Getting more directly on the topic of my headline, a number of months ago my friend and I were eating at a BBQ restaurant that's local, talking about our home area. He was talking about how he couldn't believe people would actually move to where we live, in Habersham County, by actual decision, by actual thought process. He couldn't believe that someone would CHOOSE to move to where we are, a rural outpost in the Georgia Highlands.
It was interesting for him to bring this up because ten years ago, when I was 14, I never expected to be remaining here. I never had any idea what my major would be then, I had no idea what kind of career to expect or what degree I'd ultimately pursue or what university--I was looking at the Art Institute of Atlanta at the time, I believe. The economic fallout seemed so distant from that year. I had no idea that I'd be in the same county. I had no idea that I would grow to be ok with my area, to make peace with Habersham.
It was interesting for him to bring this up because ten years ago, when I was 14, I never expected to be remaining here. I never had any idea what my major would be then, I had no idea what kind of career to expect or what degree I'd ultimately pursue or what university--I was looking at the Art Institute of Atlanta at the time, I believe. The economic fallout seemed so distant from that year. I had no idea that I'd be in the same county. I had no idea that I would grow to be ok with my area, to make peace with Habersham.
Inevitably I will need to find a new place to live. Eventually I will need to use an advanced degree to live somewhere like Atlanta/Decatur, or Chicago, North Carolina, Tennessee, etc. Yet, here I am.
It's tough because I've taken the initiative to gain experiences by eating different types of food, travelling, etc. This has led me to have a clash of expectations over small things like the lack of quality restaurants or the haphazard burgers at one particular place. Still. It could be worse.
What led to this realization is important to me because it ultimately correlated with my discovery of poetry, my true discovery of poetry. I always had poetry in my peripheral but I began to devour poetry right around the same time that I rediscovered my roots, or rekindle my love of the mountains and nature.
That began with a band.
I mentioned in my post "8 Pieces of Advice for Young Musicians" that I was in my first "band" band when I was in university. A friend of mine from Bangladesh needed some musicians for a band that would do South Asian music. I got involved as a bassist and would move on to guitar. We practiced in Buford, GA, which is 45 minutes (at least at 11AM) from Atlanta. For some reasons unknown to me I, at this time (aged 20), had never really seen the suburbs before. In Habersham there were subdivisions catered for people who wanted a second house near the mountains and such, but I had never seen the real suburbs before.
I hated it.
I hated (well, I haven't stopped hating, so hate) the suburbs. Driving through Buford with my friend (and bandmate from Habersham) we'd see the houses that littered the very private areas. We'd see how close the houses would be together, how little the yards but how substantial the houses were. The idea of Homeowner's Associations that had control over what one put in one's property, or the idea of not having a backyard or a proper front yard felt dehumanizing to me.
The opportunities to a better life were somewhere in this area...I knew that. The people I met at Gainesville State that were from Forsyth County or Gwinnett County seemed far more intelligent or had far more sense than I did. Yet, it seemed little sense to live in the home equivalent of cubicles.
With this discovery of the suburbs did the first little drops of appreciation come in for my home in North Georgia. Growing up most of my friends didn't live in areas like the suburbs of Buford. Most of our properties were surrounded by vast woods, grass, that were very unfurled and not at all landscaped.
I remember asking someone I knew in the Habersham Democrats about why he lived here. Here, Habersham, wasn't a bastion for liberals and his status in the army meant he could've lived anywhere. He came back to Habersham and his reasons were that "this was a great place to raise children."
Making my way into the suburbs led me to understand this statement. Even my bandmate/friend, who didn't particularly care for Habersham, concurred that as children we had spaces and room to explore. In my poetry I often use childhood and coming of age as themes with the forests and woods as motifs. For instance, I wrote a poem about finding out that a friend of mine was going to jail by portraying how we played in the woods, how we'd use limbs to fight each other, how we'd climb trees. Thinking of my childhood I often feel the pain that many of us do with the bruises of self-realization, yet I also notice how easy it was to play and create new opportunities to play without the plethora of toys that I could possible have.
That was the first way I re-discovered that my area wasn't horrible.
Then there was Robinson Jeffers.
Jeffers was a poet I discovered in World Lit II. My professor was a poet and she introduced me to a great extent of the poetry I read. It was in that class I started reading Pablo Neruda, with the first lines of "Leaning in the Afternoons" striking me like the first snare of "Like a Rolling Stone" to Bruce Springsteen. It was a call to arms in writing and to undertake poetry. She also introduced Robinson Jeffers and his poem "Hurt Hawks" as well as his theory of inhumanism.
Inhumanism details the idea that man is self centered, self interested, and Jeffers stressed through Inhumanism that we are not as important as everything else in nature. Jeffers's poetry detailed in poems like "Hurt Hawks" that he'd "sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk." For me, perhaps in the midst of a year that would change my ambition, I felt this to be profound.
Around the same time I also took American Literature 1 and 2, where I digged deep into Walt Whitman, ee cummings (who I had already loved), and other poets. I also started reading John Keats and indulging in his "Negative Capability," as well as poetry from India like Kalidasa, and "The Penguin Book of Zen Poetry" which steered me into the direction of Japanese and Chinese poetry that stuck with me with its emphasis of sparse, laconic language and intimate imagery with nature.
All of this was important because it set the course for me to restate my purpose in becoming a writer, with a particular focus on poetry. I don't know what the first poem I wrote was, but the first time I felt I could be a poet was in Creative Writing class when I mimicked Ezra Pound's "In the Station at the Metro" with a poem called "Without my Glasses." With my realization that poetry was, after all, my love, also came to my realization that the Southern landscape is my muse.
