theology&geometry

The last bit of my time in the mountains was considerably better than the first bit. Wednesday, my dad and grandmother and I headed eastward in my car (which was a trooper) to scale the mountain and turn around in Cherokee, N.C. The weather was heavy and wet and temperamental, but we braved it anyway. The dampness saturated the colors, but when the fog set in, it was hard to see anything through a lens or a set of eyeballs.

It was quite beautiful, and a nice way to undo some of the damage that had been done earlier in the week. (Even though all that shit is going to need to be worked through eventually. And sooner rather than later, if I have anything to do with it.)

The next morning, Grandmaw and I headed west. A fateful stop at the Dickson I-40 Arby’s and several hours later, just after I had gotten to my apartment and started hauling bags inside, I got sicker than I have been in years and years. For roughly nine hours, my body rejected everything that had ever been put into it. With violence. I was hot then cold, fine then nauseated, up and down, back and forth, moaning, crying, shedding layers of clothes, hugging the trash can, convulsing, dehydrated, unable to keep my head up, unable to walk, fully feeling the bite of the humiliation of living alone and wondering if you’re going to die there near your toilet. At 4 a.m. I laid awake on my bed, unable to get comfortable, just listening to the wind roaring outside and feeling my whole building sway and creak from the pressure. Turmoil, inside and out.

Gah. Fuck that.

But I’m not dead. Yet. I dragged myself to work yesterday and probably freaked everyone out with my pallor and bottle of Gatorade with a straw in it. And my inability to move with a speed that could be described as anything faster than “sludge-like.” My bones hurt, I can’t turn my neck, my voice is raspy, and worst of all, I can’t stop complaining about everything.

I haven’t had anything to eat since roughly 3 p.m. Thursday (save three crackers) and, although I’m a bit paranoid about eating anything just yet, I am about to take the plunge and eat what will probably be either the most delicious or most disgusting meal I’ve ever had.

This Christmas, surprise the one you love with this beautiful “Humping Bear” figurine.

Today was quite a bit better than yesterday. Because it had to be, I guess.

We got a late start but ended up frittering away several hours in Gatlinburg proper, milling around, wandering in and out of shops, and getting rained on. A lot. We’re a slow-moving bunch, for sure. Mom is hobbling around because both her feet are in orthopedic boots (she’s had surgery on both feet this year), and her hip is giving her fits. Dad hobbles too; he just had knee surgery two weeks ago, and said his hip is acting up too. Grandmaw has an old knee injury that slows her down, and she gets out of breath easily. And me? Well, I just like moving slow enough so that no one ever really sees me in motion. BECAUSE I’M A NINJA.

I’m broke right now and not the world’s biggest shopper anyway, so I didn’t go as nuts as I might have in a different life, under different, more despicably wealthy circumstances, but I did really enjoy seeing the town and its weird little tourist traps decked out in Christmas lights. Holy god, there is not a surface in this city that hasn’t been draped in something sparkly or glowing or both. It’s so deliciously tacky that my head is threatening to explode.

One of the strangest haunts here is that Mountain Mall place. It’s tiny and it has the weirdest stores in it. An entire store devoted to Case International memorabilia? An entire store dedicated to chintzy dog and cat items? An entire store that stocks nothing but turtle-related trinkets? Really? Yes. Really. Oh, and it features a really hideous rusted-metal-and-busted-wood water feature. If you like, you can throw your spare change into the dirty water and make a wish.

I won’t tell you what to wish for.

Okay, I am completely exhausted and can’t even finish the thoughts that are buzzing around in my brain. Actually, they’re not buzzing right now; they’re doing something more akin to flopping. Nor will I be processing the rest of today’s 300 photos tonight. Tomorrow I think we’re going to actually pay some attention to these great big mountains and not the cheap crap from China that’s being sold all over it.

