Zone A

Photo by me, September 2024.

It was time to come north from Fort Lauderdale and while I did, Hurricane Helene was coming north too. She and I were leading parallel lives.

 

A view from my hotel balcony overlooking the docile waters of the Gulf of Mexico on the day I arrived. A wedding was taking place on the beach that evening. Photo by me, September 2024.

I was in a hotel at North Redington Beach on the gulf coast near St. Petersburg. I arrived two days before the storm and the same day storm chasers and network media swooped in to hype the storm and shout catastrophic predictions. I was aware of Helene, but expected or maybe hoped that she would stay far enough out in the gulf as she headed north to avoid the worst of it. I had been in Florida in the center of a tropical storm before, but not a major hurricane. I expected strong winds and pounding rain if we could stay on the periphery of Helene's track. I was not expecting the end of the world; the internet and television gave me immunity against that way of thinking.

The next morning, a television reporter stood on the beach waving his arms like a hyperactive and malfunctioning windmill before a camera directly in front our hotel. He had forgotten or perhaps was never taught that waving and pointing your hands directly at the viewer is considered a threatening gesture and people will change the channel. He and his crew I had seen in the parking deck the day before and drinking in the hotel bar that night. He needed to hire himself a talent coach, spend less time in the gym and cruising in hotel bars.

I went for a walk along Gulf Boulevard and had coffee. Walking back to the hotel, I was jolted out of my remaining haze of sleep. A sheriff's deputy pulled next to the sidewalk and barked through a loudspeaker about a mandatory evacuation and that everyone needed to leave Zone A. I jumped out of my skin. It was like being warned at a protest that this was an unlawful assembly and teargas was incoming. My phone alerted me next with the same message. The expected storm surge was forecast to be destructive and deadly if we stayed.

 

Was the world not aware that I need at least two cups of coffee and an hour of quiet when I wake up before I can muster more than a 'good morning'? It was too much stimulation. I blamed that arm flapping reporter for conjuring Helene to come closer.

 

There was a controlled chaos at the hotel. Elevators beeped, luggage rolled carelessly over toes and the staff scurried about stowing things away. The hotel was closing up and sending all of the guests to somewhere other than there. A quick call was made to a hotel in Orlando and a reservation was secured before the rooms were gobbled up. The retreat inland was on before I even had breakfast or a third cup of coffee. My last moment at the hotel was passing the reporter and crew sorting through their gear. In their excitement I detected that they hoped for the worst, great footage, ratings gold and maybe a promotion to a bigger market. Damn the rest of us. This was their storm of the century... until the next storm of the century.

The night before, Pinellas County locals were overheard at dinner discussing the storm. They planned to ride it out saying it would not be so bad and joked about stocking up on alcohol. These were not young people being cavalier, they were in their fifties and sixties, though it can be hard to assess among sun crispy Floridians what their true ages were. Their misplaced confidence was no doubt based on past storms that just missed them or were not as bad as predicted. 

 

They neglected to consider that the weather, climate and landscapes are not what they once were. Hurricanes are more intense, ocean levels are higher and Florida's coast lines are more perilously populated than ever. Storms of the past were not the best indicator of what the storms of the present were capable of doing.

 

Photo by me, September 2024.

You see evacuation signs when you travel in coastal regions of the country and you say to yourself that you will never be caught in an actual evacuation. In all of my decades of traversing Florida from Pensacola to Key West I had never been through an evacuation until I was. Hurricane Helene was a category four storm that morning in the gulf and headed to Florida.

The traffic leaving the beaches. Photo by me, September 2024.

Some people were taking the order seriously, at least the out-of-towners like us were, as the hotels closed giving us no option but to leave. We were stuck in a miserable jam through Tampa and I-4 to Orlando was a mess moreso than usual. We exited outside Tampa and took the back roads by the tattoo parlors, trailer parks, strawberry fields, miles of planted pines and people hoping to sell watermelons out of the back of an old Chevy van. It was a tour of the hidden away Florida that tourists do not see. I like to think of it as the real Florida that is swampy, often ugly and crazed by the relentless sun and humidity. The real Florida is not a vacation of seafood, the yachts of Fort Lauderdale, the morning drunks on Duval Street in Key West and sand between the toes, it is a sun beaten dream in a faded 7-11 tank top, broken flip flops and with ass crack showing from cutoffs.

