Walking

I’ve started walking in the mornings lately. It began as a need for exercise, which I know I need more of, but is also a chance to just move, put on my shoes and get out into the world.

Today I take a different route than usual, the less scenic route, and it immediately takes me up a long hill, several hundred yards of steady grade. I drive from my house almost every day up this hill, and usually see someone standing at the top. In my car driving thought process, for a moment of leisure I assumed. Wrong. The truth is, they were stopping to catch their breath. 

Which I do now for a minute in the shade. Then I walk on, down Peachtree Street, past Houston’s with their shaded outdoor patio, birds in the trees, jazz piping out softly over the tables. Atlanta is known as the city in a forest, and the birds will wake you up in the morning. Not city birds like pigeons or starlings, but song birds singing away, wrens, nuthatches, chickadees. Plenty of mature hardwoods and green space back in these neighborhoods, and the birds thrive. 

It’s late morning in the middle of our first heatwave, and it is ninety degrees already. I walk a quarter mile or so and turn off on Bennett Street, looking for the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia. MOCAGA. I know it’s here somewhere, and have been meaning to find it and have a look. As with other things, people move to the city for the museums and culture, and then never quite make it actually to the museum. And our culture comes from our car radios. 

I find it at the end of the street, among some warehouses, across from a large power station. The doors are locked and it’s dark inside. But it’s still a few minutes before opening so I sit down under the front awning and wait. Did I mention we’re in the middle of a heat wave? It’s ninety degrees on the concrete steps where I’m sitting. 

After twenty minutes or so, the lights come on inside and a woman comes to the door, unlocks it, and picks up a delivered package. I stand up and move toward the door, ten feet away. The woman is talking on her cell phone and doesn’t seem to notice me. She goes back inside, locking the door behind her. I am close enough to feel the wave of cool AC waft out, into my face. I sit back down on the steps and re-check the hours of operation on my phone. Then, just for good measure, step back up to the door, where the hours are posted in small print. Of course I could be wrong and often am, but the museum was supposed to open forty-five minutes ago. 

I sit back down on the steps and figure I’ll just give her a few minutes to do her walk through, and then she’ll open the doors. I can see the paintings and art through the glass, know the air conditioning is blowing its “ all is well in June in Georgia” cool message through the halls inside. Finally, after several minutes, she comes back to the door, tapes up a sign to the inside glass. We make eye contact and she waves, then walks away. I approach the door to read the sign.

We sincerely apologize, but due to staffing 

shortages, the museum will not be 

operating its regular hours. If you wish to visit the galleries please call Margaret Jones

 (not her real name, my parenthesis, not hers) at 404-832-4561

(Also not her real phone number. Don’t call.)

I am flummoxed, not sure if it’s from the situation or the disorienting effects of approaching heat stroke. It’s not my nature to be a pest, or a problem for anyone, but I call the number immediately. And it’s immediately answered, like she knew it was me. 

“Hello, is this Margaret?” I ask.

“Yes it is,” she answers brightly.

“My name is Jim, and I’m outside the door of the museum. Would it be possible to come in?”

“Why of course. I’ll be right there.”

And then sure enough there she is, unlocking the door, beckoning me inside the air conditioned gallery.

And she is very nice, as I knew she would be. And apologetic. Says they are moving the museum soon to a new location on the Westside at The Goat Farm, which I am familiar with and think will be a good spot for them.

I ask about the library, which opens off to the side, and is chock full of art books, beginning in 1950, which is the dividing line commonly used for defining the beginning of American contemporary art. I didn’t know that, and for some reason it sticks with me. So I pass it on to you. No charge.

The museum is relatively small, and I spend a half hour walking around, enjoying the paintings, all alone. Margaret doesn’t charge me admission, which is kind of her, and as I leave I call out to thank her and she answers from somewhere in the back.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a huge museum goer, but always enjoy it when I do. I discovered a particular artist this visit, whom I had never heard of but really liked. Herbert Creecy (1939-2003), Atlanta’s most famous painter I am told. Abstract Expressionist. His words are over the door to the library in large print.

You can’t learn something if you know what you 

want to put down. I want to learn something.

That’s comforting to me, for some reason.  I think because I, myself, don’t usually know what to put down, but begin anyway. And it usually works itself out.  

So. Walking, as I was saying. I discover that from the dead end of Bennett Street I can walk down, through the woods, cross a stream, and hit the Beltline trail. Which I do, and walk back to my house that way, in the heat, which is somehow bearable because of the shade of the large trees. It’s not far, but I feel I’ve come a long way. Walking does that. If I’m paying attention, I don’t necessarily have to go very far to see a lot.