I am currently trying to stave off what I’m pretty sure is withdrawal. Though I got coffee every day at the local coffeeshop in New Orleans, I was more a fan of the walk I took to the coffeeshop than the coffee itself, and only ever drank half my usual “dose.” There was no Starbucks on the route yesterday, and I had no coffee at all. So today in Houston, I have chills and a headache after going to sleep before 10pm. I’m sitting in a Kroger on my laptop because it has a Starbucks in it and is only a mile away from the house. There
is an extra shot of espresso in it. All the black employees next to me are having a conversation about old cold remedies, and the rhythm of their warm, friendly conversation with one another is like a kind of comfort food itself:
“It was so strong … mamma would say, ‘Wait ’til I on the other side o the bed before you drink it.'”
While in Houston we took some time to wander the Buffalo Bayou Park – it’s a spectacularly cool thing that runs right through the heart of urban Houston. It’s slowly being expanded and has grown hugely since we were here in January, and was filled with art and things to climb, lizards, turtles and birds… So, one of MY favourite things is lizards, and one of the best things about going south (for me) is that states like Texas have lizards like Maryland has… has… I don’t even know! I don’t think there’s an analogue! On our walk, the bayou was just ALIVE with the little guys – but they’re hard to catch on camera, much less actually get your hands on. This guy was slowed down by the presence of lunch!
The house George and Del, rob’s brother and sister-in-law, live in is adorable. It has a tell-tale Houston feature: a single story with massive, 12-foot-high-or-more ceilings. I get it right away: So the heat will rise. There are windows and light everywhere. There’s a huge main foyer full of the quirky art they love. There is a bookshelf in the foyer that almost makes it to the ceiling.
There is a construction crew adding an addition to the back of the house. There is a couple-week-old-baby named Ike, screaming the new-baby cry. There is a 4-year-old child who squeals an impossible pitch when he is happy, and wails when he is sad. There is a train in the distance. Eight blocks. Not quite distant enough.
Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance
Everybody thinks it’s true
What is the point of this story?
What information pertains
The thought that life could be better
Is woven indelibly
Into our hearts
And our brains
Paul Simon put that song out when I was a year old, and I “discovered” it this year while cleaning out my apartment, my mind, my heart. And I sat down in the middle of my kitchen when I heard the words. I put down the things I was moving around, and listened.
It’s not necessarily a musician thing, but touring does make you entertain a lot of potential lives. Ernie Pyle said it when he went around the country in the 1930s: You start to look at every place as the potential site of a house. I wish I had the exact quote. An internet search proves the world does not know Ernie Pyle enough. I need to never go on tour without my copy of Home Country ever again.
I think the question is: How do the restless settle down? And aren’t we all restless, really? At some levels, it’s just a passing fancy with the sound of the train in the distance … in other cases, it takes us to the foxholes of foreign wars and to the ends of our lives, as it did for Pyle. The middle of those is perhaps the worst place to live. A limbo. Always pulled – Never satisfied. For those in the middle, I guess the real question is: How do we settle down (just enough) to stay happy?
Among the many creatures we spotted in the Buffalo Bayou – ducklings and ducks! we lose Heather to her new aboreal Lifestyle – in the Buffalo Bayou in Houston, TX. Then we lost ME to MY new arboreal Life style! Unfottunately, then Heather fell afoul of using my autofocus in the midst of the dense Texan foliage… omething that always surprises me in Houston, given Texas’ general approach to spending their money for public works, is the sheer amount of public art around town. These bridge stanchions hide a neat secret red button that when pressed, explodes a huge bubble out of the swamp. Or at least, that’s what the secret red button is SUPPOSED to do. Alas, it’s apparently broken. Sigh. Another leeezard. I THINK these are all types of anole, but really I have no idea. Having failed miserably with using my autofocus through the dense Texan foliage, I finally switched over to just eyeballing it – with surprisingly decent results! Finally! Turtles caught on film! They were leaping for it, but I caught’em! What I DIDN’T catch was the leaping flying fish! It took us a bit to figure out what the Hell was happening, but Kristen DID catch a few on film at least! At the Buffalo Bayou in Houston, TX. Never mind – gotcha!
