My Carolina Christmas (6 by 4)

[Gita]

1. Driver Safety

 I am bopping along interstate 85, headed north into the Carolinas. A virile black Chevy pickup is my front door, a maroon Camaro is my back door and I’m in the rocking chair.

In my opinion, this is the safest place to be when a state trooper is lurking, ready to award a speeding ticket to a passing motorist, because he will either ticket the truck that is the pace-setter or the muscle car that is last in line and easiest to pull over.

 In the world of fossil fuel spending, I know I am part of the problem, not the solution, because I love to drive – anywhere, anytime, and fast. I should feel guilty, but the pleasure of motion, sunlight and music overrides what I know is wrong about my behavior.  Strangely, when I am in this heavy machine of steel and burning gasoline, I feel at my most weightless.

 

2. Not an Original Idea

 

Such a dry cold envelops these old mountains. I steer carefully through a hairpin turn on my ascent towards Asheville, N.C., aware that the pressure in my ears is changing. I should be living here, I think. I deserve to have this beauty every day. I catalog the reasons to love North Carolina which include, but are not limited to: music, four distinct seasons, rushing water, wildlife, a sense of wonder, BBQ.

Counting the number of Lexuses and Mercedes around Saluda and Flat Rock, I am mindful of the fact that everyone with a generous retirement income feels the same way.

 

3. A Stranger Here

 

“Them two boys just been saved. As for me, my soul at this time remains unaffiliated.” – O Brother Where Art Thou?

 

 Although I have lived in the South for more than three decades, I still do not understand South Carolina. Nowhere do I feel more out of place, more “unlike” the culture around me, and I tend to think it has to do with religion and politics. But there’s something else, something hard to name, that causes me to feel like a different species.

 My cousin Pamela, her husband Garry, and I drive to Landrum to hear music in a small, cozy bar called Zenzerra, where Garry will sit in with the musicians and add his mouth harp to their string band. It turns out that I know all the songs, and with the help of a shot of bourbon, I start to relax. When the band plays Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” it strikes me as funny that they are playing a song (written by a guy from my home town) that sounds holy but really is about carnal love with bared fangs.

4. My Fault

 

Sometimes I don’t know where I belong.  This short visit with Pamela underscores how lonely I am much of the time in Alabama.  I miss being with people who sound like me, share family memories, laugh at the same ironies. But those people are thousands of miles away or, in many cases, dead.

This is my own fault; I can’t go home because I’ve stayed away too long, and I’ve failed to assimilate where I now live. I fall asleep in my cousin Rachael's bed, humming a childhood lullabye that only  my late mother knew, and now I am its only singer.

 

 

[Bill Floyd]

Lord, where to start?  Every one of these bangs, and hard.  Of course everyone knows that NC > SC, SC being a forsaken swampland with the exception of Charleston, which is truly one of the great southern towns.  Asheville has morphed into this weird hipster $ trap, but the food is awesome & they've got a pretty good music scene going.  I always rep for Boone in terms of natural beauty in the NC mountains, though, probably b/c I went to school there.  

 

L. Cohen is from your hometown?!  Dude!  One of the great wordsmiths of the 20th century for sure.  I saw him perform a couple of years ago & that 70-something guy outrocked most kids in their 20s.  Remind me to tell you the story of the drunk quoting him at the Edgar awards a few years back sometime...

 

As for 1 & 4; the youthful wonder of the pedal-to-the-floor joy of driving & the alienation of "home" have rarely been more pointedly captured.  This is top notch writing all around.  I wish you home & hearth, the mountains and the sea, a place to rest and limitless freedom.  Just not in SC... :)       

[Jamie Hogan]

I don't have a favorite. It's all, every sentence, like warm rain.

 

I feel right in the car, too, and I am head over heels in love with my NC mountains, and I feel a like a plain white zebra in SC. The only one to which I can't relate is #4, and that only increased the dull thud it created in my chest. This is art, G.

[LynnMichelle]

This really touched me.  Thank you!

[Teresa]

I love #4 because I can relate to it so well.  All four are beautiful, though, and I feel so satisfied when you share a part of yourself with us.  Though I don't belong in SugarShit, I'm content to fit in with our gang here, in a small town just every direction from anywhere at all called SixSentenceSocialNetwork.  You can get here by saying, "There's no place like home, there's no place like home..."

[Bob Clay]

Well I gotta tell ya Gita, going to sea was an adventure ... even those trips on bloody supertankers.

 

My drive was 'joined M5 Motorway at junction 27, got off at junction 2'.  Your drive was much more spiritual.

:-)

[Gita]

@Bob: Contemplative, maybe? All that time alone in a vehicle; it happens to men who go to sea.

[Bob Clay]

Another christmas on the road of a sorts, do we get more spiritual when we drive long distances ?

 

I get the impression you do.

[Paul de Denus]

wonderful writing Gita especially the last six- I called my siblings in Canada after that-thanks for the reminder. by the way, kd langs 'hymns of the 49th parallel is a pretty good record as mike indicated

[Gita]

As I said...... listen to those words.  Raw, bleeding love, urgent and orgasmic. Nothing polite about Leonard Cohen. 

[Mike Handley]

Splendid writing, G.

No. 3 is my favorite because I'm drawn to the peculiarities of people and places. Plus, bared-fang carnality is awesome, and that song rocks (K.D. Lang's is my favorite, though I haven't heard a bad version). I had a great time surfing youtube for various renditions, listening to them while looking at the lyrics in another window.