Trains, Towers and Time

 

A leaning oak tree questions its existence in the fog. Photo by me, March 2023.

Some people are spring and summer people and others, like me, are fall and winter people. I will gladly accept a gloomy, cool to cold day over a blazing hot and humid day that can occur here in the northern third of Georgia anywhere from April through early October. I compare it to music: I would rather listen to the Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Echo & The Bunnymen, Nirvana or Joy Division than Aerosmith, Poison, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga or whatever passes for the computer-generated pop music these days. Do not get me wrong; I can relish a hot July day dipping my toes into a lake or squeezing hot white Florida sand between my toes, but I love the gray, damp and cozy winters of home much more.

This past March, I experienced the perfect weather day, if such is possible, like it was one of the scenes from my novel Dweller On The Boundary when I lost my dog Raven in the fog. It was an early March day as I went north into the higher elevations of the mountains. The temperatures dropped into the upper forties and drizzle made everything dripping wet. It was the type of weather that makes me want to walk forever or rest my bones by a fireplace and look at old photos.

Better times in Clarkesville, Ga. Photo by me, March 2023.

Take the last train to Clarksville
And I'll meet you at the station
You can be here by four thirty (Train)
'Cause I made your reservation
Don't be slow
Oh, no, no, no
And I don't know if I'm ever coming home.
-The Last Train To Clarksville by The Monkees.

 

The first town I loafed into was Clarkesville, no connection to that 1960s Monkees song Last Train To Clarksville. The Habersham County town of nineteen hundred residents has been bypassed by newer and bigger highways, pinching it off from the eyes and dollars of passing motorists. The last passenger train service, via the Tallulah Falls Railway, ended in 1946. The isolated situation might not make for a thriving economy, but it has preserved the town's character and identity from the newer and more cheaply built development that is devouring much of northern Georgia like a fatal disease.

 

My thoughts are not original on this topic; I share them with the late writer and Atlanta newspaper columnist Celestine Sibley, who lamented the changes during her lifetime in her beloved Sweet Apple in what was then rural North Fulton County. I, like many longtime residents of Georgia, have watched the rolling wooded hills and mountains become parking lots and cul-de-sacs with names that only remind us of the natural landscape that existed before. This is a concern that I have also written about in my novels.

 

Progress only seems to come in one shade and which is newness and not in another, which is better. The zealots of progress would likely disagree, but I could never be convinced that a metal building is more attractive than one made of brick or stone. A patch of kudzu is more attractive to my eyes than most of that ghastly and inhumane plastic-looking crap that is built today for people to live, work and play. In modern design, beauty has been sacrificed for cheap progress.

I might be wrong and overly sentimental too, so think for yourself. Those who are most certain in their opinions are most certainly wrong.

My childhood cookie jar. Photo by me, March 2023.

I poked around a couple of antique/junk shops located in a former textile mill without buying anything. I am now of the age where these kinds of shops are museums of my childhood, filled with objects I grew up with. Sometimes people from the past show up too, but that is another story for another time.

 

The blue/green glass canister above was the exact same one my mother had in my childhood home since the 1970s. My grubby little hands were always prying it open and sneaking cookies before bedtime. I was tempted to open this one and see if it smelled like the homemade oatmeal cookies she made. 

 

It is tempting to buy these unnecessary items and recreate the past. These objects set off a physical tingle and produce a smile, but it would feel wrong to have them again, like reconciling with an ex - you just know it is not going to work out no matter how good they make you feel. It is a fight sometimes to avoid succumbing to nostalgia for objects that were once a part of my life. I do not want to slip on a permanent pair of rose-colored shades that block out the negative realities of the past. Also, I do not bake cookies and have no need for a cookie jar.

 

I touched the smooth glass of the jar but did not open it. I feared disappointment that it would not release the aroma that my mind and heart hoped. My memory was more important to keep intact than to potentially spoil it. I exited the temporary haze of nostalgia and then I left Clarkesville. Stephen King's town of Castle Rock, Maine and that novel of his that I read as a teenager, Needful Things, were on my mind.

The Big Red Apple outside the old Cornelia train station. Photo by me, March 2023.

Cornelia, Ga. Photo by me, March 2023.

