Skywriting and Trail Walking

There are few places in the world where you can truly experience freedom.  Away from technology,  other people, all the social restraints and mental hangups we all have about most everything.  No financial issues, no cars screaming to get gas, your eyes constantly on the arrow pointing dangerously close to "E," hoping that it'll get you home and back to a gas station by the time you get paid again.  There are very few places in this world where all that goes away, leaving us with our own two feet  and our minds.  One thing I know, there's nothing like the grocery store parking lot.

Back a couple decades ago, when Walmarts didn't dot the Conyers countryside, when there was a Richway, and a Big Star, and the building behind Arby's was actually a movie theater, there was a 16 year old boy just beginning work as a Bagger at Bruno's Finer Foods.  I was the fastest bagger there, and second fastest cashier.  But late at night, when the other baggers would rather be in the back pretending to put the fruits and herbs back in the refrigerator, I'd go get buggies out of the parking lot.  And there was total freedom away from most everything.  It was in the early nineties, so the only music available was that in my head.  And I sang those songs while gathering carts.  Only 5 at a time, for safety reasons (I think I was the only one to follow that, it was so "manly" to get 12 carts and push them all in at once).  My favorite song to sing out there was "Skywriter" by Art Garfunkel and Jimmy Webb.  Simply wonderful.  That was freedom.

 I'm reminded of this as I walk through the trails in Rockdale       County.  There are no people around, no financial pressures, just the ticking of time keeping pace with my walking staff.  So a week ago, I parked on the north side of the Rockdale River Trail (you can find it on Google Maps by looking up Daniels Bridge Rd, off Union Church Rd.) and walked to the clearing where the power lines stretched north to the power station.  I started south, trudging up the hill, higher and higher, until just before the top I looked over and saw Stone Mountain over the horizon to the north.  Don't think I've ever seen Stone Mountain from Rockdale.

Over the top of the hill, underneath the giant towers of flowing electricity, and continuing, there's a valley of green flora, weeds and insects.  Grasshoppers flying away from the trail, the cicadas rubbing their legs together in the hot Georgia summer.  To the right, a couple of houses are far off into the adjacent forest, and one has a rooster, so it crows, not knowing the time
of day.  This path would take me into a valley and up another hill to East Fairview Road, but I had already been that way.  This time, I turned east and climbed another steep hill to a grassy area.  On the left, a large granite outcrop grew out of the forest like some ancient ruins.  I climbed to the top of the rocks and looked around at the beauty of the trees, the grass, the sounds of life all around me.  Around the grass, dirt had been mounded together to make ramps for motorcycles, mopeds, and the like.  I wondered, as I listened to everything, why people on motorcycles would so freely roam this area, filling up the valleys with noise and not caring about everything that surrounds them.  I wondered how many people on foot had climbed those hills, reached the top on their own, and saw everything that Rockdale County had to offer.

Then I reached the gazebo overlooking the paved trail far below, next to the South River.  It reminded me of Stonehenge, some structure built long ago to watch over everything.  Turns out, it was an Eagle Scout project made by a neighbor of mine, Keith Asher, and his troop.  The gazebo had been pulled off it's original foundation by those same moped riders, but it was still very secure and well built.  I felt like I had made it to some end goal, standing atop some mountaintop, and it was good.

There are other trails I have followed where each dirt path had imprinted on it the hooves of horses (and honestly, I had to watch where I stepped).  Again, the trails were filled with sights that you just don't see going about your daily chores, a loan tree towering above the rest, plants I had never seen with soft, furry leaves, the cooler breezes going through the forest as the sun began to set.  And while I respect the people who traverse this area on their horses, I still think that these areas would be better enjoyed on foot.   There are similar trails at the Georgia International Horse Park, but according to the map, the trails are divided between bike paths and horse trails.  Would that we be able to walk any square inch of this Earth with our own two feet.  Just to walk, we should be able to go anywhere, but the fences and the signs and the obstacles that our laws put in place keep us in tight quarters.  Walking costs nothing except time, harms nothing, wears nothing out save the soles of our shoes.  It takes no maintenance, no oil changes, no cleaning of waste products.  It is marvelous and wonderful and if we could rid ourselves of the wheels and machines that walk for us, we would be in control of where we went.

