It’s over!

When I wrote the inaugural post of this blog on July 3, 2011, I was preparing to leave Boise, head out for a stint on an organic farm in New Mexico, and possessed of the vague notion that I might, possibly, just maybe, wind up in Austin, Texas.

Well, here it is, April 10, 2012, and here I am, in Austin, Texas, where I did in fact wind up. Some things have happened since I wrote that first blog post:

·         I finally, officially graduated with a Bachelor’s degree, thus concluding an epic saga twelve years in the making.

·         I volunteered at an organic farm in New Mexico for roughly three days. I originally intended to stay for two weeks.

·         I got lost in Navajo Nation en route to said organic farm.

·         My cat family and the realization that I was way too thirty-one-years-old to be bunking with two early-twenty-somethings in the throes of True Love hastened my departure from said organic farm.

·         I secured a (yet another, throughout the on-again, off-again course of the last decade) library gig here in Austin.

·         I accepted my fate and finally applied to library school.

·         Since embarking on this blog, I’ve written up a blue streak: here, elsewhere, and approximately 41,000 words of a failed novel

·         I decided to self-publish my first novella and am making active strides toward doing so.

·         I decided to see if evacuating civilization (well, not really, but this move is closer to doing anything like that than I’ve ever been) is really what I want and signed a six-month lease to live on five rural acres in Georgetown, Texas.

And that last point brings me to, well, my point. I’ve had a swell time documenting the highs and lows (and low-highs and high-lows) of this Austin transition, but let’s face it: this blog has run its course. I’m no longer on the road, for one thing; for another, I’ve been in Austin for nearly a year now. I can’t run around pretending to be a neophyte forever.

So, onward, and upward, and I’m off to find love, as Nick Cave once crooned and as Sparty so beautifully embodies here:

Thus begins a new chapter. Thus begins a new blog. I will be compulsively chronicling my bucolic frolics here:

http://countrylouse.com/

Save the link, kids!

And, for the sake of having a repository for nonsequiturs, I will be toying around with this and that here (or there):

http://thereisnodealsporto.com/

Because WordPress is where it’s at, man.

Thank you for reading, those of you who read, thanks for your support, those of you who supported, and thanks to all of you who I’ll be seeing over at the new blogs.

More to follow soon!

;

I got a semicolon tattoo on the inside of my right forearm because (among other reasons):

·         A well-placed semicolon is a thing of beauty and supreme elegance.

·         A semicolon is poised on the precipice of a pregnant pause; the long, deep inhale that comes after the initial release and before the next expulsion of breath.

·         A semicolon is the suspended moment between Point A and Point B: a reminder that, like, the journey is the destination, man, so be here now and stuff.

These themes strike me as particularly relevant as I stand poised on the precipice of the next new adventure(s), staring down at the unknown and preparing to jump.

I hope to throw together the WordPress site I will use to document my bucolic frolics by the end of this week.

Stay tuned!

Moving out and moving on.

It’s official. I signed a six-month lease today and will be giving country living in Georgetown a shot come April 15. Well, that’s when the lease starts, anyway, although my lease at the Hellhole at Turtle Rock doesn’t officially end until May 6. As I listen to the slamming doors, shrieking children, the screaming parents who are worse than their shrieking children, what I can only assume is the sound of bodies being dragged up or down multiple flights of stairs, the incessant revving of the engine being worked on in the parking lot, the screeching of tires on Anderson Mill Road, and the unctuous, velvet-lined indifference of the leasing assistant whose thin veneer of solicitude fails to bely the extent to which he clearly does not give a shit about the fact that I live across from possibly The Worst People on Earth (rivaled only by the champs with whom I share a bedroom wall), I know I’ve made the right decision to spend what in the end will amount to thousands of dollars to extricate myself from the Nucleus of Suck.

