I knew the southeast was in a daught, but I was not prepared for what it would be like. We have droughts about every other summer, but this one is particualrly bad. I can;t remember Atlanta ever looking so grey, so anaemic, so dry. The fires in south Georgia and Floria sometimes fill the city with thick grey smoke that smells heavily of burning. The grass is all shriveled and crunchy. All of the trees' leaves are pointed downward. The air is dryer than I have ever felt. On saturday there was a little bit of moisture in the air and it even sprinkled some. It felt so nice.
I am relieved to be back. I feel so much more relaxed now. I needed badly to come back here. But maybe I needed it so much that I aggrandized the slendor of this place in my head, because something feels just a little off or not right. Maybe it is the lack of certain people. But nonetheless I have expericened some of the catharsis of returning to the center of my universe.
I realized, and Sydney agreed, at a party at Georiga Tech that part of Chris Pool's function in the chapter of my life that I've known him is bridging severl different groups of people. What is most interesting about this fuction is that Chris may not even be the one who orchistrates the bridge, but someone will do it through him. When you connect the dots between seemingly unreated people, they always got hrough Chris Pool.
I never come home with the intention or desire to meet new people, but it has been happening. I met someone new who I would like to hang out with again* who made me vary interested in the body language dynamic of conversation and meeting new people. I'm now especially interested in close-talkers, who I believe are a misunderstood group of people. But anyway, I still think it is strange to think of coming back here and meeting new people. Here I am most intersted with the old and the close. I often think of how many loose ties I let go of and how many tight ones I would never.
One of my goals for the summer is to try and come closer to an idea of why I have been so compelled to make, in both photography and painting, highly simplified, or fragmented landcapes. Why creating very specifically long or short diatance appeals to me so much, and why my gaze at a landscape often turns so far up or so sharply down. I will culminate my finding with and exhibition at Javamonkey during the whole month of August.
*He is not related to Chris Pool, but Chris was the fascilitator through wihch I met him. See what I mean?