A Book Mark to Greater Exhaustion

“Hey Shaun, I gotta ask you a question that I haven’t in a while.” I knew what it was before it was posed. This city, this world repeats itself, intimately and infinitely. And, there’s something to be said for that should one be open to interpret pattern. What we know as a person is subject, oftenly, to the scrutinized opinion of those that have learned otherwise; though, it has been my experience that my detractors live in worlds of kind theory. So Kenny, as you may or may not wish to imagine, began to ask me for small amounts of money while he petted a chihuahua on his lap; the same animal kept by the children the captains of industry have bestowed upon their children.

Me, I took it as an opportunity to out-woe my given community with regaled tales of heartache. “I’ve a pocket full of quarters for which I wish to fill my gas tank up enough to visit my grandmother’s grave.” A convenient truth. The quarters were, indeed for the vacuum cleaner and I was indeed in need of fuel. A poem, a lark. I should’ve stanza’d this better.

Pride and/or Prejudice (may you never suffer both)

It’s been a while since I last reported on the doorstep-panorama of this strange dimension, crammed between the realities we sensible people often take for granted. I would suppose that the more one exposes them-self to a given stimulus, the more an objective becomes biased and, therefore, a subjective reality occurs to guide a being of intellect to identify patterns. Human nature is strange this way; especially when befitted to historical contexts as it relates to basic human drives. And, insofar that one avails them-self to more information then is necessary to get by (I estimate a good 85% of the population can be considered functionally retarded by their own volition), I firmly believe that history does, indeed, repeat itself. While the elite of that 85% might see this statement written on a bathroom wall or bumper sticker, having what can only be described as an epiphany by what other brush off as deja vu, as some semblance to a personal experience. With the fervor matched only by pamphleteering preachers of doom, they might share the experience on the internet via a status update, sharing a simple wake of joy with pseudo-strangers and their collective LOL. Keep this in mind as it pertains to an extended metaphor to come that, sadly, you may feel a sudden euphoria coupled with hysterics that may usher you to your computer; only to feel the loneliness that the genuinely perceptive can understand. So, internalize it into some grand reservoir where clairvoyants dream of crystal-winged angels and pastoral ruins. Or not.

My immediate neighbors have taken quite a shine to me since I’ve shylocked the occasional rake or garden hose and have made friends with local adolescents. The cold-war mentality of growing up in the eighties doesn’t apply here; should some synapse in the back of your head fire awkwardly at the ease an adult male can befriend small children left unattended. You may assume that the parent/guardian doesn’t care much about their kids’ safety or perhaps there is a latent trust in sensible order and destiny that may or may not operate on mystical sensibilities: whatever your life’s experience has delegated reasonable. The summer has not been kind to us in West Atlanta. It’s been a sluggish Hell that only infant metabolism can function to relegate heat across vessels of limited surface area. I often engage the frequent passerby with cheer to combat the tales of humidity-born woe and the unforeseen negotiation of existing between. Our known world is bordered with rocks and places hard.

The wheels of progress are a turning and gain speed through streets where shuffled feet were once as prominent as the buffalo. Hawaiian punch and mucously glazed gas station pastries fuel the resistance which takes several cues from peaceful protests of old, though I would venture to say this aggression would be better characterized as “passive.” I received an email linking to a hired company that not only alerts all within telecommunications’ grasp (a surprisingly small portion of the population) but provides statistical analysis of crime in the given area. Reported crime is down 88% per month from last year and while that might sound like a positive turn in direction, it spells doom for those that have grown accustomed to a certain way of life.