Photo by me, September 2024.

Photo by me, September 2024.

Leaving Florida several days later and heading north to Georgia, there were lines of trucks from utility companies and downed trees for as far as one could see. The damage became more obvious to structures  and there was limited gas north of Gainesville and into South Georgia. I thought about the people that rode out the storm on the coast. I saw what became of our evacuated hotel through photos on Reddit. The first floor was washed out by the storm surge and damage had reached the second floor. Cars and boats were washed away like the sand and the beach was much smaller than what I had stood on the week before. If we had stayed and not evacuated we would have been stranded without power, water, sewer and cell phone service. For the locals that stayed and survived they likely regretted that choice. 

 

Along I-75 we stopped to take in some of the remaining tacky old Florida that is getting harder to find with each passing storm and year.

Photo by me, September 2024.

 

Photo by me, September 2024.

Photo by me, September 2024.

This was the Florida I loved in the 1970s as a cutoffs and flip flop wearing kid when the state seemed like a wild adventure of clear inland springs with mermaids, jungles, dolphin shows and wide beaches with fun sized waves for my toy boats and plastic sharks. It was a wilder, bigger version of the woods behind my childhood home and camping at Lake Allatoona. It was the state before I ever knew what a Zone A was or required an hour of silence and two cups of coffee before my brain worked. 

Me falling in love with Florida at Marineland in St. Augustine in the 1970s. Photo by my mother.

It is a place I miss.

Hidden Mountains

 

Photo by me, March 2024.

 

What can happen in thirteen years? I asked myself that question as I stood in front of the statue of Chief Sawnee in late March of this year for the first time in thirteen years. The simple answer is a lot can happen.

It was in the fifties as I arrived at Sawnee Mountain late in the afternoon and it was a perfect hiking day. It was a day to walk through the past for me as I had been to this mountain once on a warm February Saturday in my younger short sleeved thirties. I was taking a weekend off from writing my novel Shadow's Gravity and had somehow not gained a pound from when I was a younger man. I had gained the weight of more experience, perspective, memories and countless miles on my legs. Thirteen years can do a lot to a person and a person can do a lot in thirteen years. I was writing my fourth book, had moved out of the city for good, renovated a house, nearly died in 2012 and so much more.

Photo by me, March 2024.

Photo by me, March 2024.

I started up Sawnee Mountain through the naked hardwoods that reminded me of where I grew up with a mountain behind my house. My mind wandered from the present at the turn of the trail. I was walking miles of memories as much as I was on the stony trail. The trail curved through the woods as life - to unexpected places, with unexpected experiences and unanticipated questions. Sometimes even in a place and in people we thought we knew there are surprises.

Photo by me, March 2024.

Photo by me, March 2024.

Photo by me, March 2024.

Life and its counterpart death always have a presence in the world underlining our existence in permanent ink and teaching us the seasons of emotion from joy, to regret, patience, shame and pain. One begets the other from the birth announcement to the obituary. Three weeks had passed since someone I was close to as a boy had unexpectedly died. I had spoken at their funeral the following week and they were on my mind. 

 

At the funeral I shared a rambling story of us as boys in the mid 1980s involving him spending the night at my house and us hiking to Elsberry Mountain on a summer Saturday. I talked about how he had to find just the perfect walking stick, how long  that took and how he had to have one because I had one. He was competitive, considered a gifted child like me and in this period of our childhood he kind of looked up to me. Though he is gone, the happy and disappointing memories live on with me and others that knew him. I retraced those memories like a mountain trail which my feet had followed before. 

 

Our lives traveled down very different paths as was the case with so many of the people I knew growing up who became strangers. He and I had not spoken in ten years, but one of our last conversations went for hours through the early morning and past the sunrise. We caught up, we reminisced - we were two boys again who had spent so many years together. I had wanted to include him in one of my novels, I planned it and then thought better of it. It was not that he did not deserve to be in them, he did, but the time was wrong.  He remains a mountain behind my house hidden among the trees unseen at a distance, but breaking the landscape when viewed up close.

