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November 16, 2009 21:44
When you are stuck down and lay huddled weak on the floor, and in your
ears ring the mocking laughter of those you thought were friends.
This is the time to realize your rightful place in the Universe.
There is no death. Only growth through suffering. Understand this, and
you will overcome it.
But it ain't easy, my friend.
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November 15, 2009 19:18
Dayhike Trip Report - Lake Texoma
"Hunting season? You serious?"
The guy loading fishing gear into the back of his truck is laughing at
me. "Be careful, brudda."
He had asked if I was there to go deer hunting. I told him I was just
planning to go for a walk. I feel ridiculous standing there now with my
ski pole hiking stick and my backpack packed with little hummus and cheese
tortilla wraps while everyone else is loading shotguns with #4 buckshot
and gearing up to kill stuff. He is still laughing and shaking his head
when he drives off.
It is hunting season at Hagerman
Wildlife Refuge. I should have guessed as much judging by the number
of gun-racked Ford F-150s parked along the road and filling up the small
gravel parking lot. I've never seen it this crowded. The place is going to
be filled with a bunch of Elmer Fudd wannabes today.
Damn.
I had already driven an hour to get to this place, my own little
private isolated patch of forest out here in the middle of nowhere. Only
the birds singing to me, grasshoppers following along, hawks circling far
overhead. The place where I thought no human footprints other than my own
ever came to tread. A place where I could go to compose pretty little
poetry in my head and think beautiful Zen-like thoughts.
Not today. Today things will die if the Elmer Fudds have their way. I
toss my pack into the back of the truck and head for Lake Texoma near the
Oklahoma border, another hour's drive north.
But I don't mind. It's not like driving in the Bay Area, where you're
constantly struggling and fighting stop-and-go traffic, assholes cutting
you off, merging, stopping, speeding up, cutting across four lanes to get
to your exit. In these parts of Texas, the roads are as open as the blue
skies and roll out to the horizon. The drive itself is part of my
enjoyment when I'm heading to these out-of-the-way places for a few hours
of walking. I use the time to catch up on my music and my sanity. Driving
is my own special way of doing that meditation head-clearing thing. These
Texas roads readily lend themselves to such pasttimes. Stricken by such
moods, I have at times found myself wandering around small towns in West
Texas or down south in San Antonio, much to my wife's surprise and
consternation.
--
I'm heading to the Cross Timbers Trail
on the Texas side of Lake Texoma. To get there, you head north on 377 and
make a left on Cotton Mill Road. This road winds through a little
neighborhood containing some of the funkiest looking, brightly painted
ramshackle houses I've not seen anywhere outside of Berkeley, California.
Code enforcement officers and building inspectors would have a field day
with this place.
One house -- a wooden shack, really -- sits perched atop four
purple-painted, twenty-foot-long, steel poles like an oversized birdhouse.
It teeters haphazardly and a little lopsided over the neighboring shacks.
On the front lawn of another house a crude hand-painted sign reads
"Welcome to Fantasyland" with a crudely drawn arrow pointing to a beat-up
looking front door. Across the street another hand-painted sign reads
"Driveway to Nowhere," in obvious reference to Sarah Palin's "Bridge to
Nowhere." One lot simply contains a trailer parked next to what appears to
be a toolshed made out of scrap wood. In fact, many of the dwellings here
have that scrap wood home-made look, stuff banged together using only
hammers and a few nails. Architectural plans? Building contractors? Pshaw!
The roads are narrow and severely sloped. The place must be a mess when
the rains come.
--
I pull up to the trail head and park along the side of the road as the
signs instruct. I see a troop of boy scouts loaded down with 40-pound
packs about to head in the same direction that I'm planning to take.
They're probably headed for Eagle's Roost, a camping spot two or three
miles up the trail. I wait in the truck a while and give them a
fifteen-minute headstart. Fifteen minutes later, I catch up to them
standing in the middle of the trail trying to figure out how to "sound
off."
