Editor’s Note: Marlow takes us on another adventure in his Coastal Empire. Here at Refuge Farm, we are having our own version, featuring rolling encounters with exciting elements of America’s health care system. This morning’s edition featured finding the right place to deposit two vials of rich red fluid drawn from a willing arm. That included motor vehicle operation, placard parking in a previously unknown place, interaction with several helpful professionals and a brief penetrating jab. There appear to be others on the horizon. We prefer Marlow’s explorations!

– Vic

Exploring

When it comes to Savannah, W and I are not typical walking tour tourists nor bourgeois cruise ship travelers, but Renaissance era explorers. To do otherwise is to insult this place and cheat our minds, hearts, and souls.

A wise Savannah explorer learns not to rely solely on past places of wonder but tries new places regularly. This was how we came to visit, enjoy, and still fondly remember our first moments of boundless joy at places like Squirrel’s, the White Whale, and the Black Rabbit.

Is an Apocalypse possible in travelling and vacationing in Savannah during our current era? Not unless you rely on fast food for your daily sustenance.

Discovering Savannah requires a sense of irony and a dash of innocence. Once you begin to understand where it’s been and is at, hope for its, our and America’s future abounds.

Savannah makes its explorers feel, see and hear things in abnormal ways. It has sharpened our senses and stilled our frenetic and addled minds.

Savannah requires study. It’s one of the most stellar labs to understand the human condition through observation, careful reflection, and direct personal contact. We avoid at all costs learned discussion and for God’s sake we run straight away from workshops. We embrace its customs and curious cuisines and unfamiliar beliefs. We are learning humility by understanding its past by pretending that we don’t know its present. No ex post facto illumination, please — the past is not the present. And vice versa.

In closing, if I didn’t have W, Savannah, a decaying body, and my writing, I’d be nonchalantly shambling down various cities’ streets, lanes and alleys hurling grenades word-salad bombs at bad people. Pray that America doesn’t suffer supply chain issues and the bourbon runs out.

PS: The is the last of four short current impression pieces on our Savannah pleasant stay. They perhaps someday might serve as connective tissue when the various Empire tales are spun into whole cloth. I am much obliged by your patience, so please excuse this rambling-on diversion.

Live oak leaves are fallin’ down

The coming autumn moon’ll light our way

The time is now to sing our Savannah song

Found the queen of all my dreams

Through it all and to our health we drank a thousand times

Our freedom we hold close and dear

We remember how years ago in days of old

When magic filled America’s air

But there ain’t nothin’ we can do

So we sing our song

Listen . . . there’s that side garden bluebird’s song

Copyright 2022 My Aisle Seat
www.vicsocotra.com