The view from the top of Sawnee Mountain looking to the north. Photo by me, March 2024.

The area known as the Indian Seats atop Sawnee Mountain. Photo by me, March 2024.

We took in the view of the mountain before us that summer Saturday so long ago. With sweat in our bangs we gripped our walking sticks unaware then how many mountains we had to climb, how high they would be or how low the valleys between them. I cannot say or understand what he saw that day or in the decades that followed, not long after, he chose one route and I another.

Me atop Sawnee Mountain. March 2024.

Thirteen years or a lifetime, I looked at the horizon with the same pair of eyes which had seen the hidden mountains from faraway and up close. His death hit me harder than I expected, there was a loss of balance at the edge of the rocks and that feeling has stayed with me. He should have seen the view.

 

The clouds moved in, the wind picked up and rain was coming by nightfall. I like storms, without them, nothing grows including people.

Elder Mill Covered Bridge

Photo by me, October 2024.

The number of covered bridges remaining in Georgia is either thirteen or fifteen depending on the source of information you consult. I cannot say which is accurate as I have not visited them all, but I have seen many of them. 

 

Long ago, there were over two hundred and fifty covered bridges in Georgia and as time and engineering moved forward, covered bridges fell out of use. Many of these bridges were torn down and replaced by steel and concrete, others were victims of neglect and some were lost due to arson. Seeing and driving across one today reminds me of the one I often crossed over Nickajack Creek with my mother out Saturday shopping in the 1970s and 80s. That bridge, which still stands today, is the Concord Covered Bridge in Cobb County, Georgia.

Photo by me, October 2024.

Photo by me, October 2024.

In rural Oconee County in the eastern part of Georgia is Elder Mill Covered Bridge. It is located a few miles south of the town of Watkinsville off the Greensboro Highway on Elder Mill Road.

Photo by me, October 2024.

Photo by me, October 2024.

The bridge dates back to 1897 and was built by Nathaniel Richardson. The bridge was originally constructed in a different location in the county. Before being moved to its current location in 1924 over Rose Creek, it crossed Calls Creek to the north between Watkinsville and Athens.

Photo by me, October 2024.

Photo by me, October 2024.

The ninety-nine foot bridge remains functional to traffic and is one of the few covered bridges in the state that has not been reinforced by steel.

Photo by me, October 2024.

 

Photo by me, October 2024.

Photo by me, October 2024.

 

The scenery around the bridge and Rose Creek is pretty in that woodsy rural northern Georgia way and it is worth spending time climbing over the rocks and listening to the relaxing sound of the water. It should be noted that one should be respectful of the marked private property that is adjacent.

A barrier to prevent over-sized vehicles from crossing the bridge. Photo by me, October 2024.

Elder Mill Road approaching the bridge from the Greensboro Highway is paved with asphalt and the road on the other end continues on as a gravel road through the woods and by pasture land. There is room enough for two vehicles to park at the southern end of the bridge beside the road.

 

Dead Leaves 2024

 

October 2024.

This is my favorite season, Autumn, when the leaves crunch under foot and the scent of dead leaves hangs in the woods. I love that scent more than anything and would love to find an indoor air freshener that recreates it. My office at home could smell like coffee, books and dead leaves and I would doze off before completing another sentence. If there was a fragrance called Dead Leaves I would mist it all over myself until I was delirious and drunk on it.

Some of the scenery I have seen this week.

Photo by me, October 2024.

Photo by me, October 2024.

Photo by me, October 2024.

Photo by me, October 2024.

The water rose four feet covering everything in silt during Hurricane Helene. Photo by me, October 2024.

I noticed this week during a couple of walks in parks near where I live that we are beginning to see hints of color in this part of Georgia at around a thousand feet of elevation. It is typically not peak season here until early November. 

 

Every week, I make miles on the trails somewhere and this was likely the end of shorts season as the second walk of the week was a tad cool at sixty-five degrees with windy conditions. Time now for the sweat pants, long socks and fleece. There have been two mornings with lows in the thirties and there was a frost. The chilly weather is two weeks early and it could not come soon enough as I was ready for the warm weather to end.

