Savannah Smiles

I've been struggling with writer's block (what's new???)... so in the interest of time and necessity I'm going to do a "freewrite" about Savannah because I've been meaning to write this entry for waaaaay too long and I play editor and anal retentive grammar queen too frequently.

Savannah is...

Before I moved here: a memory of my father (hence, the title, but never made the connection until I decided to settle here), a blonde sorority girl with hippie-ish parents, the plains of Africa, the Antebellum South, old $$, "Forrest Gump," "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," haunted mansions, a dark, twisted past with decadent, languorous characters.

Then: my first welcome to the city--1) after driving for hours on a clear Georgia highway for miles, my car enters into a convoluted freeway system suddenly that then opens into small city streets draped with the grey tendrils of Spanish Moss hanging off of Live Oaks and trees that crowd my vision and cast me into a spell of romance and epiphany and recognition.  I write on my Facebook page: OMG... I've been fucked and died and gone to heaven... 2) I pull into the driveway of Fitz's mother's house--his sexy beast of a beat-up, effed-up, open-topped Jeep kind of car thing next to me.  I have to violate the used, crispy, sun-drenched skins of her seats to find the key to his mother's house that he as left hidden in the folds of his car; 3) When Fitz situates me after asking him, "Where am I?" he pulls out a Moleskin-like notebook and pen that I know he's tried out many times for its flow and precision and draws a map.  Then he says to me, "Your house is here...." noncommittal, without reservation or pretense and he continues to make little sketches and lines of what is what and where is where, but I take note and think, "I would never do that.  If I had a friend staying at my mother's house I would never refer to it as 'Your House.'"  I think I am somewhere else.  I am somewhere good.

Now: I am in the "Hostess City of the South"--at every turn I've made, from Fitz's mom's house to looking for an apartment to finding an apartment and getting my apartment broken into to deciding to stay despite not having a computer or a job, I have been met by others with kindness, true generosity and genuine hospitality, the kind that comes with no expectation of return favor or debt; people spend time together here--friends pop by at a moment's notice and evenings are spent talking on the porch; though crime is rampant, it is also as random as any other city (the robbery at my house was truly a flook), and despite the insinuation of danger (dark alleys, questionable characters roaming the streets at night, violence that occurs closer than one would like because neighborhoods, the poor and the wealthy, exist side by side), at its precipice, there is also an equal amount of implied safety and discovery that can only be experienced by straddling its fence; my friend, Daphne, came to visit from LA and we jumped the fence together one night--wandering into a Greek Revival "haunted mansion" at 2:00am led by a severely intoxicated doltish guy who said his friend lived there, Hermes, a waifish young man in a newsboy cap and patched trousers, looking straight out of a 1920s film, took us on a tour of the historic home built in the 1830s, General Sherman and Robert E. Lee among its visitors.  Hermes, a self-proclaimed trainhopper, and I sat and talked over cheap wine and rolled cigarettes until the sun came up as we traded traveller's tales and kind of fell-in-love for a moment, but never kissed, never touched just kind of marveled at our differences and strange encounter;

the past and present is intertwined here, the Revolutionary War and Civil War as immediate and accessible as the Krispy Kreme or Five Guys Burgers & Fries; the foodies that are slowly infiltrating this poorly-represented food destination brought to you by Paula Deen are creating wonderful neighborhood specialty stores (Form on Habersham), beer & burger bistros (Green Truck), $2 slider and taco joints (Sammy Green's), many, many upscale wine bars and restaurants, and the incomparable standard bearer of fine dining, Elizabeth on 37th (of which another blog entry shall be expressly devoted); there are coffee houses where everyone knows your name, warehouses used for intimate showings of quality independent and foreign films, artists who work everyday at their craft, my neighbor whittles and carves wood in a studio he built in his backyard (in little more than a week!), a gentle man in his 70s who resembles Popeye's crony pogo-sticked across country and took photographs of homeless people that he compiled into a beautiful, self-published book, the scores of SCAD kids, hipsters who bike the park-like streets of the Historic District on fixed gears, cruisers with cute baskets, and expensive, fully-loaded racers by day and take-over the bars at night; nothing is planned here, everything simply happens and evolves, the integrity of the city intact.  My love affair with Savannah has only begun... the story to be continued...

Recap + Resituate = Renew

I decided to move to Savannah on a gut instinct--there were no rational or practical reasons for me to do so.  I didn't have a job lined up, no one to move here for or that it made sense for me to settle in this city.  I think when I left Los Angeles back in April of last year, there were a few things at work: my spirit was being depleted and I could feel it as I scrambled to do what was merely rote, hardly managing to create anything although I wanted to, my relationships with family and friends skimmed at the surface, the markings of an illogical love affair beginning to rear its nasty head, my skin breaking out from the pollution and exhaustion and combination of unwanted stress and general ennui that seemed to infect my life in LA.  I was curious to discover Tennessee or Atlanta or whatever else would reveal itself to me.   I think once I began my journey to The South and started to discover its beauty, its deep meaning and subtle revelations, a seed was planted to settle somewhere, here there, but somewhere in The South.

I love Los Angeles and I always will, but it was time for me to leave.  I drove cross-country by myself--the open road reminding me of the vistas and pulsing images coursing through my mind, as I slept in LA,  daydreaming or remembering past lives, future visions or present encounters.  I aimed for Tennessee, Ragmar's invitation was my only cause.  I only had to get to Tennessee, at that point, and all would be fine.

