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!

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. 

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.