Dear South Carolina,
I have to admit, it’s a little embarrassing to finally write
after so long… I guess we just have had a rough mutual past. Not enough ups to go with the downs. I’ve been avoiding coming to terms with
you. The idea was to largely ignore you,
pass by in stealth mode, without getting snagged in your boggish swamps. Not get hassled by your conservative wing-nut
ideals. Slip through the hierarchy of
supremacist classifications, histrionics, and socially accepted racism. I would have passed by observing you from a
distance but keeping our eyes from locking.
Politely keeping the association between us as close to nil as possible.
I’ve been classified North Carolinian these many years. I’m now 29 years old and I’ve spent 16.5 of
those years in NC. I can’t help but
consider myself more North Carolinian as an American than anything else. But you’ve never been very far away. It’s the nature of North and South Carolina I
think. North Carolina is long and lean, broad
and varied. It stretches like taffy from
the outer banks to a floppy end melting over the Appalachians. South Carolina, you are stocky and
vacant. You are but a misshapen brick of
a state, a land of golf carts and crocodiles; one massive mosquito breeding
ground with your sweaty air and potent stench of decay. Not much more than a massive compost heap
just outside North Carolina’s walls.
Your muddy or sandy soil when dry is saturated with ant colonies, such
that avoiding ant hills is the equivalent of never standing in one spot for
more than an instant. Keep walking, or
South Carolina will devour you in agony.
That’s how I used to think of you, I know it sounds harsh, and
I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness for being so ignorant and assuming. Now I’ve been here for almost five months, I
know better. I’m not making the assumption
anymore. You really are all those
things. I actually still feel that way
about you, in general. So you can
forgive me now if you like, but I won’t beg or recount my beliefs and
teachings; just like you wouldn’t. The
fact of the matter is North Carolina is better… even though many defining
principals are similar.
I’m going to stop making as many generalizations though and get through with this letter. I’m going to
write you as the man that you’ve gotten to know in the special, unique and
somewhat uncomfortable way we’ve grown accustomed to. After all, even though I did my best to shun
you with the high level professionalism of a thirteen year old girl, we were
forced together by circumstance. I was effectively
poured out from a dirty pitcher, naked and wet, hungry and desperate like an
alleyway prostitute whose stolen clothes only bought her one lift to the seedy
back entrance at the greasy drug den where her pimp is smoldering with anger. We make quite the pair.
I’d like to think that maybe that’s why we got along, I came
to you when I was hitting rock bottom, when I was all but broken, panicked and
dehydrated. I’d like to think that it
wasn’t really my fault. But, I don’t
like to delude myself indefinitely. I
know it all falls back to the moment I made the decision to flee. Like the well respected city council member
who realizes his cohorts have squealed about the South American connections,
that the local airport is swarming with feds and his home phones have been
tapped.
New Year’s Day 2012 I decided that I wouldn’t be able to fix
the boat and really prepare it for the journey ahead; but that I was going to
go for it anyway, knowing full well that it would catch up to me. I just hoped that my life as a fugitive would
last long enough to creep across the border… that I’d be able to meet my South American
connection at his dusty truck just across the border at sunset and that I could
get my new life started before the needed repairs caught up to me.
South Carolina, like the expert assassin that you’ve always
been, you snagged me in your low hanging moss, and cut me up on your oyster beds
and withered and crushed me with your heavy heat. Why couldn’t you have just let me go? Is it my European lineage? Is it retribution for your laborious defeat
in the war against the pale faced settlers that would rape your few resources? I have to admit your dastardly method of
punishment is ingenious. It hints at a level
of intelligence I wasn’t expecting. You
beckon to the unfortunate or deceived, you offer a sweet indulgence or two, an
anecdotal nicety that was unexpected, and just enough promise for a profitable
stay; and then it gets a little warmer, a little wetter, and a lot more
alive. Next thing you know you are just
one big extermination machine, an oven for kittens. I’m not talking about the weather.
But it’s cool, cuz I made the choice…
And…
I’m glad I got to know you after everything. I mean, although it’s twisted, you certainly
have a sense of humor. Like the kind of
guilty laugh you do when the guy hits his head in time with the laugh track,
and the video ends before the paramedics arrive. There’s a lot of that here. You also know how to seriously relax, I’m not
sure you know how to do anything but relax.