I sat on my porch on evening with a mini-cooler full of imported beer, a luxury that I felt goaded the poorer, malt-liquor folk into some social status display to disparage the meek that have yet to inherit anything but wind. “No matter,” I thought. I’ve spent a good many hours working in the yard and if my professional life can afford to treat personal toil with a European born lager, than so be it. This, is my bling. Two or three bottle caps joined the dog at my feet when I began to access the homogenized ethics that seemed to be the oriented goal of Karen and Michael and a battalion of well-spoken folk who’ve crossed party lines with good faith that they can change (yes, I said “change”) the inscribed culture of the ghetto. Monthly meetings have been rallied to improve upon the existing infrastructure which is slowly mandating out of the local government’s guilt and inability to function outside of lobbied requests: a raised hand works better than unintelligible shouts, it seems.

The aristocracy of Sims Estates has outlined a standard body of requests that enlist the American fervor and ideal that tyranny has no degree but is a general task to overcome and, yes, we shall overcome it. Some demands are small, affable things such as street signs and sidewalk re-paving, but one item is a master stroke of political genius that had me guffawing in my cravat. Without so much as an explanation as to the reason, it has been assertively suggested that MARTA buses should be routed elsewhere than our neighborhood streets. Sure, one can a

rgue that the buses tear up the streets and cause traffic but I see the real motive with my evil gringo sensibility.

Populations without privately funded transport rely on MARTA to ferry the wading masses like the ocean uses waves to move its less-mobile citizens which is why it is perfect for the under-class that has no real destination nor time restraint for getting wherever the end. Though it would be naive to assume all Atlanta beggars are homeless, street persons of redundant credential ask for currency to accommodate the fare MARTA’s turnstiles require more often than any other need. “Pay MARTA what is due MARTA,” I believe Jesus once spoke. While you and I are most likely at work or loafing to some desire to sing of ourselves, MARTA is a beating heart that pumps vascular the movement of crumb-crusted bums to irrelevant destinations. And we are looking to channel those sorts away from these shores.

It is a political master-stroke and I applaud its deceptively motived actions. While the effort to improve quality of life with small, easily sanctioned public works revitalizes the neighborhood it also becomes more appealing to prospective developers down the road (literally and figuratively). For the financial benefit of every homeowner/shack inhabitant, property values will increase potential values which will make taxes proportionately climb, but that is no bother for the savvy investor. No, it will the shacks that will have to either sell below the value of the land or suffer foreclos

ure as government aid isn’t enough to cover property taxes, basic needs, and flat screen televisions; and let us not forget the demographic that relies on public transport as a factor in searching for places to reside. And then, as if this sneaky coup to better our world might be tarnished by its perceived intent, secondary efforts have been made to provide information on work out of state to clean up the gulf; for those that have yet to find local employment to save themselves and, thus, contradict their own cause. Help America, help yourself!

I spoke with Kenny Sr. the other day. The back right tire of his electric wheelchair has been mangled into a strange oval which slows him down, shakes him around his chair and no doubt will have adverse affects on the device’s motor. I don’t believe these things are designed for the rigorous use of extended outdoor use but who am I to lecture. While cars swerved to miss him Kenny applauded the fence I built in the backyard, the roses I’ve planted out front and how it looked like a “house from a real neighborhood.” Not to be out-rivaled, Kenny pridefully mentioned how his sister was planning some government appeal to renovate their own house. Now, I have dealt with nearly every city office in the past few years and I cannot begin to guess which one pimps up pads. I would almost, if not for my bleeding heart, suggest that Kenny ask his sister to refrain from such measures as a government inquiry would most likely deem the structure unsuitable to live in and schedule a bulldozing. I merely nodded and changed the subject to the trash pile that had been gaining mass in his front yard that three weeks of trash days had not touched.

It looks like an offering to some lesser known poly-deity named Heap, perhaps. Though it is gone now, it measured at least 30 feet long and up to seven feet high in some places. Often, white, plastic smelling smoke would emanate from behind it which only added to the religious imagery of the thing. Kenny said that they had been cleaning out the basement of his father’s things which solidified my initial suspect that there was indeed some concept of tribute to a being non living. Kenny’s dad has been dead half a year, in an assisted living facility a more than a year before that, and three people with no jobs, hobbies, or need to get fully dressed have finally decided to take action and throw that which has no sentimental value, out, in the yard.