 

A stopover in nearby Cornelia had me standing next to a monument of a big red apple and the old train station. I do not associate Cornelia with apples in Georgia, but apparently they grow them and required a large monument to them, maybe to appease the apple gods. Who knows and I am not sure? Since the nineteen eighties, I have associated Georgia's apple industry with Ellijay and Blue Ridge where my family would buy them in the fall and I still do today. 

 

The plaza was empty in Cornelia, as I imagine it is most days; the flags flapped in the breeze, a pink magnolia showed off and the daffodils entertained themselves. No one waited for a train that does not stop there anymore, though Amtrak does make stops in nearby Toccoa and Gainesville. The passenger train that once ran through here went to Clarkesville, Tallulah Falls and into North Carolina. The leftover caboose was a prop for when or if the Instagrammers of the world find Cornelia or for an older person to explain to a child what the big red relic was. 

 

What a fine day it was to stand in the mist as my hands grew cold around my camera. I knew of a place outside Cornelia that I wanted to visit and this seemed like the ideal day to make the detour up there. I had found my destination and no train could take me there.

 

On the edge of the Lake Russell Wildlife Management Area stands a stone tower built in 1937 by the Works Progress Administration for the National Forest Service. To reach it, you drive a narrow paved road through a residential neighborhood planted on the side of Chenocetah Mountain. The tower is fifty-four feet high at an elevation of one thousand eight hundred and thirty feet above sea level. On a clear day, from the top of the tower, you could see for miles. It served the same original purpose as the metal fire tower atop Elsberry Mountain that was behind my childhood home: spotting forest fires.

This was not a clear day; this was a perfect weather day.

The fog on Chenocetah Mountain. Photo by, March 2023.

A tree indicated the way. Photo by me, March 2023.

I parked on the side of the road and could not see the tower further up the mountain through the fog. The crunch of gravel underfoot was the only sound as I went uphill. The atmosphere was eerie and the experience thrilling that I came on the perfect day. I was a boy again in the woods. There was no other world except where I was at that moment, which blurred with the past. It happens every time I set foot on a wooded trail: I am inspired. Dweller On The Boundary was born on a trail lined with Chinese privet on a hot summer's day.

Photo by me, March 2023.

Chenocetah Tower emerged in a clearing at the top, behind the gray sentinels, awaiting orders for when to begin to grow leaves again. The tower appeared like a sweet memory among the often mundane and trivial thoughts of the everyday that populate Facebook and the television news. Tell me what you really think or what is important and not some politically inspired pose for attention.

Photo by me, March 2023.

A pleasing land of drowsy-hed it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
Forever flushing round a summer-sky.
The Castle of Indolence, Canto I, VI by James Thomson in 1748. Also quoted at the opening of Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

The fog dressed the landscape in a cloak that distorted time. A person could have stood in that spot for almost the last one hundred years and it would have looked similar. In that distortion, I imagined myself calling out for my lost childhood dog, Raven, into the wall of gray. The conditions were the same as that 1980s day that I sank into the ground of Rabbit Tobacco Field. This was not a nostalgic trance, but history rattling my bones as if I needed to remember.

Photo by me, March 2023.

 

This was like walking through one of my stories or how I imagined the landscapes to be in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. If the Headless Horseman rode past, I could not see him in the dense water droplets suspended in the air. Raven could have been out there too with her jingling vet tag, but I would not know; all sound was muffled.

Photo by me, March 2023.

 

Photo by me, March 2023.

Photo by me, March 2023.

I could not climb the tower as much as I wanted to do just that. The blue door was locked tight to keep the vandals from having their way with it. The wood and stone were spared from high school sweethearts pledging eternal love and devotion on it. The tower is only open to the public one weekend a year, during the Cornelia apple festival. 

 

I admired the tower at ground level and thought about how structures of this quality are not commonly built anymore and have not been during all of my fifty years. I like the older architecture and craftsmanship, but do not confuse that with my liking older times better. My admiration for old buildings probably was spawned when I first saw the stone house of my great-grandparents in Tennessee as a child or visiting the Biltmore Estate in Asheville in the 1980s. I simply saw that when it came to buildings, the older ones appealed to me.

