Car Wash 3

by Calvin Burgamy

Shadow Cat with Hank Williams by Calvin Burgamy

See Prize Below

All You Have To Do Is - - -

Sort These Statements by Solemnity:

Just because you’re #5 doesn’t mean you’re not in the Top Five.

How long does it take to perceive a room?

Mathematicians go round and round because circles don’t exist outside the mind.

Quick Question: What can I bling to your party for me?

Information is rampant, but the ability to process information is rare.

Watch time. However minute our daze.

A stoic cannot shop for vegetables until he understands that he will soon die.

We are now funding a double blind study of shit that will never happen.

We need a ton of strings for a theory.

Congress mirrors your mind.

The first hundred years are the hardest.

A homonym is a word that sounds the same but is spelled differently, so a heteronym must be a word that is spelled the same but sounds differently.

The winner gets a year of free advice!

Thanks for your prompt submittal.

Dots

by Jonathan Marcus

The ad says industrial painting. I’ve never really painted, industrially or not. But I can hold a paintbrush as well as the next guy, right? Anybody can paint, right? The industrial part I’ll figure out. The ad says show up at the jobsite.

     The jobsite is a chain link fence. Inside the fence sits a water tower, and a guy on the hood of a Ford pickup. 

“Here for the job?”

“Yup.”

“Ever painted a water tower?”

I look up at all that metal in the sky and try to hide the fear. The thing is really big. “I know how to paint,” I lie to him.

“Where’s your last job?”

“Florida.”

This satisfies him. Then he says, “You climb a water tower?”

“Sure.” I lie again, and look at him like what idiot hasn’t climbed a water tower.

“Show me,” he says.

My head flies up to see where the top of it is, face going white, but I march right over to the monstrosity like I’m Mr. Watertower and grab the first steel rung like I own the thing. Start climbing like it’s easy. And, wow, it is easy, and I grab one rung after the next and get into the rhythm of ascending. It is easy. I can do this. Heck, I can probably do this with a paintbrush in hand. Nice day, too. I look up and the thing hides the sky like it’s a second moon aimed at my head. Shit. Scary. But I keep climbing. Then I look down. Way down. Shit. I can’t do this. I can’t keep climbing. I could die. If I slip or stumble, I will die and won’t even have enough time for life to flash before my eyes before splatting. Hands start sweating.  Harder to grab these rungs with damp hands. Am I halfway yet? I keep climbing because if I stop it will be worse. And if I do stop, what happens? Are they going to send a helicopter to rescue some chickenshit college hippie from a water tower? I keep climbing. I hate the entire water tower. Way above the treetops now. Keep climbing and glancing out there without looking down and keep climbing some more. Then, finally, a few more rungs, and I make it to the platform and, wow, it’s great up here. Amazing, actually. I love standing up here. Strolling on the platform is a luxury and gazing into the beyond is thrilling. Where’s the city? Atlanta is just a few buildings, a little midget place, lost in an endless forest. Maybe I could get a job up here . . .

But the guy never calls me back and anyway a few days later there’s an ad for welder. I figure I can weld as well as the next guy, or at least as well as the next guy who has never welded. So I call the number. And the guy says, “Can you weld?” And I let him know that if I didn’t know how to weld, why would I be calling? So he says “Come on in on Thursday at lunchtime.”

Why did I tell the guy I can weld? How did I get into a jam like this? I don’t even know a welder. All I know is it melts metal to metal and you have to wear a funny helmet with a dark slot of window in it. Then I remember, yeah, do I know a welder, an artist at Atlanta College of Art. Her name is Wendy Shulman and she’s Jewish so I figure it’s okay to call her up, as if it’s written in The Talmud that Jews must teach each other to weld.

by Jonathan Marcus

Mouthwash, razor, & shell

Mouthwash, razor, & shell by Calvin Burgamy

  The Sixties really begins for me one summer afternoon around the middle of the decade.

  I’m just leaving Jacksonville, driving alone down to Daytona Beach in the family Impala on Phillips Highway, the old U.S. 1. 

  When the light turns green at the corner of University Boulevard, I spin the big boat to the south, and all I see in the windshield are the knees and thumb of a hitchhiker. He must be really tall. I hit the brakes and crunch onto the shoulder. Hitchhiking is normal. Dad used to tell stories about hitchhiking after the war, and we know the story, word-for-word, of how Mom and Dad hitchhiked to their wedding.

  So now that I’m driving, and making the big decisions, this is a new part of things to capture for myself.