So, when MARTA disappears from my street like the buffalo, I won’t shed a tear. When the sidewalks have been rebuilt for joggers where lazy feet once dragged, I shan’t want for the past. And the day the machines come to phoenix new structures I will welcome them. But until then I will sentry my porch with a kind wave to the passerby, may their gaping mouth function better than nasal respiratory. I will hold steady as lord of my castle and kingdom and watch the slow drowning populace look past me to the heavens and wonder what entity they have to blame for misfortune. By what hand can one continually bite and hope to be fed? These are the Steinbeck days, revisited; and this is a wood, intent on burning itself.

Oil and Water [no picture/proof]

The neighborhood clean up day was set for 8:30 in the morning by the rebel contingency in the ghetto, here, which will, if their plans are fulfilled, ruin my blog and make me a fortune. I had gotten home around two in the morning the night before and wanted nothing more than an afternoon to sleep in before returning to work late the following day, capitulated to a Hemingway afternoon with my lady friend, between the strange demands of her schedule and dietary fugue. However, a behemoth dumpster had made a monolithic debut the day before on the empty lot to the west with the promise of feudal youth from churches strange to assist with the conditional matters I appropriate to muse and amuse.

After a moderate breakfast and proper armoring, I took to the task alongside a volunteer brigade that worked with chain-gang esteem. I payed no mind to the lacking fervor for this was obviously, for the most part, forced charity and early hours on unsuspecting youth. Bless them and their remaining days of irrelevance. As luck would have it, I was assigned to police the lots on either side of me. I have been doing this quietly, unsure of the legal implications but I was given carte blanche to do what I wanted to with the property and even assigned an older gentleman of my own biological distinctions to assist in my endeavors.

Peter, slightly younger than my parents, was friendly and helpful and obviously assigned to my jurisdiction in an effort to to utilize his graciousness and stimulate a sense of being. Come to find out, Peter is an OB/GYN at Piedmont Hospital and we were able to communicate and work together in copacetic harmony. We discussed the Atlanta progressive undertakings and speculated like wing-chaired sophisticants all while I handed him buckets full of trash from a clogged sewer drain.

[deleted: three long paragraphs about gynecologists who are men]

I made several new acquaintances of good, well-spoken people who, like me, had kept to themselves assuming that the neighborhood was still too formidable to be friendly in the Cleaver sense. Yet in this little corner of the world, organization and motive overcomes the lazy will to improve and I have no problem marshaling that cause. Even, when standing among traveled volunteers who can visibly observe the old guard watching from their porches as strangers improve their condition.

I was angered. No one I had met that day knew any of the characters of this blog by name or description, nor did I observe said characters making an effort to improve their world. In fact, many sat, as they are oft to do, on their porches; watching others clean their failures. I revel in the meanest of senses in knowing that this area will get better, the taxes higher and their government subsidized income won’t be enough to continue here.

A month later, people pushed by exocentric decency politely asked the people across the street if they may remove the mattress from their yard and I watched as they said it was okay without even an offer to help move it. In other news, I play my guitar as loud as I want to, as late as I dare.

The Weeks Between Lesser Disasters

It’s been quite some time since I’ve had anything to report on the goings-on of Sims Estates. Sure, there’s always the frequent rush of serenading vehicles, people yelling and chasing each other through the streets without any seemingly malicious intent, trash glides on pollen soaked winds; it’s been business as usual. The slow wave of progress, or change for those in power would consider as such, has hastened this year, made promising new construction up the hill and towards the city’s horizons.

My neighborhood is suffering from a new pollution of freshly paved recreation trails, quality built apartments and volunteer armies of christian folk descending upon these hopeless masses to wipe the runny nose a sleeve wouldn’t care to touch. I have become aware that the theme of this blog is by and large an example-based effort to expose urban poverty as a nurtured mind-set that subsists on a vague sense of entitlement. Here, in the ghetto, we are selective communists. I have always thought, in my own naiveté, that capitalism would always prevail because there would always be people willing to work harder for the greedy want of improvement; never once considering the alternative: many people want all the benefits of communal aide without so much as an attempt to contribute to the greater good. Sadly, I doubt my neighbors could/would make use of Mill, Kant, Marx or any academic understanding of classical ethics or social responsibility.