It’s 2 a.m. in Gatlinburg. I’m out on the deck of our cabin, hoodie engaged, enjoying the ha-ha-not-free wireless we paid $12 for. The world’s tiniest creek is babbling several feet below me. The wind is blowing and my feet, despite being besocked, are cold. My grandmother is just inside, her hearing aids resting on the night stand, a frightening C-PAP machine strapped to her face, the television blaring its early-morning mediocrity to the world. My parents are in the sweet suite below, the one with the giant jacuzzi (Grandmaw and I only got a semi-sweet jacuzzi, bummer).

We’re done yelling, maybe. Hopefully done crying.

It’s not been a pleasant night.

I swear to God, watching my parents get old is breaking my heart into ragged little pieces that pierce like knives when I breathe. A weeklong stay here inspired in my mother the need to bring with her the entire house, including Christmas decorations and baking supplies. Which is fine. I’m all for staying in one night and making a shit-ton of treats. But we also brought the entire pantry — frozen cocktail weenies, cans of soup, six single-serving cups of peanut butter, oatmeal, roughly 24 bags of microwave popcorn, etc. — including the Christmas tree-shaped salt and pepper shakers, a container of toothpicks, the entire medicine cabinet, a Mag-Lite flashlight, fifteen tiny containers of Nutrisystem lasagna, and MORE GOD SO MUCH MORE. And then we even stopped by the on-site grocery to get even more shit. I … I don’t know.

We’ve got no cell service in our cabin, and it took me a tension-filled half-hour to figure out how to connect to the wifi (seriously, you buy a fucking timeshare, shouldn’t they throw in free wifi?), so the instant we got there, we kicked things off on the wrong foot by not being able to call and check in with the legions of people just waiting on pins and needles to hear about our safe arrival. (In my family, you call when you leave, you call when you stop to pee, you call when you get there. PERIOD.)

Things have been tense in the family lately. It all came to a head tonight, of course, because people just need a cabin on a mountain to give them an excuse to fucking break down and act like children. The passive-aggressiveness hit a level even I couldn’t handle and I had to go from room to room, pulling adult plus adult plus adult into a common area so we could work some shit out and stop acting like angsty 14-year-olds. I yelled at them through a veil of tears that clearly announced my fear and anxiety. I played therapist and said things like, “That’s not helpful or constructive!” I think it worked, if just a little. There’s more shit to work through and tomorrow may end up being harder than today, but at least we all got a little bit off our chests and hugged it out at the end (however superficial said hugs might have been). It’s hard trying to resolve conflicts whose roots were formed probably before you were even born. It’s even harder trying to work through issues you yourself aren’t even fully acquainted with. It’s fucking gut-wrenching watching the most solid thing in your life — your family — waver and buckle like some shittily constructed apartment building on the perimeter of a college campus. The thought of my parents as vulnerable, imperfect beings who don’t know how to solve their own problems levels my concept of life itself. I look up to them as the people on this planet who have their shit together and who will have their shit together for eternity. Knowing that that’s not true? Well, it terrifies me.

Is that naive? Am I late to this particular terror because I’ve been blessed with a pretty solid non-divorced family? Maybe.

But holy fucking shit. The crazy that courses through my veins: It scares the hell out of me. It’s there. I feel it bubble and surface every now and then in my own life, away from its source. I work hard to keep it at bay. But I worry that there is something beneath my skin that ticks, that some day will implode/explode without warning. That I am a product of my destiny. That as much as I want to look at the ways my forebears are flawed and build a different self, a phoenix out of the ashes, I am just biding time until I re-enact the exact same things that have already played themselves out in other lifetimes.

