Flying in yesterday to this place from NYC. Been back in the USSA (as the Beatles would say) for a week now, longer. Too much movement to make any reflections or thoughts here … And dial-up access is expensive too. Spanish moss hanging from the trees, a palm in the back yard. I am in the South. It has been 15 years since I’ve been down this way in the US. It is different. I am in a different place. Last week, Helsinki, then NYC, and now here. I feel that I should be mining these cultural juxtapositions — to derive a special knowing from the differences and similarities. But I hardly have the time. I suppose simply showing a sequence of images — as I photograph all the time (well, only totaling 20-30 rolls of Tri-X 135-36 in a year) — is the only way… Savannah. I make a small foray out to meet Alyssa at an opening — paintings by the Vice-Chancellor of the College of Art and Design where she is teaching in the Fine Metals department. I walked down largely empty streets in the approaching twiLight. People take the form of small phantoms seen down leafy sidewalk tunnels. TwiLight and dawn are critical times to discover the true face of a city. Transition times. The xenon-halide street-Lights slowly take over the atmosphere and the huge live-oak trees dripping in Spanish moss transform into flat volumes with the sheen of vinyl kitchen wallpaper. The half moon — with Venus hanging nearby — was set in a clear sky, the color of which I couldn’t really decide. It changed too quickly. No more high-latitude molasses-slow sunsets. Here in the South, darkness comes fast, and these transitions are only momentary glimpses deep into the soul of the Place. I wandered through a Park where the honored and illustrious dead historians and Sons of the Revolution are buried, strange texts were posted here and there in the form of Brass plaques explaining the significance of the moldering bones below. Massive live-oaks rested in their own gravitational field, acorns escaping at terminal velocity to be ground to a powder below on the sidewalk. I saw inside a third-floor window the skin of a boa-constrictor nailed to the wall. The refreshments at the opening featured Petit-Fours, Iced-Tea, and Caesar Salad dressing with vegetable cuttings and cheese. Meeting some of Alyssa’s colleagues, four of us left for a sushi restaurant appropriately called Kyoto in the strip-malled suburbia that has spread outside the perimeter of the original old-town sector. Remarkably, it was packed with 20-something Georgians. Animatedly consuming raw fish as though, well, as though, well, I thought I was back in West LA, back in the early 80’s when sushi bars were it. Waves move slowly and fast across Amurika, depending on local conditions. The cross-walk warning signs sometimes feature a woman-figure being pushed along by a man-figure holding her tightly by the arm. The epitome of Southern Chivalry, making sure She makes it across the dangerous crossing … So it goes. Sounding a little cynical at the moment, I suppose, diving into the minutia of the Place. But I feel like I need to know something about this Place. Maybe for the stupid reason that it is my country somehow. But it feel as impenetrable as ever. The structure as elusive as the life and death of the oak trees which, Alyssa tells me, are reputed to take 150 years to grow up, 150 years to live, and 150 years to die. As I cross Amurika, all things are inscrutable. I cannot move beyond the surface of wooden houses, storefronts, and the exteriors of automobiles. Purposes seem hidden and congested. There remains nothing clear except the moonLight and Venus. Venus, governing Love, the most inscrutable of all. I stay up writing this evening because on the ground floor there is a party proceeding, a dog barking in the back yard (next to the palm tree), and so it goes. Next I go to find my own earplugs. To sleep the night. I will refine these notes tomorrow. And I have a small angst attack with the amount of email I should be undertaking. Too many to talk with, and I haven’t the concentration to do it … More later.