Today I finished putting out the pansies for the cold season flowers. I planted much more this year and it took two days to get them planted. Winter here can be rather rainy and gray, which I like, but it is nice to have some color around too.

 

The Summer of 2024

We should enjoy summer, flower by flower, as if it were to be the last one we will see.  - Andre Gide

 

The water shot from the nozzle of the hose on the August evening and I was a kid with a water cannon. The sunlight was blazing hot coming around the corner of the house between the sweetgum tree and the Japanese maple. I was sure it was going to make a weird sunburn shape on my bare leg that resembled Salvador Dali's melted pocket watches in his 1930s painting The Persistence of Memory. I jitterbugged to keep the mosquitos from dining on my ankles, but gave up when an evening stroller passed. The neighbors or strangers on my street can be a judgemental lot. Itchy red welts were as guaranteed as anything that Sears had sold under the Craftsman brand.

 

I watered hydrangeas, gardenias, nelly holly, zinnias, mums, daisies, roses, lilies, lavender, peonies, a camellia, pampas grass, begonias, some trees and  the lawn. If it needed water, and most everything did, then I doused it.

This was August being August when summer is supposed to be winding down, but sometimes flares up into a hot spell. These late summer heatwaves are as hollow as the wolf huffing and puffing outside the door. Summer can bully, but it always succumbs to autumn's triumph. The sunsets are sooner and the sunrises later as the sun has less time for its mischief. Hopefully by late October the frost will come to deliver the knock out punch.

The wayward downpours of July.

I loved and hated the summer of 2024. July was the worst and it always is. The sun was too strong and even the wind went on vacation that month. The rain spigot was shut off in June and remained so until the last two weeks of July. I watched the rain get lost time after time as it approached our side of the hill. It charged at us head on in a tease to only turn and climb another hill. The odds were not in our favor. Two weeks of storms in late July became no rain in August and the first half of September. The ground ached.

July 14th was the hottest day of the summer. The misery climaxed at 101 degrees.

The beginning and the ending of summer are the best parts with the rewards of new beginnings from the sprouts and the conclusions concentrated in the blooms. I cannot tell if I am writing about the life cycle of a season or of humans - they are so similar after all.

 

There were failures in the garden this year. What is a garden without some brown spotted leaves, bugs gnawing and the blooms that never were? The gladiolas grew, stalled and died. The poppies never sprouted. Two beds of wildflowers were eaten by wildlife. The hydrangeas bloomed early then lost their will to bloom again and instead wilted through the heat.

The hummingbirds have migrated as of last week, the wild rabbit that has lived here since spring has hopped onward, the deer are foraging more in the nearby woods and the hours of light are much shorter. Summer has ended and the drought lingers. It is time to plant bulbs for next spring, the clock of the garden never stops.

These were some of the successes grown here after the spring show of tulips and irises.

 

Summer goes with a wave, a turn on its heel and the understanding that it will reincarnate itself next year.

The Wind Down of Summer

 

Photo by me, August 2024.

Sometimes you have to stop when out for a walk and enjoy the view. That was what I did this past Sunday while on a six mile walk as the sweat soaked through my clothes and dripped from my hair. The sun was setting behind the clouds and hills and turning the landscape golden. It was late enough that no one else was around as the breeze cooled me off on an August evening.

It was a slow and gentle moment and there have been few of those this summer. I have spent too much time on the road going from here to there and back again. I love the road, but I love it less than I once did. Charles Kuralt in a Winnebago I am not. The hotel coffee, miles of traffic and the dependency on internet reviews of restaurants to find good food that often turn out to be anything but good wears me down after an extended period of it. I swear some people have questionable taste or low expectations when it comes to what is a decent meal. Years ago on a trip I learned to never eat Thai food in Amarillo and I was recently reminded again in another small city to stay away from Thai food in places where there is not a sizable Thai population.

Homeward bound. Photo by me July 2024.

The road is not done with me this year, I will be back on it soon enough.  I have considered writing a book that is set on the road as I entertain ideas for the next novel. The romance of the road is something I have seem to have lost between the rest areas and the mileposts. Or it could be that I do not enjoy summer travel all that much anymore.