 

When my twenties arrived, I chose to live in some old places: a former Atlanta Ford Factory built in the 1920s and a Victorian mansion from the 1880s in Louisville, Kentucky. Living in places that old is living inside history and sharing them with the unseen past, which is kind of similar to living in an eternal fog. Sometimes in those places I caught a whiff of the scent of the past or a glimpse of it darting around a corner, but I never came face to face with it as I did as a young boy in my backyard underneath an oak tree or again much later in life.

Whatever ghosts are, I believe in them. They can exist in foggy woods and fields, creaking mansions, antique stores, words in a book, in a mind and in a heart. I carry them around with me, write about them, sometimes encounter them and try not to be haunted by them.

Photo by me, March 2023.

 

Photo by me, March 2023.

There on the foggy mountaintop, the time distortion was strong and I traveled on the perfect weather day. Despite my possible resemblance to Ichabod Crane, no pumpkins were hurled my way as I stood next to the tower with cold cheeks and damp hair. Raven still ran through my memories as black as her namesake. Time travel is not only an H.G. Wells story or that television show I loved as a kid, Voyagers!, but a real phenomenon and that can be achieved by closing one's eyes. The keys are imagination and memories. A person can go to any place or time that they can imagine or remember, but there are reservations to be considered. The past is as set as the stone in the tower and cannot be changed, as some might want. However, time travel can influence the present and future if you allow it, so be wise in making those choices.

Unpaid Shoes

Sinead: Her Life and Music by Jimmy Guterman. Published 1991.

 

The Irish eyes will always lure you in and torture your heart, I write that with plenty of personal experience behind it. When I heard the news, the image that came up in my mind was of those eyes.

Sinead O'Connor was mesmerizing to my seventeen-year-old American eyes in 1990. That Prince song she sang would come on and I would gawp at the video. It was one of those collective moments in pop culture that do not happen anymore when she appeared all in black between the trees with a nearly shaved head, stared straight through me on MTV and sang until she cried. You did not see women like her and one with such a beautiful voice on television.

 

Her death this week was not surprising like Prince’s or George Michael's and that was maybe the saddest part of her tragic life. Someone sitting in my living room told me the news and the first thought I had was that she must have finally killed herself. If you knew anything about her for the last couple of decades you kind of expected it.

Sinead O'Connor became the latest memorable artist that entertained Generation X to die at a young age. She joined River Phoenix, Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell, Michael Hutchence, Scott Weiland, Prince, George Michael, Amy Winehouse, Philip Seymour Hoffman and many others who have died too young. The untimely deaths among my generation have been too copious for me to recall. It would be a gruesome hobby to try and maintain a list in my head and I would rather not. There were those who have died from mental health issues, drugs, alcohol or a cocktail of all three.

O'Connor will be mostly remembered for two things: singing 1990's Nothing Compares To You, written by Prince, and ripping up a photo of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in October 1992.

It would be nice if she were remembered for more, but those were the two most newsworthy events of her sometimes troubled life that included getting caught shoplifting shoes as a teenager, her own childhood abuse, the hanging death of one of her sons in 2022, her suicide attempts and ultimately her death at the age of fifty-six. Documentaries will be made, books will be written and some people will take the time to get to know more of her story, but most will not.

 

Nirvana performing on SNL in January 1992.

I saw her performance on Saturday Night Live that eventful night. I watched the show for the musical guests back then in the cozy, fuzzy sweatered and moody 90s. My favorite band at the time, Nirvana, performed on the show in January of the same year. SNL mattered in the cultural zeitgeist during the early 1990s just as magazines, record stores, MTV and zines did. Those years were defining years in the lives of Generation X, as many of us, including myself, had come of age and were shaking off our dewy youth to find a way in the wilds of slackerdom.

 

Sinead on SNL in 1992.

The big moment when she ripped up the photo of the Pope did not seem shocking to me then, nor does it now. I understood it was some form of protest, but I did not have the context. Artists have a long history of protesting for causes that matter to them. I expect artists to be unconventional and I want them to be unconventional if they are genuine in their convictions and not merely a poseur. Sinead's protest went over my head that night. I never read anything about the Pope or religion in Rolling Stone or any of the other magazines I subscribed at the time. It was not until later that I learned it was about sexual abuse in the church. What did I know about religion or the Catholic church? I was raised without religion and was an atheist by the time I was a teenager.