I don’t like seeing my worst qualities surface in my parents. I watch my mom clam up and pretend she’s not here and my dad get overly emotional and abrasive and I freeze in disbelief. I hear myself threaten to leave if people don’t straighten up and I realize that’s just as passive-aggressive as the shit I’m trying to get them to exorcise, and that I am playing cards that I know need to be folded. I don’t like knowing that who I am was more or less determined before I even came into existence. I want free will. I want to be in charge of myself. And, on a micro scale, I want to be able to leave a room without it causing turmoil and drama. Is she mad? No. Maybe she just has to piss. Maybe she just wants two fucking seconds to herself to think. Maybe everyone should chill out and stop being so goddamn tense about EVERYTHING.

I love my family. Family is the most important thing in my life. I blog about it constantly. But holy shit.

We may be the most dysfunctional functional family on the planet. Maybe not. But maybe. We have prolifically hilarious conversations that defy description, and our entire narrative arc reads like some kind of Southern-fried absurdist melodrama. I mean, the first thing my dad did when we arrived at our cabin was to erect a rebel flag on the deck. Yes. Really. But we’ve got problems. Plural.*

We’ve been here roughly ten hours and already, all this. I am putting out fires as best I can and it leaves me sobbing in the bathroom and flushing periodically so no one suspects anything fishy like private emotion.

It is now 3 a.m. and I’m inside the little apartment. It got too windy and cold for me out there. Grandmaw’s still got the goddamn TV blaring. I came inside and turned it off, thinking she was asleep. “I wa wa-in tha,” she muttered from underneath her C-PAP machine. I tried to find the button to restore the channel. I found it and recoiled from the insanely loud volume and close-up of Lindsay Lohan. And now? I’m in the next room on the couch. Her television is roughly 50 percent louder than mine. What can you do? But I am about to get in our smallish jacuzzi tub and finish off this bottle of wine. And then maybe sleep for a few hours before everyone wakes me up at dawn.

It’s going to be a long week.

*Name the movie this reference is plucked from and I’ll e-smooch you on the e-cheek.

Seen in her natural habitat, the Middle Child might seem grumpy, unapproachable, and/or miserable, when in fact she is just, as they say in popular parlance, “balls cold.”

My parents’ Explorer’s every nook and cranny is full of stuff. We are taking Christmas decorations and baking supplies, for God’s sake. And a giant bin full of food. Because Gatlinburg is so rural that I heard you have to kill and eat your own dinner there.

The upstairs portion of the parental unit’s house currently has no heat. I slept for three hours, tightly wound into a ball of nerves, and awoke to my father’s face looming above me. He told me my brother and I both snored hardcore. Having my dad tell me that is a little like having Michael Phelps tell me I’m a good swimmer.

My parents’ newest dog, Charlie, hates me and does not let me enter a new room without issuing ear-piercing tiny-dog bellows and barreling after me like he’s going to take me out with his tiny little jaws. My brother, who Charlie also hates, said Charlie crapped in his bedroom five times one night just because he could. I love all living things, but I hate this fucking dog.

I took a shower despite warnings of no hot water. I usually take pretty long, leisurely showers, during which I balance my checkbook and compose poetry, but this shower took roughly seven nanoseconds. When I got out and saw my mom, she told me my outfit was cute.

I am wearing pajamas.

We haven’t even left the house yet.

Oh. Lord.

I’m packing up and heading to the mountains for a few days.

Y’all behave. I’ll check in on you periodically.

This time last year, this is what I was seeing:

Le sigh.

Wow, time got away from me last week and I find myself at home, back in cat hair-covered pajamas, just as god herself intended it.

My trip across the state and back was amazing, as I fully expected it to be. And exhausting, like any good roadtrip vacation. Aside from the insomnia Tuesday night that knocked me out of doing the Jack Daniel’s tour Wednesday morning, everything else was smooth sailing.

Let’s see if I can break it down into digestible nuggets. Ew, “nuggets” is a gross word.

CHATTANOOGA

I got to see Nick’s new digs in the Scenic City. Holy crap, Chattanooga has done a fantastic job on their downtown/riverfront area; how neat to see a city using its public art budget creatively, or at all. The pedestrian bridge across the river is a nice touch, especially when it’s full of shirtless young men jogging. Hey-o! I kid. But seriously, that town is serious about its jogging.

