modified journal entry, 18 June 2010
I drove the stretch from the end of the Turnpike up to Cordele, which meant driving through the Ocala-Gainesville-Lake City corridor. Those invisible, unforgettable towns of O’Brien and High Springs and Live Oak haunted me, and I was literally retracing my past, passing by the signs for all the towns once – and ever? – soiled with N____.
The peanuts I ate that morning hung at the top of my stomach, a cramping reminder of the nausea and pain of North Florida, and the allergies kicked in next, leaving me with the headachy breathlessness of unidentified allergens and nostalgia. Twelve hours later, with everything quiet except for the sound of my yin and her cousin talking downstairs in the kitchen, I saw so clearly that my body was taking on the pains of the things my mind could not bear.
Seeing the banal green signs, I gave them only the slightest mention, like stopping at Leo’s for a slice or returning to visit Ocala Nikki, scourge and scoundrel and saint of Silver Springs. But underneath the flippancy of these utterances was the dreadful tissue-bound memory of soul-sickness and unspeakable miseries trapped inside the marrow.
By the time we switched drivers in south Georgia, I laid back and slept through Macon where N____ and I once stopped and took pictures of the graveyard:
Macon tombstones circa 2003
I finally opened my eyes at I-475 with Atlanta in the horizon, where a whole new set of flashback, beauty and trauma awaited me...
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