Virginia Woolf, on writing

"Anyone moderately familiar with the rigours of composition will not need to be told the story in detail; how he wrote and it seemed good; read and it seemed vile; corrected and tore up; cut out; put in; was in ecstasy; in despair; had his good nights and bad mornings; snatched at ideas and lost them; saw his book plain before him and it vanished; acted his people's parts as he ate; mouthed them as he walked; now cried; now laughed; vacillated between this style and that; now preferred the heroic and pompous; next the plain and simple; now the vales of Tempe; then the fields of Kent or Cornwall; and could not decide whether he was the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world." --from Orlando


In case anyone was confused, this is why I am like that.

Well, that figures

No sooner do I start on a Project than the forces of the universe intervene. That is to say, I got a job at Georgia Southern, which necessitated a swift move to Statesboro. I've just survived my first week of a 5/5 load, all my stuff is still in boxes, and my cats are still mad at me. And, need I point out, I won't be doing my planned review of all the hiking trails in Athens. Alas.

There are some promising locations here...the McTell Trail, as in Blind Willie, as in "Statesboro Blues." However, it is too damn hot. After it cools off a little, I will talk about the walking...

Surprise Frog

Today's walk: Birchmore Trail, Phase I

Location: Memorial Park

Difficulty: A bit hilly and rugged in spots.

Distance: Map says 2.25 miles, my pedometer says 2.

How to find it: It's behind the administrative building, next to the entrance to Bear Hollow. There are also some entrances from Gran Ellen, Lumpkin St., and Milledge Terrace.

Map accuracy: Fairly good. There's a shorter loop on the near side of Gran Ellen which isn't shown on the map.

Condition of the trail: This section of the trail is well-used. There are some tree falls, but no big obstructions. The ruggedness is due to the terrain; there are steps and hills. You also have to cross Gran Ellen twice.

Critters: Not as many as at the big pond, but there are some creekside bits and a small pond. I startled a frog. It also startled me.

It's a nice walk, with a bit of up and down for exercise. It goes near Lumpkin St. at one point so there is traffic noise there, but for the most part you are walking through a wooded valley along a creek. Sitting on a rock in the midst of flowing water is one of my favorite things to do, and there are several opportunities for that along this trail.

Walking around town with my feet on the ground

I've been walking more, generally speaking, since I started driving less. Currently I have a rental car that runs on E85 so I feel a little less horrified by driving it, even though I'm well aware that ethanol has its own issues. I decided to go looking for a guide book on walks and trails in Athens, or at least a definitive map. Surely, I thought, there must be one.

Apparently not. With all the hippies, good ole boys, ecology majors, and assorted outdoor enthusiasts in this town, you'd think there would be some kind of guide to the trails around here. You would be wrong.

Obviously there is a crying need for one, because I want one. Obviously, the thing to do is create one. I don't have a publisher but I do have this here blog. Onward!

Today's walk: Birchmore Trail, Phase II

Location: Memorial Park

Difficulty: A bit hilly and rugged in spots.

Distance: approximately 1.5 miles, according to my pedometer. I offer no guarantees for the accuracy of my pedometer, because I never calibrated the thing properly and it may prevaricate. But that's what it says. If you walk through the neighborhoods from Milledge Ave. or a bus stop, add another mile and a half or so.

How to find it: You can come in the main entrance to the park at Gran Ellen, or you might try going down Habersham to the cul-de-sac; there's an entrance there that leads more or less directly to the dog park. You can also get a map of the trail from the park office. There are some alternate entrances/unofficial trails from various neighborhoods that surround the park, but if you don't live there they will be exceedingly hard to find and if you do you probably already know where they are.

Map accuracy: Not too good. The map makes it look like the trail parallels the driveway to one side, but there isn't actually a marked trail there; the driveway IS the trail. Once you get down the hill, follow the sidewalk even though the map makes it look like the trail should go between the restrooms and the picnic shelter. It doesn't. At the SW end of the pond, there's a bit marked with rocks that looks like it's the beginning of a trail, but it currently ends in a pile of dirt.

Condition of the trail: Really easy around the pond, good for the portions close to the dog park, pretty rough elsewhere. The map says "cleared and flagged" but the upper loop hasn't been cleared in a while; there's a pretty big tree down that you have to get around. It can also sometimes be hard to tell the difference between the actual trail, the access road, and little spurs that people have made. However, if you like solitude on your walks, and wildlife, this is a good place. I didn't see a single other person while walking the upper loop, but I did see several species of birds. And ran into a few spider webs.