My new neighbors will include a horse named Handsome Ransom, a donkey named Pedro, some chickens, and a kick-ass landlady who, nine years ago, after spending her entire life as a city slicker, decided to realize her girlhood dream of living in the country and riding horses. Once the Turtles from Planet Hell have bled me for as much as they can (which is fully how I expect this to go, and if I’m wrong, I’ll own up to it and make it public here that I was), my rental money (for the next six months, at least, and hopefully forever, because property management companies are Satan and I am done, done, DONE with them) will factor as part of this wholly impressive individual’s retirement plan instead of subsidizing, like, an evil corporation, man.

Of course this means a new WordPress site is in the offing, because, while it’s been a good run, this blog has served its purpose and really isn’t relevant anymore. I’m not on the road, and I’d like to have a more cohesive thematic focus than look what my cat did today or here’s what was playing at Supercuts. Not that these subjects aren’t eminently worthy of documentation, but surely they can be examined within some greater framework, such as what it’s like for a lifelong city slicker to eject herself from civilization (all right, so that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea), primarily because it’s not civilized, and take a stab at being a country mouse. All right, I may have to abandon the Supercuts thread. But you get the idea.

For further details on this upcoming project, stay tuned, stay tuned. 

Things to be excited about.

·         Trying this lentil soup recipe (since I have burdened myself with a lifetime supply of red lentils and possess limited ardor for them).

·         Quoting myself relentlessly (friends only!).

·         The prospect of moving to the country for six months (in the event of the realization of which, I will be starting a new blog to document the experience, since, let’s face it, this whole road tripping theme doesn’t exactly apply anymore).

·         Li is coming to town! Weekend after this one! BFFs, BFFs!

·         Daring to hope for a book doctoring from someone exciting.

·         The idea of publishing (via traditional circuits or, more likely, since novellas are unmarketable in the U.S., self-publishing) and promoting my changeling novella of yore.

·         Dodie Bellamy’s (revelatory!) the buddhist. 

·         Library school! Maybe I’ll get in, maybe I’ll go.

It’s good to make lists like these when you are bleary-eyed from being up too late (again) and carrying a thorn in your heart (which is slowly falling out, if you will only let it, and stop holding on).

Red heart balloons.

On a recent Sunday afternoon walk I took a picture of a cluster of red heart-shaped balloons tied around the black bars of an iron fence. The light is dwindling and the shadows across the dead grass are growing ever-longer. But the light that remains is the more brilliant for that, rendering the patches of grass not dead a deep emerald. I set the image as my cellphone backdrop. Those hearts speak to me: the way they, though fettered, bobbled buoyantly in the air; the way their frail being could be summarily eradicated with the prick of a malicious pin; the way they served as a bright, shining beacon on a dreary Sunday. I haven’t passed that fence since. The balloons have probably been removed or deflated. I’d rather not know. I’d rather remember them as they were in this moment. I’d rather remember how I was in this moment. 

Happy anniversary, Spartacus the Cat.

Today is my third anniversary with Spartacus the Cat, who came bursting (well, more like cowering, but he’s come around since then) into my life three years ago when I spontaneously decided to take him off the hands of the lady who was fostering him. She was working at the Idaho Humane Society and took him home because his prospects of survival were not good due to his social anxiety.

It was not love at first sight; when I went to meet him, he of course hid. To be perfectly honest, I was a little put off by his neurosis, and unsure what to make of the fact that he called to mind nothing so much as a furry gargoyle.

I’ve come around since then. Three years later, I can’t imagine my life without him (and Meep, who came around that summer). He’s been an unfailing source of comfort, companionship, and unconditional affection through a stretch of difficult years. Spartacus and Meep changed my life; if it weren’t for them, I’d most likely be writing this from South Korea, where I’d be teaching English.

I won’t pretend  I’m not ambivalent about my derailed career plans and impaired ability to vagabond about the globe in the long term while my darlings live out their days; truthfully, sometimes I wonder what the hell I’m thinking. But, at the end of the day, I wouldn’t trade my cat family for the world and I’m grateful for the joy, and yes, I’ll say it, because I am a crazy cat lady, and I don’t care how it sounds—love—they’ve brought into my life.

I love you guys!

Journeys, destinations, and crazy cat lady rantings.

