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Texas Twister
… how about the winter, el 17 de Julio, 5:00 am, the hour I woke that morning to walk to the lake and catch the sunrise. Instead, I stepped into a virgin wonderland of giant snowflakes falling through the halos of streetlights, the same storm that was dumping the first really good snow of the season atop Cerro Catedral. Or perhaps we should begin late the next morning, when the 150-kph blizzard gales atop Catedral finally weakened enough for the authorities to open the lifts, granting Quigs and I passage to the summit, snowboards in tow, to drop into half a meter of fresh powder blanketing the mountain. Or maybe a better place to start would be the part where Quigs, master of all things kinesthetic, gave a lanky kid from west Texas his first snowboarding lesson. Or maybe we should open later that afternoon after I’d separated from Quigs, spent twenty minutes climbing out of a forest ravine back up to the trail, built considerable velocity down a packed route and begun to gain some confidence in my newfound abilities, when, coolly and most collectedly, I turned to give thumbs-up to some youngsters taking a break, and the racing edge of the tabla caught the trail in a most perpendicular fashion, sending me for a reeling ass-plant-wrist-hyper-extension into packed ice. But that was on a Friday… … and I prefer to begin stories on a Saturday when possible, and since the next day was a Saturday, and on that day Quigs and I began a four day journey from Patagonia to Texas, we will begin the story on a Saturday. This particular Saturday was spent on a twenty hour bus ride to Mendoza to hang out with Marcelo for a day before boarding a plane bound for DFW, where we arrived the next day to sweltering July heat… in time for Ash’s wedding – she said she wasn’t surprised, but I’m still not convinced. A pleasant day of golf at the ole south Dallas muni (a pleasant day, not pleasant golf - except for Quigs – he was in the zone if I recall correctly); beers and fine conversation with the Professor; and a night at some Latin American night club with P-Daddy & The Grinders, which was not, as promised, filled with hot girls from Latin America who would Spanish me in my tutor! It was an elegant wedding, with live jazz at the reception no less, and a long overdue reconnect with the Greek. Winged Migrations brought me to tears – couldn’t control them, didn’t want to – the natural world delivers me unto peace, and yet it is a harsh mirror, the more so when captured with such artistry, grace and honesty.
 Then there was the blood fortifying drive with Quigs through the badlands of north Texas – quail, dove, roadrunners, jackrabbits, ranches crawling with mesquite, horizons filled with cotton, and Quigs’s first encounter with Allsup’s fried burritos, and hot sauce. We made the Caprock just as the enormous swirling fire orb of day’s end ruptured the unbroken horizon of cotton to melt into the Llano Estacado for the night. (There are some magical daily events one does not often experience living at the eastern base of a north-south mountain range.) Backdrop a west Texas amphitheater with the ominous black threat of distant thunderstorm and the sunset underbelly of clouds kaleidoscoping through blazing reds, fiery oranges, and smoldering pinks, and watch as a curtain of stars and near full moon overtake it all. Enter three thirsty cowboys and Mom, throw in a case and a half of beer, put Willie and Trigger on stage, and pardner, you got yerself one helluva of an evening. We joined a crowd as diverse as one will encounter in Lubbock, Texas, and howled all the classics at the tops of our lungs, along with the Red Headed Stranger who bridged the hardworking heartland of a proud nation with its peace-loving hippies a generation ago. I bounced a shout off the moon, over to Bobby where the west begins, because they only let him go so long, out of kindness I suppose. I remember us having our arms around each other and realizing that it was a perfect moment, the kind of moment that all others exist to serve. Thanks Dad! Let’s jump ahead a week when Mom and I ate breakfast on the tranquil patio of Pete and Judy, the coolest high school Spanish teacher north of the Rio Grande. I think it was her life more than any other that inspired me to learn a second language. That inspiration didn’t unfold until long after her class, for which I never studied enough – after all, when the hell would I need to know Spanish? Well, after ten years and numerous unused dust-covered books and tapes promising to impart Spanish to a human brain in “less than five minutes a day while brushing your teeth,” it seems that I can at least hold conversation with taxistas in Buenos Aires. Muchisimas gracias por todo Señora B. More than once Mima and I engaged in lively discourse regarding civic responsibility and local politics over blue cheese dressing at Orlando’s and cheese and onion enchiladas at Abuelo’s. Man, if everyone were as aware of where their tax dollars go as my grandmother, and if they were even half as civically active, governmental corruption would be a mere sniffle, rather than the voracious viral epidemic that it is today. I admire the way she exercises her power of the people. She doesn’t bitch and complain and organize and sign petitions and wage political battles. She picks up the phone, or pen and paper, regardless of whether the elected servant is a Republican or Democrat or Purple People Eater, requests that the servants elected to serve her do so properly, and more often than not, receives a direct response, if not direct action, to address her needs as a constituent of whatever taxing entity. She doesn’t understand why I don’t vote and I don’t think I ever gave her a good answer. Rather than drill down into the guts of political theory versus political reality, my decision to abstain from voting can be partially explained by two points. First, quality of information. I see no point in voting if the information informing my vote is not accurate and truthful. Based on years of personal investigation, I believe that 95% of all passively received information regarding the governmental and political process is bullshit, which I ask no one