Empty Things

I talked about memories in the last blog, the tastes of foods and the smells of the chlorine water wafting up from the indoor pool at the college, filling the air with a warm humid touch (well, I would have had I wanted to). We all have those memories, things we pasted into our brains as children. Places that I visited often as a child, that once seemed magnificent and wonderful, now seem mundane. I remember going to Crossroads Mall in Oklahoma City with my grandmother (my dad's mom, Mema. My other grandmother couldn't stand shopping). It used to be one of the biggest malls in the nation, 9th I think, at one point. The glass ceiling arched overhead, as if some artificial sky, keeping us dry and warm. The small fountains that surrounded the stairs and escalators, moving in a single file line, like ants, toward the magnificent plume of a fountain in the middle of the mall. Where coins would be thrown, and wishes made, and the water would tower up to the second floor before hurtling downwards. The McDonald's food always seemed better there (imagine, a McDonald's! inside a mall!). The long rows of clothing stores and other chain establishments meant nothing, really. It was the size of the place. It was the toy isles at Montgomery Wards or maybe Toys R Us just outside the mall. What a gigantic cathedral to human consumerism, exalted and revered.

And later, in college days at Milledgeville, GA, our friends would go to nearby Macon, where the Macon Mall was the largest in the state. You had to walk through J.C. Penny to get to the other side of the mall. It had a Disney store (much to the glee of Brandy, one of my friends that always drug us along), and a full parking deck which made it easy to go through the Parisian's door, past the green manikins, a sip at the water fountain, and into the mall itself, toward EB or Waldenbooks. How many days when, a year or two after, I would arrive in Macon for my classes, and, depressed from being in those classes, would run to EB and purchase any number of Magic the Gathering cards to take up time in the classes, as purchasing them made me feel better. And then eating at the Applebee's across the street. Always Fajitas. It was a destination, an evenings outing, with maybe a movie at the end. How special those days were. How long ago in times of economic prosperity. And now, both malls stand vacant, as empty shells of human happiness, echoing through the shelves of closed shops.

My family went to the Macon Mall a week or so ago, to meet up with relatives driving to South Carolina from Texas. After our breakfast at Waffle House, we drove around the mall, now filled more with a police precinct and armed forces recruiters than shoppers. There were entire sections of the mall without stores, and it made me sad, that the once vibrant structure was now so still. It reminded me of the day I drove around Dekalb County, handing out fliers for Teacher Appreciation Day at Borders, and finding on my outdated map schools, and then driving to see them boarded up and empty on days when they should be alive with children. What if one of my schools became that way?

Upon returning home, I wondered, what would become of those malls that are now afflicted with the economic downturn? So, upon doing research, I found Deadmalls.com, a site that keeps tabs on empty shopping malls. I looked back at Oklahoma's list, and was shocked to find Crossroads on there as well. It was dying a slow death just like Macon was. What would we do with these now slumbering giants?

For most malls, I would use them as I have seen in my dreams before. Let's turn them into Community-based learning centers, much like the Forums in Ancient times. Take the Macon Mall, for instance. The Macon mall has three colleges nearby (Macon Tech, Macon State, and Mercer). Combined with the Bibb Co. school system and the private schools which are a big part of the county, the Macon mall could be refit to house classrooms, conference rooms, lecture halls, as well as shops and restaurants that would make it financially profitable. The main anchor stores could be gutted and made into athletic centers and gymnasiums, and the outside area could be landscaped to allow for park space and outdoor activities. Now, of course, with the economic state as it is, this probably isn't possible right now, but it might be doable in Oklahoma for some of those malls (there's one in Midwest City that is dying.) They could also be used to house vocational and technical classes that could teach the unemployed to learn new skills to become more competitive in today's market. I've always felt a need to have someplace in a community where people can continue their education, much as the old opera houses and lecture halls were in the 1800's. Some place that Emerson or Thoreau would feel at home in, or even perhaps Plato, debating philosophy inside a comfortably A/C'd building. It's simply a dream of mine, but maybe one day it will happen. There are too few centers of education and culture in the world these days. Perhaps in the world of empty shopping malls and vacant boxes, one can be constructed.