"Sound off again!"
"ONE!"
"TWO!"
"Uh, three?"
It's annoying whenever there are boy scouts on the trail. Always
yelling, bantering, counting off -- ONE! TWO! THREE! Troop leaders
shouting orders and barking like drill sergeants. How can you learn to
appreciate the forest if you don't know how to go about, quietly
listening?
They make room for me on the trail and I pass amongst them. "Hey!
That's a pointy looking walking stick you got there." says one of the
boys, mocking the two-dollar thrift store ski pole I use as a hiking
stick. I smile and keep moving. You poor, chubby little child. In a few
short years you will be lusting after young women, and they will ignore
you and break your heart. You are better off remaining lost here in the
forest. You will not realize this until you are my age and have seen the
bottom of many a whiskey bottle. Good luck.
I encounter another troop about a mile onward. Their leader is looking
at a topo map and glancing up at a tall tree, as if the tree is going to
tell him which way to go. The tree doesn't care, nor does it appear on any
topo map. A boy scout must always be prepared! Don't forget the condoms
and liquor! These pedophiles get a little frisky in nighttime tents!
I leave this troop to suffer their confusion. All the trails follow the
lake's edge. It is not possible to get lost. On your way up, keep the lake
to your right. On the way back, keep the lake to the left. You don't need
a map for that. It's not like you're in the Alaskan wilderness with
grizzlies chasing you down and Sarah Palin shooting at you from a
helicopter above. Just follow the lake!
These snarky little comments I'm working over in my mind cause me to
miss my own freeway exit. I miss the spot beneath a patch of trees
overlooking the lake where I like to take a short break and rest up before
starting the walk back. But it's autumn and fallen leaves blanket the
ground, obscuring the trail in many parts.
I wander off-trail lost for a few minutes. I'm not too concerned. The
path reveals itself in subtle ways, if only you tilt your head this way or
that, or glance at things from a certain angle. The sunlight filtering
through the forest canopy sprinkles the leafy-cushioned ground and I can
just barely make out the indentations of all those who have gone before
me. Always as they have gone before, so shall they go again. I merely
follow.
I'm on the Lost Loop Trail, I finally realize. I follow it back to the
main path and head home.
-
November 13, 2009 17:00
Bodily Fluid Clean-Up Kit
Saw this in the kitchen at work today. I hope I never have to use it.
-
November 12, 2009 06:29
Moments of clarity return briefly like schools of colorful fish brought
in by an early morning tide.
Swimming along the shore, I feel the ocean's heartbeat. It is quiet and
eternal. Strong.
My own heartbeat reverberates weakly in my ears as I run out of breath
and rise to the surface.
Later in the afternoon, swimming out to the reef, I glance back to see
my daughter struggling to keep up. She is dog-paddling and splashing like
mad.
I turn around and bring her back to the shallow end of the ocean.
The current is strong today, sweetie. And the water is too deep.
"Okay, Daddy."
-
November 10, 2009 06:55
Cool. I learned recently that a random photo
I had taken of the Alamo while I was in San Antonio
a few months back was chosen to be included in the ninth edition of Schmap's Guide to San Antonio. I guess that
spur-of-the-moment roadtrip wasn't such a waste of time after all.
So this is what it feels like to be famous.
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November 09, 2009 13:22
On the Isle of Lazy Hermaphrodites they flounce their skirts and smile at the love they feel beneath a languid sun.
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November 08, 2009 21:13
baseball
Today I found a baseball floating in the air.
I plucked it from the sky and brought it home.
Till next season.
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November 07, 2009 20:50
And what do you write? Words! Mere words.
I have written off entire lifetimes and have felt the bitter pang of
blank nothingness.
I have written off those dear and close to me. Turned my back on all of
them only to travel down lonely barren roads.
And still I continue.
You only write words. You haven't lived.
Onward.
-
November 06, 2009 08:02
Birthday Wishes
Sometimes people make mistakes.