else to believe. I also believe that actively educating oneself towards the truth is possible because I have done it to a large degree, but it requires tremendous work, energy, and time, to the point that really, for me to be sufficiently informed to cast my vote into the political process, I would need to dedicate myself to the investigation and research of that process at least full time, if not more. I suspect that you do not go to such extremes before casting your vote any more than I would, although there are people who do make a career out of pursuing the truth of government and politics. These people go by a multitude of titles, and exist at all levels of power, competence, and influence, within official governmental entities and without. We will use "lobbytician" as a verycatch-all label. Lobbyticians make a career out of pursuing the truth of politics and the reality of government, such that when they cast their one vote, it is cast upon actively investigated information. And because economies of scale are at work in the investigative and research efforts of lobbyticians, they are able to sell their information to other employees of the political process and thereby make their mortgage payments, cover their children's orthodontal bills, pay their taxes, and splurge on taking the family to the movies twice a month. And depending on what they serve and at what level they operate, many lobbyticians are able to cast their one actively investigated vote while splurging on much more than just popcorn and Coke at the movies. Such full time pursuit is simply not to my taste, and I therefore know that casting my one uninformed vote would harm the political process more than help it, and would be more of a diservice to my fellow human beings than the pursuit of some other vocation. Second, interdimensional physics. In a majority rule system, my actively informed one vote means nothing if the masses are voting based on information passively received through a concentrated media industry which exists symbiotically at every level with the aforementioned specie of lobbytician - passively received information that is inaccurate at best and coldly calculated dishonesty at the most probable. If freedom were really as easy as listening to the news drones in the evening after a long hard day of work and voting once every few years based on that information, then goverment would function like a healthy organism. Does it? Were I to expend the energy necessary for casting a well-informed vote, while 90% of my voting peers cast their votes based on intranervously administered information opiates, it would be as though my anti-matter vote were cast into an election existing in some parallel universe, affecting nothing whatsoever in this dimension. A political process, like any process, is only as sound as its input, and if its input is unconscious, its output will be unconscious at best, something more incipient at worst. I guess at this point in my life I have come believe that if I want to live in a world that is somehow different or “better” than this one, it is my duty to realize it, and there is no one to turn to but myself. In any event, Mima and I generally agree on the end, if not the means. Thanks Mima! I saw a wicked tornado show on the Weather Channel while I was home. I love tornados. I’ve dreamed about them my entire life, I mean really dreamed about them – I still do – even in South America. That the invisible force swirling about the atmosphere can concentrate in upon itself to such focused power that a shaft of straw can be driven through cinderblock… well, it blows my mind. I experienced my fourth twister (not counting a funnel cloud) while I was home. There are few rivals to match the experience of a live tornado at close range. My first was at Little League practice; the second and third were on I-35. This latest, the fourth twister, involved Dad and an inventory liquidation sale for The Outdoorsman where we were going to “buy a shirt or two” – such ferocity, such carnage. It carved a swath of devastation through the Lubbock Civic Center that left dazed onlookers shaking their heads in disbelief. Thanks Dad! And the next day: E to B: “Hey man, you want to rent Waking Life and watch it later on tonight?” B to E: “Whoa! Why did you ask me that?” “I don’t know. I’ve been wanting to see it since it came out, and earlier today I had the idea to watch it tonight.” “Dude! I had that same thought today!” “I guess that means we have to watch it tonight.” “Yeah, I guess so.” And so we did. And what a fresh creation it is.
For all of my life, until a few years ago, there used to be this giant windmill at the corner of 50th and Indiana, right next to Mima and Papa’s house, along with a giant oak tree. Man I loved that windmill and that oak tree. If I am not mistaken, I believe someone recently had the artistic civic vision to replace them both with asphalt and striping. Anyways, Mom and I paid a visit to The American Wind Power Center one afternoon, where I learned that the harnessing of wind power, more than any other invention, made possible the manifest destiny of European ancestry that is now known as the Great Plains settled of the United States of America – such a simple technology with such far reaching impacts. Most of those early, clean, renewable, infinite-energy-harnessing, windmills were dismantled during the patriotic drives for scrap metal, to be employed for death and destruction during both world wars. And today we send our children and mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and neighbors to kill and die for fossil fuels – the irony of it smells to me strikingly similar to the cattle feedlots south of Lubbock. After the windmill museum, we dropped by Prairie Dog Town. When I was a kid, Papa used to take me there, a few acres of dirt enclosed by a three foot cinder block wall, where the once largest prairie dog colony on the planet – something like 25,000 acres and half a billion prairie dogs – was poisoned to near extinction and driven onto this pathetic reservation, so that ecologically rich prairie lands might be grazed by domesticated cattle or plowed under completely to make room for endless horizons of monoculture and pesticides.