  The door opens, and all I can see is legs. Legs already folding into the car. Red hair falls to his shoulders and the bandana he’s wearing, it’s cherry red, school bus yellow and Dodger blue. He seems adept at collapsing himself. His knees poke above the dashboard. The door closes and we’re rolling.

  “Thanks, man. Glad to be riding. Nobody around here wanted to pick me up.”

  I can see why. He doesn’t look like anyone from around here. As tall as a truck, and the long red hair. Everyone in Jacksonville probably sped up when they saw him.

  “Where you going?” I ask.

  He says there is a scene in Key West.

  Nobody talks like that in Jacksonville. A scene is either on a postcard or in a play.

  He’s glad to be rolling down the road. He thanks me again.

  Then he doesn’t say anything. He seems content to simply leave Jacksonville.

  But I’m curious. “What kind of scene?”

  He looks at me, deciding whether or not to answer. Then he says, “A different kind of scene is happening in certain places now.”

  This is way before Life Magazine's shocking cover story about a newly coined word, “Hippies,” and how these people are living in a different way.

  It’s like some future Daniel Boone is sitting with me in Dad’s Chevy. He knows stuff that nobody in Jacksonville can even ask a question about. I want to know what he knows. I want to be like him.

  He says, well, if you’re that interested, a lot of what we were taught about the way things are, well, they’re not that way at all.

  Yes, I am that interested. Very interested. Extremely interested.

“A lot of stuff, about our government, about the purpose of life, about the nature of love,” he says.

  Again: nobody in Jacksonville talks like that. The patter in Jacksonville concludes foregone conclusions.

  “Like the war in Asia.” Nobody in Jacksonville is talking about the war. “Why is the government making guys fly half way around the world to blow up villages in the jungle? Guys like me. But I got lucky. I’m six-foot-nine. They won’t draft me because I don’t fit in the Jeeps. So I don’t have to go. But you have to wonder what’s driving all that madness.”

  “I’m not going,” I tell him.

  “But that’s just a small part of it,” he says, like I’m not getting it. “It’s more about ‘What forces do we represent?’ And, ‘Why are we alive?’”

  Finally. Somebody is talking about a more profound life.    

  He says, “Your neighborhood. Everyone’s in a box, right? Sure, the houses look like boxes. But so do their heads, man. Once you see it, all the people are boxes living in boxes.”

  I picture this one guy in our neighborhood. He lives alone. Everyone else is the same. A mom, a dad, and some kids. I never thought about the guy until right now in the car. We never play in front of his house. He’s just different. His yard is always tidy, but he’s never in it. All of a sudden, I like him a lot and want to see him out in the yard.

  “After high school, you should learn how to walk on stilts and make yourself six foot nine, go down to the draft board, and get out of the war.”

  He cracks a smile and says, “You can be better than this war. Go find your own war. Fight a different war, man. Fight your war.” He smiles bigger. “That’s how you make peace with the world.”

  When we get to Daytona Beach, I take care to place him at the best hitchhiking intersection in town, at the corner of US1 and Main Street. He thanks me for the ride.

  But even though I can’t get the words out, I’m the one who’s really thankful. Like I just met not only some future Daniel Boone, but also the prophet Elijah. I’m chewing on something new and raw and fresh and dangerous. I want to fight my war.

by Jonathan Marcus

Blow Drying by Calvin Burgamy

Pecan Tree Shadow by Calvin Burgamy

Head Rays

Head Rays by Calvin Burgamy

Spring Falls

by Jonathan Marcus

by Calvin Burgamy 

Carbonation within the Lurid Spectrum

Carbonation within the Lurid Spectrum from Calvin Burgamy 

Curlers Escape

Curlers Escape by Calvin Burgamy

Back to Back

Back to Back by Calvin Burgamy

Airport Parking Paint

Airport Parking Paint by Calvin Burgamy

Questions? Comments?

Questions? Comments? by Calvin Burgamy

Below the Rapids

Sunset at Clairmont Oaks

Sunset at Clairmont Oaks, Decatur, GA by Calvin Burgamy

Atlanta Church Project

A mapping of over 50 small community churches in the Hosea Williams Blvd corridor from Candler Dr. to Cabbagetown, 2011/2012. Three services were filmed and edited from the original 2 - 2 1/2 hour length to 5 or 6 minutes: True Deliverance, Jesus House of Prayer and Faith Christian Fellowship. Links to the videos can be found by clicking on their pins on the map. Click here for full version of map. map produced by Calvin Burgamy