Critters: Squirrels, mockingbirds, cardinals, wrens, a brown thrasher...the usual suspects. When circling the pond I saw a female mallard strolling down the sidewalk, and you can usually see ducks, geese, and turtles (mostly cooters) in the pond. A great blue heron flew in a big circle above my head and off towards the west.

We keep calling it an addiction. When do we hit rock bottom?

I'm home safe and sound now, my cats sitting at my feet in silent welcome. There was some doubt about the getting home part...

I've had more trouble with my car in the last three weeks than I've had since I have owned it. Battery went dead; replaced it. Someone backed into me. Car randomly wouldn't start again. Then the tire went flat. The first and third item could be connected, and be the kind of random mechanical thing that goes wrong with a car of a certain age. The others? Not so much.

In any case, I'm taking it as a sign. There's that video going around, wherein cats re-enact the BP oil spill in ninety seconds or something to that effect. At the end, it says, "You're still not pissed enough to stop driving your car."

Indeed. Our last two Presidents...if not more...have referred to our dependence on oil as an "addiction." One of the symptoms of an addiction is that the addict continues the addictive behavior, even in the face of evidence that it is destructive; even after it harms those he or she should care about; even after it ruins the addict's life and reputation, even after it causes him or her to violate previously held principles and associate with questionable people because they are the ones willing to continue to feed the addiction.

We watch birds and dolphins and communities dying on the news and are horrified; then we turn the TV off and drive to work. We ignore strong evidence that we are making our planet uninhabitable, over-inflate anything that suggests otherwise and crow that it PROVES those scientists were wrong all along, then ignore it again when those allegations turn out to be false. Our continued military entanglements in the Middle East, including at least one of our current two wars, are directly related to our desire to protect our access to the oil resources of the region, and our reputation has suffered profoundly as a result. We cozy up to and support regimes whose values we do not share, because they have oil and we want it. We have become a people who think it's ok to invade a country that did us no harm, and to torture suspected enemies, and to swallow obvious lies about our government's motives with equanimity...when that country happens to have a lot of oil. Oil has shaped US foreign policy in profound ways for the last 70 years, and the results are ugly.

Our Gulf coast is dying. So is the Nigerian coast, and that's our doing too, because 40% of our imported oil comes from there. The Gulf disaster is already the biggest ecological disaster in US history, and it's not nearly over yet. It's full impact has not yet been seen or estimated. It is much, much worse than we think. The last biggest ecological disaster in US history was also an oil spill.

Another symptom of addiction is amnesia.

They say addicts won't change their ways until they reach rock bottom. Have we reached rock bottom yet? God, I hope so. I don't want to see what is worse than this. Of course, "rock bottom" is relative. People reach it at different points, objectively; but they always reach it when they look in the mirror and say, "I don't want to live like this any more."

I don't want to live like this any more. I don't want to feel like I am purchasing lives for the sake of my convenience every time I fill up my gas tank.

Yet...and this is the bitter horror of it...I can't simply declare my personal independence from oil just like that. I have a car because I need one. Like a lot of you do. Our whole culture is built around cars, which is precisely why this is such a huge intractable problem. But cultures are made up of individual people, and there's a whole lot of room between everything and nothing. There are more ways to beat an addiction than going cold turkey. Instead of boycotting BP, boycott your own participation in this collective oil addiction. Find a way that counts, that matters to you.

I don't drive a whole lot anyway; UGA has a pretty good bus system, and Athens is a relatively walker-and-biker-friendly city. I could probably cut down my driving to one day a week, run my errands on that day, and walk or ride the bus the rest of the time. If I drive to Atlanta for the weekend...which I sometimes do...then I'll make up for it by skipping a week. If I go to visit someone who lives outside the reach of the bus, I can go by the grocery store on the way home. I can save my pennies so the next car I buy will run on biodiesel or be electric.

Another way would be to calculate my typical mileage per week, and cut it down. Could you cut a third of your driving out? Half? What about buying local produce instead of something shipped in from halfway across the country? That counts too.

Use public transportation. Politically, push for more of it...more buses (ours run on natural gas) and more trains. If Amtrak went where I wanted to go in a rational amount of time, I'd never get on a plane. If there was a train from Athens to Atlanta (like there used to be) I'd hardly ever drive. Walk, ride a bicycle, carpool. Do it like your life depends on it, and the lives of our descendants.

