1) Atlanta is hip
my first impressions of Atlanta are from childhood, traveling there with my tee ball team to watch the Braves lose game after game, year after year. i still remember those dreadfully hot trips to Turner Field, screaming for Dale Murphy to hit a home run and wearing my baseball glove in the futile hope that a foul ball might reach the most remote regions of the ballpark.
while the team eventually improved, i lost interest and wrote the city off as little more than a disastrous mélange of traffic, unbearable heat, and various oblique unpleasantries (see #2).
this weekend changed all that, however, owing largely to my yin's cousin (yousin?) and her impeccable hosting. although technically a yankee, she's spent the past decade in Atlanta and showed us some of her favorite spots, like this exotic fruit tree somewhere in Atlanta:
mmm... delicious!
2) degeneracy is overrated
i happened to live in Atlanta for about five minutes in the spring of 2000, during a period when my ability to discriminate between informed dissent and pure foolishness was at an all-time low. thankfully my faculties have since improved, but it was odd for me to see old landmarks popping up as we motored around the city.
it was as if certain intersections and storefronts existed in two separate geographical contexts: one, the real buildings and streets of present-day Atlanta; and the other, the psychic Atlanta of my memory, where the mental images exist in isolation, divorced from the materiality of previous encounters.
strangest of all were places like this one, which seemed to have been plucked from the mythical Denver of my memory (itself a shabby re-creation of Kerouac's mythical Denver) and plopped into East Atlanta:
this bar, if open, would have been worth a look-see
3) Hari Krishnas are (still) creepy
i remember first seeing Hari Krishnas in Fort Worth, probably around 1994, outside a punk rock club. even in my (non)blissful 17 year old ignorance, i considered the group highly suspect. there are few white populations more alienated from their families and society than punk rockers, and i was indignant that some religious organization had sent missionaries to a Pennywise concert.
over time, however, this sense of outrage gave way to intrigue, and by the next time i saw the Krishna-ites, my atheism had mellowed enough to view them with a mix of curiosity and ironic judgment. they were giving out free food on a university campus in Gainesville, which seemed a nice enough thing to do for broke college students, but i, an avowed carnivore, was highly suspect of their ingredients (you call those green things vegetables?). this, coupled with the risk of some mantra-mind control agent, was too much for my 19 year old (only slightly less ignorant) self.
since then, i've overcome my aversion to vegetables and mantra, but the Hari Krishnas still leave an awkward taste in my palette. (so to speak). this picture of them carrying a scarily realistic stuffed version of their guru down Moreland Avenue shows why:
an effigy of Swami Prabhupada... really?
4) NPR really does need our support
i have learned many things from public radio over countless road trips and drives to work, and it has occupied a sizable area in my psychic landscape for at least the past fifteen years. one thing that has always eluded me, however, was any sort of specific knowledge regarding what NPR is, or how it operates. this trip changed that, however, because an old friend (see #5) works as a StoryCorps supervisor in Atlanta. after a last minute cancellation, she arranged for my yin and i to go to the studio and do an interview about my yin's dead grandmother, Shirl the Pearl.
but this, for the time being, is beside the point.
the point is that, at least at WABE, there is grass growing up through the pavement in the parking lot, the brick is weather-beaten, and the bathroom smells like a gas station lavatory. what i felt wasn't disappointment though, but rather a deep sense of satisfaction in knowing that NPR is not spending the pittances i've sent them over the years on fancy buildings or espresso machines or self-flushing toilets:
this rundown building, a Saturday afternoon Mecca
5) reconnecting with old friends is
better than expected
better than expected
i have an old friend in East Atlanta who, in spite of her name, does not look like a piece of fruit. we met our first year of college and if not for her, i would have likely gone that entire year without knowing a single person in Durham.
on of my peculiarities during that portion of my life was an absolute disdain for all matter of photographs. owing to various yuletide traumas from my childhood, i refused to have my picture taken except in only the most dire of circumstances, which has created a virtual vacuum of images from the period of my life ranging from ages 16-29.
much to my amazement, however, my old friend had snapped several photos of me unawares, or at least unremembered, during that year we lived fifty feet from one another. she had pictures of what she subbed "the old me" who, if he met "the new me", would "totally kick this guy's ass." she was correct and, furthermore, she was comical in her correctness, which made for an absolutely amazing reunion dinner:
my friend's groovy table in her groovy house
½) on photographs of "me"
many of my friend's photographs were taken of events i do not remember, and while some of them did jar loose specific recollections, the vast majority are merely a haze, so nebulous that it is impossible to tell how much is an actual memory and how much is fabricated from seeing the picture on my friend's couch. this leads to some interesting questions.
first, are the things i don't remember more or less important than the things i do? to privilege those experiences and times – simply because we have access to them – seems impossibly flawed. the moments we hold onto, the days and nights we remember with such vanity and vigor, these things matter more only if we choose to privilege the past over present and mind over being.
moreover, what about our misdeeds? the times we fall short of the people we aspire to be, the things we do and regret, the people we like to believe we are – but aren't. in my experience, you can learn more about someone by how others regard her than by how she regards herself. for example, one enlightened being, perceived as a jerk by 2 out of every 3 people he passes in the street, may, in fact, be a jerk.
second, my friend possesses frozen images of me, or rather a person i used to call me. i have seen the evidence; all the markers were there: blond hair, Minor Threat shirt, Iron Cross necklace, and impromptu birthday party (my 19th). intellectually i know this day occurred, and yet i do not remember it in any substantive way.
in other words, the photograph is fragment of my history, but not my memory. and since this relic is in the possession of my friend, does that moment belong more to her than me? is she the custodian of my past? the caretaker of a day i do not remember? if so, how many other people possess pieces of our being without our knowledge? how many histories do we leave littered over the course of a lifetime? how much do we trust the people charged with their safe passage through time?
and if, as Marker says, the picture has come to replace our memory, then is my friend in possession of both my history and memory? am i left with nothing but the fiction and fabrication of the person i was fifteen years ago? i had forgotten the shirt and the necklace and the room and some of the people in the room; and now, after seeing the picture, how much of what i think i remember is recollection and how much is reconstruction?
finally, addressed to my unseen, imagined mentor, the one who speaks to me in images i do not comprehend, i state with full acceptance and understanding: "i have only the memory of the photograph."
a photograph of me, with the friend who inspired these questions
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