Sinead was an easy target for the establishment of entertainment and media to react against. The more conservative elements in society were already keen to criticize her for her buzzed hair and implied that she was a lesbian and that was oh so taboo to be considered gay or lesbian thirty years ago. The backlash against the SNL protest was immense and grandstanders like Frank Sinatra and Joe Pesci publicly attacked her. Cowards and bullies often wrap themselves in either patriotism or religion when challenged with the uncomfortable truth that rattles personal ideology and their hold on power.

 

Morrissey, never one to bite his tongue, had this to say about Sinead in a scathing critique of the music industry, the media and modern society:

"She was a challenge, and she couldn’t be boxed-up, and she had the courage to speak when everyone else stayed safely silent. She was harassed simply for being herself."

 

His entire critique, You Know I Couldn't Last, is worth a read.

 

It was not easy being Sinead and few rallied to her defense in 1992 despite the tributes to her today. From my own life experiences, I can say that the few against the many and the more powerful is a lonely position in which to live. Popularity contests and the willingness to conform against your better judgment are for the weak. Strength is required to live on an island and Sinead had that until she ran out of it. Part of my attraction to her was her fearless willingness to be different. I did not have the glare of super stardom on my shoulders as she did beginning when she was twenty-three years old. Her appearance was not a contrived marketing gimmick, she had said as much in interviews at the time. She was not about being a pop star and the glamour, she wanted to be accepted as a serious artist.

Another part of my attraction to her in 1990 was her incredible beauty. With her buzzed head, beautiful face and the captivating Irish eyes she tripped off my attraction to androgyny. In faded jeans and Doc Martens boots she would have made one beautiful young man and I was attracted to the gay skinhead look that was fashionable in some circles. Yes, there was such a trend, though many might not remember it. It was the skinhead look without the politics attached.

There were also her talents of singing and songwriting. She was not an artist I followed closely for the last thirty years, but I knew she was out there still performing and struggling. I would revisit her music and interviews from time to time, like I do with many artists from the past. I had an emotional connection to some of her work and sometimes it was nice to pull out that old shirt buried deep in the closet and wear it again.

Upon further consideration, if she is remembered for Nothing Compares To You and the Saturday Night Live protest, then that is not such a bad way to be remembered. She can be remembered for her success and courage in standing up. What will fail to remain in the collective memory is the manner in which portions of society treated her and it is too late anyway.

It is worth knowing if her death was a suicide and not accidental or some other circumstance. A definitive answer is needed so that there can be an examination of what the reasons were and maybe it will help prevent some other person from experiencing a situation where they too feel like suicide is the only option. It was not until later that it was learned that Michael Hutchence had brain damage from an assault, which, along with some seriously bad choices in his private life contributed to his suicide. Whatever the reasons were for Sinead, she had seen, heard and experienced enough of this life and she deserved better when she was living - unpaid shoes and all.

What Is Between What Is Out There

 

Birmingham, Alabama. Photo by me, June 2023.

The road has had more of my time this year like an old friend calling me on the phone for a long catch-up conversation. I am not good at ending conversations; I am bad at knowing when to wrap things up and have to let the other person do it when the pauses grow too long. Every conversation could be the last and it should count for something, as I see it. For those who have endured the hours-long phone conversations with me, they deserve to be appreciated. 

 

I like being on the road, watching the sunset between the white stripes of a rest area parking lot, not caring all that much about a place, after all, I am only passing through and watching the crazies tailgate each other in the fast lane. I am not ready to end the conversation with the road, hang up and say, "Bye-bye." I want to see what is out there and what is in between what is out there. I have had a lot of long drives and conversations in my lifetime.

The Birmingham skyline. Photo by me, June 2023.

 

I was in Birmingham, Alabama two weeks ago. Small to mid-sized cities are time capsules of the past. They remind me of Atlanta in the 1980s and 90s, before traffic reached twenty-four-hour gridlock and all of the cool places and people were priced out. Small cities have just enough of the ingredients of the magic of possibility to not bore me without overwhelming me.