A butterfly bush that I planted this year blooms. Photo by me, August 2024.

 

I am ready for summer to be over, my tan to fade, to put the shorts away for a few months and for the humidity to cease making the outdoors into a sauna. The flowers in my garden have been wonderful this year, but I am ready to do some work in them that requires cooler weather. Outdoor work around here never stops, there is always something to plant, trim, mulch or redesign. I am as an attentive gardener here as I was growing up at my childhood home in the country. I will miss the adorable hummingbirds that have been here all summer enjoying the lavender, zinnias, roses and other plants.

Terrible news out of New York as the legendary WCBS 880 is being flipped to sports talk. As if the world needs another place for mostly men to call in and bloviate about sports and worship overpaid sports stars. Of all my work in broadcasting I was never more proud of the work I did in the early 2000s on-air at WCBS 880. It was reaching the pinnacle in the industry to have been associated with that station. I thought the writing may have been on the wall for WCBS when recently there was significant breaking news and I tuned in. The station made no mention of the news for some time and in the past they would have been all over it and the anchoring sounded small market and not ready for the big leagues.

Photo by me, August 2024.

A couple of weeks ago I stopped in a "vintage" shop in Athens. It was the kind the of place where the merchandise was twice as old as the staff and the majority of the customers. I have been looking for a barn jacket from the nineties like I wore back then. I found several in this shop in okay, but not great, shape and at outrageous prices. They were charging three times the going price and this was a place where broke college students were the primary customers. Maybe college students are not broke these days or the ones who go to UGA aren't? If only I had kept the barn jacket I had as it would still fit today. I did think the above photo of the guy in a mask with a chain was curious and unexpected, but then again it was Athens so it was not all that weird.

Additional reading worth considering: How The Gay-Rights Movement Lost Its Way in The Atlantic.

Pylon - Danger

The Names

 

I

've been listening to this band called The Names and their 1982 album, Swimming, the past couple of days. Since modern music is terrible, I find that there is plenty of good music from the past out there for me to discover. 

 

I found the band through a Christmas compilation disc called Ghosts of Christmas Past released by the Les Disques du Crepuscule label. I was looking for music by Winston Tong, who is also on that album and does a humorous version of The Twelve Days of Christmas.

 

I was nine when Swimming came out and there was no commercial Atlanta station who would have been playing this album then. I suppose it was possible that the Georgia State University station, WRAS, might have played them since that was the year the station became known as Album 88 or The Georgia Tech station, WREK, could have played them. 

 

At that age in 1982 I was listening to WZGC Z-93. The music I would have heard that was in any way similar would have been Human League's Dont You Want Me or anything by The Police.

Wildcat

 

Last night I was watching Wildcat, an Ethan Hawke directed movie about Southern Gothic writer and Georgia native Flannery O'Connor, and I realized I knew exactly where it was filmed. In this scene above the actor playing Flannery is walking through my old neighborhood in Old Louisville. It is the exact same spot from Shadow's Gravity where Everett and I walk after the bakery to the fountain. I was glad to see that the movie was filmed in Louisville as it is not a place often used in films unlike Georgia or California.

Anyway, it was a good movie. I was completely unaware that Ethan had lived in Atlanta with his mother as a young boy for a short time. He is apparently a big fan of Flannery O'Connor.

 

My favorite quote from Flannery might be, "The truth does not change according to your ability to stomach it."

Without Distortion

 

In an old mill on a recent day.

I have been browsing the David Wojnarowicz papers at NYU the past few days. The photos contained in it are rather good and revealing too. From time to time I listen to his audio journals, Cross Country, which were recorded in 1989 while he was driving around the Southwest.

The 2020 documentary about Wojnarowicz, Fuck You Faggot Fucker, was excellent. Most of the film is in his own words and voice. I was fearful that the documentary would try to project the current political agendas onto his life and work and other than a couple of instances it did a good job of keeping it in context. I would have hated it if the modern revisionists would have tried to make him into something he was not.

I mention Wojnarowicz in my latest novel, Shadow's Gravity. He comes up in a conversation I have with the character Finn in 1999 along with Warhol and Keith Haring.