The other day a man roughly my own age knocked on the door, introduced himself, gave his address and asked to borrow a hammer. I excused myself to see if I still had the cheap ikea one because I wasn’t about to lend the one I had inherited from my grandfather. While rummaging around my toolbox I remembered that the hammer had broken in the move and I would have to lie to my neighbor. He was reluctant to leave, asking if I still had the broken hammer or anything he could use that was hammer-like, along with an additional request for any nails I could spare. I did not.

After he left I began thinking to myself how odd the situation was that had just transpired. First of all, what man doesn’t own a hammer and should a one find himself in such a situation, why wouldn’t you immediately go and buy one? It’s a hammer! I have a special socket to replace the elements on electric water heaters; a tool I will probably never have to use again in my life, but I have one because I needed it and now I will always have it at my disposal. Had the young man asked for it, I would’ve handed it over. But, a hammer!!!? The Native Americans, whom never invented the wheel, had hammer technology. Even my Nana had a small wooden-handled hammer despite all her household repairs were done by my dad, uncle, or professionally.

My second major thought brings to mind an anthropological conundrum. My brief liberal collegiate education (which has served my contemporaries so well with lessons of debt and misanthrope idealism) stressed, rather alluded, an importance on the “multi-cultural” necessity of every science, as if to decondition the nazi youth. That being said, I’ve always tried to judge a culture by how it provides for its people as well as a general harmony to the condition of neighboring entities. However, this man from four houses down has never introduced himself nor made his presence known until he needed something. Granted, I have made no effort to endear myself to my community as I have subscribed to isolationist principles to combat the favor-ready provocative that permeates the ghetto. Perhaps it is this aloof self-sufficiency that heralds affluence? I don’t need, therefore, I am in a position to give. That is a thought I don’t wish to explore.

The roadkill my buzzards were circling is this: what brings a man to ask for help when he is a stranger of convenience, for a thing that he is readily capable of acquiring without the embarrassment of pride’s distinction? For the sake of argument, let’s say that the hammer is the very symbol of American masculinity (if not everyone with facial hair; in fact, what was on the Soviet flag all those years ago?). I don’t think this is much of a stretch; even if you want to get all Freud about it. How does one ask a stranger to borrow a birthright or even haggle for the broken secondary one? Personally, I would go buy one, or find a rock. Pride is a strange thing. I watched the first half of a documentary on Medgar Evers the other day before I got bored with it, I already knew the ending. I see it across the street and, grandly, everywhere I go. There was a dream, and it was realized, and now the bastards subsist on residuals; having a good time on the interest earnings of Kentucky bets made when we fashioned things from metal (with hammers), leaving statues to shadow picnics in the park of people who needn’t a plaque to identify. Harumph!

In other news, the Kennies have been cooped up in their respective institutions; prison and Grady leaving the talents of the lady of the house to bemuse my lesser artistry. Tuesday is the day the city has set aside for we plebeians to collect our solid refuse (that which we cannot flush, drag, bury, or burn) and place them curbside in large green containers befit with wheels. My household typically uses this service once a month but that is irrelevant. What is relevant, however, is the dark blue mattress, box spring and frame that has sat throughout the weather of more than three trash days in the elements.

How long will it sit there until the city workers relent or my neighbor figures out that they won’t and drags it to the backyard? This is indeed a battle of who could care less: city policy vs the citizenry of absolute apathy, apathy to the point that one wonders whether it is a test to see how far the line between purgatory and hell may be pushed south. It has been a 24 day war thus far and I bet my money that it will be a third party that removes it which will will esteem both the city and the ghetto. Old mother Hubbard has even begun to dump trash on and around the mattress as if to reiterate that it is indeed refuse and not on the market for barter. Local children have begun to play with what they find in the pile the sort of games I once did during field day.

