into an airplane in one place, and appear in another, and you have no idea about what’s in between the two places. It’s really a crying shame, he says, because, man, this country is absolutely amazing on the ground. There’s so much on the ground. It’s so beautiful. Up in the air, he says, the sky is always blue and a little cloudy, predictable.
It’s before this 3,000-mile journey by bus that Abe’s uncle gives him his first camera, a point-and-shoot. Abe’s understanding of the camera is as a painter.
“I’m trained as a painter,” he tells me, slightly stuttering. “I apply the same technique in my pictures as I do in my paintings. I took to photography right away, but I haven’t gotten much into digital photography. The quality isn’t as good yet. I take most of my photos in black and white, and a lot of times there’s noise in the black areas of digital photos. The cheapest film camera is about a 33-megapixel digital camera. I don’t even think those are out yet!”
I tell Abe I want to learn how to take pictures. I say, “Bridget and I got a camera. It’s a nice camera, but I can’t get my photos to look the way I want them to look.”
“Oh yeah?” asks Abe, dragging cancer. “How do you want them to look?”
“Like the way I see things.” I say. “True to life.”
Abe laughs. “That’s not easy. People spend their lives trying to get their photos to look like what they see. But one bit of advice I’ve always found helpful: if your pictures aren’t coming out how you want them to – get closer.”
I fix my eyes on a cut of the whitest sky. A robust cloud effortlessly sails toward the Texas plains. A grackle alights on the wrought-iron fence that surrounds the pool. A girl in bikini reads a glossy magazine on the chaise lounge. I can’t tell where exactly she’s looking when she looks up from the pages because of her plastic bumblebee sunglasses, but I recognize her lurid tater tots.
She’s 26, and she never did treat us to that beer.
“Ooo whew, whew, whew, whew, whew,” goes the Grackle. “Crewhewwhew!”
6
Our bedroom is far from dark and quiet, even in the stillness of deep night. Honeyed Cat is unreasonable, really. She demands that we leave the sliding glass door open at least enough to allow for an egress. If we shut her passage, if we limit her freedom, I’ll ultimately be the one who will be sorely awakened in the wee hours of morning by her retractable claws scraping alternately between aluminum frame and windowpane. She’ll disturb my REM cycle, and I’ll wake on the wrong side of the bed. It’s very easy with Honeyed Cat. Either give her what she wants or go mad.
When I try to make a stand and teach her a lesson, Bridget immediately sides with her cat. In the end, I’m the bad guy. I’m the stern parent the child grows up despising, the emasculated Gestapo.
But, with the sliding glass door left ajar for Her Royal Highness, the artificial glare of floodlights that hang on each building, and the seemingly endless 911 calls for help, pollute our bedroom – make it hostile by some standards – because Austin nights have a significant increase in decibels.
I don’t know how a metropolitan area of around 750,000 people can be punctuated so frequently with emergency sirens. I’ve lived in other, bigger cities than Austin, and nowhere are sirens more prevalent than here, in this brave democratic outpost, the last standing blue bastion in the center of red Texas.
2
Austin calls me for a run. I answer accordingly and leave The Oaks without a shirt. It’s true that running is a spiritual experience no matter where it happens. I’ve had my share of epiphanies while running. It’s more than a physical experience. There’s also the mental determination required when going the distance, and the innermost desire to conquer any weaknesses that may stand in the way.
PAIN IS INEVITABLE,
SUFFERING IS OPTIONAL
And let us not forget self-induced runner’s high. My body’s response to steady effort is a deluge of smiley-faced endorphins. I love endorphins. After three miles of continuous motion, of pushing my body to the limits, I manage to laugh, get high, and know my wiry legs pumped on endorphins could run forever. After three miles, I feel detachment from myself while being very much in tune with the tiniest cogs in the center of my abdomen.
Austin is full of hills. Some are barely perceptible. All of a sudden you realize the muscles in your legs are experiencing a slow burn. Others are steep. To climb them you have to high step. For some reason, high stepping up steep hills is easier for me than the slow burn of deceptive grades. To run in Austin, you have to manage both with a calm head. You can’t rush or sprint hard when everything seems peachy. In Austin, it’s necessary to ration. You have to pace yourself if you’re in it for the long haul.
