Someday

Asheville

I have not had much to say lately. Granted, I never do. Anyhow, things are going well, I guess though I am itching to get away somewhere. The problem is since I recently started a new job I don’t have any time to take off. For the first year of employment I only get 7 hours and 50 minutes of holiday time a month, so this doesn’t add up much. According to university rules an employee must maintain a minimum of 10 hours for emergencies and if you don’t you could be let go.

I would like to go home, but Savannah is 5 ½ hours away. It’s not quite possible on a weekend because it is practically a day of driving there and back, which does not leave much time for visiting. I would like to visit my friend Gloria in Arizona. She just moved there, but this is way too far for me to go. As well I would like to visit friends in New Jersey, but that too, is out of the question. Hell, I would like to visit my family and friends in the UK and Europe... and while I'm at it I wish to go on a world tour!

Labour Day is fast approaching and I have wanted to go to the mountains and visit friends in Asheville. The mountains are my element. I wish I could be living there again right now, but it is not where the Fates wish me to be. I made plans to go there, but I just found out even though it is a university holiday I have to come in for 4 hours that day. WTF?

It is a state holiday. The university is closed. Why is the library open 4 hours... and only 4 hours? As a socialist I find this very disturbing. It is Labour Day god damn it! So I resigned myself to the insanity and cancelled my trip, but there is the possibility I could arrange for a graduate assistant to cover these hours. We shall see.

I think I will visit Emma in Chapel Hill. I haven’t visited with her in awhile and she is the closest friend I have here in North Carolina. It’s not the mountains, but Chapel Hill... has hills. All my friends live all over the place. We are all so separated from one another and I have moved into exile.

Though it has been over a decade since I lived in Asheville, my heart is still partially there. Someday I will return and hopefully one day, perhaps I will live there again.

Memories

This picture was taken in 1998. I was living in Atlanta and my friend Jimmy found my Polaroid camera (remember those?) and snapped this surprise picture of me. The crazy expression is because I was attempting to tell him to stop, but it was too late. You see I had plans for that last piece of film though almost ten years later I can't remember what for.

Anyway I just came across this image in a folder of scanned photographs on my computer. It made me laugh and remember fondly the times I spent with my friends in Atlanta.

Lost Items

Have you ever lost some thing you still wish you had? At the moment I wish I still had these glasses. I loved these glasses. Yes, they are silly, but I loved them. It was 1992 and I was 25 years old. I was living in Athens, GA attending university.

I had some crazy times in Athens. I attended UGA, was part of an experimental band, The Vomits. I created a tremendous amount of art, explored bisexuality extensively (oh!) and just had a blast.

Anyway where was I? Oh yeah, I lost these glasses while me and some friends were visiting Ricky Wilson’s grave. The cemetery caretaker was a mean, nasty old man (probably my age now) who used to chase people away from Ricky’s grave. He would come after you with a pitchfork.

One day while paying homage we were chased away by this man. We panicked and ran up the railway embankment which was covered with kudzu, crossed the tracks to the other side of the embankment. What we didn’t realize at the time is the other side of the embankment was much steeper. The kudzu grew up at such an angle over old bushes and trees we didn’t know we were going to be swallowed up alive by impenetrable kudzu!

Now I must admit we were all rather stoned. So we took a tremendous fall and tumbled down the embankment, much like Buttercup in the Princess Bride. The good thing about this situation we vanished out of sight from that horrible man with the pitchfork.

My glasses disappeared when all this happened. So I am thinking some where in that kudzu are my glasses.

Perhaps I need to make a trip to Athens.