Oil is energy; energy is power. Being addicted to power is never pretty, and never good. We can change the way we relate to power, politically, inter-personally, economically, and in our relationship with the natural world. We have to. It's the way forward, out of this hole.

Clouds in my coffee

A while back my friend George and I went to brunch at the Globe here in Athens. They have clear coffee cups, and so when I poured milk in my coffee I had a good view of the little fractal Brownian motion dance that coffee and milk do.

I said, "Ooo, look! Swirlies!"

Almost the first thing that another friend, Mark, said to me...when we met lo these many years ago...was that I seemed like I was tripping without the drugs.

I assume he meant that I'm the kind of person who will pour milk in her coffee and go "Ooo, look! Swirlies!"

I also like to go on and on about things I find Significant and Terribly Interesting, and laugh at random shit because sometimes the world just strikes me as absolutely fucking hilarious. I'm fine with that. Think of all the time, money, and trouble I save not dropping acid.

What bothers me, though, is that 1) people don't allow themselves to be that open or delighted with the world unless they have chemical intervention, and 2) this kind of behavior is considered strange or "off." If you laugh at the world because it's funny or you're in love with it because it's beautiful, you're not, I don't know, serious or adult enough or something. As if grimness were a virtue.

How can you not be in love with the world? The motion of a bird as it flies, or the way things smell at different times of year, all the details of the way a tree looks from the rough grey and black texture of its bark to the rhythm and pattern of leaves on branches, clouds in the depths of air and the color of the light....or the way milk swirls in elegant slow motion when poured into coffee. Those things are offered all the time, not even for the asking...they're just there, because they are. All around you every day is a wonderment of delight.

It's not that I don't know about the bad stuff. I've lived through some of the bad stuff, myself, and I have been wretched and angry and sad. That's why I'm so attentive to the glory in everyday things; there have been times when that is what saved me from despair.

Do you have so little sorrow in your life that you don't need beauty? Is your life so full of joy already that you have to shut some of it out? Do you think if you squander happiness that you'll run out, or that you're supposed to save it up for important occasions? I assure you that it doesn't work that way.

The Ghost of Bobby Lee - National - The Atlantic

The Ghost of Bobby Lee - National - The Atlantic

"This isn't about honoring the past--It's about an inability to cope with the present."

Tell it, Ta-Nahesi.

Here is an example of the kind of thing that drives me crazy: "Tara Estates," in Walton County, a development of houses in the $150,000+ range. Do I need to parse for you all the things that are wrong with that?

Southerners like to say that the war on the Union side was really about money, and not morals. It is absolutely true that sentiment against slavery didn't start to turn until it was no longer profitable for northern shipping companies, and also that northern industrialists didn't fancy having to pay tariffs on cotton like everybody else. However...

Axiom: ALL wars are, at bottom, about money. One way or another. This does not negate the fact that individual people may have other reasons for supporting a given side; many people fought for the Confederacy out of regional loyalty and not because they actually supported slavery. Note I say "fought." I am not letting the Confederate leadership off the hook whatsoever.

Because it was absolutely about money on their part. Not only were slaves the single greatest asset in the US economy, like the article says, the particular people who started the whole mess...the South Carolina secessionists...were very decidedly motivated by money. They were Beaufort plantation owners, who were getting ten times as much per pound for their Sea Island cotton than the price for regular cotton. They were getting absolutely filthy stinking rich, so rich that they would do things like build a mansion in town just to throw parties. Much like the super-rich of today, when they got the idea that the government might interfere in their very lucrative exploitation of other humans, they were horrified and decided they must do something! And had enough power and influence to make it stick. The idea that the Union side was motivated by financial considerations but the Confederacy wasn't is a myth.

But modern people in the South don't believe that just because they're stupid or they don't read history. They believe it because the image of the agrarian, idealized, anti-commercial South was carefully created and promoted and mythologized. And not just here, though plenty of Southern authors participated in the literary version of the myth-making. People in the North ate it up with a spoon. Writers like Joel Chandler Harris (who grew up poor, spent plenty of time as a child around black people, and in my personal opinion knew better) helped create that myth because that's what his readers wanted and would pay for...his mostly Northern readers. We got noble savagized, or noble agrarianized. We are not the only ones who worship our ancestors as they never were. Hell, much of Southern literature in the 20th century could be understood as rebellion against that, or reaction to it. The consequences are still reverberating. As we can see.