Up bright and early, brimming with plans, prospects, and mad dashes for hope and the future. The thing about cabins is that although they may be made from trees, they do not grow on trees, at least not on the outskirts of Austin. All is not lost, however—there are some options out there, some of which, if not literally cabins, seem like they might be bearable until it makes more sense to sever myself from civilization in earnest (if this will ever make sense, that is).

Or maybe I’ll throw pragmatism out the window, hightail it to the Colorado mountains, and reenact The Shining. Again. Since this is what I more or less did in Boise, without the panoramic views or quality solitude.

We shall see.

The thing about seeking things (which I believe is the root of travel: to seek out new places, experiences, people, ways of seeing the world) is that the search puts you in touch with the Longing For Things, whether that be solitude, or love, or connection, or peace and quiet, or purpose, or, or, or…the way that the smell of food seems to make people hungry (I wouldn’t know—as Li says, my ole factory is shut down). There’s something to be said for being put in direct, visceral contact with the Longing for Things: for the process of trying to meet these needs and for the simultaneous awareness that often—almost always?—it is the Longing and corresponding search that are the pleasure and point of it all.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, the journey is the destination, man.

And all of that.

In other news, Meep has become a regrettably picky eater, eschewing various flavors of wet food without any discernible pattern (on the blacklist are the chunky salmon Fancy Feast that comes in the lime green can and a certain stripe of Friskies’ seafood pate—Mariner’s Choice, I think? Or maybe it’s Mariner’s Catch). Well, she has a right to have preferences, I thought, and tried to accommodate them by whisking away the offending flavor and replacing it with a more acceptable variety.

The problem is that I only use half a can per serving and she refuses to eat leftovers, either cold or reheated to room temperature in the microwave. Plus, I still have the offending flavors to use up, which is fine, because Spartacus has absolutely no reservations about any flavor of wet food, fresh, leftover, cold, or at room temperature; his only qualms lie in the fact that there is never, ever ENOUGH of it, EVER. But, since Sparty only gets a half-can of food per meal as well, and since I have been busting out two separate flavors per meal, trying to accommodate Meep’s aversion to certain flavors AND to leftovers, half-can after half-can of wet cat food have been accruing in plastic zipper bags in my refrigerator, which is becoming cluttered and unappetizing. I finally had to put my foot down this morning; when she refused heated-to-room-temperature leftovers of a flavor that yesterday had been perfectly acceptable, I had to say “this isn’t a restaurant, Little Missy” and direct her to the kibble, my Guilty Single Mother complex burning a hole in my conscience all the while.

I think I have a better inkling now of what my poor parents went through with my own picky eating tendencies.

Also, look! Since this post has devolved into still more musings of a Crazy Cat Lady, here’s Sparty enjoying his Christmas present from his Aunt Amy! Thank you, Aunt Amy! 

The mighty hunter stalks his prey.

 At this point, Meep had become the prey (again).

I want no part o’ this apartment.

So I quit it! I gave my sixty-day notice—which technically qualifies as a lease violation—on Tuesday. Why? Because I hate it! This is a crummy, beige, noise-besotted hellhole in which beasts masquerading as neighbors bare their barracuda teeth at good behavior, sink their serpentine fangs into each peaceful moment, and gore basic human decency, etiquette, and awareness with their bloodstained tusks and angry horns. In light of the fact that if you are miserable and have any say in the matter (First World, whew!) and choose to do nothing, you are choosing to be miserable, this move (upward, downward, or lateral) makes sense.

The thing about doing something like this—taking bold and decisive action when your default mode with respect to decision-making is Mosquito Trapped in Amber—is that it tends to open the floodgates. This is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying.

It raises all sorts of questions, for instance: what now? Why am I here (in this case, I refer to my literal location rather than the Meaning of Life, although if you happen to know the Meaning of Life and are inclined to pass it along, then please, by all means do)? Why would I be anywhere else? What am I doing with my life? Have I allowed the Onus of Responsibility to fetter me unduly? What does responsibility mean, anyway? Responsible to whom? I’m responsible for myself, of course, and my cats. I feel a responsibility to the people who care about me not to give them evitable cause to worry. But perhaps I’ve mistaken stagnation for responsibility. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with being a roving Vagabond Gypsy Cat Lady and running, running, running like something’s on my tail (and I ain’t talking stripes).

