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.

*

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