I’m in it for the long haul. I know I am the moment I start my stopwatch. I don’t say anything to myself regarding how far I will travel, but I know I’ll travel far. After all, the day is finally cooling. I want to see Austin by foot. The sky is pastel blues and pinks. The clouds are cotton candy. I head west on Cumberland Rd, pass a couple runners, and head north on 5th St.
5th St is special. I like running on 5th St. I feel safer on 5th St than I do on, say, 1st St or Congress Ave. 5th St is more like a neighborhood. There are old trees on 5th St. I’d even go so far as to say 5th St is pleasant for running. It’s not Miami Beach. There are still cars and busses and the noises of civilization, which is to say, there are no waves and there is no sand. Still, 5th St has its own charm.
0
“Vas a escribir así, mi amor?”
That’s Bridget speaking Spanish, naked. She’s about to hop into the shower to wash the chlorine out of her reddish gold hair. But before ablutions, she did a suggestive dance to Jimmy Hendrix’s Little Wing, and I said, “You’re beautiful.” Then I straightened my lower back and sat properly, so when I’m really an old man, I’ll be able to watch Bridget interpret Little Wing naked and I’ll be able to say, “You’re beautiful,” and not be hunchbacked.
Meanwhile, on the other side of our bedroom, Honeyed Cat stands inquisitively over a five-legged grasshopper. She has sheared off one of its hind legs. This form of torture is her idea of good-fun times. She won’t ever snuff this grasshopper. She’ll only lightly pounce and dismember it one appendage at a time. Then she’ll go over to a distant corner and hunker down in predator pose, waiting for her expiring toy to contrive an escape.
Honeyed Cat is an agent of destruction. She’s programmed to be harmful. Inflicting injury is her way of ensuring survival. She doesn’t know any better. She’s trapped in a lower form of existence. Finding freedom is nearly impossible for her, even with the sliding glass door left ajar at nights. While it may seem appealing to nap all day and have food given to you regardless of whether you work or not, she’s ignorant and slated to a life without any form of enlightenment.
8
Larry McMurtry, I’m almost ashamed to say, is teaching me to think about the sweep of human progress. His non-fiction is shaping my view of history. For example, during a walk today, with bridge camera diagonal across chest, I start to think about the sun over my head. Although I’m wearing a generic white baseball cap, the central Texas sun, that mighty thorn in the heavens, pricks me with venomous radiation. Especially when I tramp north down the railroad track toward the skyscrapers, my neck is red from the bite.
Too bad Bridget isn’t with me, I think. We had planned to do this together.
This is the first time I walk down a railroad track. But, as a young kid, man did I love building railroads. I’d sit down on the carpet and connect segments to build the track that a train would then ride around and around for as long as I wanted. What an idea: trains and railroads. It’s so controlling and inflexible. Compared to the galleons that travel the seas, our trains and railroads are more like prisons. First there’s the freedom of uninterrupted land, where horses and buffalo roam wherever their hearts desire, and then there’s the strict fence of track, where destination is enforced and etched on a timetable.
The idea of trains
and railroads is so human. Only the human mind could devise the railway system. It’s such a simple and exploitative idea. All it takes is thousands of enslaved laborers working thousands of hours in chains doing the same thing over and over again.
Over and over.
It’s strange to think the advent of the industrial revolution required redundant and strenuous work that, in addition to being of great service to the progress of this country, demeaned the human spirit.
Does art redeem us? Is art powerful enough to compensate for thousands of men on the tracks doing nothing but marching in time with the foreman and making more in the way of tracks?
First there’s the freedom of the land, where pioneers roam, but they have to be willing to build their own shade away from the sting of the sun. They have to gather food and water, work the land to make it bear fruit, love and hate the sky that either waters or scorches their crops.
The pioneers toil all day and sleep and eat only as much as they need to toil the next. The pioneers have no time for art, for any expression of the mind that isn’t through hard toiling. They are incessantly working on the railroad, and they do this so that in time the next generation will have a head start and have a few spare minutes to start making the art that will redeem all of