Not really related to any of this, but it was necessary for me to delete my Instagram account this weekend. There were numerous unsuccessful hacking attempts over the past several months on it. The attempts were annoying and I decided it was best to eliminate the security risk.

Gang of Four - What We All Want

All Things 90s

Ding, ding, ding!  

 

"There isn’t really subversive youth culture anymore, merely well-rehearsed identities which are all derivative of some moment between 1950 and 2000."
From The Critic, When Things Could Only Get Better.

 

I have a copy of this book and I have read some of it. As with anything, some of it I agree with  and other parts I do not. I remember in the 90s there was much nostalgia for the 1970s and today it is the 1990s.

The Political Whiners

 

This icky feeling comes over me whenever I log into Facebook for so many reasons. The primary source bothering me now is politics - I hate the stupid filtered selfies too, the constant updates by people acting as if they are celebrities on a reality show also, but the political ranting is the worst nuisance at the moment. 

 

People should keep their political opinions off the service. Were they not taught that politics and religion should not be mentioned in polite company? 

 

A friend from way back, said a few years ago that she used to love to discuss politics with me in the 1990s. I eschew such now, but I enjoyed the conversations then and we did not agree on everything. In the 90s it was possible to have a political conversation and disagree, but not now. People have wrapped their entire being into one of two teams, either red or blue and cannot be civil or believe they know everything or believe in stupid conspiracy theories. I blame social media, identity politics, television, print and internet media and the lousy politicians for this change.

 

It is not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing or being a Republican or Democrat or a Whatever-the-fuck, it is just inappropriate to spew your political rants on Facebook. Unfortunately, it is an election year and people have nothing better to post between the beach selfies and memes. It makes me wish I could find a way to permanently leave that service behind.

What has been on my mind is how it felt for Soviets prior to the collapse in 1991 when nothing made sense for them and whether some saw it coming or not. It makes me think of those Adam Curtis documentaries for the BBC, especially TraumaZone which is about the Soviet Union  and Can't Get You Out of My Head which is more about the U.S. and Europe. The documentaries of Curtis are a bit of an acquired taste I admit and they do require the viewer to give them a chance so I doubt the Facebook loudmouths have the patience for them.

 

The United States is deeply troubled, has been for several years, and I wonder where it leads. I do not recognize this country after decades of social and political upheaval. It is not the country I was born, raised and enjoyed much of my life. What a somber Fourth of July.

View from a Hill - The Chameleons 

Immediate Days

 

Main Street Louisville. Photo by me 1996.

In the immediate days that follow a book launch I am nervous. It takes patience and commitment to spend four years writing a book and more patience to wait for the judgement of readers to trickle in. The waiting wrecks my sleep and concentration. I have been lucky that it rained the past two days, it gave me an excuse to sit in my dark office and listen to Sigur Ros. I do not like summer in the South much anyway the older I get.

 

Releasing a book is like closing your eyes and stepping over a cliff. I put out four years of deeply personal work into the wilds of the world without knowing how it is received. I am unconcerned of what readers will think of me, I am more interested in what they think of the work. I am not a painter or photographer standing in a gallery at a show opening listening to comments and watching the crowd. I am also not a playwright getting a review in the morning's paper after opening night.

Unless, you are a writer then it is difficult to understand.  There is no instant punditry for new books with hours and days wasted analyzing every second on the television and internet by talking heads who produce nothing but unqualified opinions.

 

I peek at the sales data with one eye covered and know that people are buying and reading my book. Yet, it is too early for feedback and it is unknown what readers think as they turn the pages. Are they hating it? Understanding it or misunderstanding it?

 

Shadow's Gravity is the most complex and longest book I have written and I hope that readers will find it challenging to their perspective of the world.

Sebastian

 

Sebastian looks like an interesting film (trailer) that comes out this August. 

 

The film is about a gay writer working on his debut novel about prostitution. The main character takes his research seriously. I doubt there will be much focus spent on the toils of being a writer and the isolation it requires and more screen time will be dedicated to the prostitution angle. Writing is after all not a sexy occupation. 

 

The lead actor, Ruaridh Mollica, is quite handsome. I look forward to seeing it and him.