Our afternoon was spent at the art museum, which houses American art, and is a pretty swanky place. We are twelve years old, so we mostly spent our time making inappropriate, anti-intellectual comments about the artwork. The highlight of the trip was the visiting exhibition by William Morris, whose blown glass works are absolutely insane. If you ever get a chance to see this guy’s stuff, do so. (I snuck a picture here.) It will boggle your mind. Also, there was a lifelike sculpture there of an old lady taking up money for charity. Nick decided that it nearly resides in the uncanny valley. I couldn’t stop looking at her, waiting for her to move. It was sick. Also, awesome.

We spent the evening bar hopping — conservatively, compared to the drinking pace he and his last visitors took. I particularly enjoyed Pickle Barrel (which I obnoxiously refer to as “Hobbit Bar” because it’s roughly three feet wide, some of the stools look like they’re carved out of logs, and it seems like the kind of place tattooed, down-on-their-luck hobbits would go after a long day at the hobbit office), which was super cheap and laid back (so much so that we were served by some dude in super tight pants who apparently didn’t even work there). We saw a movie (“Tropic Thunder,” which was horribly offensive but terribly funny) and had dinner, then roamed around the riverfront some more so I could try my hand at blurry nighttime photography. We met up with Nick’s work friends at The Big Chill, which is a gay bar that doesn’t want to be called a gay bar lest some of the more prickish patrons decide to stop patronizing once they realize teh gayz are everywhere! We had entirely too many rounds and Adam spilled some unholy peach/Jager combination all over my hand and convinced me it was okay to take two of the bar’s cups home with me. I tipped $10 and called it even. Adam is evil. Evil!

The next afternoon, Nick let me take a look at the classy Times Free Press newsroom where he works. It’s a big open lofty-looking place with shiny old hardwood floors and clean lines everywhere. Classy! I wish I had taken pictures but I got a case of the chickenshits there with all those other journos. I felt touristy enough just being there, I suppose.

We came home, watched a documentary about the infamous “tranny nanny” in Dyersburg in which Nick has a starring role (separate post about that coming up soon), and I hit the winding road out of the ‘Noog and back into Middle Tennessee.

[More Chattanooga pictures here.]

NASHVILLE

Lesley was kind enough to let me swing by her house for a shower so I could go meet Brittney and some of the other Nasvhille bloggerati without being a disgusting sweaty mess. We don’t do a lot of blogger meet-ups in Memphis (I know, I know, this wasn’t technically a meet-up), so it was a surreal experience meeting so many of the people I’d previously only known as avatars, and doubly surreal to actually be recognized by some people. I’m not going to name everyone I met because just thinking about accidentally leaving someone out makes me break out in hives, but suffice it to say that if I met you Thursday night, I am so glad to finally know you in meatspace. Lesley took a funny picture of me drunkenly, nervously rambling about who knows what, smarmy grin plastered on my face. Lordy, boozehound, easy on the vino.

That night I spent some time with Kristin, looking for midnight vittles (The Herm was closed by the time we got there so we ended up at some place whose name I cannot recall, but I do remember ordering some Korbel bubbly and having it served in a small airplane bottle with no glass, heh) and a nightcap. We dodged aggressive panhandlers with skill and ease, and returned back to her and Lonnie’s house pretty late. The next morning I tagged along while Kristin ran errands around town. Bought some crap at Target. Bought some crap at World Market. Realized that I like shopping when I a) am not looking for anything in particular and b) do not need anything. We ate lunch at that dairy bar over on Charlotte and I had a fanfuckingtastic chocolate milkshake. We sat on the patio and watched the traffic whiz by while golden oldies played on the PA.