A car can only go on streets, the width restricts us, the gas limits us.  But if we could walk to everywhere we needed, we would be totally free to explore and expand indefinitely.  There is nothing to keep our legs from traveling anywhere we wanted.  That is freedom.  You will not find true freedom cruising along the highways of America, although it certainly is tempting.  In my opinion, you will find the open freedom that I seek only on your own two feet, walking up hills and through valleys to places unknown.  May I never run out of trails to travel, nor miles to walk.

Home

I recently took a walk through my neighborhood, with my trusty walking stick in hand, just for exercise, and because moving keeps me from being cranky.  Anyway... I noticed that everyone was out mowing their lawns, or blowing leaves from the front yard, constantly maintaining the outside of the houses.  My main thought was why would anyone want to have something that large to take care of.  I'll admit it, I'm lazy.  I don't want leaves to rake and grass to mow and ivy to cut off the house side.  I've always said that I would be perfectly happy living in a small apartment, or an out of the way fishing shack.  I remember driving down 212 on the way to Milledgeville seeing a log cabin type house right next to Lake Sinclair, and I thought that would be the best place to live, out of the way of the world (well, it was next to the highway), and next to a lake.  Just give me a broadband line to the Internet and I'd be all set.  Or another "house" I remember seeing... I was jumping on the trampoline with a friend of mine in Milledgeville, off in the middle of nowhere, and next to the trampoline was a small trailer/house that couldn't have been more than a bed, a table, a kitchen and bathroom, all in the same room, it seems like.  Probably no bigger than my bedroom. I asked Marcus what that was, and he said that someone lived there.  I'd be happy there, as little as it was to take care of.

And all these houses, spread out everywhere in my neighborhood, with all that work that goes into it, wouldn't people be just as happy in apartments? Wouldn't Le Corbusier have loved to make the housing for an entire city, leaving the land to be used for leisure, education, preservation, natural living? Or people living in those places underground, with the same intents for the land.  I'm not an environmentalist, by any means, but I see the construction of new buildings and houses and Publix shopping centers (that in a later blog) and I get depressed.  All that wonderful forest land being toward down just so we can put up another box.  It's not worth it.  Why don't we let the forests be, and be a world that lives with the world that we have been put on.  I mean, Earth is our "Home," for the most universal meaning of the word.  It's where we live, and keeping the natural beauty of this planet is very important.  I mean, we could take everyone in my neighborhood, put them in a tall building, both above and below ground, give them wonderful apartment spaces for the cost of the houses they currently live in, and return that space to the trees and animals.  I mean a huge building, with fireproof protectors since I know that every apartment building in Atlanta seems to catch on fire.  And below ground would be the commercial section much like the Metro area in Washington DC, and away from the building would be a school and church, partnered with the outside world.  I know I've said these things in other blogs (click on the label for Le Corbusier at the end of this blog).

So what is "home?"  Why should the people want to own houses?  I know that Locke used (paraphrased) the idea of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Property" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_happiness for the evolution from Locke's statement to the Declaration of Independence), and the stacks of people living in shanties in London and in Europe was far different from the wide open spaces that the colonists found when they came here to America.  Here, owning a piece of that vast country became everyone's dream. To have a house, to have the freedom and privacy, it was engrained into the very core of living in the United States. And to live in a country where the government couldn't take that freedom or privacy away from its citizens, that's where "home" becomes very important.  Democracy allows for the houses to be built, for the dreams to be realized, and without this, the walls won't keep anyone, be it the mobs or tribal kings, the governments or the terrorists, the churches and the kings, from entering and taking at will.

