The Effects of Wrap-Around Porch Syndrome, Part 1: Charleston

It took only so long for me to recognize that I felt completely at home with Charleston.

But I did, and I'm sure that if I went back, she'd greet me with a sweet southern "Hey, little missus". That's the thing about Charleston; get on its good side, and it'll remember you forever.

Much of the history of the city has been erased, at least at surface-level. It's an autumnal sort of place - a blend of something brand new and something left over. There's high fashion salons next to Civil War era homes -- the church graveyards, of which one feels that there is no end, are amalgamations of cracked headstones and shiny new plaques. The people have retained a charm, but have shed a lifestyle. Despite all that has perished here, though, Charleston is alive, and I'd even say it's alive and well. Some things just keep kicking, and no one can say Southerners ain't stubborn.

Charleston is not your average city. Neck and neck with Columbia, in a wrestling match for biggest city in South Carolina, Charleston's high risers are not skyscrapers but church steeples. You can see St. Michael's almost from the freeway. It's so beautiful - I wish there was a word that wasn't so overused, but there's no other word that quite sums up the extraordinary familiarity that gives Charleston its splendor. I tend to wonder why most people haven't been to Charleston, and I maintain that everyone should go. I am a little skeptical, though, a little pretentious - I know that you can go to Charleston but it doesn't mean you've been to Charleston, really been there. You've got to undress the city, see the buried things along with the colorful bed-and-breakfast inns that line the streets. You've never really been to Charleston until you know which dog lives outside a restaurant on the corner of Broad, and which dog lives behind a gate at a house near Battery Park, just at the end of Meeting Street.

The whole place smells like horses, and there are horse-drawn carriages bouncing along the cobbled streets. We oftentimes waved at the passengers, and they oftentimes waved back. Everybody waves in Charleston because everyone knows each other - maybe not by name, but everyone understands something indescribable, like there's a connection running through our minds down into our feet and streaking through pavement to pass through the other bodies walking along in coexistence with us. So we see each other, and we wave. We recognize each other.

There are flowers EVERYWHERE. The whole darn place is a flower shop, which probably is a definite reason it was easy to become an inhabitant of Charleston for me. In the springtime, you can walk down Meeting Street and see magnolias, azaleas, camellias, roses, blossoms on trees, all of 'em. They also keep little garden boxes under their windows - sometimes beautifully sparse, minimal, sometimes spilling out of the boxes in unparalleled drama.

And so many of these living things in Charleston - the plants and the people - are so refreshingly unplanned, so beautifully embarrassing in their realness. I have seen people meeting up, laughing, crying. Their accents are sweeter than their tea they'll try to make you drink, and they say the things no one else will say. Relentless gossipers, all of them, but so full of goodness to their very core, and so many of them think so much about Jesus. I felt like I was on holy ground for much more than just the towering church steeples.

Most interestingly, though, there is a big dock with porch-type swings at the end of the Battery. Oftentimes lovers occupy them, holding hands or kissing. It seems like the perfect place to kiss someone - looking out across the Atlantic ocean kind of feels like making eye contact with someone across millions of miles, a strange and disconcerting feeling that probably goes nicely with the warmth of lips to lips. I haven't yet experienced that delicious divide in myself, but there's hope for me and all those people who've noticed the lovers on the swings. We can all fall in love because of Charleston, I think, maybe a little easier than before. Charleston is somehow foreign and home all at once, and it taught me that I had the potential to become a porch-swing lover, and so do you. That someday, maybe today (how thrilling!) we'll all find someone who makes our soul want to stay put in our bodies instead of flying all over this beautiful world. Maybe that feeling comes in conjunction with every single thing culminating in, coming together as, the soul of that someone - like there wasn't any reason to go anywhere else to see the world, 'cause the world is right there in them, and you can really see it in their eyes.

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