Yikes I have been busy, what with starting the new job, going to SE Asia again and in general taking on far too much. I haven't even seen my horses in almost 2 months, though the girl who runs hers with them on my land says they look goood.This post is going to be as short as it is meaningless, but it's been so long since I've posted anything, I feel compelled.
Mostly what I've been doing in terms of writing is transcribing my travel journal and trying to knock it into shape, though for what I don't yet know. I don't think I'm much of a travel writer, but it looks like an interesting way to explore some ideas and in general try to make some sense of what I've been up to.
07 March 2012
09 September 2010
06 January 2010
Travelers
Oftentimes, in unexpected and unusual ways the past has a way of catching up and when it does in some painful or unpleasant way, I retroactively reconnoiter in an attempt to discover exactly at what point in time the decisions I made or actions I took set in motion events that led to whatever outcome. Sometimes it's not hard at all. I was aware as I was doing it and so, like jumping onto a moving train, the repercussions and changes they heralded came as no surprise. However, that's not what I want to write about tonight. Tonight, I want to write about the future because Logan and I are about to jump off a platform onto a train that is moving very fast.
At this moment there is an eleven year old South Korean boy named David Lee hurtling toward us across the Pacific Ocean, seven miles high and close to 600 miles per hour; he'll arrive in Austin late tomorrow and then he'll come to live at our house for the next three months. There are reasons for this.
Though eleven seems startlingly young to me, Logan's school routinely hosts foreign exchange students from Korea. This past Monday, the Principal sent out an email to the effect that there was a desperate need for a family to host David, as he was about to board a plane and come over and so far, no one had volunteered.
31 December 2009
Ending the Year
I dreamt about my grandfather again last night. Though he died almost thirty years ago, he still appears regularly in my dreams and last night’s tracked most all of the others I have of him. He’s always the same, in his late seventies, active, fit and interested in whatever is going on, which is a far remove from how he was at the end, broken in body and spirit.
In my dream I was driving a red truck that had been sitting up for some time. After getting it up to speed, the thick layer of dust had blown off to reveal the old and spider tracked paint, patterned with minute hairline cracks like an impenetrable, organic labyrinth sprung from the slow passage of time. I drove into and finally through a howling
In my dream I was driving a red truck that had been sitting up for some time. After getting it up to speed, the thick layer of dust had blown off to reveal the old and spider tracked paint, patterned with minute hairline cracks like an impenetrable, organic labyrinth sprung from the slow passage of time. I drove into and finally through a howling
28 December 2009
A Small and Perfect Gift
This year I woke to the first white Christmas Texas has seen since 1926. As I was beginning my drive from Austin to Dallas, fierce head winds sprang up from the northwest and the weather deteriorated rapidly into the kind of instant storm we sometimes get in Texas. The wind was gusting to forty plus miles per hour, snapping off road signs and blowing rain and sometimes snow, sideways across the highway and keeping my vehicle on the road soon became my sole focus. By the time I got to Dallas snow was general from there on north and west, but I didn’t expect it to last, because it almost never does.
My parents have a bungalow behind their house which is where I stay when I’m in town and when I arrived, dad had already built up a fire and it was nice to drop my bag and
My parents have a bungalow behind their house which is where I stay when I’m in town and when I arrived, dad had already built up a fire and it was nice to drop my bag and
11 November 2009
Newpages.com
This is a pretty good resource for literary journals, competitions, blogs and other creative writing related things.
http://www.newpages.com/
http://www.newpages.com/
07 October 2009
Among Other Things, School Buses
Disclaimer: No children or small animals were hurt during the research/creation portion of this essay.
Yesterday, while taking a load of Kindergarteners to Buda TX, to visit the Fire Station, I wrecked the school bus. My upbringing left me saddled with an above average amount of guilt, so it's my nature to take the blame for things—even when they aren't my fault—and in this particular case, it really wasn't; I was following the hand signals of a very nice, very earnest young firefighter and he guided me right into a fire engine. More specifically, he guided me into one of the engine's side view mirrors that are about eight feet off the ground. I want to be nice, but in retrospect, I really expected him to pay attention to all of both vehicles, not just the eye level parts.
