My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.--Ursula K. Le Guin

Union Avenue An Urban Journal Exploring Place, Purpose, Literature, Memory, and This Time

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Journal Entries March, 2001, page 2 back... As a writer, an imaginary city may be the most real thing I could say about Knoxville, TN. For me, it is a city that survives mainly by its history, its myths, and its irrepressible desire to reinvent itself. Why would anyone choose to live in downtown Knoxville, TN, you would surely ask if you walked its silent streets after 5:00 in the afternoon? It's a question often asked, not just by outsiders, but by its residents who are frustrated not only with the city's current and historical lack of direction, but with their own. I'm often conscious of the fact that many of the people who live downtown appear to be, like the city itself, waiting, waiting for something or someone else to take over their lives, but are tied almost hypnotically and illogically to a place that seems to promise little more than possibility. I'm always curious about the motivations of non-natives for living here, non-natives being anyone born in states other than TN and KY, which for all practical purposes, are synonymous. I mean, TN has Nashville and Knoxville (we won't mention Memphis as that seems to be so hybridized it no longer belongs to TN); KY has Louisville and Lexington; and except for an inverse proportion of horses and orange people, the two are interchangeable. For those of you not familiar with the University of Tennessee football machine, orange is the school color and dominates the landscape year-round. So, you have the requisite in-house nomads, people who've migrated down out of the hills, who have come here for college or jobs and just stayed which is understandable. I mean, to most small-town residents, Knoxville is the Big Apple (or Orange); any state beyond may as well be China, the moon. I know. I grew up in Kingsport, TN, the land that time forgot, population 40,000 and sliding. But how to explain the people living here who've come from "outside," or, as my husband is quick to say, from "back in the states"? He loves to go off, sometimes for several minutes: "It's not bad--you can work here and don't have to have a Green Card; you can get back to the States without a Tourist Visa; and, hey, the bread sucks, but there's never a shortage of car parts," and on and on. But everyone knows he's joking; after all, he DOES live here. More...