GRABBINGSAND

wow. a mighty lapse. you can always tell when all of the burners are boiling, as the website goes to the wayside. someone told me that they can tell when things are cooking in my life, because my site seems to simply clam up and keep to itself. but i guess i am back to a simmer and i am back to write some more.

the second day. 7:04pm. the sun is out and i can see much more of what i missed in the dark last night. but what i cannot see is the train i keep hearing. an occasional, very brief blast on the whistle, but i guess the tracks must be on the opposite side of the hotel. not annoying, though i can see two train cars plain as day before me. different ones. immobile. one red caboose (are they all?) and one black engine with the number ‘134′ on the side in white. the river is flowing east to west, or at least right to left, and it seems incredibly narrow at this point. much more narrow than the tennessee river i know from chattanooga.

the hills roll on forever. an immediate set just over the river, one faded by haze behind it, another obscured to a shadow after. surprisingly, the opposite river bank is rather bare. grass alternating with storage, keeping in mind that knoxville is a port city, albeit a small one. there is a sense of history here, and they seem to keep their old architecture longer than atlanta. the world’s fair exhibitions are still here, or at least the shells that housed them. the sunsphere has been polished recently, and it is occupied by some upscale restaurant of a kind. the other pavilions are being reconfigured and are yet to become parking lots. had the 1982 world’s fair happenned in atlanta, it would all be one massive parking lot by now. no, wait, someone would have converted the sunsphere into one bigass set of highrise loft apartments.

oh. almost forgot. the hyatt is parked alongside the women’s basketball hall of fame. an interesting and respectable structure with a 10-ton orange basketball stuck on top of it.

well, off to meet the co-worker’s for some after-work frivolity…

my hotel room. the desk said that i would have a ‘river view’ and i suppose i do. of course, between the river and the hyatt are some obstacles. a tree-lined bank (acceptable), a precarious and trendy apartment complex (odd), a two-lane highway (freshly minted), a complimentary hotel volleyball court (errm), and a parking lot. the windows are huge, about 5 foot tall, but they have these ‘don’t jump’ clamps on them to keep you from sliding them open more than about 4 or 5 inches. for some reason, the narrow gap just screams ’school book depository’ – it may be the coffee talking. the coffee is from a Mr. Coffee Concepts coffee maker popping and spewing in the bathroom. they give you this ‘coffee kit’ containing a sealed porous pouch of coffee, two sugars, two creamers, two pinks and two stirrers. the coffee is not bad, but the ’single serving’ ideal is just odd.

it is dark now. the river is no longer evident, though i know its there. every once and again, light catches on a ripple and the river shows some skin. the river view is marred a bit by these large cannister looking things on the opposite bank. not sure what they are. they look like fuel silos, but i don’t think that even knoxville would put petroleum storage less than 20 yards from the tennessee river. there is some rural highway within view, the streetlights lining it give it that look of christmas trees.

the business trip. there is just something instantly comical about it, but only funny in that ‘born loser’ kind of way. do you remember that comic strip, denizen of the sunday funnies, the bald businessman with his overbearing wife and dutch-boy-haired son, wilberforce? it might even still be in print. it was always an attempt to be funny, but never quite made it. you just ended up feeling sorry for the dated sense of pathos and humor from which the cartoonist worked. i believe he was a travelling salesman. or insurance man. or an accountant. one of those stereotypically mocked careers that writers assume to be worthy of parody.

now, fate is with me. i am no salesman. i am a techie. i am sure my career is just as open a target for ridicule, but i am ignoring that for the duration of this writing, thank you very much. damn you, dilbert. anyway. i am in knoxville for the purpose of learning more software. though what i am learning, or perhaps remembering, is that i have a great fondness for the quircks of the southern states that formed me. growing up on the tennessee-georgia border gives you a sense of dual statehood. you sleep in georgia, you shop in tennessee, you get your driver’s license in georgia, you work in tennessee. and your family trips in the car take you through one or both of these states. almost always up and/or down interstate 75.

it has been awhile since those family outings. trips to myrtle beach, orlando, eufaula (its in alabama, and though you have never heard of it, when i was last there it was very pretty). and today, this morning, i found myself remembering bits of i-75 as i trucked north up the artery. it goes all the way to chicago, i believe. or perhaps to niagara falls. i cannot remember which, and right now i can’t be bothered to check. i-75 rarely changes. i mean, in the cities, atlanta and chattanooga and knoxville, it is always adapting to the adjusting metropolitan girth, seemingly always under construction. but the cities in between, those landmarks are incredibly dependable. the airplane graveyard near calhoun has always been there, i cannot remember it not being there, and it will always be there.

thom yorke is singing about ’such a pretty house’ and ‘no surprises.’ i think i will find some other distraction, or maybe just turn around and face the mute television. olympics. gymnastics. i will need another cup of coffee for this…

the weekend. i am in need of one, but why do i get the feeling that this is going to be one of those weekends that is really just a really long weekday in disguise?