You also have this super convincing version of beauty going on. You are full of wide open unpopulated places,
and nature has a great hold everywhere here.
But I can’t get past this nagging feeling that it’s all a bit of over
dressing to obscure the blatant reality that you are flat…
I’m sorry but the fact of the matter is that curves
matter. I know, I know- you think that the
tattoos and the belly piercing and the fact that you pull off the unshaven “natural
look” so well, make up for it. But let
me let you in on a little secret… it doesn’t.
There is something that tugs at the guttural unevolved spiritual libido-
it practically guarantees mutual satisfaction- Elevation. Get some.
Ya know, mix it up.
Some foot hills here and there, dunes, whatever you want. Anything would be a big step forward. I hear tell about some mountains that weakly
cling to North Carolina’s chain like an almost functional extra limb, but I’ve
never seen them. If they do exist, they
might as well not. You’re a big lady
South Carolina, they seem too far away to be true.
But it’s cool, I’m not so shallow to let one (if glaring)
flaw keep me from, if begrudgingly, getting to know you, and convincingly
believe I have feelings for you. It may
sound like I’m pulling a lot of 180’s in describing you, bait and switches if
you will, or improvised compliment devices; but, that’s only because that’s how
my relationship has been with you. I
wouldn’t give it up for anything, there will always be a place in my heart for
you, I’ll always sort of love you, in a special kind of way, you know, like
this one kind of love, but not that other love kind of love…?
There are things about you that you should never
change. Your cooking is amazing. We all know a way to a man’s heart, and you’ve
got that covered. Sunsets here are
hypnotizing gypsy spells made of cotton candy and vanilla fighter jets. The tide mesmerizes everything and commands a
sorcerer’s apprentice orchestration that sets the creatures abuzz, and the
populous entranced. The breeze
melodically rises and falls threatening insect Armageddon before the sudden
storm drops the beat, yo. Then the lightening
dazzles while the thunder keeps rhythm with bass that pumps your blood for
you. Marsh grasses twist, bend, and
strain prostrate. Allowing the gusts to
really gain speed kicking up the sandy soil as if trying to mix it with the
atmosphere above, a grey and black two-tone design that is stunning to watch as
it invades. The sky follows the curling motion of a tidal wave submerging what
was picturesque setting minutes prior. What follows is a fierce rain that chills you
in the accompanying wind. The puddles
form almost instantly and suddenly it seems as if water is coming from
everywhere. The water from above is cold
and stings while the water from below is warm, instantly made comfortable by
the still baking ground, gritty with sand and mud. It’s a rain that makes you dirty. It’s sexy, and kind of hurts. Once you’ve been baptized to the bone,
saturated in the most protected crevasses on your person, the gauntlet having
been thrown down, the victor unanimously recognized; then it becomes steady fat
rain, no longer parallel to the ground.
It falls directly down in a stormy slow breeze, a bit intimidating, but
gentle and almost reassuring.
While I am really itching to get the proper start on what I
wished had begun the way I envisioned; I am happy I got to know you. I’m happy that you welcomed me, even if it
was done in your plain language terrain, with the spike of dark slapstick
humor, dosed using your patented brash unforgiving karma circus. I wish you were more hospitable, but it’s not
your fault, and although it was painful- I know it’s just the way you break us
into your tradition. I’m the only one to
blame for any discomfort you’ve brought me; you have my pardon for any torture
you might have wrung me with.
So this is my coming to terms with you South Carolina. I hope I made my feelings clear, I have a
tender sentiment in my heart as I write this; no, seriously. I’m not surprised we have our conflicts. I wasn’t meant to be here. It was going to be inevitable that we would
row. But I wish there had been fewer
games and deceptions, I wish we were both more upfront with each other, that we
had taken each other seriously. But I have
learned that games and deception are a part of life with you. I’ve learned that seriousness is incongruous
with the fundamentals of living here with you.
It’s something that must be accepted for what it is, parts of you that
have to be embraced.
So are we good? What’s
the score here?
Luv ya,
X
