mountain wildlife

i spent last thursday and friday up at coweeta attempting to do my fieldwork even though i've already quit and am having a difficult time motivating myself. each day the was pretty miserable except for my wildlife encounters.

day one i saw this guy:

hello mr. copperhead. he was very polite and let me come close enough to take his picture. he didn't move a muscle until i rudely poked him with my tripod 3 or 4 times to get him out of the road. then he made his way into the underbrush and i realized that i had directed him into one of my sampling sites. oops. hopefully we won't have any unpleasant confrontations in the future.

on day two i ran into this wild beast:

she was not as well behaved as mr. snake. ms. kitty ran yowling from the woods and scrambled up my jeans and shirt and then perched herself on my shoulder and made it pretty clear that she was not a wild forest kitty and that she would appreciate it if i remedied the situation as soon as possible. so i took her home (my two cats are most displeased), gave her a name (adel- short for adelgis tsugae, the insect species i was/am still somehow suckered into studying for the next month or two), and found her a home (eli will be the best cat owner ever).

so there you have it. i wonder if anyone would have adopted the copperhead if i brought it home? anyone? come on now you guys. he doesn't have enough venom to actually kill you. unless he bites your face or neck or something.

regret and mediocrity

decisions are difficult to make because once you've chosen one option you've automatically rejected at least one other. and what if that other was the "correct" one? how can you know? so you vacillate back and forth and finally settle on something. not because you want to but because you have to.

if you're lucky, you're one of the few individuals with faith in their ability to make the right decision. with the type of personality that doesn't look back and wonder "what if" after the fact. what if you had gone with the other option? would that one have been better? would you not feel that sense of regret?

when i was younger and slightly more optimistic i vowed to make every life decision with the idea that i would never have any regrets. whatever i chose to do, i would chose based upon my innate ability to decipher right from wrong. as if my life were laid out before me in black and white- a single line with the occasional branching point stretched out before me. the correct branch would, of course, be obvious once i reached it and i would follow it unerringly and look back in my old age to a life correctly lived. my own yellow brick road leading me toward fulfillment and away from regret.

now that i'm a bit more mature and less of the idealistic stranger to myself that i was a few years back, i recognize that there is never a correct path. that no matter what decisions you make in your lifetime, you will automatically have to exclude some options that may have been, in a sense, right for you. and you will have regrets. there is no way around it.

regret almost feels like nostalgia to me. bittersweet. it's like looking back at something fondly remembered except that it never actually happened. i think the quality of regret that lends it to nostalgia is that it's very inexistence allows you to idealize what could have been and what will never be- to create a possible reality for your life that never would have existed anyway. but oh if it had! what my life could have been! to think of all of the possible lives i could have lived... nostalgia times fifty. nostalgia times one thousand. infinite nostalgia...

i know i'm not really very old, but sometimes i feel like i am. is my life winding down or just beginning? i can no longer tell. sometimes it seems to me that life is full of mediocrity and failure and that i don't want any part of it because i embody that mediocrity. that meaninglessness. at other times i feel like i will never get enough of the experiences life has to offer. at these times an overwhelming feeling of disappointment (and excitement) that i will never live long enough to experience it all weighs on me and pushes me back out of my everydayness and into the world. i feel frantic and seek change. constant change. constant stimulation. are there other unfound remedies for this restlessness? i certainly hope so.

i can live with regret because i have to. what i can't live with is mediocrity. so i'm still looking for a cure for the commonplace even though i don't really believe that one exists. does this mean that i will have to learn to accept mediocrity in my life just as i now accept regret? hmm, check back with me in five years.

tales from the city part one: new york- "there's a god-wind a-blowin"

immediately after my arrival at the new york, laguardia airport i am struck by the strangeness of people. sure people in athens are pretty strange, but i'm used to all of them. and once you're accustomed to something (or someone) it's no longer strange, now is it?

so new york people- visitors and residents alike- man they're odd. take "david" for example. my friend leslie and i met him on the bus from the airport to the train. the bus was packed with people and most of them had gigantic suitcases with them. suitcases stategically placed to block the aisles and prevent anyone from getting on or off the bus and, in the process, incur the wrath of the bus driver who refused to budge until the aisles were cleared. needless to say we were there a while.

as leslie and i caught up with the happenings in eachother's lives i could see david watching us. waiting for his in. he struck me as strange right off the bat. there was just something a little off, a little contrived, about his carefully cultivated rocker style. he was an attractive guy but his hair was a little too bleached (sun-in maybe?) and carefully messed up. his clothes were a little too urban outfitter-esque to be an expression of his own unique style. his guitar case looked too clean to have put in much time on the road. and his not so subtle, trying-to catch-our eyes coyness was a bit too determined. he appeared to have an agenda. so we ignored him.

unfortunately the bus remained immobile for quite some time and as leslie and i launched into my failed graduate school plans at uga and what i was going to do instead, i made the fatal mistake of mentioning the possibility that i would go to austin. to the university of texas where there is a great ecology program.

oops. texas was the in. how was i to know that? too late to take it back.

