Harvey-Sue

Stop One…Milledgeville (Dragon #1: History)

My intention was to go to the Flannery O’Connor Museum, but I heard there was a haunted / abandoned insane asylum in Milledgville, so…. I went there instead.  I broke in the basement and used the camera flash to navigate the lightless halls / find stairs, which were lined with sea-foam-green chain-link fence.  My heart was fluttering pretty hard…no better word than haunted.

   

Stop Two: Albany (Dragon #2, The Journey–or is it Self??)

I’m working on writing up the story of this trip.  Mostly I’ve just got a lot of descriptive scraps about breathing deep and acquainting myself with the fear-impulse to hesitate or leap back.  It was a last- minute, three-day trip in a fishing-boat with Uncle Vic down the flint river, complete with 44’s, scuba diving, storm boating, trailer backing,  and alligator wrestling.  It was a short time to get acquainted with so many dragons, but there was a lot of breathing and talk about life, and they were all kind to me.

A kid (that Uncle Vic took under his wing) took this picture of a scuba diving lesson in a spring on the quail plantation the day before we left.   The sky from underwater looks purple, and its the most frightening and peaceful thing.

On the first night, Uncle Vic showed me how to shine gators with a flash light to make their eyes glow back red like tail lights.  He took this next picture while he was doubled over laughing and cursing because he’d thought I was just out scouting an island for camping and I came back with a gator.  I’d been all talk about learning to catch them, and earlier in the night he’d had to wrestle one that I’d tried to get but had hesitated and jumped back when it thrashed.

 He later told Sister that he’d only seen one grown man catch a gator in his whole 70 years of life, and the he just couldn’t believe I’d just gone and got one…he said, “She must’ve picked him outa the river like a God-damn lilly.”

Here’s Uncle Vic.

Stop Three: Mcdonough (Dragon #3, Art / Makin Somethin of It)

I stopped here to see my friend Kyle for Norm and Norma practice (the second one ever). A facing of demons in itself…not quite the same gothic, dark, literary type–more the middle-America Dinette City type.  We threw rocks on the RR tracks at night and they sparked.  And this adventure, like the trip down the river, also included turkey callers:  Micky’s Jam ….That one’s actually a clip from jam session #1 last month…but we’re trying to polish a couple tunes (like “Get Normal,” which is all about setting each other’s demons free with Sun Tornadoes and Jared Letto). Huzah!