2003-06-04 1:09 p.m.
Georgia honey, on my mind

My mind keeps flashing back to a year ago.

The first moment it hit me was when I made it past the MARTA station platform on Howard Ave. onto a side street in Candler Park...the smell of earth, trees, life. All of the houses of varying vintages, some newish, some falling apart, some recently patched up with lots of love and sweat (one house, which I remember having only a chain-link fenced-in backyard, now has a deck with an entire level underneath).

Maybe I should just go by myself. I've always been too thoughtful for my own good, but there's always been something about Georgia to me � a mental salve, cool fingers on my temples, kneading out the wanderlust and yearnings I have in favor of a calm. It's not the fields of golden lotus from Odysseus' travels, or even the opium dens of China by comparison, but it inspires both a fire of thought, churning up all my basic ingredients and getting them a-boilin' again, and plugs me back into the Earth, something I've missed desperately since I moved to New York, or even, to Fort Lauderdale.

A lot of problems get solved if I go back to Georgia, besides the obvious psychological cooling: living's cheaper, I can drive anywhere (though that'd mean getting a car), I have 1+ year (depending on when I move) experience as a legal secretary at a huge New York law firm (as well as years of other experience in NYC), a theater background, I know the lay of the land, and I can get my work staged more easily (given that I'm friends with a few different theater companies). I'd have access to Emory's resources again ($300/yr for the gym, natch, and free library use). And I have friends down there. I miss having a lot of folks around. I miss drinking on the porch and doing improv a few nights a week.

Cons? Not a lot. I'd miss NYC and the convenience of the subway. I have no idea if L would go (and I wouldn't if she didn't). I have no idea if the job climate there is worse than here or better. I'd be a large step removed from the comics community (though Tony Harris' studio is down in Hotlanta).

I just remember having a conversation like this with S on a pissy day in Prospect Park, and remembering her getting exasperated with me, saying that I was living in the past.

Maybe it's that my present isn't where I want to be. Maybe I've been on concrete too long. The ocean smelled too good in St. Pete. I think about the thick smog in the city these days and I just want to cry, and not the same tears I let flow on the Brooklyn Ferry.

I know these cravings come and go. I know my yearnings are proportionately difficult to my money troubles, the slowness of forward movement, everything tied to "getting somewhere"...but something in my head's warning me not to ignore them this time.

Hm.