The car radio scanned and I was surprised that Birmingham had an alternative station, 107.3 FM Mountain Radio. I listened through the eastern suburbs and spent the rest of my time in the city listening to a classic rock station that played too much AC/DC. Back in Black greeted me as the skyline came into view. My mind veered to the early 1980s and I was hearing that music coming from my brother's bedroom and it seemed angry in the way teenagers pose as rebels against everything.

I have a little history with the city and plenty with the state of Alabama. Alabama, contrary to popular opinion, is not a foreign country for gays. The gays there are the rebel weed dandelions growing through the sidewalk cracks and surviving through the adversity of existence. In the 2000s, I occasionally partied at a club called Quest. It was one of the few gay bars in the city and in the state and it was open 24 hours. The attraction was that it was always open, never closed, and open later than the Atlanta bars that closed at three in the morning. These trips were never planned and were spur-of-the moment excursions. I visited a few times danced until sunrise or so, grabbed a hotel room to crash for a few hours and went to The Galleria mall to buy fresh clothes. The locals at Quest were friendly and recognized that I was not a local. I would say I was from Atlanta and that led to too many questions and unwanted offers to buy coke. I raised the guards and applied my fake bar name, Eric.

Birmingham. Photo by me, June 2023.

My reason for being in Birmingham this time around was to visit an antique store. The times have changed. The store was on the south side, in the same neighborhood as Quest. I parked on the street and walked on a windless, hot day as smoke from the forest fires in Canada glazed the sky. I relaxed and felt the relief of having more space around me than in Georgia. 

 

I smelled the stale scent of a time capsule opening.

Photo by me, June 2023.

It was a large and interesting store and a few purchases were made. The prices were better than what can be found in Georgia, another benefit of being a less populated place.

I loafed around Birmingham for the day, seeing new places, eating barbecue at Dreamland on 14th Avenue and then headed home to Georgia. The radio stayed on the classic rock station on Interstate 20 as far east as Anniston, another place with a history for me and radio and Susquehanna, until the static choked it out. The last song I heard was The Marshall Tucker Band's Can't You See. 

The road called, the conversation was had and I was out there seeing what was in between through the crackling static. The last of the sun fell on me at the Georgia welcome center parking lot. A family posed in front of the state sign with a peach on it. I must have looked as silly as them on some of my travels too. Life is going by the same as the cars on the asphalt and there is no slowing down.

Pride in 2023

 

The Atlanta Pride parade 2004. Photo by me, June 2004.

I am standing at the corner of 10^th and Peachtree streets on a Sunday in June 2004. This is my regular spot to watch the annual Atlanta Pride parade. I prefer this spot as the parade slows to make the right turn on 10^th as it heads to Piedmont Park. I can have a longer look from here at the marchers, clap, cheer them on, watch the men and snap photos. The parade with all of its color, loud music and performances is a writhing and beautiful street party in a week of parties. It is the ultimate release of frustration at being a discriminated-against minority and a celebration of surviving another year. The American version of Queer As Folk was my favorite television show and I wanted both the characters of Justin and Brian.

That was 2004. Gay marriage would be legalized almost eleven years later to the day.

 

Atlanta Pride parade 2013. Photo by me, October 2013.

Much has changed in the nineteen years since 2004 and much has not. I was younger at thirty-one and now I am a slower moving, slightly more wrinkled fifty-year-old that stopped partying in my mid forties, lives outside the city, I can get legally married, Backstreet and many other bars and clubs are long gone and Atlanta is a helluva lot bigger and more expensive and Atlanta officially celebrates Pride in October and I totally and utterly disagree with that change.

In one aspect, it feels more like the 1980s and 90s than 2023 as Pride month begins. The stench of fear and bullshit are blowing in the wind. Again, the United States is bobbing and weaving through another culture war with gays and Pride in the middle of it, as a volleyball in a game in which those on the conservative political spectrum are trying to score using us as bait. This is reminiscent of my youth, when the country was less tolerant, less accepting of the other and we had AIDS then too. The political sideshow of it all is boring and tiresome at fifty years old.

The ghosts of the Moral Majority of the 1980s and their claims of a sinister gay cabal with a homosexual agenda have arisen from their cesspits of defeat. There are accusations of gay grooming and all of that nonsense. This new set of grifters and homophobes may be loud, but they certainly are not very original in their smears. Shame on those nasty people and perhaps they should clean up their own closets. Thou doth protest too much. What's next the gay panic defense?

