Sighnaghi / Georgia · 2018 from the roofs to the mountains
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Georgia was a multiflavored delicacy. I cut it open from east to west and took three bites out of it – Sighnaghi, Tbilisi, Chiatura – and they all appealed to different regions of the palate. Chiatura was almost raw and Tbilisi medium rare and Sighnaghi was very well done. I’ll be back for more if I can get away with it.
My sampling allowed for plenty of other conclusions and fun insights, e.g. that Georgia is two thirds West and one third East, and that the most eastern town I visited looked the most western and vice versa. Indeed, my methodology was sound and my sample size of three absolutely conclusive and significant. A fine study mine.
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a glimpse
Like elevators, just different, the cable cars have been flying since Stalin's day to get the miners into the mountain.
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Chiatura / Georgia · 2018 flying elevator
Tbilisi / Georgia · 2018 nutty clock tower
Chiatura / Georgia · 2018 apartment cluster
Tbilisi / Georgia · 2018 back-alley front yard
Chiatura/ Georgia · 2018 Soviet pastel
reliable until back in fashion
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Sighnaghi / Georgia · 2018 tada, Lada
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places / stories
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Chiatura / Soviet Ghost
Chiatura / Georgia · 2018 yesterday, at the cable car station
I arrived under a blue sky like underwater, short thoughts and long feelings running loose inside me. To visit a mining town that others toil in, is one of the dirtier forms of entertainment, travel, curiosity. I’ve never been inside a mine for longer than I liked or for any other reason than excitement. Miners, I salute you, but I am not worthy of the dirt between your nails and your calloused fingertips. And I’m thinking this, luxuriously, from a distance, years later, while walking through a golden Saturday night in Paris with a cute buzz buzzing though my marrow, head tingle to toe tingle, and now I’m writing it in a little cozy notebook my mom gave me, all the while simmering blissfully in one of these orange puddles dripping from the old streetlights onto Paris’ wealthy stone, a writer in a city that does all the writing for you. It is less than unlikely that we will switch roles in this lifetime miner men.
Chiatura / Georgia · 2018 midair nap
They send them off into the mountains in rectangular metal boxes that might as well be coffins. Death taking off at dawn, everybody aboard. I would have ridden them, again, for pleasure, for kicks, for photos, for understanding something at best, but there was a power outage that day and so they dangled in midair over rivers, roads, and canyons, hopefully empty.
Chiatura / Georgia · 2018 suspended church
Chiatura / Georgia · 2018 miner mural
Chiatura / Georgia · 2018 mining town perched in the canyon
Katskhi pillar / Georgia · 2018 taxi driver
Vanished, quite literally, from the face of the earth, a monk lived atop the pillar in maximum solitude. When I was there, he had descended, like a bearded angel with some weekly worldly business. His ascend was, yet again quite literally, via a stairway to heaven, some 100 steel rungs populating a 40-meter ladder that wasn’t for the faint-hearted or those with mushy limbs.
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Tbilisi / You, Me, Let's See
Tbilisi / Georgia · 2018 sky turning cosmos
Tbilisi, squeeze me once more someday. Squeeze your way under my skin and into the tissue and bury yourself in me because I know you well enough to know you belong there even though I hardly know you at all. Not love on first sight, no, but infatuation, yes, very yes, very you and me, very let’s see.
Tbilisi / Georgia · 2018 books and a palace
Tbilisi / Georgia · 2018 bright light, night outside
Tbilisi / Georgia · 2018 riding the cable
Tbilisi / Georgia · 2018 let sleeping dogs lie
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Sighnaghi / No Shower, Free Wine
Sighnaghi / Georgia · 2018 vantage town
Sighnaghi / Georgia · 2018 concrete terrace
Sighnaghi / Georgia · 2018 orthodox guardian
Sighnaghi / Georgia · 2018 rusty roof
My room didn't have a bathroom and the bathroom I could use was the restaurant's bathroom, which, naturally, had no shower. My hosts were surprised that I was surprised. They gave me a bottle of wine and a smile, and we called it even.
Sighnaghi / Georgia · 2018 room and space
Sighnaghi / Georgia · 2018 living with a view
Sighnaghi / Georgia · 2018 the fastest shadows fall the deepest
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