ruptured appendix and that I immediately needed to go to the hospital.

At the emergency room, their diagnosis was also a ruptured appendix. They said I would have surgery later that afternoon. Then things changed. More and more doctors came to see me, more and more tests were done. I began to sense that this was not something as routine as a ruptured appendix.

Finally the chief surgeon came with a serious look and showed me an x-ray of my abdominal region. It showed that air was leaking out of my intestines into my stomach cavity and he said they had no idea why it was happening. He told me that I needed emergency exploratory surgery and I needed it right then, there would be no waiting.

I signed a paper or two, had it explained to me that this was life threatening, that without surgery I would die and even with surgery, I could still die. I stared at the ceiling and thought my life was over at thirty-nine. I had no time to prepare and moments later I was in an operating room under the bright lights.

Several hours later I woke up in recovery from surgery. I had no idea what had happened or whether I was going to live or die.

There were tubes coming out of me from everywhere. At least I knew I was not in I.C.U., which I was told prior to surgery would be likely.

A doctor would come by and tell me that I had an ulcer that burst and tore a hole through my stomach. He said that if I had waited much longer to come to the hospital I would have died. He said the last patient he had operated on for the same thing died during surgery because his body had become too weak.

Days later, a doctor would tell me that it was caused by a bacteria due to the type of ulcer that I had. I would be treated for that bacteria as well, which was Helicobacter pylori.

August 2012.

Nine days I was in the hospital. I stared at the Atlanta skyline out my window and drifted in and out of drug induced sleep. Since the surgery was to my stomach I ingested no liquids or food until the eighth day.

My prognosis is good. I will make a full recovery physically despite having a substantial scar forever. The surgeons cut me open from my sternum to down below my belly button and that is where I am currently growing back together. The wound is mostly closed now, but it looks horrible and it may always look that way. It hurts and it is depressing to look at it. It gives me pain all the time as it grows back together but eventually the pain will go away I hope and I can resume a full life they tell me.

Thursday it will have been a month since my surgery, but I still can not do much of anything. I can walk now and get around. However, I cannot bend over, lift anything or strain or clean or do much else, but eventually I will get around like before they say.

I will never look the same ever again and that hurts. I lost 30 pounds from being sick, dropping me to 130 pounds, most of which was muscle mass. I hope to be stronger than I ever was before.

 

 

I Love The City In The Rain

Midtown in the rain from Ponce de Leon Avenue. Photo by me, August 2012.

Last weekend I was walking down Argonne Avenue on a Friday night in the rain at 1:30 AM. It might not have been the smartest thing, walking that late on the empty tree lined sidewalks, but I wasn't alone. He wanted to go to the Eagle and I was up for it too. He was talking and I wasn't paying any attention, I was listening to the rain hitting and dripping off the leaves on the trees protecting us from being drenched as we walked the dimly lit and shadowy blocks.

 

The rain was pouring, but under the tree canopy that defines Atlanta's green image we were hardly getting wet. He was talking about the old apartment buildings and wondering about rents and parking. I said something about living just down Ponce in the 1990s. I was thinking about how cool it was for early August and how beautiful the night and city both were in the rain. My eyes were watching the wet streaks of light glowing on the street and appreciating their gritty beauty.

 

We met no one as we walked except for one guy standing outside his building smoking a cigarette. He was shirtless and wearing an undone jacket and pants. Semi-naked people at night do not surprise me in the city. He did not appear to be homeless, perhaps he did not want to expend the energy to get dressed so late just to go out and have a smoke. He paid no mind to us and we paid no mind to him. Perhaps like me the man was just enjoying the city at night in the rain. He might have liked the sound of the raindrops pattering on the leaves, the shiny glow of the lights on the slick street.

 

We made it to the Eagle. I was met with a smile, flirtation and a very long hug from a shirtless skinny young stranger on the patio. I am not sure why we embraced and why it was so long, but his warm skin felt good in my arms. My companion stared as if in jealousy or amusement and I broke the embrace. The stranger and I smiled with our eyes, we almost kissed for a moment and I disappeared into the dark club and pounding music. The wet city and the cute stranger were moments behind.

Hiking Sawnee Mountain

Sawnee or Suwanee Mountain? U.S.G.S. Map from 1890.

 

On a sunny and warm February Saturday my feet were drawn out of the city to somewhere north of Atlanta. After the snow of last month, February has turned mild enough for short sleeves on sunny afternoons. I headed off to Sawnee Mountain in Forsyth County for my second outing of the year to walk in the woods.

Sawnee Mountain is a small mountain at 1,946 feet in elevation as far as mountains go and is part of a larger preserve of protected land managed by the county. For comparison sake, Sawnee is a hundred feet higher in elevation to Kennesaw Mountain in Cobb County. Both mountains are bumps on the landscape to the higher Appalachian Mountains further to the north. In terms of geologic classification, this area and these small mountains are classified as the Piedmont Uplands, the same as where I grew up in Paulding County, Georgia with Elsberry Mountain and the Braswell Mountains.

The 1964 U.S.G.S map, the first year it was shown as Sawnee Mountain.

