ROVIN' AND RAVIN' WITH MIKE:

copyright (c) 1999 by Michael Segers

- all rights reserved -

PASSAGE TO PASAQUAN

 Oh, you cats and kitties, you brethren and sistern, young

and old, rich and poor, I'm standing here before you to bring you

the gossippy syllables of his hallowed badness, Eddie Owens

Martin, Georgia's own bigmouth bogeyman, redneck hippy, suicidal

self-proclaimed saint, fantastic foreman of the nuttiest, slutti-

est, saintliest bit of architecture in or maybe out of the lines

of that joyful state of mind, Georgia on or off our minds.

Pardon me, but I have set myself a real task this time, How

can I possibly communicate to you in mere English the sin and

song, the din and dong, the yin and yang of most likely the

brightest, craziest, just possibly most sane Georgian of all

time--St. EOM, as he called himself? I may have to stretch out

my language just a little, just the way his sinful saintliness

himself stretched and starched his hair and beard to reach up to

the life-giving sun.

St. EOM began his seventy-seven year visit to this beauti-

ful, sometime bedraggled planet on the Fourth of July 1908 in an

area of central Georgia that has served as the entrance to this

world for Flannery O'Connor, Jimmy Carter, Koinonia Farms (a

Baptist preacher's effort to create a color-blind first century

Christian commune in a very segregated place and time and the

forerunner of Habitat for Humanity). Growing up pretty much on

the line that divides red clay Georgia from white sand Georgia,

he suffered poverty, violence, sexual abuse. The one element

missing from the standard southern eccentric's background is

religion, the kind of sweaty, gutsy religion that most likely

most of my readers now know only from the film "The Apostle."

But, he would change that, creating his own one-man religion in

which he was the number one and one and only saint and sinner.

While still young, he ran away to New York City, and so

began the pattern of his life, living in the cotton fields of

home until the boring life of hard work there was unbearable,

then moving to various little apartments and sometimes street

corners in New York City, until, "I was sick of New York anyway,

to tell you the truth. It gets old after a while." He con-

tinued, "Glad I had a place to get out to. I wouldn't be alive

now if I hadn't."

And what a place it was, a few acres with a tin-roofed

house and a few nondescript outbuildings. But, that was just the

beginning. Over the years, responding to interior instructions

from unseen beings, Eddie Owens Martin turned himself into St.

EOM and his little cracker cottage into a place just about liter-

ally out of this world. "I built this place to have something to

identify with,'cause there's nothin' I see in this society that I

identify with or desire to emulate," he explained. "Here I can

be in my own world, with my temples and designs and the spirit of

God."

Drawing inspiration from architecture and mythology from

around the world, he created near Buena Vista, Georgia--of all

places--a wild, technicolor paradise in which religious symbols

and proud nudes melt together into a technicolor sideshow of the

soul, a joyful dance of life and love, which is regularly rumbled

by planes from nearby Fort Benning. (I leave the irony and al-

legory to braver beings.) In 1986, his health failing, facing

and fearing the prospect of leaving the hip-mythological paradise

he had created, St. EOM decided to take his leave of his own

magic garden on his own terms... and with his own pistol.

I never met him, but in December 1989, I visited Pasaquan

the first time it was officially opened to the public after his

death. It was the kind of cold, clear day that in many places

might be autumn, but which in my neck of the south Georgia woods

is fullblown winter. I went with a couple of friends, one of

whom did the driving. For some reason, I always regret that I

was not driving, that I was not making a pilgrimage.

We went through the little town of Buena Vista ("good view"

in Spanish), which looks like so many other little old has-been

or might-have-been towns scattered across Georgia, not like the

vital and vibrant little home town of your humble correspondent

and our lively Peanut.org. I remember that the driver asked

someone for directions, but we finally followed some crudely

lettered signs that had been put up for the day.

In the three years since St. EOM had committed suicide, the

place had obviously deteriorated, but it had suffered no vandal-

ism. Rumors were that he had trained rattlesnakes to guard

Pasaquan, and some of the walls were undulating, with large

serpents painted along the tops of them--somewhat like the serp-

ents on the great pyramid of Chichen Itza.

