The South- Nashville, Tennessee
The time I have spent in the American South has been a sobering experience. In the years I have lived in the States, we read and learned about the South, the North, the Civil War, equal rights, and MLK. There is nothing better than seeing the livelihood of "history" with own eyes. My adventure to the South began by leaving Illinois on a road trip. Passing through the long state of Illinois, driving into Kentucky, then Tennessee. The Great Smoky Mountain is really something one must see. Well, if you like the outdoors and appreciate nature. Its massive presence and the gray-blue fog give you the sense of being in the "smokey mountains." "The Great Smoky Mountains are a mountain range rising along the Tennessee–North Carolina border in the southeastern United States. They are a subrange of the Appalachian Mountains and form part of the Blue Ridge Physiographic Province."
One common thing I have noticed in the South is the heat and the humidity. While the mornings and the evenings are lovely, each afternoon was draining. The heat and the humidity sucked all my energy, leaving no ambition to do any activity but to swim in cold water (in an indoor pool.) I call it escaping-from-the-sun. The humidity was so bad that I kept thinking about the cold Mongolian wind. I wished it would touch my face and stay there.
I was in Nashville, Tennessee. I actually liked Nashville. People were naturally artistic-looking. You'd see handsome dudes carrying their guitars and heavy musical instruments. Ladies dressed to impress. The Nashville Honky Tonk makes you want to buy boots and wear jeans shorts and play something. There were music venues everywhere, fancy and not-so-fancy places. The talented would be promoted. The untalented, well, there were many of those too. Dreams lost. Lost in the heat and dust of Tennessee. I felt terrible for those people who stayed in Nashville, dreaming for years and years. The whiskey culture does not help their skin and their wrinkles either. It was similar in Daytona, Florida. Dudes want to become a professional car racers. Never left the beach. Drank themselves.
The Parthenon was a distinctive architecture. "The Parthenon in Centennial Park, in Nashville, Tennessee, is a full-scale replica of the original Parthenon in Athens. It was designed by architect William Crawford Smith and built-in 1897 as part of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition."
As the sun sets on the plains of Tennessee, I sat on the grass, hearing the cricket, and the music culture of Nashville became alive all of a sudden, here and there. The sunset and the double rainbow were something to remember.
