So, it’s the end of my last June in Beachtown, and I find myself thinking increasingly about Next Year at This Time, because: 1. I am just that laissez faire and fancy free, and 2. it’s the middle of the damn night, a late night I didn’t expect to even be awake to see, several hours ago, when I was sitting on the couch, munching on popcorn and watching Annie Hall, a movie in which I can see both the innovations of the period and this horrid datedness.
So it's that perplexing duality that I'll blame. Let's blame Annie Hall, you and me. Together. What the hell.
But anyway, now, somehow, it’s one in the damn morning. And I just ran across this thing I wrote back in March, when I was visiting Atlanta, you know, that town I spent years trying to escape:
“Driving along in one’s car, seeing someone talking on her cell phone one car over, you notice her nodding vigorously, listening. Seeing this, you are certain: you feel closer to this stranger-woman than the person on the other end of the phoneline could possibly be capable of feeling.”
Who wants to go back to this world, right? Not you. Not when your shoulder blades have finally unclenched, when you finally live somewhere with clean! air!, where it doesn’t automatically take 20 minutes to reach any given destination, where this annoying term: “roadrage,” has faded to the status of Archaic Fake Word invented by television pundits in the early nineties and then quickly forgotten about by real people.
Why would you ever go back there? I mean, by choice?
Oh, Henshaw. I’ll explain in the morning. I really, really should go to bed, now.
So it's that perplexing duality that I'll blame. Let's blame Annie Hall, you and me. Together. What the hell.
But anyway, now, somehow, it’s one in the damn morning. And I just ran across this thing I wrote back in March, when I was visiting Atlanta, you know, that town I spent years trying to escape:
“Driving along in one’s car, seeing someone talking on her cell phone one car over, you notice her nodding vigorously, listening. Seeing this, you are certain: you feel closer to this stranger-woman than the person on the other end of the phoneline could possibly be capable of feeling.”
Who wants to go back to this world, right? Not you. Not when your shoulder blades have finally unclenched, when you finally live somewhere with clean! air!, where it doesn’t automatically take 20 minutes to reach any given destination, where this annoying term: “roadrage,” has faded to the status of Archaic Fake Word invented by television pundits in the early nineties and then quickly forgotten about by real people.
Why would you ever go back there? I mean, by choice?
Oh, Henshaw. I’ll explain in the morning. I really, really should go to bed, now.
Labels: Atlanta
posted by Alice at 12:59 AM
4 Comments:
Maybe not Atlanta, but there are plenty of other great cities. There must be someplace that combines what you enjoy in Beachtown with what you miss about Atlanta? Whatever happened to Chapel Hill? Or is that way too obvious a comment for 1am musings?
By the way, your amazing last post filled me with massive blog-insecurities about my self-absorbed and uninteresting updates. Must! be! worth! reading!
But you fingernails are filthy, you've got beach tar on your feet.
Oh, bollacks, Megatron. Your cross-country account was riveting and funny, with impressive photography. ("If that's the angle of the picture, then WHO'S DRIVING THE CAR??"). Everyone here: go read it, now.
Also you make me feel less insecure about the unfortunate outfits I ended up wearing covering a number of events. And here I'd thought I was alone. No flip-flops in a forest fire, but many a plain t-shirt that highlighted the amazing flooding powers of my sweat glands. Oh, boy. It's really worth reading the comments, people, for that extra bit of insight.
I had road rage in the beach town...maybe I am very susceptible to it....
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