It’s entirely possible—and even likely—I will secure something livable in Austin. But right now what sounds ideal is living in a cabin in the Colorado mountains—or in the forest somewhere rainy and chilly—with nary a neighbor in sight. Maybe just go totally Walden for a year—and hyper-document the experience of course—and see how it agrees with me. If I love it, then awesome, and if not then I return to civilization with a fresh perspective on its draws and drawbacks.

Is this the responsible thing to do? Probably not. But maybe it’s what I need right now. And, after all, my primary responsibility is to myself.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to keep my options open. I’m applying to library school, hatching some writing and self-publishing schemes (or the inklings thereof, at least), and I’ll also look into livable Austin situations too.

Should you care to sort out the bothersome mess of What I Should Do With My Life, suggestions, ultimatums, and exhortations are welcome here. You could of course also share similar experiences and struggles of your own. 

Austin Saturday II: this time it's personal.

So, the original idea was to venture to Esquina Tango to hear Argentine folk music, but I ended up joining forces with Kristina at Threadgill’s (another Austin institution I can check off the bucket list, but alas, why do I keep forgetting to bring dear Shutter Island?), and it was a crisp, brisk neon-lit evening, replete with gravel underneath my shoes and a fire pit, and we invented The Unicorn, destined to be the next dance craze to seize the nation, and I drank too many beers, including a black lager from local brewers Live Oak (which I kept wishing to christen a live lager from Black Oak brewers), and I bought Shakey Graves’ children’s book (which is actually for grown-ups), and we renamed him Shakey Bones, on account of this calls to mind a jaunty, dapper dancing skeleton, which seems apt, and the young and old congregated, the bright blue neon notes of the Threadgill’s sign pulsed in the cold night, and the air crackled with that distinctly Austin energy, and it turns out melancholy can be sublimated with the help of good beer and the Unicorn Dance, and thus another Saturday—this one more successful—came and went and ceded the floor to a bleary-eyed Sunday: too hot, too hazy, and rendered leaden by the heavy ticking of  borrowed time.

In other news, I am now the proud owner of www.thereisnodealsporto.com (go here for the tentative mission statement) because I want to relocate to WordPress, and I need to breathe new life into my blogging, find a theme, a cohesive focus, pull my gaze from my navel and fix it elsewhere, but where, but where? Food, travel, rage, reflection—the themes that have been posited. Not sure what to do with this site, or if it will amount to much, but it’s mine for the year. Who knows? Maybe I’ll buy another domain name and begin collecting them. It would of course help to learn WordPress first. 

Blast from the PWAst.

Much to my surprise, my lighthearted take on grammar addiction (could you be a sufferer?) appears here.

Forewarned is forearmed, people. 

This conversation has been moved to the trash: notes from an unsuccessful Saturday

Charles Bukowski was on to something when he said “Don’t try.” Don’t, for instance, when trying to be a Conspicuous Solo Diner in Public, rely on a venue situated on South Congress and try to make this happen on Saturday night when street parking is more or less the only option and you never learned how to parallel park. I suppose, given my present schedule, this is a project better realized on a Friday afternoon or Sunday evening. To be continued.

Determined to make something of the evening, I ventured back to Black Star, which was of course mayhem on a Saturday night. I ordered the fish and chips, which were alas burnt, which I blame much less on the kitchen than I do on myself for ordering food when the place was overrun, although I was starving when I optimistically left work with the notion I would find parking in proximity to my originally intended South Congress venue and, an impromptu driving tour of Austin later, the situation had not improved.

