Unnatural Beauty – Atlanta

I did a quick trip to Atlanta this weekend. Got up at 3 am, drove down there, spent Saturday afternoon and evening enjoying the city, then Sunday morning into afternoon as well. I’d never been there before and the only thing I’d ever heard about it was that it is hellishly hot and traffic is very bad. I was pleasantly surprised. It was all beautiful spring days and light traffic.

These images are from Doll’s Head Trail, which I’m pretty sure is Atlanta’s number one tourist attraction. Well, maybe not. It was kind of like aNick Cave song to get there. We drove across the tracks, a federal prison loomed like a bird of doom, past plenty of humming wires, under bridges, past some mills, past some stacks, which took us to a suspicious looking parking lot off in some woods in a largely abandoned industrial district.

There were 8 or 10 cars in the parking lot, but I couldn’t tell if they belonged to early morning hiker types or if people were sleeping in them. Lola looked at me like, Nope. So we sat there a few minutes and another car pulled up. It was a mom with a stroller so all was cool, or cool enough for me.

Still, it turned out to be a long walk on a paved path through a creepy southern gothic wilderness to get to a trail lined with creepy doll’s heads.

Best urban trail ever, imho. in the U.S. anyway. And that’s where I got the title for his post. If you go back to the first pic, the words “Natural Beauty” were scrawled underneath the white doll. All my experiences in Atlanta were beautiful, but it was much more an unnatural beauty. Kind of like that pic up top.

After the Dolls Head trail we headed to the Atlanta History Museum to see the cyclorama. The cyclorama is a 49 foot tall, 360 degree painting that’s longer than a football field that depicts the Battle of Atlanta. It took like 700 German painters 400 years to paint it, or something like that. You can check Wikipedia if you really want to know the details.

I knew about cycloramas from my association with the sideshow in Coney Island. Before there were movies and tvs, cycloramas were an important form of popular entertainment. They’d tour the country and it was a big deal when one came to your town. Taxidermy too. Who knew? Sideshow historians, as I learned, knew, but not many others.

Anyway, although I had some idea of what I’d be seeing, I was totally unprepared for the feeling of the cyclorama. I can’t describe it, but it’s very strong. If you’ve ever been in a giant cathedral, or maybe a cave or mountain or other wonder of the world, it’s like that. Not the identical feeling, but something you can definitely feel, and a feeling that includes at least a bit of awe.

Of course I’d rather they’d painted Monet’s Lillies or Thomas Cole’s Catskill Mountain scenes than a battle, but it’s still fantastic. Go, if you’re ever anywhere near Atlanta. You’ll thank me later.

That’s a troll sculpture from the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Saturday evening they had a cocktail hour and a band and the trolls were lighted. I didn’t really see all that much of the garden. There was a very nice orchid house, but mostly we just sat around drinking beer and watching people. I was very much impressed by the diversity. Often we go to botanical gardens or museums or whatnot in big diverse cities and pretty much everyone is white. The Missouri Botanical Garden in Saint Louis is like that. But the crowd in Atlanta seemed to pretty well mirror the demographics of the city. There were plenty of Black, Latino, and Asian Americans, along with the white folk. Everyone seemed very relaxed and comfortable in their own skin. Unfortunately, that’s something you don’t see a lot of in the midwest, where just about everybody is uptight all the time.

I know that parachuting into a big city and going to a few places that are popular with the locals can only give one the most superficial insight into a city, if not a terribly wrong impression, so take this for what it’s worth. Although the photos are devoid of people, I was feeling unusually chatty and spoke at some length with several locals and they were all very friendly and open. I made that comment to one guy and he said there was still a lot of “Southern Nice” leftover from times that are mostly past. And I’ve seen Atlanta, the tv show and even if I hadn’t, I’d know that a lot was going on beneath the surface. But still, I’m okay with “southern nice,” even if it’s not altogether sincere. It’s better than the alternative of just openly being a shit. And what little experience I’ve had with “southern nice” makes me think that maybe there is at least some sincerity to it. Here in southern Indiana we have what’s called “church nice,” which is the opposite of sincere, and beneath the surface, the opposite of nice.

It was only when I got to the Atlanta History Museum that I started noticing static. Siri took us on a long winding path past old money mansions like the Swan House pictured above. Although that’s actually part of the museum, it’s just a normal type house in the neighborhood.

But unlike the other ostentatious mansions, we got to walk around inside this one. I thought it kind of odd that there was a ceramic lesbian sex scene next to the mantle in this tableaux. What’s up with that?

Maybe the Georgia History Museum wasn’t all that different than Doll’s Head trail?

Although we both enjoyed the museum, to do so required turning off the political part of the brain. I suspect that’s why the staff seemed so ill at ease. So much of the museum is just horribly wrong. I suspect they catch some flack from time to time, both from normal decent people and from confederate assholes. There’s plenty to offend everyone.

Just a couple examples from the more progressive side. There was a display of a bullwhip next to a display about cotton. Cotton, we’re told, was an important driver of the south’s economy. The bull whip was useful for herding horses or cattle. Ummm, anything else come to mind historically when remembering cotton and bullwhips in the old south? Not in this history museum.

From the traitor-state perspective, it was probably worse. Although the museum went to great lengths to show that the two sides in the Civil War weren’t really all that different. The cause of the war, doncha know, was mainly just a slight difference of opinion on how the North and the South defined the word “freedom.” One said tomato, the other tomahto.

And you could tell when they referred to the United States as “we” it was like someone was jamming a sharp stick up their ass. Look at many of those displays through the eyes if traitors, particularly the battle depicted in the cyclorama. The northern soldiers are slaughtering the southerners. It’s the southern widows that are shown weeping in their plastic cages over the deaths of their traitor husbands.

There was some black history, but what hang heavy was not what was shown, but what was not. Black history as presented by the Georgia History Museum was entirely its own thing., and it was the same with white history. They weren’t presented as unequal. They were entirely separate. There was no overlap whatsoever.

And don’t get me started on how Indian history in Georgia was depicted. I’ll write about that another time.

Anyhow, It was good that we could mostly turn off our political brains and just enjoy the great stuff about the history museum, of which there was a lot.

This picture of a log cabin, for example, is not any kind of special photograph. I didn’t compose it or put any effort into it whatsoever. It’s just a snapshot of what I saw from where I was sitting. We were sitting at that spot having coffee and a light breakfast we’d packed, enjoying the beautiful spring morning and incredible peacefulness of the scene. There was no traffic or industrial noise, only the slight rustle of leaves and grass in the breeze, and the sound of birdsong in the trees.

I commented that Atlanta was such a beautiful, peaceful city. Not at all what I expected. Lola came back that we only had that impression because of the places we went, the woods and gardens that were inherently peaceful. That was true and I realized it’s because that’s a lot of what I did all the years I lived in cities – sought the most peaceful parts of them (along with the weird). And that works for parachuting into strange cities. Seek out the most peaceful places (along with the weird). It’s been working real well lately.

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