(Look up Winslow Homer's paintings for ones like this at the right. He painted rustic American and Carribean scenes during the late 1800's when urbanization drove people into the cities and away from the small towns, but also at a time when Manifest Destiny drove people west throughout the Plains and into the West.  It reminds me of the Oklahoma Land Run in 1889, when settlers sought out land to build their own houses and farms.  I participated in a mock land run at my Elementary School in 1987 before I moved to Georgia.)

The American Dream.... for everyone to own a home.  Forgive me if I think people took that too literally.  We all had to own a home, no matter what it took, or what legislation had to be brought forward for the banks to give everyone a loan to own a home.  Obviously, that didn't work.  And now there are a bunch of empty houses all over the place while those that were living in them are now stacked up in apartments, if they're lucky, or living in the basements of their parents, or worse.  All because they thought that the absolute necessary thing for them to do was to own a house.  And I've heard my brother talking about houses he's been in, to answer false alarm calls on security systems, huge houses where all they have are a couch and a TV (flat screen, of course), and a bed in the bedroom because they can afford nothing else, other than the cable and the utilities and the mortgage payment which is ridiculously high.  And this is their dream.  And people "occupy" the banks in New York City and elsewhere demanding that the banks "give" them homes, which makes no sense, because such things have to be earned and owned.  A dream is not an entitlement, not a right, not something to be handed out to every soul on this earth.  The people who designed the papers by which we govern this country gave us the right to pursue that dream, not necessarily that we would find it.  Property is not the goal to that dream, just part of it, because the true dream is that of freedom.  And that is something that a house cannot give you, not by a long shot.  In fact, a lot of people will find that owning a house is the very opposite, a jail, a nightmare, not something that gives freedom. 

Freedom transforms the inside of the mind, breaks down the walls that keep us locked into ourselves.  Owning a house, being able to do whatever you want inside that house, that is truly freedom, I guess.  But if doing so causes more trouble than it's worth, is it truly freedom?  To me, give me a one room shack someplace and leave me to my own devices, and I'll be free.  Give me a corner of this world, and, given a good book and the Internet as my playground, I shall be more at peace with my surroundings than those who live in mansions.  And further, give me the freedom to do what I wish in that space, to come and go as necessary, without question or critique, and it will be bliss.  For the American Dream, I think, is not the actual property that you own, but the state of mind that you are in when there. 

A friend of mine asked me what "Home" is.  What was "home" to me.  It took me no time at all to answer that home was in my apartment in Milledgeville, for the 6 months I lived there.  That was a time when I had total freedom to do whatever I wanted.  I worked at the grocery store, drove to the park and took walks around the lake, went to Lake Sinclair and swam, stayed up at night watching TV and made it ice cold in the summer and dry and warm in the winter.  I washed my dishes, cleaned my house, did my laundry, all the things I was supposed to do.  My apartment was always clean, and I had pride in it.  Because it was mine.  Not that I owned it, but that I could truly be myself, without any masks or restrictions.  "Home" is a state of mind. 

I would also say that home is where you are most comfortable.  I would say that, for a time, Borders was home, during the time that Jeremiah was our GM (and I know people will disagree with me on that), but I felt as if I could be myself almost completely there, and I was happy working like a well oiled machine.  You know that feeling when you watch Star Trek: TNG when everyone is clicking, and you feel that it would be a perfect working environment?  That's what I felt like there.  There were no parts of the machine that were off, rusting away.  That is Home.  It's the place you go to where you don't want to be anyplace else,  and would be content to be there for all eternity.  Home is as close to Heaven on Earth as you can get.  But the one thing I learned from all the places I've been, is that Home is a transient state.  Home can never stay in one place for very long.  After 6 months, I had to move out of my apartment.  After 6 months, Jeremiah moved back to Maine and was replaced with the bankruptcy of the company and other managers that didn't work out as well. 