It's really not hard to be understanding when the vehicle—or as in this case vehicles—you've wrecked are not your own, but still
All My Friends Are Gonna Be Strangers
It's Southern Decadence week in New Orleans and I'm standing on the wrong end of Bourbon Street surrounded by literally hundreds of sweaty, horny, and very drunk gay men. Here, there’s a six foot six cowboy who’s built like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime and wearing only a straw cowboy hat, pointy toed cowboy boots and a black leather jockstrap. There, a matched brace of youths that might weigh in at buck thirty five a piece in matching sailor hats and white briefs. They’re singing "Anchors Aweigh" and seem very patriotic, albeit in a rather unconventional way.
It’s swelteringly, tropically hot and love is in the air, in the street, in the bars, the alleys. Am I uneasy? No. Am I straight? Yes. Am I offended when some men hit on me and some don't? Not exactly, though I do wonder why. Primarily I’m impressed with the sheer force of abandon with which these boys are partying and at the same time amazed at how well groomed the majority of them are. During beach season one year I tried to thin the hair on my chest with an electric beard trimmer, but the results were not as I see before me tonight. When I finished I didn’t look any the better, in fact I looked as if I had mange.
In any case, though dwelling on the past is as inevitable as it is futile, one needn’t dwell on the worst of it. I turn to why I even have the capacity to stand here and take all this in and it’s this: Georges Bizet and The Dallas Opera.
A lifetime ago, after college but before grad school, with no idea of what to do or who to be, I impulsively auditioned to be a supernumerary, a non-singing extra in the Dallas Opera's production of Carmen. The interview consisted of sitting down with the diminutive stage director who expressed relief when—after inquiring if I had any acting experience—I answered “No.” I told him I considered myself completely free of any opinions on acting, productions, plays, and anything else theater related.
“I couldn’t stage a coup in South America,” I quipped.
As he looked me over for a long moment I expected to be shown the door. The he broke the silence. "That's good," he said. "You have no idea how trying these bitches with a little experience can be."
It seemed sensible to agree, so I did and that sealed it. In short order he gave me the run down: rehearsals were every night for two weeks, afterwards there would be four performances: Friday night, Sunday matinee, Wednesday night and Saturday night. He paused before delivering what many in my position must have received as highly offensive information.
“The pay is five dollars per night.”
He may have taken my silence as the preliminary stages of shock. “Per night,” he reiterated. “Not per hour.”
I shrugged my shoulders and said “Sounds great.”
He pursed his lips and continued. Though vital to large productions, supernumeraries play only a small part and are always expected to do exactly what is asked, nothing extemporaneous, nothing additional and “No acting!” We were scenery. Even so, we were expected to be polite scenery and call ourselves and each other "supernumeraries"—or “supers”—as opposed to the trade slang “spear carriers” as that was considered a derogatory term. Upon entering the room I had noticed
It’s swelteringly, tropically hot and love is in the air, in the street, in the bars, the alleys. Am I uneasy? No. Am I straight? Yes. Am I offended when some men hit on me and some don't? Not exactly, though I do wonder why. Primarily I’m impressed with the sheer force of abandon with which these boys are partying and at the same time amazed at how well groomed the majority of them are. During beach season one year I tried to thin the hair on my chest with an electric beard trimmer, but the results were not as I see before me tonight. When I finished I didn’t look any the better, in fact I looked as if I had mange.
In any case, though dwelling on the past is as inevitable as it is futile, one needn’t dwell on the worst of it. I turn to why I even have the capacity to stand here and take all this in and it’s this: Georges Bizet and The Dallas Opera.
A lifetime ago, after college but before grad school, with no idea of what to do or who to be, I impulsively auditioned to be a supernumerary, a non-singing extra in the Dallas Opera's production of Carmen. The interview consisted of sitting down with the diminutive stage director who expressed relief when—after inquiring if I had any acting experience—I answered “No.” I told him I considered myself completely free of any opinions on acting, productions, plays, and anything else theater related.
“I couldn’t stage a coup in South America,” I quipped.
As he looked me over for a long moment I expected to be shown the door. The he broke the silence. "That's good," he said. "You have no idea how trying these bitches with a little experience can be."