Luckily, or unfortunately (as the unfortunate are prone to experience) the vocal and active minority in this neighborhood are pushing hard against the sedentary majority. I may be able to have guests over before the end of the decade.

He Jests at Scars that Never Felt a Wound

I have lived in many places in and around Atlanta; some further from the dull glow of the city’s night lights and some close enough to watch Buckhead’s fourth of July fireworks from the back porch looking over Druid’s Hills towards what once seemed like the forests of Brookhaven. Living in the city, any city, one becomes attune to the sound of sirens in the distance and it’s been my experience that they’re more often the cries of a stranger’s plight. On any given day ambulances, fire trucks, or police cars can be observed snaking through traffic and around a corner of over the hills into horizons in peril, though how often does anyone ever come across the tragedy at the end of the road?

I remember once, a few weeks before Christmas 2003 or 2004, I was on my way to work when I came upon an old truck with smoke all around it that was slowly slipping backwards towards one of the steep declines of my neighborhood. I pulled my car over and ran up to the driver who was slumped over and unconscious while an elderly woman was in hysterics. Careful not to move the man too much, I opened the door, holding him in place while trying to administer the parking brake. Ambulances arrived rather quickly and the paramedics did what they could before they sympathetically packed him up to die somewhere other than the street. Until recently, this is the only tangible memory I have of seeing emergency vehicles within close proximity.

These last sixteen months I have become alarmingly apathetic to sirens, flashing lights and the diesel rumble of a parked ambulance. Kenny Sr. uses the Grady hospital EMT’s as his own taxi service and by the paramedic’s lacking sense of urgency, it would seem that Kenny isn’t the only person abusing the system. If this is to be any indicator as to how the state run health care will perform, I fear that America may have jumped off the dock, into the lake, with cinder blocks tied to her ankles. Time will tell.

One has to question (me, if no one else) what exactly makes up a ghetto? It’s easy to point out the poor, the uneducated, and all the teeming masses welcomed upon Ellis Island’s shores, but I think there’s something else. Maybe it’s the general esteem within a collection of people who would rather sell each other out for a quick buck than to work together to improve this corner of the world. Kenny says he puts aside five dollars ever week from his social security check to play the lottery. He admits this freely without shame, and though it’s not fair to assume that everyone on welfare abuses it, it’s far more difficult to believe that government subsidy does anything but enable those evolution left behind. In fact, I think it’s something deeper and more vile than mere laziness.

That’ll be the end of this edition’s social commentary; here comes the funny. As

my more loyal patrons already know, the house up the street has been removing wood from the abandoned shack next door (which someone has re-attached plywood to all entry points) and burning it in a metal barrel on their patio where someone stands sentry all day and night should there be a need to shout obscenities at a passerby. And like so many other things I have come to ignore despite my inclination to panic, there is often grey smoke pouring out into the street from their yard.

One particular morning this week I got up early (noonish) to eat lunch and mail off some bills when I noticed a strong smell of burning plastic and a thicker than usual cloud of smoke, obscuring much of the west side of the street. At any other time in my life I would have made active inquiry into helping my fellow man but the strong urge to eat tacos at the Bone Garden far outweighed wasting time on making sure my shiftless neighbors weren’t burning to a crisp. They’re in God’s hands now; peace be with them. An hour later I came home to the following picture. I will l

et you assume what you will:

Rain, Beading Off a Pot-Roast's Coffin

I came home later than usual to take the wolf out to piss and smell the new trash that’s found its way into my yard with the knowledge that our down time was going to be brief as I would have to return to work in an hour or so. Last night I began an extended essay on the societal perception of racism as I am now, more than ever, accused of being one, and though I don’t really care what the feeble, closeted people of upper-crust society think of me and my observations, I do, however, wish to provide a basis for my perspective in a philosophical, if not scientific, manner. It has been a slow week for concrete material lately and the moment I am no longer able to deliver, I will lose my audience; all six of them.

