I have time on my hands these days. I mean, I graduated. I’m not working. I am waiting to move to the country (see previous posts). We are due to leave mid-week next. My time in P’cola is coming to a close, and I can only think of a few things to think about it.
One is: Thank Goodness. I have never liked this place. If you live here, you likely understand. I mean, it’s not a bad town. But like the rest of the country, it’s terribly economically depressed. There’s little money to me made. But there’s more to it than that. This riptide of oil is moving in on the beach. The whole town smells funny lately (could be me I guess). The hipsters are eating up all the old places I like to hang. The Elbow Room. The Handlebar. The Z. Shit, last time I went into Dick’s on Saturday for Karaoke, all the old guard had fled for the hills. Why? Prolly because I was the first wave of new assholes to come trudgin’ in and stinking up the place 4 or 5 years ago.
Also, it seems others have fled before me. My formerly pleasant apartment complex is going to seed. They slapped on a coat of paint around the same time they put fliers on our door that said “don’t leave stuff in your car, there’s been a number of vehicular break-ins lately”. The old tenants are gone, replaced by meth addicts and weirdos. They leave trash in the parking lot.
When I walk my dog in the neighborhood south of here, I have begun to notice that some streets are lined up and down with empty houses, replete with “For Sale” signs. On one street, there are 10 or 12 houses and 7 up for sale. Yards growing weedy. Streets empty.
It seems I am only getting the “flee Pensacola” vibe very late in the game. It’s a vibe I’ve surely been giving off since I moved here in January ’06, and likely the reason I have never fit in here (also, I can be an asshole). Since hitting the ground near the campus after my split back then, I have always been pinging a new place to live. Came very close to moving to Los Angeles (dodged a bullet). Felt like “upandrunnoft” to Portland, OR, again. Met my wife, now moving with her to rural Merryland. I feel more alive there, somehow. It’s only 10 acres, but even when I am flaking off there, I feel like something important is done, like I am recharging batteries. Now that grad school is over and the M.A. is awarded (yay! yay!? yay?) I feel like I need to focus my brain for my task. I don’t care about dough, except to pay my debtors and eat, and provide for possible youngins.
But it’s time to git up outta here. Goodbye, Pensacola, and good luck to ya’ll. I hope I have few occasions to return.
