Savannah: City of The Dead? (Part One)
Imagine if you will, a city where the discussions of ghosts, hauntings and or the dead, are a daily part of community life. If you have trouble doing so, you're aware of a vital thread missing from American life these days but one that hasn't gone lost inside a place called Savannah.
So removed has this township been from the 21st Century that when modernism creeps in, its like anything or anyone entering is absorbed in a flash by the town's living past. Newly shaping that something but at the same time leaving it older. Perhaps only the younger journeyers find its powers so effecting or perhaps not. But the truth of this place is that this €rub€ is felt by all those who seek it and those unassuming who don't realize that they are.
We've all had the experience of seeing a building and announcing matter of factly (with some disbelief), €hey that building is over 100 years old.€ Understandingly, most in the same breath of that statement, also place 100 years between themselves and the object without realizing how close they are to it by the logic of time. The very years since something was built or created are right at the back of us at every moment. Every second is at the back of another second, every minute on another minute and pretty soon, 100 years or more is not so long ago when seen in that context. In that light the distant past becomes not so much and can be felt as if yesterday or that yesterday is always a part of the now.
The more we preserve anything old, be it a book or a building, the more we are able to literally connect or stay in touch with the past. It gives us roots, it grounds us, it supplies us with tools for every type of advancement. To destroy important relics is like reading a worthy novel, but then ripping out the first half or every other page and then giving it to a friend to read hoping that they will understand it or find the same lessons plus some. So you see, to do away with objects made with care, is to show carelessness for the past, but also the self and all of humanity. Within reason of course as every such moment has its conscious and unconscious variables, but generally speaking this is the moral dilemma that comes along with every moment that something old is discarded or bulldozed. In effect, to tend to the cultural old, the very substance of a culture's soul, may not be a guarantee for the future but it is a promise of a greater one.
So once more, what an amazing concept, having an object of the past, living in the present. There, actually before you! Like fallen from a wormhole into your modern realm. At a second glance, it seems impossible! Too fantastic! But yet there it is! You ask yourself or feel at some level, €How can this be?€ Well then, what of a whole town then and one filled with the objects of life from the spirits of the past that dwelled here? Yet you see, its never gone anywhere. You are the one whom is new to IT. Man has been moving around it, era after era. It doesn't die per say €" we do. Do you understand by now? We are the ghosts of Savannah. Floating in and around the place. To marvel or wonder at spirits in nature is merely to be astonished by our own reflection! Savannah is filled with lessons of our own mortality. It evokes flashback reminders that we are mere filler in this thing called Life. We are of course substantiating its existence with our own, but life comes with the knowledge that it will not last long for us. We all stumbled out of the dark, and we will all stumble back. Which is a part of the visitor's awe when absorbing Savannah as a place. Its survival envy. Savannah's endurance through time, its ability to withstand and recover. Its very existence refutes the nature of our own. People look upon Savannah and realize their mortality in a single glance. I humbly submit that a part of experiencing the joy of Savannah is that all at once we are asked to sound the depth of its sadness and this can invite some very deep feelings of lament. It is bitter sweet. It is love's splinter. Yet it is to honor Savannah and ourselves by allowing her to plumb our inner strings so that we might play something back to her.
Just as we might feel her tolling our depths, Savannah in the same moment will at least attempt to turn the experiencer back towards the sun. Because they look and see that here were people who built up lives and neighborhoods all with the hope for something better or more. Something that might last beyond them. Yes, the song of all people's lives. For many, entering Savannah is like entering Heaven for a time. For a brief moment they find a kind of desideratum or a soul essential. Some evidence that their struggle in this life is rewarded in the next. And whey the leave, they return to more mortal soil feeling golden with memories of the truths they learned here.
So removed has this township been from the 21st Century that when modernism creeps in, its like anything or anyone entering is absorbed in a flash by the town's living past. Newly shaping that something but at the same time leaving it older. Perhaps only the younger journeyers find its powers so effecting or perhaps not. But the truth of this place is that this €rub€ is felt by all those who seek it and those unassuming who don't realize that they are.
We've all had the experience of seeing a building and announcing matter of factly (with some disbelief), €hey that building is over 100 years old.€ Understandingly, most in the same breath of that statement, also place 100 years between themselves and the object without realizing how close they are to it by the logic of time. The very years since something was built or created are right at the back of us at every moment. Every second is at the back of another second, every minute on another minute and pretty soon, 100 years or more is not so long ago when seen in that context. In that light the distant past becomes not so much and can be felt as if yesterday or that yesterday is always a part of the now.
The more we preserve anything old, be it a book or a building, the more we are able to literally connect or stay in touch with the past. It gives us roots, it grounds us, it supplies us with tools for every type of advancement. To destroy important relics is like reading a worthy novel, but then ripping out the first half or every other page and then giving it to a friend to read hoping that they will understand it or find the same lessons plus some. So you see, to do away with objects made with care, is to show carelessness for the past, but also the self and all of humanity. Within reason of course as every such moment has its conscious and unconscious variables, but generally speaking this is the moral dilemma that comes along with every moment that something old is discarded or bulldozed. In effect, to tend to the cultural old, the very substance of a culture's soul, may not be a guarantee for the future but it is a promise of a greater one.
So once more, what an amazing concept, having an object of the past, living in the present. There, actually before you! Like fallen from a wormhole into your modern realm. At a second glance, it seems impossible! Too fantastic! But yet there it is! You ask yourself or feel at some level, €How can this be?€ Well then, what of a whole town then and one filled with the objects of life from the spirits of the past that dwelled here? Yet you see, its never gone anywhere. You are the one whom is new to IT. Man has been moving around it, era after era. It doesn't die per say €" we do. Do you understand by now? We are the ghosts of Savannah. Floating in and around the place. To marvel or wonder at spirits in nature is merely to be astonished by our own reflection! Savannah is filled with lessons of our own mortality. It evokes flashback reminders that we are mere filler in this thing called Life. We are of course substantiating its existence with our own, but life comes with the knowledge that it will not last long for us. We all stumbled out of the dark, and we will all stumble back. Which is a part of the visitor's awe when absorbing Savannah as a place. Its survival envy. Savannah's endurance through time, its ability to withstand and recover. Its very existence refutes the nature of our own. People look upon Savannah and realize their mortality in a single glance. I humbly submit that a part of experiencing the joy of Savannah is that all at once we are asked to sound the depth of its sadness and this can invite some very deep feelings of lament. It is bitter sweet. It is love's splinter. Yet it is to honor Savannah and ourselves by allowing her to plumb our inner strings so that we might play something back to her.
Just as we might feel her tolling our depths, Savannah in the same moment will at least attempt to turn the experiencer back towards the sun. Because they look and see that here were people who built up lives and neighborhoods all with the hope for something better or more. Something that might last beyond them. Yes, the song of all people's lives. For many, entering Savannah is like entering Heaven for a time. For a brief moment they find a kind of desideratum or a soul essential. Some evidence that their struggle in this life is rewarded in the next. And whey the leave, they return to more mortal soil feeling golden with memories of the truths they learned here.
