Friday, October 14, 2011

Trail blazing.

We went west out to San Francisco for the last American adventure.  When pioneers cut these trails in search of precious metals precious hope they knew they had reached the end of the line.  The point where the land meets the ocean, spouting plumes of fog over the hills marked the end of the discoveries of the New World and the beginning of what would truly become and American dream.

Visitors from the far ends of the world come with an unquenchable thirst to rent Mustang convertibles and cruise down the 101, in the hope that one cool breeze, or minute of the sun on their shoulders will create precisely the same feeling that pushed countless artists to create their California opuses.  We chase their dreams to understand more authentically.

In our cherry red Cadillac we are retracing trails well worn.  Down the coast to Monterrey and back into the chilled fog filled bowl of the Haight.  I can't imagine that much has changed in this place since the last revolution.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Making History.

We spent three weeks in Oklahoma, thinking that it would be more than enough.  We reminisced fondly over our wasted Oklahoma youths, debating the benefits of an adolescence with little distraction and never ending fields.  Those who have found their homes there have searched and nestled into happy lives and I feel privileged to peer into their successes.

The plains roll out in golden rod and wheat and I am thinking about my grandmother.  She was barely a teenager when she went to work as a dance instructor in the City.  The hand made cardboard inserts allowed her to put off buying new dance shoes until even they were worn through.  I imagine her walking, ignoring the pavement encroaching into her mules, to the job that never landed her fame, but did land her a young soldier named Earl.

Three weeks passed too quickly and I wonder if there is never enough time to exist in the past.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

The Burning.

Central Texas is a tinderbox.  Driving up the I-35 corridor as the state burns around us it feels more like we are evacuating than going on a planned trip to Oklahoma.  There is a dark haze from Austin to Dallas that tricks us into expecting rain, though there is no hope for moisture.  It's  all very post apocolyptic.

I joke about our "homelessness" and our "unemployment" but am coming to consider that those descriptors are a touch too dark.  We have a destination and a plan to get there, complete with a pillow of savings and blanket of kindness.  The counterparts of our generation are not so lucky.  Either in the midst of the helplessness of job hunting, or hanging on to jobs that seem, at the end of the day, only a way to get the student loans paid, the recession has revealed itself to be a beast that no vorpal sword can slay.

It is the burnt earth around us and the smell of hundreds of homes falling to ruin that make me reconsider my vocabulary.  There is no roller coster of potental future and dashed dreams and time is not running out.  We are without perminant residence or income, but we are not homeless or unemployed.  We are between adventures.

Monday, August 29, 2011

How to Live

As a child my father would take my older brother and I butterfly hunting.  Like tiny Victorian biologists we would  trek out into our backyard jungles, our vacation plains, our temporary mountains and hunt for a new variety to mount and preserve in our collections.  My brother was a master in collection and identification-his ability to interpret swirls of powdery pigment, to translate wing size and thorax into the words of species and variety were unrivaled among 10 year old lepidopterologists.

In grade school, we collected caterpillars.  With first grade fingers both cautious and destructive, the caterpillars were lowered into glass terrariums to be observed.  Overnight the caterpillars disappeared into their leafy cocoons and then...nothing.  School yard days dragged on in a way that would be recalled a decade later, waiting for college entrance letters to arrive.  The cocoons did not move.  They did not wriggle like worms or crawl like bugs or fly like rose petals on the wind. They were ugly, dry and still.  Then, a twitch, and a crack like falling trees that thundered through the microcosm of the terrarium.  We children did not notice.  We had abandoned the cocoons weeks ago in favor of a donated turtle and a blood feud on the four square court.  The cocoons ripped down their natural seems and the butterflies gnashed and fought their way into existence.

Alarmed, the butterflies flew to the upper most corner of their glass universe and clung to the side, trembling with the fear of the unknown and giddy with possibility of flight.  They looked down at their abandoned cocoons, heaped on the terrarium floor, worthless and in pieces and wondered briefly why they ever needed those silly things.  They looked out and saw the huge fleshy faces of our first grade class, suddenly interested again in their progress.  They reached out their antennae to grasp on to each other in butterfly celebration.

"Tom?"
"Yes, Suzanne?"
"Can we fly?"
"I think so."
"Well, this just got interesting."

tl;dr  We moved all of our things, save the necessities into my parents garage.  With the exception of our cars (anyone want to buy the big, red, Jeep?) we have cast off most of our worldly possessions.  Feels good, man. 

Saturday, August 20, 2011

The Devil envies Texas.

This coming Tuesday will be a momentous occasion.  On, Tuesday, August 23rd, Austin will break it's record for consecutive days over 100 degrees.  The temperature is too damned high.

The last few days I have not been working-my last day at the Rides was quiet and reflective-but instead I've been trying to pack our lives up into categories, sections of time, seasons.  It is difficult, for instance, to predict what we will need for the dog days of Summer in Oklahoma, then the beginning of Fall in eternally chilly San Francisco, and finally two years of service in Jordan.  Not to mention that from Oklahoma to California and back to Austin we will be flying, and want to avoid checked baggage costs and that the Peace Corps limits our checked baggage to two bags each, weighing a total of 80lbs with each bag not to exceed 50lbs.  It can make one's head swim.

And it is hot.  The kind of heat that conjures images of scorching deserts with weathered soldiers of fortune finally succumbing to heat stroke after weeks of searching for an oasis-and that was only walking to the car to pack in one more load of donations for Goodwill.

I'm no stranger to heat, the thought of winter is much more foreign.  The forecasts from Amman read like a brisk Austin Spring-90, 91, 93-and I think "I can do that."  I walk my poor dog across sizzling concrete from which his princess paws may never recover, amused once again that the first thing to break out into a sweat is always my knees and think, "Jordanian Summer can't be as bad as Austin, I can totally do that," and then I pause, looking down at my exposed, sweaty knees, under the fringe of cut off jeans.  I am between my air conditioned car and my air conditioned home, a place of business for my large refrigerator with automatic ice maker and closet full of sundresses.  Can I survive this heat with no hope of recirculated air?  Will I be so good natured when I am covered from wrist to ankle to chin, praying for a moment of privacy to reveal my flushed skin to the breezes of Wadi Rum?

"No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater... than central air." Azrael, Dogma


Annie

Monday, August 8, 2011

Peacing Out

This is far too early.  We are selling our bits and pieces of furniture, going through our clothes to see what is really needed, paring down our life slowly to a few 50 lb bags.  We are wrapping up old projects and trying in vain to not start anything new.  We've looked at written Arabic, our eyes wide with a mix of novelty and terror, only to back slowly away from the text book as if it were a camel, majestic, ancient and prepared to spit in our eyes.

We leave for the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan as Peace Corps Volunteers on October 21st.  Between now and then is months of goodbyes.  First, on August 15th, I will say goodbye to my job at the Hill Country Ride for AIDS and the Texas Mamma Jamma Ride.  Then on September 3rd, Rick will say farewell to the American Cancer Society.  From September 5th until October 5th, we will be playing in Oklahoma, first to say goodbye to the Dooleys in Tulsa, and then to all our friends in Oklahoma City.  Then it's off to San Francisco to play with the boys and girls and then back to Austin for the hardest goodbye of them all, ending in a flight to Philadelphia on October 21st.

We are Peacing Out, folks.  It's feels early, but it's time to get started.