#uncoffeed...

Work in Progress - Tongues "I assume, if I haven't heard from you, that things are okay." -me, to H------, ca. 1998 You know my sarcasm and wry asides are for hiding the raw edge of something I desperately want to share but also don't want uncovered. Overreaching typically indicates anxiety. If you don't hear from me, things are probably okay. Things are okay. I said words and that was all:  promised this year I would learn to be more me than I already am, and do it unaugmentedly if possible. There was no plan. Basically I started a bunch of shit and it's all taking off - all of it . Terrifyingly. If you aren't seeing me where you're used to seeing me, I'm busy making my own hell and reveling in it. Much like starting a family, there's no best time or place, and all the planning in the world won't make it easier - you just jump in the deep end. There will be surprises, disasters, and glory; at least one more tattoo. I am my...

The most adorable thing happened today - my landlords sent me a postcard. They're away in warmer climes, and I'm feeding the cat, tending the plants, raiding the liquor cabinet once in a while. Okay, once. I was bored. I don't have a return address, so I'm responding to them here. Things are fine; it hasn't snowed much at all, really.  I had one big day where I shoveled from my door to the car , and then from the big tree to the road, and then shoveled the road.  The foxes laid tracks all over the yard. I stayed home from work today but I won't have to move snow at all.  Today we had what must be called sun-snow.  Either there were secret clouds or it was so bitterly cold that the snowflakes had drifted gently and intact onto leaves and were thence lifted by the wind.  I couldn't capture the effect by camera. Let me know when you open the whisky from Holland. Tigger's been good; Barb left him catnip and I will bring him some more later in the we...

Palo Duro Canyon is the second biggest in the United States after the Grand, and yet I didn't know about it until I went to visit my friends at the Academy of Advanced Imagery in Canyon, Texas . "Yes, there is a canyon," I kept telling everybody, because I'd Googled . And then we went there. I'd almost not brought my camera on this trip, because I knew Maz had hers and she's a talented photographer. We have different perspectives, though, so it's a good thing I did. We often took different trails; also, she's got the better telephoto lens. There were times I bade her take the long-distance shots I knew would fail with my camera. This cute yellow flower tried to kill me. I really wanted that shot, so I crouched low and finally lay prone to find my angle, and then I realised how close I was to the edge of the cliff. It was at least twelve feet away, but I was frozen in terror. You see, when I was a teenager my friends thought it was funny to thr...

Austin, TX, can be a bit Tippi. After Canyon, we headed south toward San Antonio. Maz's sister lives there and said we could stay at her house while she was away. North of Sweetwater, a little before sunset, Maz made a video (which we thought was hilarious) of an Oil Crane Pump Well (which looked like a grasshopper). We didn't make it to my family's ancestral graveyard but stopped at the Ballinger intersection where we could have turned left toward Brownwood. There I picked up a rock that may have touched either foot or hoof belonging to my old settler Ewings. As we passed Paint Rock, I thought about how Southwestern petroglyphs really freak me out. Like cold to the bones and feeling nauseous freak me out. I swept slabs on construction sites in San Antonio during 1983 instead of graduating from high school. My daughter's father's father lived in Universal City, and we landed at his place for a few days before finding a trailer and getting jobs in the booming...

"You want to go to the beach tonight?" Vickie's Texas drawl was hopeful; we were finally meeting in person after knowing each other through the hotel system for years. The beach south of Port Arthur was suggested by Vickie's friend, her guy friend, the one who (you could tell by the wistfulness in her voice) currently held her heart; the one she said was her best friend. I wouldn't have to drive, she said, because I'd been driving since California. "Sure," I replied.  I'd just left the desert and hadn't seen the Gulf Coast, which holds a piece of my heart, in over a decade. Of course I wanted to go to the beach. The problem was this: I was too old to innately know this was Spring Break, and there would be no beach to be seen. It was joyous mayhem. There were jeeps and Beetles driving up and down the sandy shore, campfires burning, hippies dancing... Around the other side of  Vickie's car a particularly greasy young man was sittin...