 

It is rather funny that in all my years I have never caught a whiff of official homosexual meetings typing up the homosexual agenda or even a grocery list.

A woman confronts a coward to his face and all he can do is look away. That man is the type that wish to do gays harm. Atlanta Pride parade. Photo by me, June 2007.

There is much revisionist history I read on the internet, as some claim Pride month is a new phenomenon in some gay conspiracy take over of the country. This is nothing more than some homophobes finally taking notice of something beyond the end of their own noses and using gays as a way to grift money and make a name for themselves on social media. June has been officially recognized as Pride month since 1999, thanks to Bill Clinton. Also, since June 1969, there has been the historical precedent of that important event in gay liberation that you might have heard of called the Stonewall riots. Pride month is not something new and there is also Pride week when the parties, the festival and the parade happens. For those who do not like Pride month or week on their calendar then ignore it. I promise that Pride month is not going to kidnap you, make you dance for dollar bills in a thong on Peachtree or give you a better sense of fashion.

Some people are upset that Target is selling Pride merchandise and others are upset that Target is removing the Pride merchandise as a capitulation to a boycott. Both sides are being played in this silliness over what a retail store sells. It is a distraction from the larger issues of life. How dumb and lazy have we become as a society that adults spend time arguing over rainbows on tee shirts and beer bottles? Do you believe you are saving the world by stopping someone from buying a rainbow tee shirt? Are you that easily offended, weak and manipulated? Maybe you are one of those types who thrives on outrage because of your own misery?

I have no plans of buying any Pride merchandise from Target, I can do that at a gay retailer such as Brushstrokes. The only gay themed shirts I have ever purchased were from Brushstrokes in Ansley, Ball Beachwear in Fort Lauderdale or at the Pride festival itself. At least I know that my money went back into gay pockets.

There is another side to this argument to consider.

 

Atlanta Pride parade 2007. Photo by me, June 2007.

I remember the complaints in the gay community of the 1990s and 2000s about how commercial Pride had become with corporate sponsors and floats in the parade. I did find it rather insulting and tacky to see Bank of America and other corporations with floats that were nothing more than advertisements in the parade. Bank of America does not get hurt being called a faggot on the street by a moron like I have a few times, nor have they ever been assaulted as I have for just being a gay man. They have no place in a Pride parade and they have not earned that honor and yes, it is an honor. Corporations have bought their way in and used Pride as a marketing opportunity.

 

PFLAG in the Atlanta Pride parade. Photo by me, October 2013.

As far as the regurgitated smears of gay grooming, gay kids are a natural part of human biology and are going to exist whether some like it or not. Those children deserve protection, as all children do, and that is why there are organizations like PFLAG that have been around since 1973, the year I was born.

The origins of PFLAG began when elementary school teacher Jeanne Manford's gay son was beaten in 1972 for handing out flyers to a dinner party. The police had little interest in solving the case, so Manford became an activist. She went on radio and television and in the summer of 1973 marched with her son in the New York City gay pride march. She carried a sign that read, “parents of gays unite to support our children.” Her bravery and willingness to support her son gave birth to PFLAG.

A terrible photo of me and my then boyfriend at the 1998 Atlanta Pride festival in Piedmont Park in June.

I think back to my first Atlanta Pride festival and parade in 1995. I was twenty-two and though I was more than comfortable in my own skin and with being an openly young gay man in some of my circles of life, I was not out to all. I was not out to all of my family then or to my coworkers. I lived in an old factory on Ponce de Leon Avenue and even living in the confines of the city, it was not entirely safe to be completely open in my life. My boyfriend had the tailgate of his truck vandalized in the parking lot of our building, sprayed on it in capital red letters was the word FAG. We had been harassed on a MARTA train at Five Points. The city was not OZ or a protective paradise, but it was significantly safer as a gay man than living out in the suburbs in a place like Cobb County. Going to the parade and festival in Piedmont Park was the first time in my life that I was surrounded by so many people like myself. It was scary and simultaneously great. That weekend meant a lot to me and it still does. I was glad that Pride existed, if for no other reasons than it was eye-opening and so much fun.

