ROCKS IN THE MINDSCAPE

I have rocks all around where I live--inside! I have a rock from the volcanic sill behind my house from when I lived in the Santa Monica Mountains, California (1989-1993). I have a quartzite (crystal) rock I have been toting around since I lived in and around Lexington, Kentucky (1965-1979). I have rocks in the form of Native American arrowheads and axes from southern Kentucky, which are very approximately possibly 2,000 years old, that I have kept with me since the 1960s. 


Some people have quipped that they are here to remind me, in case of sudden-onslaught Alzheimer's, of who I am! Get it? (My surname is Stone.) 


One thing that pleases me about my imminent move to Nashville, Tennessee, is that there are actual outcroppings (the Nashville Dome) similar to the limestone outcroppings of the Inner Bluegrass--the Jessamine or Lexington Dome, which is geologically part of the Cincinnati Arch, so the stratigraphy is virtually the same. That will begin to feel closer to my sense of home (I am from Kentucky and lived in and around Lexington for 14 years). 


Here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast the bedrock is a few hundred feet below surface covered by coastal sediments. 


I need rocks in the landscape of my life, specially the 200-million-year-old limestones. 

NOMADIC IN PROCURED SPACE

Now that I have unmasked my assumed neo-primitive persona, I admit that I once freely visited Opryland Hotel, Nashville, whose mottoes might be: "Lose yourself in our simulated reality, because it's more real than Disney Land!" and, "Make new friends at our many conveniently placed layout maps!" There's a reason that there are so many layout maps (and other nomads crowded around in perplexed silence): It's because wandering lost (and spending money while lost) is the game. They should call it the Wanderlust Hotel.

The maps are themed: cartographic obfuscation. And the architects were obviously in on the ruse: How to place two large hotels and FOUR atria and a gigantic convention center and myriad shops and restaurants under a roof and in such a way that visitors (read shoppers) will always be lost. But, hey, we won't care! Because it's so pleasant with all this natural tropical vegetation (in Tennessee) and streams and cascades and waterfalls (it's good to get out into nature) that.... "Hey! There's another layout map conveniently placed 10 feet ahead! Let's see where we are!" (Perplexed silence.)

After I entered this aMAZEing space and soon enough realized I was missing, I found a creek and reckoned I could meander downstream to find my way out. (I learned this in the mountains of Kentucky.) It stagnated at Bayou Country! Since I felt physiographically comfortable there (and knew how to keep an eye out for gators) and I saw Boudreaux's Bayou Smoothie Shoppe (whose theme should be, "You buy by the bayou"), I had to gladly purchase a smoothie or two--and drink it at the next conveniently placed layout map! You get the idea.