a cleaner shade of thinking time: January 2007

Home of 'Mizz Skahhhlit'...

...and...home of me!!

I'd like to give a shout out to my travel companion -- Percival the Poinsettia
he's a trooper, I only watered him once!

driving through eastern Georgia...

Peach trees! (they're not as pretty in winter)

I love trains. I think they remind me of College Station. and I love College Station.

this is the water tower in Fort Valley. I got lost in Fort Valley.

sometimes you just think, God?...gimme a sign!

I'm not ranking Savannah, so this was just my 'vacation' in Savannah :)

Savannah is sooooo pretty, gah! it's beautiful! some say it's the most haunted city in the U.S. I wonder who decides this, by which measure does it beat out all the other haunts? Some people think the Spanish moss is creepy, but Tampa is all Spanish moss and i don't think it's creepy. It did sorta have that Nawlin's, romantic, very old, lots of history feel...The city was laid out in squares of parks. That is the extent of my history knowledge, I should be ashamed. Please read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil for more details.

There is a fantastic art school in Savannah that my friend Dave graduated from. Wish I had visited him while he was there, hung out with the 'cool crowd' :) The art school has bought up tons of old buildings all over Savannah, the school is spread out pretty much everywhere. And anywhere you go, restaurants, coffee shops... there hangs student artwork, soooo nice! But very different than Austin. Savannah's art scene seemed to have a striving/am-i-good-enough/serious/this-is-how-i'll-pay-my-rent feel, while Austin seems more raw, obvious, confident, maybe garish? Maybe it's the difference between southeast coast and southwest?

I stayed with a young couple from Wisconsin. They lived in the entire upstairs part of a big, beautiful home in the historic district. Hard wood floors, fancy wide baseboards and crown moulding, inset bookshelves, a teeny library, a long narrow yoga room, original bathroom fixtures. They took me out that night in Savannah, and two hours in, he leaned round from the driver's seat and informed me that they had broken up two days prior...'why do you always have to bring that up?' she chided.
'Oh! really? ...oh, i'm...i-i'm, sorry? that's, uhhm...' what the hell was I supposed to say? I had JUST met them!
Throughout the night, I studied their dynamic and began to feel so sorry for this guy. He did something with computers (his explanation sailed 10 feet over my head), they'd been friends, they hooked up, he moved to Savannah for work, she tagged along because she was bored in Wisconsin. This girl is beyond beautiful and she absolutely knows it. She was very kind and warm toward me, but she had the confidence and apathy of someone who's never been hurt before. When it was just her and me, I asked, 'Well, are you ok? Are you gonna move back to Wisconsin?' 'Oh, no, I'm fine. I get over relationships pretty quick. He'll be fine, too. I'm already starting to see someone.' I watched as he fought his natural instinct to treat her like a queen; begin to walk toward her car door, think twice and double back around to his side. Later that night, he would tease her about this other guy, and the sleeping situation, and who he was gonna bring home; you could tell that he was trying to play it cool, trying to mimic her apathy. I wanted to shake her. Anyway...

I saw this at the waterfront restaurant we went to...hard to imagine a time when this was taken seriously.

Later we went to the Mellow Mushroom. Apparently, it's all over the South. Pizza and beer.

More Savannah stuff...

technicolor?

I'd forgotten the damp smell of things that grow in the shade:)

pretty colors

for some reason, I really love pics of stairs
I'm sure there's a psychological explanation:)

scary stairs!!

there were plenty of beautiful, tallllllll, detailed, old churches

I sorta had to climb in the bushes for this shot, I think someone from a visiting tour bus took a picture of me flailing my way out of the bushes

walking down this sidewalk, I passed a fanstastically creepy cemetary
creepy in a peaceful sorta way
like, it's ok to have nightmares and dark corners