Sometimes you get lost in a place and often you just panic. Often it's for a good reason. Maybe it's not safe, or you don't know how safe it is. Maybe you have to be somewhere at a given time. Whatever it is, you will get in trouble.
But often it's just us being conditioned that we will get in trouble.
What if we can convince ourselves that we won't get in trouble. That we are flexible; we can drop whatever plan we originally had and allow ourselves to wander, instead of getting lost.
So I went to seek out this restaurant, this eatery. It's what one of the people who re-oriented me called a "dive bar." I was looking for Southern homecooking. It was my second attempt. First attempt ended in a failure because the place closed at 6PM. This time, I took the bus down during my lunch break, all the way to the last stop. I was excited, but then I couldn't have imagined the surprise that was waiting for me. The bus ride was straightforward. And I saw "100 Hurt Street" and I was delighted. But when I crossed Hurt Street to the "dive", I saw a huge spot light shining some white background. Then I noticed all these cables and then all these trucks with lots of instruments. They are making a movie! I saw a pretty black woman standing in front of the door, not at all what I expected from a dive. She was well-dressed in a New York way, and next to him was some young white guy. I asked her if they were open for business. Without looking surprised, she said this wasn't a real restaurant. I was surprised. I asked what she meant. She said that it was only for making a movie. I asked if there wasn't some restaurant here called "Son's Place". She didn't know, but there's a cafe around the corner. Maybe I was wrong about the address? I looked up, and the place definitely looked like the one in the photo on the web, but the name was something like "Fried Catfish" or something. So I went down to check it out. It wasn't what the picture on the web suggested. And when I peered in the window, all I saw was white young people and nice romantic tables with white table cloths. I walked back to 100 Hurt Street, without looking I was really confused and lost because I was already embarrassed. I was so confused, but that's a different story. So after a few more minutes of getting used to the reality that I couldn't get my Southern Food fix here, I decided to go to my backup. I didn't have a map, and I didn't want to take the bus.
Why not?
Some would say I was cheap because it was really nearby. But I'd like to think that I was being adventurous. I was not only interested in the little eatery, but the neighborhood around, called Inman Park. So using what I remembered from Google Map (which, again, I don't have with me, not in digital form, not in print), I started walking in the direction I thought was correct. I asked this lesbian-looking girl (I say so only because she had short hair, lots of rings on the skin of her face, and dressed like a boy) where North Highland Ave was. She first said it was really far away and that it was best that I took the bus, at which point the bus passed us. So I asked where Euclid Ave was, where the bus would have dropped me off. She wasn't sure but told me to take a left, which was what I wanted to do because I didn't want to be walking in this (very welcoming) heat on an ugly parkway. So I thanked her and moved into the little streets of Inman Park neighborhood. The houses are very nice. Very Southern, meaning either very short, not like those in the Northeast, or very regal, like from the antebellum era (and I saw plaques describing the role of what house played during what battle of the Civil War).
Eventually I had to ask for help. I spotted my target, a busy looking woman listening to music and walking fast. I assumed she was walking fast for jogging. Interestingly, right before I saw her I saw an anti-war lawn sign. And right after I met her I saw another one. At least this neighborhood might be a bit bluer than the otherwise very red state. She, coincidentally, was also from New York, but knew this neighborhood well (meaning, she probably lived here). So she told me to cut across a park and make a left somewhere and a right somewhere and maybe a left somewhere after that. I thanked her. She basically told me that the restaurant I was going to go, she was certain didn't serve lunch (and really expensive, she said). But I told her I wanted some Southern food. She told me if I would settle for Louisiana food, I could go to the "Parish". (Which shows up on Google Map, as I learned after my adventure.)
Going back to the initial didactic point: all this time I had the choice of just taking the bus, or better yet, calling a cab, and going back to my conference. Really, I had to be back at least within an hour. But why? Why did I have to go back to that incredibly boring and useless place? Why not get lost? It's warm, it's sunny, it's a beautiful neighborhood. So I shook off my uptightness and on-timeness, and decided to go on this adventure.
But my imagination can be my handicap. I imagined somehow that the "Louisiana" place was something like a gumbo place, like Baba's (or what Baba's should be like in the "Forest Gump", not the fast food chain it is in real life). Sometimes you just have to let go of your imagination, or at least not let it become an expectation.
I had to ask some big white guy in a wife-beater to make sure I was going the right way to the "Parish." He didn't look too happy or enthusiastic, probably in a hurry. And I noticed he had a lot of hair in his armpit. So I finally found the place, and it was odd. It was all EMPTY! But it was open. A group of people were talking business while at another table some guy was talking more business on his iPhone. After feeling weird that there was no waiter, I looked around and heard noise from below. That's when I realized lunch was happening downstairs. It was more like a cafe. The lovely lady making the coffee told me to go to the back to order food. There I saw this man scraping stuff out of a whole bunch of baked butternut squash halves. The cashier didn't know what he was doing that for. But she was nice enough to draw a map of how I could return to the bus stop. Unfortunately, the receipt she wrote it on she kept it and I didn't want to bother her again after realizing the fact later.
