The Amazing Disappearing Past

I went out to take pictures today.  That Nikon calls to me almost constantly.  I had the same issue when I lived in Japan.  Of course there, you could pretty much close your eyes, point the camera in a random direction and push the button and get something interesting on film.  I routinely just got on a train and went on photo trips.  If I also came back with some pottery in my backpack, too, well, that was just a hazard of living in Japan, wasn't it?  I have tons of photos from Japan.  Travel was easy, history was everywhere, and the sorts of things I enjoy photographing, the old, the odd, the rare, and the sacred, abounded.

Here, it's a little trickier.  The South is like Japan in so many ways that it actually becomes frightening after awhile.  That comparison is a whole "nother" blog, though, so I'll leave it alone for now.  Suffice it to say, it should in theory at least be easy to find the sorts of things I appreciate shooting here, too.  But, outside of a few things that I knew I would be able to get because they are "Historic Landmarks" protected by megabucks and the strong, if largely inactive, arm of the Federal government, it hasn't been.  I noticed today that the things I love are disappearing.   Things I should have been able to find, signs, whole buildings even, are gone now.  Even here, in my lovely backwards rural South, everything is becoming homogenized, streamlined, sanitized.  Progress is marching forward with its steel-spiked jackboots.

The town I work in has an absolute embarrassment of history in it.  At one time, it was the largest city in the Southeastern United States.  It was a rival to, and even at certain brief moments in its glory days, surpassed, Atlanta.  I don't think one in five people here know that.  Traces of it, only traces are visible.  Actually, there is a lot of it left, much that could be unearthed, restored, reclaimed, shown off, revitalized as so many places I've been are doing.  Here, though, nobody much except for a local university seems to be interested in that in a big way.  It's puzzling.  What the hell are they planning to do with all that, then? 

The downtown area is chock-full of buildings that should be chock-full of businesses, professionals, restaurants, and so on. Yet, the businesses in the downtown area are ephemeral.  Very few of them manage to stay open long.  Just as one begins to get attached, they disappear.  There are a few foundation businesses down there that have been open forever.  They cling with tenacious determination, but even they are not immune.  I noticed a sign on one of the oldest in town, in business for 185 years, that they are "quitting business," their massive four-story building now going to be another of the blank-eyed ghosts staring out in quiet desperation.

I don't know much about business to be sure.  I will be the first to tell you that I have no head for money at all.  Look at the sad tragedy that is my personal finances.  However, I do know this:  every town that I've ever been in that has been vibrant, active, and pulling itself out of what I loosely term "urban slump" for lack of something more creative has been making the effort to do something with its past. and not just slam a giant wrecking ball through it or leave it to fall down bit by bit.  There has to be some solution.  Otherwise, how are all these other places doing it?

The Japanese valued both progress and tradition.  They might have a 500 year old temple nestled next to a highrise apartment complex that was just put up this year.  They know how to balance both and are interested in the preservation of both, at least as far as physical things go, exceedingly well.  They understand that the past helps to define a people, that it is worth looking at whether it is bad or good.

I don't think we do that as well here.  I don't know if it's because we have so much less history, because we have history that is full of so much strife (although, granted, Japan's has not been a cakewalk), or because we are still trying to figure out what our working definition of ourselves is, something Japan pretty much had nailed down a couple of centuries before we sewed together the first flag that flew over our infant nation on the day of its birth.  We frequently have to have our own history pointed out to us.  Things reach a point of total ruination before somebody sweeps in to "save" it or form some kind of restoration society to preserve it. Meanwhile, everybody sort of sits around going, "Gosh, that old thing was important/valuable/nice?  Who knew?  We were going to put the cows/tractor/hay in it/burn it down." 

I just hope we can find a way to reach that balance here.  Not just for the photographs or the economy, either.  Mostly I hope so because I think that one day, if we keep going the way we are, we're going to wind up wanting some of this stuff back again, and it's going to be gone for good.  Reconstructed history is nice, as far as it goes, but nothing compares to the reality of saving the authentic thing, especially when it's so possible to do if someone will just trouble to take the time and effort to imagine the beauty of it.