I then made my meandering way to the Draught House, where I met Carolyn last Sunday, and found the place transformed for the worse on this Saturday evening: namely, it was so overrun with people that it was a challenge to even open the door, let alone order a drink. Having accomplished the former, I abandoned hope of the latter, used the bathroom, and fled, eventually ending up at Ginny’s Little Longhorn with the notion that I would drink Lone Stars and listen to live music and feel like a Real Live Texan. But it was 8:30 p.m., and the 8:00 show was of course nowhere near beginning, and so I drank a lone Lone Star and listened to Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash croon their contentious discussion about his imminent trip to Jackson. It did help with the whole feeling like a Real Live Texan thing when a man in a cowboy hat who had momentarily left the bar said “Excuse me, Ma’am” when he made his way back to his spot as I was ordering. And the woman who carded me (Ginny’s daughter, I think?) did a kindly theatrical double take when she caught wind of my actual age.

Oh, the onus of a Saturday night: the great, beckoning promise of possibility, the brightly thrown gauntlet to seize the fleeting hours of freedom, to drink in the neon reprieve from the dull light of stale Sunday-Monday-and-so-on afternoons. Can it ever live up to any of this?

No. If you ask me, no it can’t. I will take a page from dear Henry Charles B. when I say: don’t try. Don’t try to live it up on a Saturday night. Hell, don’t even leave the house. There are so many ways for a house to be vulnerable: house of cards, house of straw, house of sticks, house of leaves, house of glass, house of sand and fog. But at least a house (or apartment) is yours (however temporarily). So—if you’re lucky enough to have one—make your bed and lie in it.

It occurs to me that I should back up and offer some scant illumination on my newfound(ish) preoccupation with Conspicuous Solo Dining. Amy recently brought up this topic, on account that she’s been traveling and having her own adventures on this front. It made me think. My own life has been an exceedingly solitary one; I’m no stranger to going places by myself, and I don’t consider myself to be hung up about it. But there’s something about eating alone at a restaurant—some sort of social stigma, real or imagined—that gives even me pause. I don’t like this, especially since it’s kept me from trying restaurants for want of someone to try them with. I want to try new restaurants and I want to be able to do so alone, with ease and ownership, rather than self-consciousness and trepidation. Shock yourself awake, a book I’m reading about writing (courtesy of Carolyn) advises, and I say, yes indeed. The Table for One project is one in a series of strategies I’d like to employ to this end. And also I like eating in restaurants.

My first attempt was unsuccessful, but you know what they say to do when you fall off the horse. On the bright side, I believe I was the only solo diner at Black Star this Saturday evening. So maybe this was the training wheels. It’s also possible that the bike lacks brakes. Regardless, I will document the trials and triumphs of said endeavor here. I’m aiming to do this once a month, since I plan to eat at the nicer sorts of places where people generally don’t dine alone (cafes and the like—and, alas, Black Star—would feel like cheating).

Stay tuned: whether you lean toward pathos or Schadenfreude, there’s liable to be plenty of both on offer. 

Beer heaven is a place on earth.

Well, I’ve gone and moved into a co-op—more or less. If you’re looking for me, the odds are good these days that you’ll find me at the Black Star Co-op, where the beer selections have names like Recalcitrant Dockhand, High Esteem, Hubris, and—perhaps unsurprisingly—my favorite (in name, anyway), Depths of Despair. The Co-op serves an array of reasonably priced standard pub fare/American comfort food. I am obsessed with the delicious chips and, were it possible, would bathe in the gleaming silver cups of aioli they graciously allow me each time I ask for it, even though it has only been listed on the menu as coming with one of the food items I ordered.

And it comes with an enigmatic location! Upon attempting to locate it for the first time, you will swear you’ve gone astray and found yourself in an apartment complex. But guess what—you’re supposed to be in an apartment complex! Because that’s where Black Star is located. The people who live in that apartment complex are lucky sons-of-guns.

I met Kristina there on a low-key Monday, returned (quite comfortably) by my onesy on a bustling Thursday, and braved a chaotic-but-still-pleasant Friday there with a bevy of library workers. It’s a wide open space replete with an exposed industrial-type ceiling, a red wall, some black chairs, can lighting,  a generally modern laidback vibe, and a back porch where you can shiver on one those rare chilly Austin evenings and watch the trains on the adjacent track go by. You can laugh or cry into your beer, you can come with someone or alone, you can watch people play darts, dress like pirates, wear cool hats, get drunk, dance ridiculously, and—oh, if only—bathe in Black Star’s aioli.

