Yesterday, I took a trek from my current home in Little Five Points through Inman Park, Cabbagetown, Grant Park, Summerhill, Mechanicsville, the West End, and up to the Atlanta University Center where the Morehouse, Spelman, and Clark campuses converge. Through this journey, I met with two former residences of mine (543 Boulevard in Grant Park and the old Southern Mills building in Mechanicsville where I managed Ambient + Studio for several years), and the nostalgia was overwhelming to the point of obliterating the present for more than a few moments, the feeling of having been there just yesterday. While in Grant Park, I felt viscerally an era with frequent strolls to visit the hornbills, meerkats, and snapping turtle at the zoo; going on a run through the neighborhood and ascending/descending the stairs of the Cyclorama like some famous movie about an Italian-American boxer; sledding on trash bags down snow-covered hillsides on dark winter nights; and well, the entirety of life with my boyfriend and two of my best friends (and our kitties) living in a home that was all at once cavernous, confusing, beautiful, and utterly ramshackle. Passing by Ambient was a more recent nostalgia, but it’s surprising to know that what feels so familiar was more than a year ago: cultivating a pollinator garden, painting giant rooftop murals, witnessing dozens of marriages, and of course having my path blocked by a slowly-moving train. This hike was one to remind that even recent memories can seem distant, a good indicator that we must live our entire lives all at once, like some Kurt Vonnegut quote I don’t feel like looking up. And of course, it provided a healthy dose of photographic material that I’m posting here, the catalogue of yet another journey from point A to point B through many incongruous neighborhoods (including some mild trespassing). And it didn’t hurt that I got some great hot wings at West End Mall.
TIME TO LEARN 