After eight days, I found myself driving off of a highway clearly marked on my iPhone Google map into roads that became smaller and smaller and less distinct as night descended--bends and curves melding into darkness and quiet.  I wonder still to this day: How did people navigate foreign roads before GPS?  Sure, there's a Thomas Guide--that's what I used back in the day to get from Point A to Point B, but what did they use before GPS?  Before Thomas Guides?  Instinct?  Sure.  Landmarks, markers.  That's what I had to learn, eventually, during the short amount of time I lived in the country when bends in the roads and darkness intertwined.  Thank Divinity that Ragmar met me on the road leading to his house when he did.  I would not have found the entrance to his kingdom otherwise...

[Note to Self and You: Ragmar's Kingdom shall be written about more in depth soon... I have much to catch up on, but his kingdom, The Retreat and its inhabitants not only deserve to be written about more in depth, but, also, because we have much to learn from them....]

After two months in the backwood country of Tennessee, I then set out to find my next destination: Atlanta.  I stayed with my friend, Charles, for a day or two.  He is my big bro--one of the sweet lights in my life--and his home will always feel like home to me, just due to his generous nature and the nature of our relationship.  I've known him since I was two years old... or, gosh, maybe still in the womb?  I don't know.  He and his sister, Leigh--our stories always get conflated.  The three or four of us (including my younger sister, Cleo) grew up with stories of our parents--how they met, how they grew up-- and his mother, Belle-- a beautiful Chinese American woman born in Mississippi, was always a comforting, familiar person/presence in my life, as were they.  I had already stayed in Charles' house in Atlanta for a long weekend when I was still living in the country in Tennessee and taking weekend jaunts to this place or that place.  After my two months in Tennessee seemed to come to an end I set out for Charles and Atlanta.

Atlanta reminded me too much of Los Angeles, but in a Southern way.  I loved that when going to the Whole Foods market in Atlanta, I was surrounded by Black people.  White people were the minority.  Actually, that was the only "cool" thing that stood out to me as an unusual and remarkable moment during my time in Atlanta--upscale, food-conscious Blacks checking labels and the ingredients of food as a few White people did the same.  Always, in the scheme of things--of White and Black--I was the voyeur, a mere Asian or "Oriental" to be looked at, studied or misinterpreted, and yet still looking, studying and [mis-]interpreting "them"--a weird, strange, beautiful, decadent conflation of necessity and privilege, but there was too much traffic in Atlanta--congestion, too many "city" people unsettled, searching, going, doing and masked by bravado or tenuous certainty.

Then, my friend, Fitz, invited me to Savannah... I was so close, why not?  When would I get the opportunity again to check it out being so far from home, so way out east?  Why the hell not?  My best friend, Ziggie, had lived here after she graduated from Vassar--her roomie was from an old Savannah family and it was the perfect post-college segway for her to gain some work experience before going on to grad school.  She lived here for a year during the 1990s.  When I decided to settle here, now, she asked me, "Why???"  The Savannah she knew then was so different from the Savannah I experienced now in 2010.

She said the Savannah she knew, then, was scary... and I could see or understand how that could be--a mere fifteen years ago.  Savannah is cast with the dripping grey tendrils of Spanish Moss--haunting, eerie, lovely and romantic.  Perhaps, fifteen years ago in 1995, the dirtiness of Savannah was even dirtier; the darkness, darker: spells cast from its Antebellum past, Blacks disenfranchised, even more close to the Eighties, the Civil Rights Movement, Slavery.  There is a dark history in The South--not ever to be forgotten or unacknowledged, misunderstood or not made right (if it can be made right), but the darkness that Ziggie may have encountered a mere fifteen years ago is not what I encountered or discovered in 2010.

Savannah, when I first met her, made me squeal on my Facebook page, "OMG.  I've been fucked and died and gone to fucking heaven!!"  Yeah, yeah... I know.  So crass.  But that's me, too (at times... I can't help it :-)).  But, I couldn't help it!  After driving for miles upon miles from the traffic and congestion of Atlanta, I arrived into a helping of trees and darkness and dripping Spanish Moss and I felt like I had been released into something beautiful  and dark, then delivered into something more... nothing I could wrap my head around then, just utter beauty.  Refreshing dark, dark beauty.

I have been fortunate to see and experience many different sides of Savannah since I've been here (some of my experiences to be recapitulated in another blog entry): the privileged, the Black, the White, the immigrant Asians and Latinos, the artists, the darkness, the light.  Most of my time thus far has been spent as an observer--always taking notes to write further about.  When, in October, my apartment was broken into and my beloved computer stolen, I had to nurse some wounds and learn how to live again without immediate access to the tool I've used to write, but I am blessed and a computer has been returned once again to my hands.  Though I wanted to write on my blog (and otherwise) I was forced to learn how to do so again using only the most simple of devices: pen and paper.

When my apartment was broken into and my computer was stolen and after having such a difficult time finding a job here, I thought "Savannah doesn't want me.  Maybe I don't belong here."  But other things, people and experiences have manifested since then.  The overriding theme, however, of my time in Savannah has been the generous, genuine hospitality of the people--they don't it call "The Hostess City of The South" for nothing.  I think it was the true hospitality I experienced over and over again that made me fall-in-love with this city and its people.  As the days grow since I've been here and I'm less of a visitor and becoming more of a settler, I still encounter people's warmth and generosity.  Though I've encountered difficulties since I've been here, it is the people and the heart of Savannah that makes me feel like I have arrived Home.