Wednesday, December 5, 2007 - Demopolis AL
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And the park has a winter rate of $4.00 per night. This sounds like a good alternative to Wal-Mart parking lots for a few days. So I stock up on food and head out.
No cell phone reception at Payne Lake Campground
Darn; it's a nice quiet campground, nice lake, but I get no cell phone reception. Without cell reception I felt I didn't want to stay and headed on westward on AL 25. So here I am at one of dear old Wally's parking lots again.
This Wal-Mart Supercenter is green
Now here's a first for me. Of all the Wal-Marts I've visited to date, this is the first one done up in green and beige instead of the usual blue and beige. Is this a reflection of the "green" image Wal-Mart has been promoting lately?
Night camp
Wal-Mart Parking Lot in Demopolis AL
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Demopolis AL
Wal-Mart Supercenter Store #731, 969 Us Hwy 80 West, Demopolis, AL 36732 - (334) 289-2385
- Good level parking, reasonably quiet
- Poor Verizon cell phone service - access is via Extended Network, roaming
- No Verizon EVDO service - access is via the Extended Network and service varies is slow but reliable
- Find other Wal-Marts in the area
- Check the weather here
When Hope Dies
When you give up on hope, something even better happens than it not killing you, which is that in some sense it does kill you. You die. And there's a wonderful thing about being dead, which is that they—those in power—cannot really touch you anymore. Not through promises, not through threats, not through violence itself. Once you're dead in this way, you can still sing, you can still dance, you can still make love, you can still fight like hell—you can still live because you are still alive, more alive in fact than ever before. You come to realize that when hope died, the you who died with the hope was not you, but was the you who depended on those who exploit you, the you who believed that those who exploit you will somehow stop on their own, the you who believed in the mythologies propagated by those who exploit you in order to facilitate that exploitation. The socially constructed you died. The civilized you died. The manufactured, fabricated, stamped, molded you died. The victim died.
And who is left when that you dies? You are left. Animal you. Naked you. Vulnerable (and invulnerable) you. Mortal you. Survivor you. The you who thinks not what the culture taught you to think but what you think. The you who feels not what the culture taught you to feel but what you feel. The you who is not who the culture taught you to be but who you are. The you who can say yes, the you who can say no.