I haven't updated in quite a while. I would say that is due to my not having anything to say, but that would be a lie. I've had lots to say, just nothing I wanted to share with the whole world.
I'm in Atlanta at the moment and I've begun a process of identifying with the girl from the south. I got a new tattoo, you can see that to the left there.
I spent the better part of my life since I was 19 trying very hard to be "LA Austen" and anything but "Georgia Austen". They're two different people and there's a time and place for each, but now what I'm working on is really discovering who the latter is, and then ultimately I'd like to two to merge and become me. The South is such a magical place, and full of mystic darkness to me. And it's that mystic darkness where I feel the safest and I feel like I'm truly home. It's something I don't feel anywhere but in the woods on a humid summer southern night. The spirits like to dance here, and it's here where I feel most protected against the things that harm me. Which is ironic, because I've spent the last five years fearing this place. The air is thick and sweet here and it brings back memories of a child who didn't know what life had in store, and who thought "mid-twenties" was ancient.
As I'm fast approaching this landmark in time, I'm beginning to hope that little girl was wrong about where 24 will fit into the time line of my life.
As a teenager I romanticized the idea of a short life filled with flare and going out in flames before my time leaving some sort of permanent mark to be only fully appreciated posthumously. Now, with my friends beginning to get married, and forcing me back into our memories, I hope I was wrong about that feeling.
My friend Dave is getting married in less than a week, he's one of the most southern people I know in my peer group. He's also one of the best men I know and I'm honoured to have spent the last decade calling him friend. I have many good memories with him, and I look forward to bearing witness to this next chapter in his life.
I don't want to spend my whole life in Los Angeles. I love it out there for sure, but there's something that my hypothetical children would be remiss to not have if they were to grow up anywhere but the south. I know so many people feel that way about where there from, but I suffer from a disease of terminal uniqueness and I'm right in a way that you're wrong.
I got to grow up with a grandmother who knew the value of family in a way only a woman from the heart of the south, the middle child of seven, and the only girl could know. Mary Ellen Baird is such a big part of my becoming me. And I couldn't be prouder to call her my grandmother. I miss her, I miss the farm, I miss the connection to this deeply suppressed part of me that she made. I started shutting out the southern girl in me the day Gandy died. I know that now.
I'm on a path of self-discovery and I'm in love with life, and this part of the country, and I feel so protected deep in the southern woods. I feel the cool sticky pre-summer air wrap around me and hold me close like it did when I was a child. And I know that she's here with me.
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