"Why do you hate the South?"

"I don't hate it," Quentin said, quickly, at once, immediately; "I don't hate it," he said. I don't hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark: I don't. I don't! I don't hate it! I don't hate it!

-Faulkner Absalom, Absalom!


Houndstooth jumper dress: Thrifted
Sweater: Forever 21
Tights: Target
Shoes: vintage '60s, thrifted
Bag: Thrifted
Octopus necklace: Etsy

That second photo kills me! I was doing a happy flaily dance and this was somehow caught-- it looks like I'm posing! I'm so bad at actually posing, so this is kind of exciting, despite being out of focus. A big reason I started photographing my outfits was as an attempt to become comfortable in front of the camera, because I just freeze and forget to actually move (as witnessed by, um, all of my normal poses). I'm trying!

Rhiannon often makes lovely posts about how beautiful the South is, with photos of abandoned buildings and fields and pretty old houses, things like that. I've always lived in North Carolina, and because of that I've grown up with Spanish moss and cotton fields and old run-down barns and buildings everywhere. I've known that it's beautiful, but at the same time I've struggled with accepting that this is where I'm from. It just comes from this strange embarrassment that a lot of southerners feel (especially liberals stuck in red states, cough). We tend to overlook the beauty in favor of the acceptance of a bigger city. In college, one of my favorite professors (and a Faulkner scholar) said that one of the hardest things is to accept where you're from. This is particularly true for the South, and especially when you're from a microscopic little cotton mill town in the middle of nowhere like I am. Reading lots of Southern Gothic has helped me to appreciate how weird and special and creepy and full of history it all is, though, and now I realize that I don't think I could live anywhere else. At least not without coming back in the end.

Also the husband and I are about to go on an epic road trip to New Orleans, our absolute favorite place! One week there, one week driving through Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia to Florida, where we'll be staying with friends. New Orleans in particular makes me feel like I'm part of a weird little club-- I would live there in a second, but the heat/humidty almost kills me here.

The town we live in now is the second oldest in NC. It's not super exciting and we miss Wilmington, but I'm determined to make the best of it until we move next year. Pepsi was invented here! That's something I suppose. There's an amazing cemetery that has to have its own post, so consider this part one.

Those silhouettes are painted on the boarded-up windows of several abandoned buildings around town.

The photo on the left is from an outdoor chapel at an old church downtown, and the one on the right is what I call The Orphanage. It's totally not an orphanage, just an old house, but it's tall and has broken windows and sits on the corner of our street all ominously. It's what I imagine Tom Riddle's orphanage would look like. The azaleas attempt to make it cheery but don't let them fool you!