Home is, for some people, a place where there are other people.  As Billy Joel sang, "Wherever we're together, that's my home." And for others, like me, I'm perfectly at home when I'm alone.  Freedom comes in solitude, for there is no society or government to define the rules, only those

that reside in the mind.  Self-regulation becomes that which defines walls.  My grandmother always says that "Home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in."  In a land of solitude, there is no one to keep you out. Would that I be Thoreau sometime in my life, and live in a cabin where I wouldn't have to see anyone for days, even as my mind wanders about the universe.  I will not deny that people need each other, and I certainly do need the people in my life, those at work or here on the Internet, but for true "Home-ness," for true freedom, that is done alone.  Or, I guess, with someone that you love.  Yes.  I think Billy Joel talked about that in his song.  Because Love goes with Home in a very personal way.  A home is shared by two when they can be together and still be free, when the walls are knocked down between the two.  The threshold becomes crossed then, and two homes become one, to mix some cliches. 

So that is what Home is.  It's Freedom.  It's a state of mind.  It's being alone and unencumbered by the world.  It's finding someone to share that freedom with you, without prejudgements or opinions, and living, beside the fire and in front of the screen, and being content.  Yes, home is a place where you can be content, and, as fleeting as that is, hopefully, everyone can find a place they call home, for it will sustain them through all their journeys. 

"I know what we're going to do today!"

I ended the last blog talking about how children, after school, seem more interested in the virtual worlds of the internet and video games than the real world, a world that provided their parents and grandparents...etc... with as much excitement as World of Warcraft does the kids today. Oddly enough, it still shows in some of the television shows made today.

There is something so refreshing about watching Phineas and Ferb on the Disney Channel each day. Something that will make me laugh and feel refreshed even when I'm having a rotten day (like yesterday, for instance. Dealing with my bipolar car and my grandmother's taxes was not the way I wanted to spend my day off.) But as I was thinking about Architecture and rooms and whatnot, it occurred to me that bedrooms in television shows are of the utmost importance. Whether to show them, or not, what they symbolize in the show itself. Take the characters on P&F. The only time you will ever see Phineas in his bedroom is when he is in bed or waking up. Otherwise, he is eating in the kitchen, or outside making a rocketship to the stars (or giving a monkey a shower). On the other hand, Candice, who cares little for the imagination of her brothers, is always found in her bedroom talking on the phone and daydreaming (virtual worlds, and the like) about her boyfriend. In some episodes, she was seen forwarding youtube videos (of a guy rollerblading in his underpants and falling into a toilet) to all her friends, and non-friends. Exactly what indoor, Cyber-children do today. True, she does go outside on dates with Jeremy, or to "bust" her brothers, but she symbolizes the contemporary adolescent. While Phineas and Ferb symbolize what children could be, letting imagination and creativity run wild.

In a similar show, the creators of iCarly on Nickelodeon have never shown, to my knowledge, Carly or Spencer's bedrooms. They've been in Freddie's bedroom once, and never in Sam's. And while we're not talking about the outdoors here, it's the same principle. The world in which imagination and creativity run wild takes place in the studio where they create the iCarly webshow. For them, they take the tools of the internet and take them as far as they want, doing anything they want with them. It's just as liberating for them as the outdoors is for P&F. Unlike Neville, who is holded up in his bedroom on his many computers all day long.

It's the spirit of freedom that creates the best environment for children. The ability to be creative, to build tent cities in the living room, or treehouses and forts in the backyard, using them as spaceships or castles or army forts. It's the free range of the outdoors that develops the sense of pioneering reach, that children can do whatever they want, if only they are creative and free enough to do it. It builds self-esteem, makes them strive toward their goals, for if imagination can take them anywhere in the fantasy worlds, the real worlds shouldn't be that much harder. The children today should reach for the moon just as their parents and grandparents did, only with the tools they have now, they should go further. And yet, when the tools of Cyberspace are instead creating pseudo-worlds for them to inhabit, what's the point? When corporations earn millions of dollars on a video game, such as Final Fantasy, what motivation is there to invest that money on the real frontiers here in the real world. Let's fight the challenges of going into the unknown, instead of taking on dragons and whatnot that aren't even real. The possibilities are endless when that energy is expended on the right thing. Let's be more like Phineas and Ferb, and a little less like Neville. The world will be far better off that way.