there is always this cacophony on my floor. not like a stock exchange, but its a constant over-the-tops-of-the-cubes discussion about who-said-this and she-said-that. luckilly, the conversations have nothing to do with me.

full moon again. found a box of file folders from just after college. playscripts. letters. photos. i cannot tell you how much i relish this physical evidence of good memories.

i have been lax. but it felt good to disjoin for awhile. so five days later, i am back… with tales to tell and things to say. unless i decide to put them off until tomorrow. or the next day. or the next. or…

Okay. Previously I have aimed my black eyeballed QuickCam at myself, at my friends. I have shared several of those images here. But since my new apartment has this interesting window arranged right at my desk, I decided to point in that direction. This is the result, tinted slightly.

Let me walk you through what you see. The window was open on my side, but the storm pane was still closed, causing a reflection. So you see the back of my bed’s headboard against the window sill, above and behind it the white wall of my room, framed William Blake poster in center. Across the alleyway is another apartment, windows like mine. All of them dark because of the hour. In the lower right, a streetlight on North, behind it the bright light of a 24-hour gas station.

Maybe this is just one of those things that looks cool to me.

yes. while i was corrected accurately this morning by a co-worker that it is still humid and wet, the temperature is shifting. my favorite season is returning and there was just enough of that wind-blown mist this morning to justify the jacket.

might i humbly suggest some things. if you are going to be moving furniture and boxes over a two day period, it might be advisable to not have any dental work done. also be sure to contact your local van rental place about six or seven months in advance, as it was my experience that only one Ryder truck was available on Saturday afternoon and it was mysteriously priced at three times the going rate. now, i am not one to judge (shut up) and i would never assume that the price was a bit gouged to take advantage of the Labor Day weekend (shut up) , but it does seem a bit odd. i could also mention how the battery on the truck died during the three hours of intensive hazard-blinker action it took to unload, or i could wax eloquently about the hand truck that i paid extra for and never used… the hand truck that seemed to leap out of the back of van when we opened the door to unload… that seemed to jump at a curious angle that sent it bouncing into the path of an oncoming car. if Roland hadn’t caught it with his mutant super-human reflexes, somebody would be buying a new windshield. but i will not mention any of those things — at least not again.

another thing. Dale Carnegie might not have ever mentioned the persuasive influence of Krispy Kreme donuts, but he should have. if you need assistance moving large and unwieldy objects up stairwells and down hallways, might i suggest the humble cruller as your tool of convincing. sure, you can offer your beer, your steak dinners, your firstborn children, but if you really want your friends to help you always go with Hot Donuts Now.

this move went surprisingly smooth. the new apartment is in-town, and the change of venue is already offering its rewards. less than a day after bringing in the last of the boxes, my shelves are up and filled from end to end with my unnecessarily large collection of books and curiosities. no, i have no shrunken heads. what i do have are odd objects from various locales. a broken horseshoe i found on campus at Berry College. an uncertain scrap of metal pipe that came from my father’s work. a thimble-shaped piece of green glass from atop a turn of the century electrical post. the black iron business end of a broken pike. a teacup that a director from Berry gave me and the props master for The Importance of Being Earnest (i think it was meant as an example of the kind of teaset she wanted and perhaps we were supposed to return it to her). photos of grandparents, great-grandparents.

and then there are the books. i have said before that a home is not a home until you can sit up in your bed and find yourself surrounded by the books you enjoy and could not live without. i guess the new place is already home.

to round out the holiday weekend, i found myself back at Eddie’s Attic last night. another benefit of the move, Decatur downtown is now only five miles or so from my apartment. i went to support my friend Geoffrey as he braved the stage for Open Mic night. it was great to see him sing his songs, songs that i have heard many times before, songs that i can hum with words i can mouth, doing my best to give him as much projected courage as possible.

also at the Open Mic were Russell Wolff and Christina Abbott. i left Eddie’s with Christina’s CD in hand. her music is reminiscent of other bands i admire (Fleming & John, the now defunct Soul Miner’s Daughter), with a voice that bends and curves around her words with audible smiles. a line that i keep repeating to myself and belting in the car:

hold on… you don’t wanna miss this
love’s a sticky business,
and i get stuck all the time

she has a website where you can purchase her CD. the cost is not much at all, and i can tell you with some confidence that you will feel better spending your money on good music, honestly-made than on any of the machine made pablum that seems to be multiplying so rapidly and rabidly.

there was also a great duo that sang about finding Jesus in a snowglobe at a truck stop in Memphis. the line that got me was: “i know my Jesus died for me/ that snowy night on Calvary.”

well, one can only waste time updating their website for so long, and the Louis Prima on the MP3 player is actually inspiring me to get up and do some real work.

funny, but when you’re near me… zoom-zooma-zooma….