I mentioned before about the speaker at my graduation ceremony, Michael Shapiro of the High Museum of Art, talking about how we need to seek through the world to find what our muse is or what our purpose is. It was speech that had an impact on me. I thought about what do I muse about, or where is my house of musing. For Shapiro it was the art museum. For me it was the cinema, the library, and as I would discover through my poetry it was nature, specifically mountains and water.
Through poetry I would work to excavate my surroundings and their different hues. Inspired by Walt Whitman or Basho I would walk through the woods. In this mode of thinking I ultimately found Georgia reasonably transcendent.
As a poet I struggled as many poets do starting out, trying to figure out what to write about or what is worth writing. Often my poetry delved into loneliness, into despair, but I wasn't sure how to depict these themes. Through poetry I started to move inward within the area, hiking Tallulah Falls, Black Rock Mountain, etc, and taking lunches at Pitts Park. When my poetry began to reflect the images of Tallulah Falls, of the forests, of the coastal plain of Alabama, did I feel that I was onto something.
Slowly I've realized the difficulty of leaving the South. Part of this is economics, but I also feel that I need the South for my writing, for my poetry especially. It is my muse. It will always be my muse.
I hated it.
I hated (well, I haven't stopped hating, so hate) the suburbs. Driving through Buford with my friend (and bandmate from Habersham) we'd see the houses that littered the very private areas. We'd see how close the houses would be together, how little the yards but how substantial the houses were. The idea of Homeowner's Associations that had control over what one put in one's property, or the idea of not having a backyard or a proper front yard felt dehumanizing to me.
The opportunities to a better life were somewhere in this area...I knew that. The people I met at Gainesville State that were from Forsyth County or Gwinnett County seemed far more intelligent or had far more sense than I did. Yet, it seemed little sense to live in the home equivalent of cubicles.
With this discovery of the suburbs did the first little drops of appreciation come in for my home in North Georgia. Growing up most of my friends didn't live in areas like the suburbs of Buford. Most of our properties were surrounded by vast woods, grass, that were very unfurled and not at all landscaped.
I remember asking someone I knew in the Habersham Democrats about why he lived here. Here, Habersham, wasn't a bastion for liberals and his status in the army meant he could've lived anywhere. He came back to Habersham and his reasons were that "this was a great place to raise children."
Making my way into the suburbs led me to understand this statement. Even my bandmate/friend, who didn't particularly care for Habersham, concurred that as children we had spaces and room to explore. In my poetry I often use childhood and coming of age as themes with the forests and woods as motifs. For instance, I wrote a poem about finding out that a friend of mine was going to jail by portraying how we played in the woods, how we'd use limbs to fight each other, how we'd climb trees. Thinking of my childhood I often feel the pain that many of us do with the bruises of self-realization, yet I also notice how easy it was to play and create new opportunities to play without the plethora of toys that I could possible have.
That was the first way I re-discovered that my area wasn't horrible.
Then there was Robinson Jeffers.
Jeffers was a poet I discovered in World Lit II. My professor was a poet and she introduced me to a great extent of the poetry I read. It was in that class I started reading Pablo Neruda, with the first lines of "Leaning in the Afternoons" striking me like the first snare of "Like a Rolling Stone" to Bruce Springsteen. It was a call to arms in writing and to undertake poetry. She also introduced Robinson Jeffers and his poem "Hurt Hawks" as well as his theory of inhumanism.
Inhumanism details the idea that man is self centered, self interested, and Jeffers stressed through Inhumanism that we are not as important as everything else in nature. Jeffers's poetry detailed in poems like "Hurt Hawks" that he'd "sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk." For me, perhaps in the midst of a year that would change my ambition, I felt this to be profound.
Around the same time I also took American Literature 1 and 2, where I digged deep into Walt Whitman, ee cummings (who I had already loved), and other poets. I also started reading John Keats and indulging in his "Negative Capability," as well as poetry from India like Kalidasa, and "The Penguin Book of Zen Poetry" which steered me into the direction of Japanese and Chinese poetry that stuck with me with its emphasis of sparse, laconic language and intimate imagery with nature.
All of this was important because it set the course for me to restate my purpose in becoming a writer, with a particular focus on poetry. I don't know what the first poem I wrote was, but the first time I felt I could be a poet was in Creative Writing class when I mimicked Ezra Pound's "In the Station at the Metro" with a poem called "Without my Glasses." With my realization that poetry was, after all, my love, also came to my realization that the Southern landscape is my muse.
I mentioned before about the speaker at my graduation ceremony, Michael Shapiro of the High Museum of Art, talking about how we need to seek through the world to find what our muse is or what our purpose is. It was speech that had an impact on me. I thought about what do I muse about, or where is my house of musing. For Shapiro it was the art museum. For me it was the cinema, the library, and as I would discover through my poetry it was nature, specifically mountains and water.
Through poetry I would work to excavate my surroundings and their different hues. Inspired by Walt Whitman or Basho I would walk through the woods. In this mode of thinking I ultimately found Georgia reasonably transcendent.
As a poet I struggled as many poets do starting out, trying to figure out what to write about or what is worth writing. Often my poetry delved into loneliness, into despair, but I wasn't sure how to depict these themes. Through poetry I started to move inward within the area, hiking Tallulah Falls, Black Rock Mountain, etc, and taking lunches at Pitts Park. When my poetry began to reflect the images of Tallulah Falls, of the forests, of the coastal plain of Alabama, did I feel that I was onto something.
Slowly I've realized the difficulty of leaving the South. Part of this is economics, but I also feel that I need the South for my writing, for my poetry especially. It is my muse. It will always be my muse.