"TEXAS?" frown. "texas is a terrible place."

of course it is. bush country. rich right-wing republican haven. blah. blah. but nope, that's not what david meant at all. david is from oklahoma and, according to him, there is deep, long-standing hatred between oklahomians ("oklahomians"? did i just make that up?) and texans due, not to political differences, but to a college football rivalry. his fellow travelers nod enthusiastically in heartfelt, heartland solidarity. fascinating. football, my favorite topic.

but david didn't really want to talk football, gosh darn it. he wanted to talk GOD. of course. a christian rocker. how did i not spot it immediately? he was in town from oklahoma with the aisle blockers to "hang out at the park and play some music and talk to people" (read- to "save heathen souls such as mine and leslie's and show them the ways of our lord and savior jesus christ and maybe get laid in the process if that was god's will, amen.")

really, i shouldn't make fun of him too much because he was a nice guy despite his agenda. he wasn't a pusher. he just talked a little bit about what he was doing and asked us about ourselves and just casually mentioned that he was going to be in washington square park on friday night if we wanted to stop by. well, we didn't want to stop by but we acted our part and said that we might just do that (when hell freezes over).

but then fate or coincidence (or GOD?) had a different plan for us and we found ourselves meeting a couple of people at that same park on that same night.

while sitting by the fountain with our friends joseph and ian, leslie and i looked around for david. there was a large gang of "folks" gathered around a few guitar players but our david wasn't with the other rabble-rousers from oklahoma. now, you can blame it on the frame of mind created by the companionable passing of a flask of whiskey among friends, but leslie and i were disappointed. we actually wanted to see good old david. maybe we felt the pull of salvation or maybe we just felt a bit drunk and silly. at any rate, we kept checking back with the christians to see if he would show up.

and then, finally, there he was. david. so we got all excited and pointed him out to joseph and ian who didn't really give a shit. except that when ian saw who we were pointing at he got a funny look on his face. a look that appeared to be a definite mixture of disgust and humor.

i:"that's the guy?"
l and me: "yup."
i: funny facial expression continues.
me: "why? what the hell? do you know him?"
i: "um....no but we were just in the bathroom together and....never mind."
me: "what? just spit it out."
i: "well..." makes a weak, wheezy, singsong farting noise.
me: "what the fuck was that? he farted? if so, that was the most pathetic farting noise ever."
l: "he either farted or sang a really weird song in the bathroom."
i: getting more enthusiastic "dude, he didn't just fart. he let it rip like no one i've ever heard before. it was like he just didn't care who heard him."
me: "that's because god will love him anyway."
j: snorts
me: "did it smell bad?"
i: his expression says it all. i think it's safe to say that it didn't smell like roses.
l: "gross" drinks some whiskey, hands me the flask.
i: "i think i'm ready for a hit off of that flask now." drinks. grimaces.
me: "christians fart, too? it's too bad god can't cure that. if he could i bet a lot of people might suddenly convert to christianity." tilts it back again.
j: "who wants to go see billy graham with me on sunday?"
me: "are you hoping god will cure your farts if you convert?"
j: "i'm already christian."
me: "oh, yeah. i guess it's official then. christianity is not a cure for gas."
j: mean look directed at me

then, as we got up to leave, leslie and i got another surge of desire to converse with david and his crew. as we drew closer to the crowd we hesitated. stopped. and then veered away from them completely. i guess we just weren't feeling god that night. or maybe we were just afraid that we might get caught downwind from david and his pals.

if it was god that tried to bring us together, it must have been a powerful wind indeed that blew us apart.

premature goodbye

new york city. what can i say? i've lived in chicago. i've lived in dublin. i've been to cities all over the u.s. and europe but so far no other place has screamed CITY, has represented what i always imagined a city should be, would be, like new york has. the first time i went to new york i was 21 or 22. since then i've been there 4 or 5 more times and it never changes. that feeling that i am in the one place that defines the word city.

i've never though of myself as a city person. for a time i even thought that i wanted to forsake all society and live in the middle of nowhere away from all people. seriously. but now... i don't know, maybe 3 years in chicago changed me. now it seems that i miss the stimulation of city life. the people-watching alone keeps me endlessly entertained. the culture. the museums. the variety in everything. all things you can't find in athens.

not that i don't love athens. it has it's own charm. it's own draw. living in athens is like living in a comfortable, predictable bubble of like-minded people. easy. simple. but i'm back to the point where easy and simple bore me. i need a challenge. that's not to say that my past two years in athens haven't been difficult. they have and i've learned a lot about myself. i've changed a lot, too. for the better? who knows? i do know that i am a different person than i was when i came back two years ago. essentially the same, but still different somehow.

in any case, sometimes you just know when your time somewhere has been used up. when a place, even one that you love, has nothing left to offer you. or what it does have to offer is no longer enough to make you stick around.

the conundrum that is athens- you feel forced to leave because life here is so easy. too easy. so you must go for the sake of your own self-preservation and in order to salvage what is left of the productivity that you set aside during your athens interlude. at the same time, if you leave you're always trying to resist it's pull- that call back to your comfort zone. somehow athens has become the closest thing to home that you know.

i'll miss athens. especially all of the amazing people that i've met and even what it's taught me about who i am and who i want to be. it has been a necessary stop in my life but it's getting close to time for me to move on. so this is my premature goodbye to athens.

i'm not going to michigan but neither am i staying here. blame it on new york city if you want but it was really only the necessary catalyst that kicked my ass into gear. so i'm going... where? somewhere new. a city? new york? austin? tuscon? san francisco? i don't know just yet but my deadline is january 1st. maybe january will come around and i'll still be in athens and i'll have to eat my words but the way i'm feeling right now i don't think that will be the case. in the meantime i'm going to get my act together and get some shit done. finally. hopefully.