Tuesday, February 12, 2002
And tonight I'm writing from Athens, Georgia. Sitting in the living room of a friend, listening to Cocteau Twins and Blade Runner samples. My friend, whose name is David Ferguson, made a cameo appearance in Silk as Jobless Claude. He brewed coffee for Daria and Niki and brought them pastries. These days Jobless Claude is Student Claude, studying Japanese and Japanese literature at UGA. I tell him how much I envy his current academic status and I suspect he doesn't believe me. We're trading his digibilicus back and forth and Jennifer just said, "This is what passes for socializing in the modern world," and then she went back to reading her novel.
Athens. I spent three years (and then some) here and it's a lot like coming home. Driving through the February Georgia night looking for UFOs and seeing only airplanes and stars and helicoptors. Dark pine fields and bright splotches of gas station brilliance dabbling the ribbon of Highway 138. And then Athens. I used to call this place Never-Never Land. It might still be 1983 here, or 1994, or seven years from now, but it's always Athens time, which no one seems to bother keeping up with. That used to drive me nuts. My internal clock would never reset itself to Athens Standard Time, my clockdriven self, which made me an oddball among oddballs. "What do you mean I'm late," someone would say if I complained, as though "late" were not a valid concept here.
Tomorrow I may go on to Charleston, to see the Atlantic and the aquarium. There are times nothing brings me peace like the sea, and aquariums. And right now I need peace. Or I may spend the day prowling the used records shops and Jackson Street Books, coffee at Blue Sky and then Guinness at The Globe. I go away and everything stays exactly the same, almost.
David has to be up at 7 a.m., so I'm probably keeping him awake.
But he seems unconcerned. Athens Standard Time.
I did not begin Chapter 3 today, but it's coming.
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