describing (missing) nashville
who would've thought!
I’m currently home in Mississippi for the summer, and I’ve been recovering from the trifecta of semester burnout, wisdom tooth extractions (more on this another time), and coming to terms with living at home for 3 months. And I know my sister is reading this, so trust me when I say it is not any specific family member’s fault that I have been dreading this summer.
I think most of my friends my age would agree that going home for an extended period of time can feel depressing, regardless of healthy parent-child relationships and boundaries. I spent nearly 5 years living on my own to some degree, and here I am, back at square one. As soon as the first 48 hours of being home are up, the mental rut starts to sink in, and I feel stuck. Maybe it’s partially because my close hometown friends live elsewhere now or because I technically have nothing to do until I start work in 2 weeks. Instead of venting about this particular sense of unease for now, I thought I’d maybe finish up an idea that I started last month.
I am famously a Nashville hater from my time in undergrad. But being home has reminded me how much I appreciate Nashville and what the city means to me now.
A few months ago, I rewatched Lady Bird, a Greta Gerwig classic coming-of-age movie, rendered “basic” at this point (I like to think things are considered basic and enjoyed by the masses for good reason). Please enjoy my favorite quote from the movie that this post kind of blossomed from:
Sister Sarah Joan: You clearly love Sacramento.
Christine 'Lady Bird' McPherson: I do?
Sister Sarah Joan: You write about Sacramento so affectionately and with such care.
Christine 'Lady Bird' McPherson: I was just describing it.
Sister Sarah Joan: Well, it comes across as love.
Christine 'Lady Bird' McPherson: Sure, I guess I pay attention.
Sister Sarah Joan: Don't you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?
One of my favorite things to do in Nashville is go for a run without a specific route in mind. There’s usually a particular location I want to see or walk by during some part of the run, but the route I’ll take? No one knows. My path is up to the timing of the chirping pedestrian signals.
I know the streets I’ll need to take for my specific route, and I know which streets might be a bit more dangerous to cross due to the speed limit (or suggested speed limit, as most Nashville drivers treat it).
Sometimes, there’s no way to continue running without pressing a pedestrian signal button and waiting for the locator tone to *chirp*. There’s a certain bliss in knowing which buttons in the neighborhood have a defect—some are jammed, some make funny dying noises when you hold them—and knowing when it’s your turn to start crossing the street before the white walking sign flashes.
On my runs, I pass by purple WeGo buses I’ve taken before and think back to the adventure I made each quest into (yay existence of public transit, boo limited public transit). I pass by numerous familiar murals, some created with the intent of being shared on Instagram, some created for the sake of art. I pass by familiar graffiti and stickers of up-and-coming artists trying to make it big in Music City. If I ever find myself on a street that I’m unfamiliar with, I know I just have to keep moving forward to encounter familiarity once more.
Whenever I have trouble falling asleep, I visualize myself running on the sidewalks in Nashville, heading aimlessly in a general direction. I think through different routes based on previous walks or car rides or exploring on Google Maps. The streets of Nashville have become a source of comfort to me, melting my pre-sleep beta waves into the calming alpha waves of Stage 1 sleep.
Recently, an old friend from high school came to visit Nashville, and he wanted to see some historical buildings Downtown, exploring some spots that I had only seen in passing.
“I will force you to be a tourist in your own city.”
So we galavanted throughout the Downtown area for almost 2 hours in the glaring sun, absorbing architectural details and small gardens scattered around, soaking in the Greek influences in architecture and the irony of some calling the city the Athens of the South (reader, Athens, Georgia is a city that could be more appropriately deemed the Athens of the South).
“I never knew this building was here.”
I thought about how even living just outside of campus this past school year has opened me up to a few neighborhoods of Nashville. And those 2 meager hours around Downtown opened me up to even more.
Knowing my way around as well as the quirks of a gaggle of neighborhoods in Nashville is one thing. But I’m thankful that this city seems to offer me more as I have settled into a community of sorts over time. One of my goals this summer is to find a fragment of this kind of attention and (dare I say) love for my hometown as I have found over the past year with Nashville.