Today

I bought a book with a collection of photographs by a guy named William Eggleston - his pictures send me into a complete tizzy. They bring more surreal exaltation to what only an idiot might refer to as mundane southern Americana than any other photographs I've ever seen. I yearn to be there immediately: Greenwood, Huntsville, Knoxville, Montgomery, Memphis, anywhere any of the photos were taken. I want to live someplace sluggish and normal, near a truck-stop where he (whoever he'll be) and I will eat grits and drink coffee every morning. I want a little house with honey-colored walls and grandma looking furniture from the seventies, maybe an organ in the living room, a cheap painting of a saint above our bed, and Formica countertops in the kitchen. We'll pretend we're Baptists so we can go to their church on Sundays and hear the choir sing. He would be a writer, and I'd work as a waitress. Pudgy, perspiring men will give me an extra dollar tip because I'll wear my uniform a few inches too short, but that's as far as they'll push it because the whole town will know about him and me. We'll be recognized as the lovebirds - the sappy couple who hold hands, kiss, and never mow their lawn.