I went to Pride for years and it was always marked in ink on my calendar months in advance. I went to the parade, the festival, the parties and danced until sunrise or later in the bars. I watched the younger generations move into the scene and then it became time for me to bow out. Plus, having Pride in October in Atlanta does not work for me, as October is one of my busier months for social activities.

There are disagreements I have with the modern gay movement, support organizations and Pride, but those are insignificant when compared to external threats and the rise of hateful smears against gays by those that would do us harm just for existing. I did not ask for my sexual orientation to be politicized, just as I did not ask to be gay.

Of course, I am glad Pride still flourishes and means something to younger generations finding their way through life. Pride has a place for them just as it did for me in 1995 and if I ever feel as though I need it again. We do live in ugly, violent and fractured times.

The Silent And The Quiet

 

Late spring encroaches on the banks of the Yellow River in Georgia. Photo by me, April 2023.

On a recent walk in the woods it was surprisingly quiet. It was so quiet that it was noticeable like a change in the atmosphere from dry to humid. It is not often that you can find woods that are quiet anymore. Most woods around the northern half of Georgia outside of places deep in the mountains are not far enough away from some form of civilization like a road, a subdivision or other people that you can enjoy the natural sounds of the environment. I grew up in a quiet place, enjoyed it and prefer it today.

Where I walked was in the woods of Yellow River Park near Stone Mountain. I know that it was only quiet on the trails because it was a Monday in late April and it was late afternoon. Another day and another time and it likely would not have been so peaceful. This was a fortunate experience unlikely to be repeated unless maybe I returned to walk in the rain.

 

It was down this stretch of path when I noticed how quiet it was. Photo by me, April 2023.

It is my impression that society and modern life does not value quiet and especially silence. Lives are filled with noisy traffic, chirping car alarms, slamming car doors, leaf blowers, cell phone notifications, loud talking people, music blasting and background television wanting to sell you something. So much space and tolerance is made in life for noise that little is left for quiet.

It is amazing how much can be learned about people because they do not care to remember that voices have a volume control and that we have feet to bring two people closer in conversation instead of shouting from a distance. I find myself judging people's manners by how loud they speak in public and not always by what they say. It is not always about what is said, but how it is said. I would prefer to know less about strangers, but they do not care so shout it to the world they think – or in fact they do not think.

 

I passed through a thicket of blooming mountain laurel and it was a surprise. Photo by me, April 2023.

Photo by me, April 2023.

Photo by me, April 2023.

 

The same goes for music. I wait for the moment that I hear a car loudly playing something by Bach, Chopin, Mahler or Mozart or anything remotely classical out the car windows as it drives by. Something tells me I will be waiting for the rest of life and never hear that. I will concede that if I heard that often enough too that I might say, “damn those Bach lovers and their incessant need to pollute the world with that noise.”

I kind of doubt I would have that reaction, but I would like to be tested.

 

The twists and turns through the woods. Photo by me, April 2023.

Photo by me, April 2023.

Photo by me, April 2023.

The frequency in which people slam car doors now is something that truly surprises me. The slammed car door is like an act of violence to my ears. I was raised to never slam a car door and learned that I was going to be scolded if I did. Do parents scold children these days? I suspect they do not. Children and adults are zombies to cell phone screens and cannot seem to walk without one in their hand, clutching them like security blankets.

Modern life has been degraded in so many aspects that people either do not notice or care like the trash out the window and into the ditch. Loud people and devices and their behaviors are polluters dragging down the quality of life for everybody else.

 

Photo by me, April 2023.

Photo by me, April 2023.

Photo by me, April 2023.

Some people are afraid of silence and it must be because it is so unfamiliar to them. People have a tendency to feel uncomfortable in the presence of the different, the other and often that other is quiet. Or maybe and this is a more scary proposition; they are afraid to be alone with the thoughts inside their own head. A couple of years ago, I said to someone when I was writing some of the stories in Terminal Wake that the book was as much about silence as it was anything else.

 

I emerged from the tree canopy into a field. Photo by me, April 2023.

As for someone like me, that is highly sensitive to sound, I notice and appreciate when sound is absent in public. I do not expect the world to accommodate me, but maybe they could consider being quiet and modest for themselves sometimes.

Taking Notes and Photos

A rundown town in Georgia. April 2023. Photo by me.