There was no Louisiana food. Closest to Southern food was pulled pork. But I got a burger instead and it was really good! Very spicy but great sauce. The place has its yuppie charm. Huge table in the middle where people were eating with their laptops. How odd. I would've liked to talk to someone, but everyone was reading something. There's a young woman next to me who was wearing a sweater and a scarf! It was really warm today. So I did as the Romans and got myself a holiday baking book. I wasn't disappointed. I was glad to have found such an interesting place. The decor was very nice. I didn't expect something so hip in Atlanta. It's a very young people's neighborhood. Everyone I asked for directions later were young people.
I had to bug my sister to give me some real directions. And finally I got to the bus stop. But that's after I walked through what's called "Little Five Points", as opposed to the center of Atlanta, "Five Points". Unlike its dreary, sketchy original bigger version, Little Five Points is full of hip, white, young people, as opposed to black people living in the margins of the economy. I even got myself an ice cream. I walked to the bus stop, thinking very nervously that the bus would come any moment and I would have to relinquish or conceal my ice cream. I saw an overweight black woman waiting at a bus stop that didn't say what buses stopped there. I asked her, and she said my bus stopped there. Though later I saw that she didn't take my bus, at which point I was nervous that maybe she didn't know what she was talking about.
But the most interesting part of the day was talking to this black woman of heavy set. She seemed very innocent, even charming. At first I didn't even think she was American. I thought she was African because she had the wildest accent. She said she was born and raised in Columbus, Georgia. No clue where that was. But she had moved here a long while ago. I noticed at first she was holding a Walkman!!! I haven't seen one of those in 15 years, I told her. She said she bought it at Dollar Store (for more than a dollar). I asked where she got her tapes from. She said from before. Soon my accent started imitating her Deep South accent. She said she was listening to Gospel music. She tried to explain things to me, like I didn't know much about American culture. She was prepared for the possibility that I didn't even know what the Bible was. I told her I liked Gospel music, lots of energy. She said it gave her a lot of love, because this world was now so devoid of love. She asked me how long I've been here, but even after I told her I've lived here for 25 years, she still talked like I was some immigrant. I wasn't annoyed, especially not after I realized she worked across the street at the dry cleaners where, as the stereotype went, Asian people owned and operated (specifically, Koreans, and she just assumed I was Korean). I wasn't annoyed, I was in fact charmed by her innocence. At some point she started talking about her family, about her aunt telling her to go out more. And then she told me she had her 50th birthday. I asked enthusiastically if she had people over. She said no, and that she just sat home and watched TV. I was saddened and asked why no one came. She had a sister, still, and an aunt and cousins. But she just shrugged and said that she preferred to be alone; that was what she was used to. And I thought about my Dad; he would say the same thing, just used to being alone. Or my Grandmother, just prefer to be alone than having to take care of anyone. I guess at some point you're so used to being alone that it doesn't bother you, but that when you're not alone, instead of feeling more love in this world, you just feel more burden. She let me listen to her Gospel tape, but then the motor wasn't running. I tried to explain to her, but she insisted that the motor was turning the tape. I didn't know how to explain to her that what she was listening to was still the radio.
She was 50. She turned 50 just this past Saturday. Can I be sad? Can I be sad for her? No, because then I would just be sad for myself, because when I turn 50, right now I can't imagine being alone. I can't imagine further that I would prefer being alone. Don't you look back at those 50 years? I looked at her face, so innocent, and yet, when she said that there were bad people here (as in the US, not just Atlanta, for the foreigner me), I could imagine that that innocence was compromised many times. A big black woman in her 50's, obviously no man, no good enough man in her life to be around for her birthday, must have led a very lonesome life. She had six siblings at some point. Now only one left. How lonely can you get?
I would have liked to talk to her more, but her bus came and took her away. She said, "Bless you" before leaving. I felt touched, but I was being selfish. I was hoping that, yes, please, may the Lord bless me because I am weaker than this lonely big black woman who still listens to cassettes from a Walkman that might not be working. That I can't imagine preferring being alone at 50, that even though I make more money than she does, that I have more friends, that I have probably greater support from my family that I have long rejected, in the end, I needed this woman to ask for God's blessing.
My bus finally came, and I bid good bye to the warm sun. And I couldn't stop thinking about the woman, or the adventures I allowed my heart to find for myself. I still felt weak, but at least I felt I was thankful for what life had to offer me.
