Grateful this Thanksgiving week for the Athens community, a special place in my heart that feels hard to part with, when Athens has taught me so much thru schoolyards, classrooms, bar patios, and the most blessed days when I could write and draw on my father's collegiate blackboards anything in chalk, easily eraseable with a puff of chalk dust, and in my mother's office at Nelson and Hill play a version of civilisation and Castle of the Winds on a now oldfashioned computer, keyboard, and mouse.
St. Mary's Hospital to my parent's and sister's loving arms, Parna's nursery, Athens Montessori for three grand years of playing duck duck go, singing "He's Got the Whole World, In His Hands"... playing on the old firetruck, the ropeway in the back, hiding in the overturned truck tire, breaking pecans with my shoes and learning tool use. David C. Barrow to follow, where we'd sing, "I love to go to Barrow school, to Barrow school I gooo, Five days out of every week, to Barrow school I goo," when we weren't singing the song with all the school sponsors named at school assemblies, where we received so much love from our teachers and Principal Wright, the unique moment of the 90s when multiculturalism was a blessed reality, shifting into Clarke Middle School and the joys of learning creatively, most of all in Mrs. Nagao's class, where I met future friends once we were separated from our Elementary school bonds in a haphazard way, thrown into the deep end of 9/11 on the TV in Mrs. Causey's class in 7th grade, Earl Ayers the bandleader teaching an entire class to play every single instrument single handedly, we in percussion pushing each other aside to get on that big bass drum or the snare and the cymbals. Bloody knuckles and Mossing each other on the playground, Yo Mama jokes that on this day I can understand the pain that could be inflicted on a peer if the joke hit home. Into high school where we all self-segregated into cliques, racial divisions in the cafeteria, College Prep, Advanced College Prep, and AP classes to divide us further. The humiliation of my peers having fallen behind in their studies and eeking out an existence far from the dreams of mothers and fathers envisioning their children going to college one day. Kids having kids and growing into the responsible parents as if it were destiny, wisdom I never have known. Dropping out of school and going on my experiments thru the woods, jumping over hedges, stacking chairs and trying to learn how to land...thinking I could feel the air to the degree to catch the winds and take flight. All foolishness, as were my many experiments with sound, sungazing, altered states of consciousness, and awakenings that had to be put to somnolence if not to sleep.
Leaving town for college at a private school on half scholarship, losing the connection to the peers who raised me in Athens, coming back to complete a masters in public health and a masters in social work, by the skin of my teeth, every year returning to a stupor once the delusions had been properly sedated.
All this to say, working at Advantage must be my finest moments here in town, not to mention my marriage of which books could be written, where I felt I was giving back to the place that has given me so much, teaching me empathy and compassion in action, and recalibrating my playlist back to soul, Indian classical, and far from gangsta rap, some ill-informed rock, too, and their lures. Listening to the lyrics deeply and changing my mind to change my environment. Changing my environment to change my mind. And as I now depart to another world city, with the heavy feeling that I did not do enough for Athens, I embark on opportunity for redemption and reconciliation, non-violent communication, empathy and conflict resolution, courage and commitment, conviction and resilience, adventuring into the unknowns lurking in the shadows of the known, to complete my task I began 19 years ago, and maybe earlier- to make known the unknown, to know the demarcation of these in myself, to know in others for all good intents and purposes, and to get into the ground, plant the seeds to grow this tree, this tree of life that I hope to see one day as the fruition of public health, the indefinite lifespan, free of fear for all-too-preventable death. Because as the logicians said: "All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Socrates must die". Is it so unreasonable in this world of senolytics to dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? As I said in the beginning, so I will say in the end...seek no fame, no glory in the game, go against the grain, try to stay sane, entertain the untamed unnamed lion's mane, be Adam's outstretched finger, be God's brain.