It seemed sensible to agree, so I did and that sealed it. In short order he gave me the run down: rehearsals were every night for two weeks, afterwards there would be four performances: Friday night, Sunday matinee, Wednesday night and Saturday night. He paused before delivering what many in my position must have received as highly offensive information.
“The pay is five dollars per night.”
He may have taken my silence as the preliminary stages of shock. “Per night,” he reiterated. “Not per hour.”
I shrugged my shoulders and said “Sounds great.”
He pursed his lips and continued. Though vital to large productions, supernumeraries play only a small part and are always expected to do exactly what is asked, nothing extemporaneous, nothing additional and “No acting!” We were scenery. Even so, we were expected to be polite scenery and call ourselves and each other "supernumeraries"—or “supers”—as opposed to the trade slang “spear carriers” as that was considered a derogatory term. Upon entering the room I had noticed
31 August 2009
Arachnophobia Past and Present
Logan is crouching over the shower drain with a homemade spear, waiting for me to pour the gasoline. As I tip the can and watch the source of many of the world’s problems sluice down the drain, I have the irrational thought that a Sewer Cam would be nice so I could monitor the situation in the septic tank.
As a single dad I know I don’t always set the right tone for how to live, but I mean well and though I’d like to think today’s lesson is something like “Meet your fears head on and if possible, be armed,” I think in reality it has more to do with my past than it does his future.
For the second time this week, Logan has come to whichever room I’m in and calmly announced “Dad, there’s a scorpion in the tub.” Both times
As a single dad I know I don’t always set the right tone for how to live, but I mean well and though I’d like to think today’s lesson is something like “Meet your fears head on and if possible, be armed,” I think in reality it has more to do with my past than it does his future.
For the second time this week, Logan has come to whichever room I’m in and calmly announced “Dad, there’s a scorpion in the tub.” Both times
28 August 2009
Al Dente
Al Dente
Each summer here in Texas that as the heat climbs, the rains stop and the temperature builds at a truly ferocious pace, I increasingly find myself standing trancelike on my front porch. My mind travels northwestward, through the pecan groves and the oak stands, the mesquite thickets, skimming over the Brazos, Pease, and Red rivers, further and further, leaving the cotton fields of the panhandle behind and finally soaring over the wild, high Texas plains and the deserts of New Mexico. This goes on for days, and for days I shake that vision off and I shake it off until something clicks—or snaps—and I recognize what I knew all along; there’s a long drive in front of me.
As with many of my lifelong habits, this started innocently enough. One August day a few years ago I got a phone call from my friend Evan Voyles, who is one of the strangest and most wonderfully interesting people I have ever met. We first met in Abilene, TX. I lived alone in a small stone house on College Street; Evan had a small house too, but shared his with four hundred pairs of custom made cowboy boots he'd collected from all over the Southwest. In addition to his boot collection, Evan also trade in Navajo blankets, antique firearms, knick-knacks and old neon signs, the kind you see advertising hotels, department stores, long defunct products such as Bull Durham Tobacco, Four Roses Whisky, AM radio stations, greasy spoon diners, in short any of the old, quirky stuff that that was
Each summer here in Texas that as the heat climbs, the rains stop and the temperature builds at a truly ferocious pace, I increasingly find myself standing trancelike on my front porch. My mind travels northwestward, through the pecan groves and the oak stands, the mesquite thickets, skimming over the Brazos, Pease, and Red rivers, further and further, leaving the cotton fields of the panhandle behind and finally soaring over the wild, high Texas plains and the deserts of New Mexico. This goes on for days, and for days I shake that vision off and I shake it off until something clicks—or snaps—and I recognize what I knew all along; there’s a long drive in front of me.
As with many of my lifelong habits, this started innocently enough. One August day a few years ago I got a phone call from my friend Evan Voyles, who is one of the strangest and most wonderfully interesting people I have ever met. We first met in Abilene, TX. I lived alone in a small stone house on College Street; Evan had a small house too, but shared his with four hundred pairs of custom made cowboy boots he'd collected from all over the Southwest. In addition to his boot collection, Evan also trade in Navajo blankets, antique firearms, knick-knacks and old neon signs, the kind you see advertising hotels, department stores, long defunct products such as Bull Durham Tobacco, Four Roses Whisky, AM radio stations, greasy spoon diners, in short any of the old, quirky stuff that that was
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