Butterfly in the Sky...

A friend of mine posed a question the other day on Facebook, and it was an interesting one, so I thought I'd answer it.

"If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?" A simple question, really, but what made it fascinating were the answers that she got. Italy. Ireland. Greece. European countries mainly. The underlying question that I heard was "Why would you want to go there?" What makes people want abandoned ruins and lavish castles? What makes them yearn for lavish countrysides, or the beauty of fellow people on European beaches? Why look for greener grass?

I certainly understand the seduction of travel. There have been times, when, traveling at 70mph on the interstate through Conyers that I just wanted to keep going, to travel to someplace else, wherever, and enjoy my life of freedom. But, as Shawn Mullins sang, "Freedom's just a metaphor / You got no place to go." Freedom, the ability to run away from the life we have, has a strong pull. It's running away from reality, escaping from this place to another. I have known people to do it. A good percentage of the people that have worked at Borders with me have quit suddenly and moved to California, or Colorado, or Texas. Someplace far away from Georgia. Whether they found what they were looking for, I'm not sure. I hope they did. But I've had other friends that, just to get away, moved to Canada. One found happiness, marriage. The other, misery, loneliness. She moved back later and was a shadow of herself. And of course, it is certainly possible to escape from reality by taking drugs, alcohol...etc... but since I'm not talking about that necessarily, I won't. I do want to mention that reading can push that need to get away even more. There are scenes in Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts that describe the shores of the Greek Isles. Idyllic, almost paradise, and those scenes really make you want to visit there. I'll return to travel and reading in a minute.

So let's say you have the money to go to Europe and travel around Italy. Now, don't misunderstand me, I'd love to go and do just that, but let's think for a moment about why someone would want to go to Europe in the first place. Everyone talks about the Historical landmarks...the castles, the churches, the paintings and masterpieces of geniuses that lived hundreds of years ago. The achievements of mankind are definitely a worthy subject for study. I doubt one could stand in front of Michelangelo's David and not feel a sense of awe that a human being could have conceived such a piece of art. Similarly, you couldn't stand in front of St. Peter's cathedral in Rome, with the outstretched arms folding outward, embracing you, and not see the magnificence of what we can build when we try. We should see this in our own country, our own city, our neighborhoods. Because the difference is merely one of conception and usage. Could we not stand in front of the Brooklyn Bridge, and, seeing the mathematical formulas that stand the structure erect, marvel in the masterpiece that men had constructed, right here in America? Or the skyscrapers in New York City, or Chicago, or Atlanta, raised to the sky in some high praise for what we have done with the iron, the steel, the rock of this nation? It is what holds us up, holds us together. (you will excuse me if I've taken a page from Rand...it makes me feel good, right in a way.) So when you go to Europe and stand before the Colosseum, or you wander about the Parthenon, realize the rocks that were carved into these shapes are not what is awe inspiring, but the people who built them are. I think if I were to go to the Old World, what would be truly wonderful to see would be the Aqueducts in Spain, still carrying water from the mountains to the villages, after all these years. Or maybe the sections of the Via Appia that still cover the streets of Italian villages, that are still used today like cobblestone streets.

If I were to travel anywhere in the world, I would go first to the Peruvian Andes, and see the marvels of Macchu Picchu, of the roads and bridges that still stand, and of the ancestors that still use those bridges. What power the Incas must have had, to construct the buildings of that city, with such angles of perfection and consistency. Only the pyramids of Egypt would compare in architectural wonder. But as I said before, it's not really the buildings I would want to see, but the people and the culture of the society that made them. So actually, it would not be just a place I would travel, but a time.