Dakota came inside, refusing to do the usual business due to rain (she is a very prancy creature of standard) and we retreated to the studio so that I could look at pictures of Eric Mason’s girlfriend while the wolf gnawed on what’s left of the raccoon I gave her this morning to keep from chewing on the baseboards while I’m away. I wasn’t even through the first album when I heard a horrible crash outside which I instinctively assumed were gunshots or the discarding of furniture. This was further distressed by the fact that it was a mere 3:30 in the afternoon, twelve hours too soon for such a noise. A tree must’ve fallen on something as a result of the heavy rains coupled with the lacking upkeep and responsibility of personal property in the area.

Looking into the hallway I saw Dakota’s eyes glow with concern over what she must’ve sensed as an out-of-the-ordinary occurrence and with predatory concurrence we both dashed downstairs to see what all the hubbub was about. Much to my un-amazement, Kenny Sr. was parked in the street wearing a yellow parka and holding a pack of cigarettes. He smiled and waved as a Dodge Charger swerved to miss him by what looked to be two feet and traveling at a velocity of forty miles and hour; almost twice the posted speed limit. I asked him if he had heard the noise and he pointed at an oven with four electric ranges at the foot of his home’s patio steps.

He explained that his mother had pushed it down the steps and asked if I could help her move it around to the backyard. Between a paraplegic and an old woman it seemed impossible that they were gonna make much headway in the endeavor, so I crossed the street, met Kenny Sr.’s mother at the top of the step where she handed me a rusty old hand truck without so much of a speck of modesty over her dirty green house dress that she had yet to change out of by late afternoon. Now, I am oft to do the same on my lazy days though I’m not venturing outside nor eliciting help from strangers to dispose of large appliances. Yes, I judge. I judge and, BAC willing, I usually keep it to myself. Usually.

The oven door was hanging off the cumbersome object and was covered in what I would assume to be at least five years of accumulated grease. She pointed down her driveway to a discarded front loading washing machine and motioned for me to put the oven next to it. Several questions entered my mind:

1. Why am I moving this thing down a busted up driveway wearing my leather loafers?
2. Why did she choose now, a rainy afternoon, to dispose of her oven?
3. How did she plan on getting it down here without help? Did she intend on hooking it up to Kenny’s wheelchair and have him tugboat it?
4. Why do their visitors park in the street in front of the house when there’s a perfectly good driveway that could easily accommodate six vehicles?

Upon reaching the my destination, a land of misfit appliances stretched out before me; a Whirlpool graveyard, I quickly utilized my newly honed homeowner detection skills and discovered that all of these rusting appliances were of better quality than anything I had still functioning in my own home. Hands covered in grease, I made my way up the driveway to the street and returned the hand truck to Kenny’s mother. She thanked me with a tenderness that not quite reached kindness but that was good enough for me. I ran across the street before they could ask anymore favors, washed my hands, and took a picture from Alex’s room. I have a strange suspicion that my adventures will outlast the Amazon’s supply of wood and American dependence on oil. This, ladies and gentleman, is a fountain springing forth and inexhaustible supply of mana. This is the sandy hole I regret I may forever dig; the rock I will push up the mountains of Hell. Behold the epic myths of the ghetto: he who eats of the Doritos is doomed to live here for eternity.

This World is a Landfill

Life in the ghetto, as exciting and glamorous as I may portray it, takes a few days off every now and again; leaving little blog worthy anecdotes to tie into some grand social commentary from the outsider within. Sure, I typically fall asleep to the not so distant sounds of gunshots (which are sometimes merely the sound of people dragging cheap furniture to the curb or an abandoned lot, very, very late at night) and I awake less regularly to sunshine than violent sounding shouts. I have come to find out, however, that the casual use of obscenity and discourse towards people from distances more than fifty yards away, in public and before noon, is not always a cause for concern. Shouting crude epithets at your “O.G.s” roughly translates into a “howdy neighbor” and accusing someone of petty theft is much the same as discussing the weather with a casual acquaintance.