MUFREESBORO

I left Kristin’s and booked it to the ‘boro to meet up with Megan for dinner and drinks at the Mellow Mushroom. (God, Murfreesboro just keeps sprouting strip malls.) We spent some time cussing (Megan’s a champion cusser just like I am) and boozin’ and then, upon realizing that I had nowhere to go until my friend/home base for the night JR got off work, Megan invited me to play poker with her and her friends. I know nothing about poker and they were playing for money, so how could I possibly say no? Sure enough, I got my ass handed to me, but in the meantime, I actually learned how to play poker. And I got to see someone do this:

After the game, I met up with JR at his house and made him watch the aforementioned tranny nanny documentary, like I’m some kind of tranny nanny documentary evangelist, traveling from home to home, spreading the good word. The next day we laid around the house like lazy, drunken cats, me editing photos and him watching football and trying to Google hott pictures of Bristol Palin, only to stumble upon rumors about Trig and his suspicious parentage. This is what journalists do on their days off.

We had lunch and then trucked it back to Nashville. At some point, my car reached its 3,000th mile since its last oil change, and John McCain’s VP pick began to look really fucking stupid.

NASHVILLE, AGAIN

JR and Lonnie sutured themselves to the recliners in front of the Alabama-Clemson game, and I nuzzled up to my laptop to continue editing pictures. Nick was in town and already drunk, so he sat beside me and said weird things, as he often does. Kristin came home from work, and then Matt and Amanda came over, and we set about figuring out a plan to get us out of the house and away from the all the football-related yelling.

Cut to Larry’s Karaoke Lounge in Antioch, which is where we met up with Cox, who was in from Oregon for the weekend. There was drunken warbling, there was blurry picture-taking, there were hugs, there were dudes dancing with dudes (closely!), there was a long line to get to the toilet, there was Rickrolling and there was a Total Eclipse, and I somehow even ended up on the dance floor. Twice? It was marvelous, the whole night.

The next morning I stumbled into the shower and into a fantasy football draft, which was one of the more pointless and confusing things I think I’ve ever taken part in, besides voting. I reckon my team is pretty solid. Actually, I have no idea, but apparently my kicker is to be feared. Fear the Bironas, y’all. Fear him.

I finally got my ass in gear and left Kristin and Lonnie’s and headed toward Saltillo for a quick powow with the family before returning to Memphis yesterday. I got back to a new camera lens, a pretty clean litter box (my catsitters are fucking professionals), and some wine I’d forgotten I had. Score, score, and score.

It was a busy, busy week, and living out of my car was not necessarily easy, but it was pretty damned fun, just drifting from couch to bed to bed, wherever I could find a place to stay. (Thanks to everyone who lent a shower, couch, or bed.) I got to see old friends I don’t get to see a lot, which is always so much fun, and make some new ones along the way. My car got to trace the highways of Tennessee as the land swelled and swayed into the mountains of East Tennessee and then back again. I am fortunate to live in a state with such amazing beauty — both in its rural lands and in its major cities. There was so much to look at, so much to relish along the way, that there’s no way a week could ever do it justice.

[More pictures are here; they're sadly out of order for the time being, thanks to my own drunk hands changing the date on my camera at some point in the middle of the week.]

I don’t know why I’m still up. Oh wait, yes I do. BECAUSE I AM A GLUTTON FOR PUNISHMENT. And instead of packing and going to bed like any normal person about to fly down to Florida for a week of beachy funtimes and Radiohead, I’m uploading photos from the weekend to Flickr. And I haven’t even gotten to today’s MusicFest pictures. I guess they’ll have to wait until I get back Thursday and then I’ll just do one massive photodump, yay.

Saturday my cousin Keri got hitched. It was a sweet ceremony on the river in Decatur County as the sun set. We were mooned by some boaters (see above; click the photo and then check out the large size for details). No one wanted to catch the boquet OR the garter. Bunch of commitmentphobes, I tell you whut. Anyway, good times in Parsons complete with horribly vulgar things written in shoe polish on the couples’ windshields. I hope Keri and Randy are together for the long haul. I’d hate for her to have to put another wedding together. Yow! That’s a lot of work.

