The Middle Of Somewhere

 

January 2024

Crossroads, seem to come and go, yeah
The gypsy flies from coast to coast
Knowing many, loving none
Bearing sorrow having fun ...

A bird sang on a cold Sunday morning and a week began. My head was empty and that is the best way to roll out of bed, go downstairs and make coffee. Nothing except coffee needed to be made, not the bed or decisions. This was a planned week off from novel writing after a very productive week before.

It was a week that I wanted it to snow, but it did not. Instead I enjoyed the snow in Louisville at the end of my fingertips. It was a week dressed in wool in the wind, the sun and the rain that stretched from Woodstock to the northwest, Dawsonville to the north, Gainesville to the northeast and Warner Robins to the south.

Roads had me. It was a week of being in the middle of somewhere in the middle of something. The unfamiliar and the familiar were all the same like the double yellow line. I really am the character Chris M. Rhodes from my books as much as I am Chris M. Vise.

Bennett Street Atlanta. January 2024.

It was a week of buying furniture and art. Legs were stretched, a salesperson carried a lamp for me assuming I was too old and a stranger talked about cell phones in an old mill. It was the South as it was long ago faded like jeans hanging from a clothesline. I could love it again like watching Coal Miner's Daughter for the thousandth time. Somewhere Dew and Loretta were cutting up and ordering sliced bologna in a general store.

Again the morning's come
Again he's on the run
Sunbeams shining through his hair
Appearing not to have a care...

 

Pretty roads were traveled and the miles climbed only to be erased by a head on a pillow and a quilt pulled up high. Georgia Highway 11 between Gray in Jones County and Monticello in Jasper County was some of the prettiest two-lane country road I have seen in Georgia. We drifted through places called Round Oak, Wayside, Adgateville, Hillsboro and places that once had names, but only the road, the train tracks, the pines and broken down homes remain. It was a nice stretch of road from Flovilla by Indian Springs in Butts County down to Forsyth in Monroe County on Georgia Highway 42 too. The quiet was as persistent as the January cold.

It was a week that reminded me that the moments I ever loved Atlanta were few and gone. Sitting in traffic, hunting limited detours and holding back the frustration of being inconvenienced by careless drivers who needed to crash into each other on the interstate was enough.

 

Monticello, Georgia. January 2024

 

Long shadows on the town square in Monticello came from the sun and history. A teenage couple walked into a local coffee shop, cars circled the square to get to some place else in four directions and my head filled.

Crossroads, will you ever let him go? No, no, no
Will you hide the dead man's ghost?
Or will he lie, beneath the clay?
Or will his spirit float away?

 

I began jotting down thoughts about Confederate monuments and the darkest part of my family's history that I have never whispered or hinted. I had a thousand words before the spell broke and I needed a break. I was uncertain if I wanted to write that. I suppose it means I should. The easier something is to write, the less interesting it is.

Macon was a city that I only knew from I-75 going to Florida or I-16 going to Savannah. It was a place to get gas or use the rest area. Many times I had said that I was going to the cherry blossom festival there and many times I found a reason not to go. Macon could never seem to capture me. It was odd for me, I had walked on the streets of the other small Georgia cities such as Columbus and Augusta, but never Macon.

A river and a railroad passing time. January 2024.

I liked how lost in time and left behind it felt. The states of decay that the South has cannot be achieved elsewhere as if the red clay and the kudzu are special ingredients mixed with the heat and humidity. The impression that Macon had on me that once it was important and now it was a relic. In the smaller places of Georgia you see the connections and similarities the state has to its Southern neighbors that metro Atlanta does not have. I could have been just as easily in Gadsden or Fort Payne or Meridian instead of Macon, but those places did not give us Otis Redding or Little Richard or Ronnie Hammond (lead singer of the Atlanta Rhythm Section) or The Allman Brothers Band. There must be something special about the crossroads there and rolling down Highway 41.

Warner Robins, Georgia. January 2024.

I-985. January 2024.

The sun set on Saturday and a week ended. My feet went on my desk and outside as I write this it is nineteen degrees in the backyard. My lips are chapped and I am a little sore. It is time to be home again and to empty the head that is in the middle of thinking about something.