Southeastern USA around Savannah where I grew up is unsophisticated socially, behind the national average in education and salaries, hesitant to go green, and often twisted and smothered in the name of religion. My adolescence was spent raging against the baptismal drowning by the good-ol-folks of "the village". Evolution had not formed these folks. No, only Adam's rib dripping with sticky BBQ sauce could have birthed intolerant "souls" like these. Raging against what? I did not know. Whatever social norm Dixie had to offer I would loathe it.
Slowly, and for a time, the drawl of my voice transformed into what I approximated to be sanitized mid-western. When engineering school couldn't quench my thirst for hedonism I did what to my father must have seemed the equivalent of joining the circus. I went to art school for five years serving up sixty ounce pitchers of sticky florescent green frozen margaritas to pay for a "fine" art degree. The fraternal and sororital brats feigning southern gents and belles whom I served would ask if I was from up north.
Athens, GA was my Mecca, my Shangri-La, my utopian world scene of thirty thousand sweaty young bodies of all shapes and hues. While writhing in the midst of that hive mind... my persona developed. Time spent in that drunken oasis surrounded by the bible belt desert earned me a set of wings. My wings didn't have feathers or scales. They were made of painters canvas and cane poles like a Da Vinci drawing.
Dreamless and dazed like a hangover I came home. What had I become? A hybrid of Georgia gasoline and Manhattan electricity. The wings became a tent, the tent became sheet rock, and the sheet rock became a cave where I huddled at night during the pit stops of the rat race.
Traveling to amazing places, perfect places, places that people dream about visiting made me understand a little more each time why I often longed for home. The cave became a van, a bicycle, a kayak, and a carriage for exploring the south east coast with camera in hand. Savannah is what I make it. Yes, it can be a sleepy oppressive crap hole. But it is also a sleepy old oaken beauty where you can walk the streets with a cocktail in your hand. Around it are thousands of barrier islands sprawling between Charleston and St. Augustine each with their own tastes and smells.
I've come to love my hometown again with warm ocean, mild winters, truly wild wildlife, antique streets, tropical flora, and sweet ice tea, Hallelujah.