The other night I came home from work after midnight only to discover that I had less than a glass of cabernet in the house and there’d be no way I was to face the night on that quantity. It usually takes me anywhere from three to five glasses of wine for me to sleep comfortably otherwise I get a bit nervy and awake at every eery noise the settling house makes. For this reason I have decided not to purchase a handgun but I do keep a Wade Boggs edition Louisville Slugger by the front door, (a baseball bat) and on the un-anesthetized evenings I find myself ninja-ing around the house checking closets, staying low and hoping not to improve on Boggs, .328 career batting average. The Kroger on Howell Mill is open all night and inside city limits, Atlanta lawmakers have decided that Jesus says it’s okay to sell at any hour so I put my slippers on and headed out.

I set the alarm, locked the doors and detoured to the mailbox for obvious reasons and was hailed in customary fashion from a gentleman making his way to my person. “Hey Reggie,” I said when I finally recognized his face and quickly greying hair. I could immediately tell that Reggie was drunk or high or both by his serpentine gait and his overt friendliness. He was beside himself with joy that I had remembered his name. Reggie chatted me up for several minutes recalling the time he did in the army and, his favorite subject, asking if I need help with any work around he house because he had help build the newer houses on the street and had actually stayed in mine after it was built four years ago to thwart theft. The fundamental flaw in Reggie’s logic is this: there is nothing wrong with walking up to a person you barely know at one AM, in

an inner-city neighborhood plagued with crime and violence, while at the massaged hands of some intoxicant to solicit work with the calming justification that you know their home’s every hammer stroke.

Pointing at the abandoned lot next to me, I mentioned that I was clearing it out to make the community look better to prospective investors and that he was more than welcome to help but that concept was met with oblivious decision. I, laughingly elaborated on all the wood I had cut up only to be dragged away by the same chaps who are dismantling the shack next door for firewood to which Reggie sprung to life and warned me of his next door neighbors.

The darkness, Reggie’s condition and my ability to clench my back teeth to keep from chuckling saved me from an awkward moment. You see, if I may break the fourth wall, Kenny Sr. told me to watch out for Reggie because he’s an addict, not dangerous or violent, but not a trustworthy individual. This stems from an altercation they had when Kenny Sr. and his mother cut my lawn with a Reggie’s weed-wacker and, unbeknownst to myself, when I gave Reggie the twenty dollars to give to Kenny Sr., he kept ten for himself as an equipment fee and thusly depriving Kenny Sr.’s mother of purchasing cigarettes. Never-mind the image in your head of a large elderly woman and her paraplegic son butchering my lawn with thoughts of Kools dancing in their heads, Kenny Sr. sold out his best friend and neighbor of twenty or so years to a relatively new acquaintance over at matter of ten dollars (understandable if this was $10 in 1885); and now Reggie is doing the same to the neighbors between Kenny Sr. and himself.

I then invoked a social technique I learned from Daniel Ohmann: encourage the deranged to continue their rant and watch as hilarity ensues. So, I asked about Kenny Jr. and his recent run in with the law. Reggie’s bloodshot eyes enlarged and he went on a tangent about how the kid was indeed in jail and how he, Reggie, had personally tried to guide the poor kid, act as a mentor, but “some people can’t be saved even by a good influence.” He spoke at lengths in this

vein but none of it was intelligible nor relevant to this story. For all I know or care, he could’ve been mumbling the theme song to Full House.

Eventually I had to break the news that I was on my way to the store for some cheap wine and I offered to buy Reggie a bottle. He said he liked white wine and when I asked him what kind of white wine, he repeated his previous answer. If my years in the restaurant industry has taught me anything, it’s that white wine is code for chardonnay and red wine means merlot. I could create an entire dissertation on the subject of wine and demographics but for the time being I’ll stick to the subject matter (riesling is for old women and gay black men... you’d be surprised how much they h

ave in common; I’ve made a list. Seriously.)

