What's Cookin'

This is a closeup of the mobile Janelle & I made for Eleanor shortly after she was born. She's fascinated by it. Lately, she's on a quest to grab, by an y means necessary, the items on the mobile and consume them with extreme prejudice. My job is to prevent this from happening. It's called fatherhood. Welcome.

We've got roughly 20 days left in Athens, Ga. before moving on down the line to my place of origin. Strange ripples of deja vu are coming to me now that now it's time to say goodbye to Athens. I feel like I've done this before...like, I don't know, maybe 2 or 3 times. Maybe that was all a dream, though.

Chuang Tzu was a dreamer. He wandered all over the wide hillsides of the vast campo, carrying only a flute and a bottle of wine. Once, he had an illicit affair with a seventeen year old girl. Public outrage ensued. This event helped him grow, however. His art became much better afterwards. He said, "Once I, Chuang Tzu, dreamed I was a butterfly and was happy as a butterfly. I was conscious that I was quite pleased with myself, but I did not know that I was Tzu. Suddenly I awoke, and there was I, visibly Tzu. I do not know whether it was Tzu dreaming that he was a butterfly or the butterfly dreaming that he was Tzu."

Moving on from Athens will be bittersweet. In many ways, I hate to leave this place. It's been a good home to me. Like Chuang Tzu's nubile concubine, it has inspired me and helped me to grow. It saddens me that all the land developers are ransacking this old town and paving all the kudzu and ancient buildings, putting up plastic houses and Bed, Bath, & Beyond where oak trees should be fighting their war against Chinese Privet. So it goes. And but for the grace of Fortuna go we, the family atomic.

I made all that up about Chuang Tzu and the concubine. I think maybe I was trying to merge him with Jorgen Leth...in my mind.