I wouldn't want just to see the Parthenon, covered as it is now with iron bars and archeologists who are trying to keep it erect. And aside them, the markets and the souvenir shops that sell postcards and t-shirts, that keep the 21st century very much in the forefront of the mind. I would rather walk amongst the people of ancient Greece, the philosophers sitting amongst the trees arguing of human principles, the politicians being just that, the worshipers of Zeus and Athena, the common people, the slaves, the difference of it all. The only thing that would nag at me would be that they never found the wheel to be of any use. Why build tools of convenience when slaves did all the work? It is the one thing that kept Greece and Rome from becoming truly great and progressing as far as they could have. Ah, to see them going about their daily lives, to see human society as something completely different from the world today. That would be incredible.

And the same would go with other cultures. The Incas, the Mayas, the Aztec. To watch the Mayan astronomers calculate the Sun and stars for centuries ahead of them, with complete accuracy, at the observatory at Chitzen Iza, or at Palenque. To witness the barbaric sacrifice of human victims to the Aztec gods upon the temples towering into the sky, not so much for the Gods, but in reality, to show the power of the Aztec Empire to the neighboring tribes. These are things I would see, not just the ruins of Teotihuacan and Tikal.

The power of human life is not just in the incredible or the violent. I would want to see people living in their day to day lives. I have always wanted to return to the days of the 1920's, prior to the mechanical devices that we have today, and see how people in America lived. What would Milledgeville have looked like, or Shady Dale, or Conyers for that matter? What swimming holes would be filled with children swimming instead of the absorbed in the electronic whirrs of the Xbox 360 or Wiis? The rocking chairs would be filled outside of porches, the sky would be pitch black dark after sunset, and the stars would shine and glimmer through the treetops. Yes, life was hard, and people died of common diseases and so forth... but there must be happiness that they found in doing things that we have lost today, because getting to Level 17 is more important than climbing a tree.
Let's face it, reality is not like that. We have no technology to let us go back in time, nor to we all have the money to go flying of to lands foreign and romantic. While this sounds like a big cliche, we do have books that we can read. Out of the minds of authors come lands and societies real and imaginary. I could just as well find a copy of Plato's Republic and sit in with the Greek philosophers, or pick up a copy of Gary Jennings' novel Aztec and relive the days prior to the arrival of Cortez. The worlds of mankind are neatly compiled into words, and then transformed into reality in our minds.

A perfect example, coming from the current news, is the story of the 13 year old Dutch girl that tried to sail around the world alone. You can find her story on Yahoo easily enough. She was retained by Dutch authorities and is now in State Care, so vehemently against the trip is the government, for some reason. But there's no need to do that right now, as there have been people before her that have succeeded. Take Robin Lee Graham, who wrote the book Dove about his adventures around the world. The experiences that he had on Pacific islands, the paradises he found, the extreme loneliness on the boat alone for weeks on end, it is all magnificently written for anyone to read.

And when the current rules of society are too much for us to bear, we can simply read about worlds that are in another reality. Take Arthur C. Clarke's Songs of a Distant Earth, a set of stories that take place on a colony planet in the far reaches of space, where people have been sent to start the human race afresh, with the entire knowledge of mankind, but without the religious or societal prejudices that have set this world in the direction it has gone. The makers of the spaceship loaded the libraries of the Earth, but omitted anything with references to God or to the horrors of man. Tough choices, but the result was a colony that was much different from Earth. It was a pleasure to read, a a book of Tabula rasa, where people could find their own moral standards and live life according to them.

Or take Anne McCaffrey's Pern series, which is the most liveable world in Fantasy Literature. Amazing scenery, and you are surrounded by dragons constantly, ones with abilities that we could only dream of here. I'd give anything to live in Benden Weyr, or at the Harper's school next to Fort Hold.

So to answer the question of where I would like to go, I would say, "Wherever the pages in my books will take me." And if, by some chance, I get to actually visit those worlds, then they shall be but echoes, dreams, of what resides in my head.