 

Having left the city of Atlanta in the fall of 2021 and moved to a different part of Georgia, I have easier access to a part of the state that I am largely unfamiliar. This part of the state is more rural and remnants of the past still dot the landscapes in their often decayed states. I am reminded some, but not entirely, of where and when I grew up and still my perspective has changed. I am finding new places to inspire my writing. 

 

I seem to be constantly snapping photos and making notes of what I see as I travel about in my comings and goings in these areas. The new places are inspiring me to think about ideas for writing that I had not considered before.

This is a photographic tour of some of those places.

March 2023. Photo by me.

March 2023. Photo by me.

March 2023. Photo by me.

April 2023. Photo by me.

April 2023. Photo by me.

April 2023. Photo by me.

April 2023. Photo by me.

May 2023. Photo by me.

May 2023. Photo by me.

May 2023. Photo by me.

May 2023. Photo by me.

May 2023. Photo by me.

May 2023. Photo by me.

May 2023. Photo by me.

May 2023. Photo by me.

May 2023. Photo by me.

May 2023. Photo by me.

None of the places shown here are in Athens, though I spend enough time there, but are instead in the smaller places on the map or not on any map at all. These places make me feel as if I am living in the early 80s music of the Athens band, R.E.M. 

These particular R.E.M. songs are in my head quite often as I wander: Can't Get There From Here, Feeling Gravitys Pull and Gardening At Night.

Two of the songs come from the 1985 album, Fables of the Reconstruction. It is an album that features southern gothic characters and themes. Wikipedia describes the album this way, "Lyrically, the album explores the mythology and landscape of the South..."

I am also drawing inspiration from my favorite photographer, William Eggleston - also a southerner.

In early March I went out to a ghost town that is far from any place, down a long gravel road and along a river. I have not written about that place yet and it is not in the photos shown here.

The Underworld Of Writing

Me in the early blogging 2000s.

T he thought entered my mind how, as far as I am aware, none of the gay Atlanta bloggers from the early 2000s, besides myself, are still around. As I have been republishing my twenty-year archive that was offline for some time, I have been thinking about that time and that group of online writers.

My old site twenty years ago was called My Daily Education or MDE for short. My slogan was "uncovering queer Atlanta." I used the word "queer" because it seemed edgy then, but now it has been adopted into the mainstream and I cringe at its usage. I wrote about nightlife mostly, wild nights, music, film, protests, travel, strange characters from local gay history, I awarded the best and worst of the city in gay terms, Atlanta and whatever else I wanted. I still write what I want, but my focus has changed with the times and my  interests. The wild nights ended a long time ago, but the writing continued and diversified.

I suppose this makes me the old guard of gay Atlanta bloggers.

 

At The Masquerade in the glory days of blogging. Taken from my old site, My Daily Education. Photo by me.

 

There were several of us in our twenties and thirties writing fearless and whatever we wanted. We pounded the keys and pounded our way through the clubs such as Jungle, Heretic, Blake's, WETbar and other places. Legendary Backstreet was still around, but it was being killed by the city about that time to make way for a shiny and soulless condo tower. We would chat, drink, dance, sometimes flirt or gossip, but mostly enjoy ourselves like a small cadre. We were the upstarts against the established gay media that sugar coated everything. Then they tried to co-opt some of us, including me, to write for them. I did do that interview that said something about how blogging would die and we would move to something else, which turned out to be true. I also did do some writing for the gay media so I suppose they got to me.

 

A screenshot of that interview in the 2000s. I do believe I would not have considered myself fabulous nor do I ever recall using that word.

Where did my fellow gay Atlanta bloggers go? Our little underworld of writing we enjoyed went poof! Social media was never able to capture the spirit of blogging and aided in making people's attention spans shorter. Also, Twitter and Facebook made people more snarky and turned them into meme speakers which requires no original thought or even words.

One of the banners from my old site in the 2000s.

 

Social media killed blogging and I am not writing much about Atlanta anymore or even living in the city, but those were good times on the internet. I cannot even remember all of their names, though I wish that I could.

 

Not only did blogging die, but look at the pathetic state of gay media in Atlanta today. I am not certain local gay media serves a necessary function anymore.

 

Underworld, Sola Sistim