I sit in my study with my glass of wine considering the ones that I
have made over the years. Then I consider the one that she is making right
now, while I sit in my study with my glass of wine.
The kid comes up to me and asks, "Daddy, if you had to pick your
favorite
cake, what would it be? Vanilla or chocolate?"
"Oh, I don't know," I say. "Why do you ask?"
Her smile is bright and mischievous. "I don't know! I'm just
wondering."
"I guess I like chocolate better."
"Okay!" She runs away giggling.
The kid was excited about my birthday. That previous weekend, while I
went my way and the wife went hers, the kid spent all her time planning
and scheming for this magnificent event. She was very sly about it. It was
supposed to be a secret, after all, and I was to know nothing about it.
Even though she had sent me to the store to buy all the necessary
supplies. I kinda had an idea what to expect.
Later as I'm paying the bills and examining all those heart-breaking
phone records, the kid comes in again: "Daddy, what color combination do
you like better -- green and orange, red and green, or blue and orange?"
"Oh, I don't know. Why do you ask?"
"I'm just wondering."
"Well, hmm. I suppose I like green and orange the best."
She runs off giggling agan. "Thank you!"
Later that afternoon, I pass her in the living room. She is furiously
scribbling away at something.
"Don't look this way!" she says. "I'm making you a surprise
birthday card."
"Oh, okay," I say.
And of course, she presents me with my surprise a few minutes later: a
hand-drawn birthday card on green and orange paper. I will save this one
in a special file where I keep all the others that I have saved over the
years. In this file, there are mermaids, dragons, dinosaurs, Happy
Birthday cards, Valentine's cards, Father's Day and Mother's Day cards,
super heroes, fashion designs, stick figures and crayon figures. There are
some cards that have even been sewn with colorful yarn and buttons. There
is also a 50-page picture book, created using markers and crayons, which
she had started when she was five or six years old. The book's protagonist
is someone named the Evil Queen Mictoria.
Monday is my birthday, and I awake alone. Another awkwardly formal
affair with the wife rushing off to work while I try to get that first cup
of coffee. No good-bye kiss for me. Again. Then I take a sleepy-eyed kid
to school an hour later.
I treat myself to lunch at my favorite Japanese restaurant. I don't
tell anyone it's my birthday. No one gives a shit. To some people, it's a
big deal and they feel this annoying need to send out emails to everyone
at work and make grand birthday pronouncements. I don't give a shit,
either.
Later that evening at home, we have dinner. The kid and I eat at the
kitchen table. The wife eats in the living room in front of the TV.
I get ready for bed. The kid comes into the room and wants me to read
her favorite poem from "Where the Sidewalk Ends." She smiles widely as she
turns the pages. "No, not this one. Not this one, either. Don't worry,
I'll find the poem I want you to read!"
My eyelids are getting heavy. I'm getting sleepy. I think to myself,
"Why does she always wait until bedtime to have me read poems or long
passages
from her chapter books?"
The wife yells something from the kitchen, something requiring my
immediate attention. What now? A leak? A spider? Dogshit on the floor?
"What?" I go to the kitchen with with the kid following close behind.
There are times when I'm a very slow thinker and fail to grasp the
obvious, especially when I'm exhausted and can only think about sleep and
where I might be sleeping in the foreseeable future.
All the lights had been turned off and then -- SURPRISE! -- there on
the kitchen table is my chocolate birthday cake complete with burning wax
candle numbers "3" and "8." I blow out the flames, and the child is
laughing and smiling bright. She is so happy to see me surprised like
that.
It was all her idea, I know. But she reminds me, anyway. The wife would
not have done something like this. Not these days. These days her
interests lie elsewhere, I'm afraid. I watch her as she goes out to the
patio to smoke a cigarette and check her text messages.
---
Some mornings I kiss her while she sleeps and she is unaware. Doesn't
she know I still love her? I have no right to be angered. Quietly, I rise
from her side and go my own way before she wakes.