Kroger had a sale on Rex Goliath wines so a got a couple of

cabernets and a pinot noir (because it tas

tes like freedom) and a three dollar bottle of chard for Reggie. Returning home I gave the bottle to Reggie, who was still shuffling around in the street, and politely asked if he had a wine key to open it. “You mean like a corkscrew?” I nodded and he assured me that I shouldn’t worry; he would get it open without one. Before I could turn around, I hear

Kenny Sr.’s cherub-like voice emanate from his porched position in the darkness ask why I had gone on a booze run without consulting him. It’s like my little twin sisters: you can’t get one of them something without getting the other - one of the same. I instructed Reggie to share with Kenny. “There’s four and a half glasses in that bottle, depending on your stemware, you two should have fun with that.” Reggie walked up Kenny’s wheelchair ramp, that doubles as a clothesline, as I went up the stairs to my own dwelling, locked the door, and steadied the baseball bat in its position.

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Often times I am reminded of certain character traits I exhibit from my affectionate inner-circle of friends, at times of introspection and drink, that I should curb and/or suppress. For all their colorful, however vague, ridiculous, and poorly thought out and dictated allegations, I believe that they are hinting to some portrayed arrogance which I find to be the very thing on which I pride myself. Yes, I am proud of my arrogance. You are laughing at the irony of that statement or you are confused and youtubing Dane Cook (enjoy your remaining years). The point that I’m carouseling is that I’ve not mentioned why I live here in the first place. I love Atlanta for all its quirks and inconsistencies. Within twenty years I honestly believe that this will be THE place to live. I am less than five miles from were I work in Midtown, restaurants and art galleries are moving into the King Plow complex less than half that distance; Atlanta is spreading west.

There’s a married couple, Mike and Karen, who live closer to the scarier side of my neighborhood who are incredibly motivated into turning this area into a better place. They work tirelessly trying to get the right people in local office, organize meetings and clean up days, and have created a real neighborhood watch program. I cannot in good faith pretend as though I live in some hell hole without referencing that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I received a false alarm from Karen the other day on the way home that someone was vandalizing my house. Mike showed up within minutes. We talked for a long time about the wheels in motion. He pointed to the shack next door and said they’ve already had a commitment from the city to bulldoze the structure and hold lot holders accountable for maintaining their property. I pointed to the other one that I’ve cleared and he Mike grinned like a kid on Christmas.

Sadly, I fear that a significant amount of American money is going to repair the ghettos of Haiti while mine might be vanishing into drug-addled memories of the people decency forgot.

Strange memories on this nervous night in Sims Estates. One year later? One and a half? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a main era - the kind of peak that never comes again. Atlanta in the early twenty first century was a very special time and place to be apart of Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run... but no explanation, no mix of words or bass frequencies from a hoopty’s trunk or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and in the ghetto. Whatever it meant.

Transition is hard to do because of all the elected bullshit, but without being sure of “transition” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole neighborhood comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time - and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of this time will hang on one or five or maybe forty nights - or very early mornings when I left the Vortex half-crazed and, instead of going home, aimed the mustang down West Peachtree at a hundred miles an hour wearing brown leather pants and a jean jacket... booming down the access road towards the street lights of Brookhaven and Druid Hills and Decatur, not quite sure which turn-off to take when i got to the end (always stalling at the the 400 toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change)... but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place were everyone was just as high and wild as I was: No doubt about that at all about that...

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not in Midtown, then up to Buckhead or down 75 to Northside or 5 Seasons... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning ...

And that, I think was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we needed that. Our energy would have to prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the discarded spare tires; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful gentrification...

So now, less than a few months later, you can go up by the Inman rail yards and look East, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the city’s high-watermark - that place where poverty finally broke and rolled back.