1. As often happens when I visit cities, my favorite part of Nashville was the park; in this case, Centennial Park, the centerpiece of which is an exact replica of the Greek Parthenon. Constructed in the late 1800s as part of an exposition, its kitschy pointlessness is a refreshing antidote to the wave of capitalistic development ruining transforming the rest of the world.
2. I stayed in a trendy 'boutique' hotel not far from the conference I was attending. The eighth floor offered nice views of the skyline, dotted with construction cranes. According to my brother, who has lived in and around Nashville for several decades, hundreds of people are moving to the city every day.
3. Automotive traffic is intense and there's no infrastructure for the many brands of dockless scooters that can be seen everywhere. Several Nashville residents told me how annoying they found the scooters and I gently tried to suggest that the problem is really cars, which I quickly gathered isn't a widely shared perspective here. "Imagine if, instead of parking, a lane for bikes and scooters were installed on every street," is the kind thing you might as well say in another language.
4. My niece and her nonheterosexual relationship partner took my brother and me to a secret cocktail bar, where we discussed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and specifically the social isolation that afflicts so many of its victims. I had just finished reading 'I Can Give You Anything But Love' by Gary Indiana, which was brilliant, sad, and abrasive; brilliant because he's incredibly well read (there's a reason why he was friends with Susan Sontag); sad because of the self-abnegation with which he (consciously) infuses the work; abrasive in his critique of straight society (but reaffirming if you happen to share his viewpoints: sometimes it's easy to forget the truth of things until you read someone like Gary Indiana). After a few drinks, I was happy to expound on my theory that many and possibly most gays -- particularly in my generation -- could be diagnosed with PTSD after growing up in our homophobic society, except that I'm not sure we've reached the 'post' part yet. Is there such a thing as Ongoing Traumatic Stress Disorder? The subtext to this conversation, like so many, was the question of whether 'Trump will ever be over.' It's not a simple question to answer, unfortunately.
5. The next day, I went to the park and communed with the magnolias.
6. I had also just finished reading 'The Overstory' by Richard Powers (interesting in its treatment of nature/trees, but Very Straight and a bit too melodramatic for my tastes in terms of its human characters) and was thinking about the beauty of trees. The best thing about 'The Overstory' is the idea that we (people) are really an insignificant blip on the natural timeline in comparison to trees, which in a way provides an answer to what will happen when Trump (literally and metaphorically) is over. The trees will come back and the earth will be better off for it.
7. Centennial Park has some strikingly decrepit monuments.
8. This monument symbolizes the idea that nationalism is -- despite everything we hear -- on the wane in 2019.
9. This monument also celebrates the certainty that no country is immortal.
10. Unlike beauty and nature, which will always last.
Comments