Saturday, December 23, 2006

Familiar Landscapes

The perils of global warming aside, North Carolina is wonderfully warm and damp.


These are of no use to me here, but they look awfully pretty when taken by my new camera.


One of the first requirements upon returning home is going up the road to Underwood's gas-and-grocery for glass-bottle Cokes.



Inside are such gems as decades-old hair pomade and cheap American cigarettes, overalls in all sizes and work boots, rotting vegetables and dusty plastic bottles of soft drink.





The sun came out for real late in the day.


Here's my house at twilight.


And my typical posture since I got home:


***

Tomorrow I get to see Meredith, my best friend from high school who also went to Oberlin, and soak in some coffee shop culture and trade kid stories; hers from classrooms in New Orleans, mine from a portrait studio in Chestnut Hill, MA.

And isn't it funny how when you're home, you can be at some party of your parents' friends, way, way out in the country, the opposite direction of anyone you know, and among the handful of guests is a person very close to the one person - the one person - you want to avoid? You can feel these things before they happen, so you deal with it better as you get older. It becomes less of a big deal, but it still makes your heart plummet.

More to come from me and my camera during this week home, once the novelty of long naps and staring into space wears off.

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