I get the sense that this is a neighborhood bar for a lot of folks—which of course makes sense, given its unassuming apartment complex location—and a destination for a lot of other folks. I hope to come here once a week for inverse happy hour (Monday through Thursday from 9 to 11 p.m.) for as long as it complements my work schedule so nicely, if not my waistline, liver, and wallet (although, as I’ve said, that prices here are astonishingly reasonable).

On Thursday I watched a boy with a skull cap and a copy of the Austin Chronicle tuck into a big, beautiful, six-dollar bowl of macaroni and cheese. I look forward to doing that next time.

Never have I been so tempted to join a co-op—and who knows? I just might.

This refreshing departure from mournful introspection shall soon be derailed by further mournful introspection, no doubt.

Meanwhile, it’s on to further adventures in uncharacteristic beer-drinking (for a wino like me, at least, and I notice that Black Star does also serve wine) at an as-yet unvisited venue tonight!

Also, stay tuned for adventures in Conspicuous Solo Dining at Restaurants Where This is Not Done.

Highway to the Danger Zone.

Look who’s back in time for Valentine’s Day!

http://eatdrinkbesolitary.tumblr.com/

RIP, Whitney.

From The Book of Tragic Heroines, a photo by Dysphoria Jones on Flickr.

Pictured: my tribute to the immortal “My Name is Not Susan,” from The Book of Tragic Heroines

Grounding versus grinding.

I think part of it is how rooted I’ve become in routine. While this imparts much-needed structure, it’s also stifling. One of the beauties of travel is the way it forces us out of our routines. When you take up residence somewhere, and go about the business of actually living there, routine inevitably sets in, which is as it should be, probably; but routines should be mindful and frequently questioned.

It was with this in mind that I decided to revisit Bouldin Creek Café for a veggie chorizo taco and a soy Mexican mocha. Friday has become chore day, and catch-up day, and work-on-all-the-projects-that-gainful-employment-precludes-or-allows-minimal-time-for day. Clearly this is a lot for any given Friday to live up to, and I feel like I’ve become so entrenched in trying to realize various goals that I’m not doing a great job of making time or room for spontaneously experiencing and enjoying my new city, for participating in its cultural life, or for just, well, for lack of a better word, being.

So I lingered over coffee and a taco, and wandered up and down First Street, including stopovers here and here. And then I made my way back to my neck of the woods, and took my place in the slow, grinding, congested procession of cars and shopping carts and bodies navigating around other bodies in the name of doing the responsible thing and stocking up on provisions for the week. The eventual return to routine is unavoidable. Or is it? And is the evasion thereof advisable or even desirable? Trying to strike a balance between the grounding aspects of routine and the grinding ones.

In the thrall of the sort of melancholy that typically strikes on Sunday afternoon, the sense of living on borrowed time, and wondering what kind of life I’m living, what I’m doing here, or what I’d be doing anywhere else, for that matter. That’s the thing about allowing yourself to just be—it has a way of putting you in touch with where you’re at. And maybe that’s part of the temptation of routine: to bury the thornier aspects of that. It seems important to take stock of this sort of thing, even if it’s difficult. It also seems important to recognize that these moods, just like happier moods, are episodic and fleeting, and never the whole picture in themselves.

I’m at an interesting stage of this journey: the part where the brand-newness of a situation gives way to reality and invites one to meet the challenge, or flee. Or perhaps meet the challenge by fleeing. Again the wanderlust—powerful and insistent—creeps in.

It’s another beautiful, slightly cool, spring-like day in Austin. Departing from my routine and wandering around First Street gave me ample opportunity to reflect on what drew me to this place, why I moved here. It also gave me ample opportunity to reflect on the fact that wherever I am—Austin or elsewhere—I still have a lot to figure out.

Spartacus the Cat, you appear to be getting better.

If you’d told me a week ago that the unceremonious pawing of my face at 7:30 this morning (after going to bed close to 1 a.m.), claws mostly retracted, announcing—along with a running monologue of long-suffering mews—that it was indeed breakfast time were things I'd be overjoyed about, I would have been skeptical.