At some point the name of the mountain was changed from Suwanee Mountain to Sawnee Mountain or early maps incorrectly spelled it in error. The 1890 map at the top of this page from the U.S.G.S labeled it as Suwanee. Error or not, that naming practice continued through 1963 and then on the 1964 U.S.G.S. map the mountain became Sawnee. Either the mountain received a new name or the mapmakers had it wrong for seventy-three years. Getting the name of a mountain incorrect for that long a period seems peculiar.

Over the decades a local legend developed about the history of the mountain too and how it got the name of Sawnee.

 

Mr. Sawnee may have looked like this or maybe not. Photo by me, February 2011.

According to this legend, and you know how inaccurate those can be, the mountain was named after an American Indian chief named Sawnee. He was said to have been a good carpenter and helped newly arriving settlers set up home in the area. He lived on the mountain and had a stash of gold hidden there according to this legend that sounds like a bad seventies movie plot. Whatever happened to chief Sawnee and his gold no one has an answer, but people searched and searched and never found that gold.

An old mine shaft on Sawnee Mountain. Photo by me, February 2011.

It is true that gold was found at Sawnee Mountain like it was in several locations in the northern portions of Georgia. It was discovered through mining operations and not at the end of a rainbow.

Consider me a skeptic that there ever was a chief Sawnee and a hidden pot of gold no matter whether the name of the mountain was Sawnee or Suwanee.

 

The visitor center. Photo by me, February 2011.

 

The Appalachian Mountains in the distance. Photo by me, February 2011.

Whatever the name and the history I arrived at the visitor center to hike the miles up and around the mountain. Behind me from the parking lot was a nice view of the Appalachians not too far in the distance.

Photo by me, February 2011.

Photo by me, February 2011.

Photo by me, February 2011.

Adjacent to the visitor center, people learned to climb trees. Strange it seemed to my eyes, but people will do anything these days and at least they were outside and not being sedentary. It must be part of this amusement park trend that it takes to lure some people out into nature when nature is not enough reason for them to step into the woods. Similar to the notion of going "camping" in a bus sized RV with all of the comforts of home on wheels parked within feet of the next campsite with another bus parked there too.

I will stick to my tent and sleeping bag just fine.

Photo by me, February 2011.

A view up the slope of the mountain through the hardwood forest. It was a spectacular day at this rather nice park that I had not heard of until the week before.

Photo by me, February 2011.

Photo by me, February 2011.

Photo by me, February 2011.

It was through this largely hardwood forest that the trail gained elevation through a series of switchbacks. There were stretches of trail that were rocky to the point of having to watch every step, but otherwise it was a smooth trail that presented a couple of calf burning steep stretches. The understory included passing through a thicket of mountain laurel which provided some pleasant winter greenery.

 

The view to the north which is the only open direction to take in the view. Photo by me, February 2011.

Photo by me, February 2011.

 

At the summit of the mountain were rock outcroppings and ledges that provided a wonderful view to the north in the direction of the Appalachians. These rock ledges were named The Indian Seats.

Photo by me, February 2011.

There was also a wooden viewing platform with a view to the north.

Photo by me, February 2011.

Photo by me, February 2011.

Photo by me, February 2011.

Photo by me, February 2011.

The view was worth it. You could see the tree covered folds in the land between Sawnee and the Appalachians to the north. The suburban sprawl was beginning to creep into the landscape forever biting away at the rural and natural beauty. I hated to see it, but it was expected and not a surprise.

1924. Image courtesy the state archives of Georgia.

This was the same view in 1924 from the summit of Sawnee Mountain. There were fewer trees in the immediate foreground when the land was used for agricultural purposes. It was also common practice for the timber industry to clear cut the land during that time and almost every acre of northern Georgia was logged in the late 1800s and early 1900s, which left us with few old growth forests.

Photo by me, February 2011.

Photo by me, February 2011.

Photo by me, February 2011.

Photo by me, February 2011.

I chose to descend the mountain down another trail to make for more miles and a loop around the mountain and back to the visitor center. There was little in the way of views on this side of the mountain, but it was still a good hike that meanders through the woods.

Photo by me, February 2011.

On the trail back as the sun was getting low on the horizon, a bent tree winked at me. The tree reminded me of a piece of folklore that is undeniably false, is spread on the internet and I have heard said to me many times by people in person. I may have fallen for it as a child, but not as an adult. The folklore is that when you see a bent tree like the one above, it was done when the tree was young and American Indians did this as way-finders in the wilderness. I have to dispel this because it defies common sense. Trees bent like the one above are much too young to have existed when American Indians lived in this area and any tree from that time was long ago logged. The are two more reasonable explanations: the tree was bent by a fallen tree as it was growing (most likely) and the other was moonshiners bent the sapling as a way to guide them through the woods. Moonshining was a thriving practice during the lifetime of these bent trees that are found in the Georgia woods. I do have some familiarity with that business as one of my grandfathers ran moonshine and the practice continued where I grew up in Paulding County, Georgia into the 1970s. There were also numerous abandoned moonshine stills along the springs and creeks in the woods of our property. Near those stills were sometimes bent trees like the one above.

Happy hiking, get out an enjoy some nature on foot and learn some history about the places you explore.