I’m not from New York and I don’t live in Atlanta, but they’re my landmarks. An island city and a landlocked one. There are 27 landlocked states. Of course. But Georgia isn’t one of them. I just live closer to the city where Sherman began his March to the “Sea” of Savannah, which sits at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
What if instead of a seashell, we use a cellphone to hear the ocean? It will never be the same experience as when you hear the wind moving through your hair, as you gag on sand.
And that, my friends, is the purpose of being alive.
I spent roughly the first half of my life in suburban New Jersey, about 30 miles east of NYC. For almost the last two decades I’ve live 30 miles north of Atlanta. The irony that I rebuilt my life from ashes in a city that has done the same is not lost on me. The solid foundation I have here with my family is everything I’ve ever wanted. It is the life I can now build on.
But quarantine drove me crazy while parked at home in 2020, the year that felt like decades. I fled on fire, needing water and air travel. I realized this after flying alone to Austin in 2022 to meet with health care journalists. As I waited for the famous bats to fly over the Congress Avenue Bridge, I heard the song of waves moving under air. Standing on that bridge felt like I was standing in the middle of the universe. By the middle of the year, Russell and I found ourselves in Chicago.
There’s a soft edge along the river in Chicago where the pavement meets the ocean. While I had my own images of what existed at any river’s edge, it was never concrete meeting the shoreline. That day in June, a spectrum of blueish grey color flooded the landscape in front of me and I took a deep fucking breath and heard the water’s song. In with the good, out with the bad. Always with Russell’s framing support.