Today it’s made my day.

He’s still limping, but that also seems to be improving. Hopefully this remains the case.

Spartacus the Cat, you will be the death of me.

It started on Wednesday night: the strange walk, the hiding out, and, most alarmingly, the sudden lack of interest in food (which Sparty’s sun—shaped like a can of Fancy Feast—rises and sets by).

Four days, two vet visits, and five hundred dollars later, no one can find anything wrong. The strange walk evolved into a pronounced limp, but the physicals, blood, urine, and pancreas tests, and x-rays haven’t turned up anything. The painkillers and appetite stimulant are helping for the time being, but these are temporary remedies. With any luck, it’s just some sort of random sprain or pulled muscle that’ll heal with a little time. If luck isn’t in our corner here—well, I don’t want to think about that.

It’s so frustrating to see that something is clearly wrong and have no idea what it is or what to do about it. It’s heartening, however, that he seemed to be doing better yesterday, and this trend continues today, although when he tried to jump onto the windowsill, he couldn’t.

And of course it’s a good sign that all of his tests are coming back normal and the vets can’t detect any pain.

Hopefully he’ll sleep it off.

In other news, I used up the last class on my yoga pass today. It was a good class, and I felt better afterward, but this is the last stop on the yoga train for me. No more soft, vacant voices intoning about tuning into your body, no more tortured gasps of bodies contorted into highly improbable positions, no more rooms full of skinny white ladies (for the most part) chanting “Namaste,” no more being thanked by an instructor “for sharing your energy with us today,” no more compostable paper cups of tea, no more focusing on my third eye. From here on out it’s all about embracing a life of noisy futility, as haphazardly navigated by my loud, angry, uptight, screed-prone, and decidedly un-centered, un-grounded self.

With all due respect, of course.

Maybe I should take up kick-boxing instead?

Word count: 41,270

Oh yeah, back in the saddle, kicking, screaming, and alive.

Namaste that!

Running with Moleskines.

Li! Do you remember how we wrote up daily key points of our Austin impressions in our Moleskines (because we’re real writers) when we visited last spring? I’ve reached the end of this particular notebook and I figured I’d lurch a bit down memory lane before archiving it, and came across my notes. Which is convenient, since I don’t have much else to say at the moment (not that this ever stops me). So, here they are!
 

Spring Break 2011: Austin, TX

Thursday, March 31 (impressions as dictated by Li):

Sitting around waiting to die in Orlando; Spooky Kids and Texas gents; plane crackers in a death embrace; zombie drive on I-35; broken toilet and deluxe T.V.

Friday, April 1:

Transcendent soyrizo; let’s go malling; university heat stroke; hibiscus with a kick; ballsy old folks line dancing; classic cars; toddler lust

Saturday, April 2:

Get lost; Hill Country; beetle with an oil-slick back perched on Pizza Hut and scuttling; I missed my Fortress of Solitude but stood before the gutted mouth; motorcycle men with a view; carnitas soaked in milk and Coca-Cola; bat songs and Strange Sex; Thursday: addendum: bra infomercial with Riki Lake

So, looking over these outstandingly coherent first impressions, it’s no wonder I moved here.

And since I’m transcribing things, this was written on the drive back from California to Idaho after Jackie’s wedding:

June 27, 2011

Sitting in a motel room off I-95 North, en route to Boise, mountains jutting dramatically (those drama queens!) into the sky, an unplugged sort of evening, reading, writing, eating strawberries (and Cheetos!). I want to be at peace with imperfection: with my sloppy haphazard scrawl across the pristine pages of this Moleskine (a Moleskine!), my sometimes not-ideal posture (or is it posturing?), the way that physical and mental grace sometimes seem like too much damn effort. Winding roads, towering pines, birds of prey, too much road kill, billboards for the Wild West Saloon (truckers welcome! Exit 178), the way the fruit sits in the bowl, and a mother’s love, generosity, warmth, and quiet strength infuse a house. Wind chimes, silent nights, hardwood floors.

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So there you go, posterity. You can thank me later.