The Senses of Learning

Imagine going to a college reunion, as I would have done this year, had they had such a thing at GC&SU (Milledgeville), and seeing all the people from your class, now 10 years older, with kids, failed dreams, or not, money, or not, and mostly with 30 pounds more or a half a head less. And there, betwixt conversation and speeches, wondering where the time went and how much had changed, there is the almost necessary singing of the Alma Mater, with the words printed on some programming sheet. And as it is sung, out of tune, with soggy nostalgia, would you wonder, for what are we missing? What makes the college years so utterly miserable, and yet so strongly yearned for? The days that I had my own apartment, going for my Masters degree, were the happiest days of my life, and yet, I was highly depressed. I went to Applebees every day to eat away my sorrow, and to run up my charge card.

It's amazing, the small, sensual details that reminds me of college. The things that make me yearn for the days when I was wondering about the campus from class to class. I thought about those, this morning, and thought I'd share the memories I had.

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There's a certain way the college smells, in the early dawn, when Milledgeville is just waking up (well, save the students, cause they sleep till noon). But I was a morning person, and always woke up at 6 to get to the early classes, eat breakfast, go over to the computer lab (when I didn't have a computer)...etc... Squirrels there didn't seem to mind the students at all, and only ran away if you chased after them. But there were times that you sincerely wished for a good soaking rain, to wipe away the scent of living. Much as I remember playing outside after a thunderstorm in Oklahoma. It's remarkable how smells can link themselves over years of time, instantly triggering emotions of memories. For instance, I always loved walking by the Health building over near Music on my way to Clarinet Practice. They had an indoor pool, and the windows at the top of the building were open. On cold, winter evenings, the chlorinated warmth of the pool would filter out to the walkways, bringing memories of the YMCA in Bethany, with warmth that blankets your body and brings a glow to your skin, much as a cup of hot chocolate would. There is nothing so sensual as that smell.

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Anyone who has been to college would immediately complain about the cafeteria food. Certainly, on the weekends, the food was barely edible. But the old Southern ladies that worked the back kitchen could fix the most wonderful Chicken Parmeshan with Noodles, and the Wok fixture made the best Caesar Salads I have ever tasted. I have spent years trying to imitate those salads. Down the street from SAGA (called that because of the company that owned the kitchen some 30 years ago, and the name just stuck even after the company moved out.), was a great restaurant called Brewers. It was a coffee shop that had soups, salads, sandwiches, and some sinfully wonderful cheesecakes. But the true divine food was served on Monday nights, when the soup of the day was Tomato Bisque. I have never tasted a liquid so golden or smooth, with flavors so wonderful. I have never equaled it, although I have tried many times. The restaurant is now out of business, and the secret of the soup gone forever.

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Milledgeville is filled with old buildings, with Corinthian pillars of Neo-Greek architecture. Being in the RHA club (Residential Housing Association), I got to go inside the old Psychology building, the one that hadn't been used in years, where parts of the roof was gone, and the old, crickety stairs led up and up to places of dead knowledge. With rooms of desks and outdated psychological tools and tests, old 5" floppy disks, folders with who knows what inside. What grand design were these old towers of wisdom, now left to disintegrate. It always left me with such reverence and nostalgia for the past, even as the new computer labs left me with hope for the future, that knowledge could still exist in a world of reality TV shows and endless nights of inebriation.

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But the highlight of being at college is definitely that feeling right after I walked out of the classrooms in the Arts & Sciences building feeling as if I had slewn (slayed, slewed??) killed a dragon. When the tests given were slaughtered and sliced and diced and an "A" was a certainty. Because the knowledge was there, the learning, was in my head and I had met my professors expectations. There is no greater feeling than this. And it's the feeling that I most long for now. I have talked about before, on another blog ( http://denzilpugh.blogspot.com/2008/01/faust-picard-and-pursuit-of-knowledge.html) how much I yearn for the continuing education that we seem never to get anymore. After work, it's the mindless electronic stimulation, eating of food, and then going to bed. We never learn anything anymore. I bring this up because I had a dream last night about being at something like a college, where music, sports, intellectual conversations, etc... was happening, and I want to look at the dream further and see how it could be implemented in real life. But that will take more than just being buried at the bottom of this blog. So I will end this here and start a new one, after I have set my brain on mix and cogitate.