When we got there, I was struck by the incongruity of the

thing. I still have a vivid impression of the smell--the dry,

clean autumnal air tinged with the burning of trash out back. So

much of what I saw was familiar: the land, the plants (the

inevitable pecan trees and pines), the little farm house and

outbuildings, the dog pen. These things I knew. But superim-

posed was another dimension, another reality, which I doubt if

anyone but St. EOM himself knew: wildly, vaguely mythic figures,

all in garish enamel paint. Well, the cool white statues of

ancient Greece were originally painted, so who knows?

As I've mentioned, Pasaquan is on the line between red clay

Georgia and white sand Georgia. Well, it is on other lines as

well, on a San Andreas Fault between here and there, between the

rather boring young couple I went with and the mad prophet who

had created the place.

Even by the time I got to Oxford, Mississippi in 1992, it

was still permeated with a Faulknerian effluvium. Faulkner's

little postage stamp was like a fantastic Victorian recipe I once

read, in which a whole succession of fowl were stewed and sim-

mered in one pot, so that a single small serving contained an

essence of many birds. Faulkner kept on boiling and stewing the

south until it became more southern than any place could be.

St. EOM's achievement was just the opposite. I can imagine

Pasaquan rising up from the desolate plains of Texas or stuck

down a mountain road in Colorado. He boiled down the essence of

a place beyond place, boiled down many religions, traditions,

spirits, into a hearty broth that owes its high flavors as much

EOM's fortune-telling and alleged drug-dealing as for his medita-

tions and soul-surgery.

After his journey to the Maya ruins of the Yucatan peninsu-

la, St, EOM said, "But I had already seen them ruins from the

travelogues and travel adventure films, and it was really more

interesting to see 'em on the screen than it was to be there."

To me, his remark about seeing the ruins on film is telling: one

can experience the essence of the place without the distractions

of--from my memories of the Maya ruins--bugs, big lizards, smelly

busses, loud tourists, to see the ruins as the ruins themselves

would like to be seen.

It's nice, but is Pasaquan art? St. EOM had odd ideas about

hair and beard, that they are repositories of power, but that to

take advantage of this power, they must be pulled upward, so that

the energy flows upward. Once he started growing and tying up

his hair as can be seen in some of his sculptures and paintings,

he could no longer work as a prostitute. His many tattoos kept

him from being a dancer. So, he created his body in the image of

his choice, even if it involved making sacrifices. Perhaps

Pasaquan is an extension of his body, or, perhaps, his tattooed

body is an extension of Pasaquan.

His project was not so much about creating art, whatever

that is, as about creating a place, a space, a refuge for him-

self. Once, again, to quote the one and only Pasaquoyan, "Here I

can be in my own world, with my temples and designs and the

spirit of God." There he performed ritual dances in his sacred

sand pit, and it there were others to dance with him, good, and

it he was alone, then, perhaps, so much the better.

Since that first day that I went there, the first day there

had been any public opening of the place, very well meaning souls

in the area have paid the back taxes and raised funds to restore

and maintain the property, which is now open on a regular sched-

ule, complete with an admission charge and a gift shop where you

can buy tee-shirts.

Would the more Pasaquoyan response have been to film the

place extensively, post the photos out here in cyberspace, and

then blow up the hollow shell of Pasaquan which Eddie Owens

Martin left behind, uniting the badboy saint and his place beyond

space? I ask the question, but I cannot know how these not so

ancient but already timeless ruins want to be seen.

All the quotes in this article are from Eddie Owens Martin

himself, as recounted in Tom Patterson's book of photos and

memories, "St. EOM in the Land of Pasaquan." For more informa-

tion on St. EOM and Pasaquan, consult that wonderful book, which

you can order from the Pasaquan Preservation Society, co Fred C.

Fussell, 2217 13th Street, Columbus, GA 31906. You can begin

your journey to and through Pasaquan on the web at:

www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/1482/steom.html

www.shockoestudios.com/steom.htm

Till next time, keep your feet dry and your heart full of

noble thoughts.