Okay, enough internetting. I need to pack and clean up the apartment so I’m not instantly depressed when I get back later this week.

I was cleaning off an old memory card tonight and I stumbled upon a couple of photos I took en route to Hawaii. Specifically, this one, which I really like:

There is something about photographs taken in the air that is necessarily surreal. I look at the photograph and it’s hard for me to remember my time on the plane that led to such a picture. If I squint and try to remember real hard, I can recall snapping that pic with my broke-ass pocket point-and-shoot while my window-seat-having companion was in the can. But beyond that, it’s all been retired to the recesses of my brain, never to be recovered again, most likely.

What’s the point of this post? No clue. Except, maybe, to muse that flying has still not gotten any easier for me these several years I’ve been flying alone. The first time I flew ever was March of 2001. The second time was October of 2001. The difference between the two times was absolutely staggering. I’ll never forget the armed soldiers stationed throughout the Nashville and airport that October. And even though it’s gotten much more lax since then (despite the ridiculous 3-ounce liquid carry-on and take-off-your-shoes rules), it’s still a nerve-wracked ordeal for me. Every time my plane takes off, I get teary-eyed and assume that we’re going to plow into another plane and spend our final moments in a miserable inferno.

So far, I’ve gotten lucky and had nothing but wonderful experiences on airplanes. Still, every time we get up to 30,000 feet and pretend to be comfortable, ordering drinks and snack boxes, I imagine what it might be like were one of our engines to peter out or one of our fellow passengers to decide he/she needed to commandeer the plane for personal reasons, and each time I’m fairly sure I’d not be able to climb over my neighbor and be a hero.

If anything, I’d rely on my sleeping pills to help me doze through the entire crisis.

[for Monday, Oct. 8]

Amber’s flight left around noon on Monday, which left me alone with the car and the island and some vague idea of stuff I needed to do and see before my own flight took off that night at 9.

So I headed to Pearl City to see the famed memorial to the USS Arizona and the other ships that were destroyed when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The place was packed, of course, and I was dismayed to learn that I couldn’t bring my camera bag or purse inside. (This distressed me on lots of levels: it meant no zoom lens but it also meant I had to shove tampons into my pockets, which is so effing tedious.) Inside the welcome center, I requested a ticket (which was free) and was told that my tour would begin in roughly forty minutes. That gave me plenty of time to wander about the grounds and the museum and the gift shop (where I bought my dad a hat and donated $15, which the checkout lady just went crazy about; I guess people my age don’t usually donate anything, or else she’s just a total ham).

Finally the time came for my group to line up for the pre-tour movie.

I’m not totally ignorant of history, but I can also be kind of oblivious to big details that most people know without having to think. So the documentary was a big help for me; it spelled out just how and why the attack happened, and Ben Affleck wasn’t anywhere to be found. Stockard Channing narrated, and damn her if she didn’t make me cry.

The film ended, the doors opened, and we boarded the little shuttle boat to the memorial, which basically consists of this weird-looking abstract white building sitting atop the remains of the USS Arizona, which were left in the harbor to decompose — the final resting place for the many men who died on the ship. There are rusting bits of the ship sticking out of the water — skeletal, mechanical limbs that are nothing more now than man-made coral for the wildlife below. I gazed upon the marble wall of names of the deceased and sighed a popular sigh: fucking war.

It was hard to not get pissed off, standing on that platform and listening to the tour guide tell everyone to keep their voices down, that it was a place of memory and somber reflection. I wasn’t pissed at him, really, but just pissed in general that there are always going to be assholes who think it’s kosher to just blow shit up and send people to their deaths. How fucking arrogant, to do the dirty work of nature, when all we have to do is just not kill each other.

I know, it’s so simple it sounds stupid. But I stand by the idea that it’s possible.

Project 365