OK, enough of that. Skip ahead to countless hours lost in pages at BookPeople, Whole Foods and wheatgrass juice, Town Lake and the Shoal Creek greenbelt, the hill at MLK & Lamar, the jukebox at Deep Eddy, Java Co., moon towers, Thai food, an orange tower on Saturday nights, Mexican Martinis at Trudy’s, KGSR, the Greek and the Elephant Room with some serious jazz, Clarksville, the turtles at Mozart’s, BA on the guitar, new friends, Dazed and Confused, Hula Hut, the better half of Poindexter, Liz at Malaga, the Bitter End, Z-Tejas margaritas, Amy at Hickory Street, and Whole Earth Provision Co. – yes, we have touched down – Austin, Texas baby! (I must plug Whole Earth at this point because the staff in every location I have shopped – Austin, Houston, Dallas – is always, consistently, superb – in terms of knowledge, service, and general all around buena onda.) I have mostly transmuted a whisky palette to one of Argentine vino tinto, but when the bullshit flows with Tom or the Nomad or Bobby, hell, red wine just doesn’t cut it. A fine weekend, capped off appropriately by a very late Kerbey Lane brunch with the Mermaid. To you of Bitter End fame – thank you from the bottom of my heart – it means more than you can know. Every place or town has its establishments, its “must-knows-to-be-in-the-know,” and all self-respecting residents will see to it that they make acquaintance with such places in all due haste. Tourists are exempt, and the level of haste expected of residents is in direct proportion to the size of the place and one’s term of residency. After seven years in Central Texas, some things are, simply put, inexcusable. So check it: Carol, the Salt Lick, and a pilgrimage to Luckenbach, sacred shrine of music and peace and love for all shitkickin’ hippies everywhere, including on this day, Germany; a Shiner in the hot shade of central Texas oaks, cooled by slight breeze and serenaded by the thickest of drawls and the strum of geetars being operated under the heavy influence of Lone Star; followed by a sunset over the Pedernales. Or why not pay a visit the next day to Jay and Julia and the precious Jenna? If you’re really fortunate, and I mean really fortunate, why not cruise the next day with BA, Jay and Big Dusty to the hill country paradise of Jay’s ranch for a tour
Enter the uber-Urbach, one of my favorite artists, and sushi with Big Al, and BA, and Akshay. Yes, we will travel to Mexico – Judy, you are the greatest! And while the nut of the story is really a coming of full circle with Marcelo in Monterrey with his Bubbalicious chewing dog Piper, set to the backdrop of Mariachi music, tacos, chilaquiles and Micheladas, here is a story from the journey as promised:
Oh Man, Back on the road. There is no doubt that this is the life I love. Very special thanks to Judy, one of the coolest ladies I know, for living a cool life and inspiring me to strive for the same, and specifically, for making this latest adventure possible. Irony, or synchronicity, or just some damn fine mojo, envelopes me on this 6:00 am Greyhound from Austin to Laredo, seated next to BA himself, the chillest broham on the planet. The last time we made this trip together was by pickup, and we wouldn’t see each other again until Belize. As usual, we stayed up way too late last night and both slept through our alarms. Special thanks then also to Big Jake for waking us up and getting us to the station on time – que encuentres mucha fortuna y aventura en Manhatten. I was exhausted when we boarded this bad boy, but as usual, the thrill of the unknown and the sovereignty of movement, kept me from much needed sleep. So I breathed, my favorite part of traveling by bus, just breathing. After grabbing a gas station coffee somewhere outside New Braunfels, the guy in the seat behind us spoke, a Latin guy, stocky, clean shaven, excited, big toothy grin with a gap for character: “What time is it?” he asked. “Seven forty,” I answered. “We should be in San Antone by eight ten.” “Yeah, that sounds about right.” “Where are you guys headed?” “Monterrey. What about yourself?” “San Antonio. I was in Abilene with my wife and she got pulled over for speeding. She wasn’t speeding though. I speed all the time, but my wife never does. It was in one of those drug trafficking zones, you know? So the cop said he had to see my card even though I wasn’t driving. I had a bunch of tickets from a long time ago that I never paid. Yeah, they came up when he ran my card.” “What happened?” “Man, they took my ass to jail. My wife told me to pay the tickets, but I said, ‘No, baby, I can sit it out.’ Eighteen days man.” “You went to prison for eighteen days?” “Not prison man, just jail.” “You went to jail for eighteen days for traffic tickets?” “Yeah man.” “How much money did they make off you?” “Hundred bucks a day.” “You paid them a hundred dollars a day?” “Yeah man, but I got money. I got a good job and I ain’t gonna lose it.” “What do you do?” “I’m a brick mason. Good company in San Antonio. Been there three years. Make good money man. I’m one of their best masons. We do good work.” “Damn.” “Yeah, my wife didn’t want me to do it. We got plenty money. Hell, I got seven grand in the bank. ‘I can sit it out baby.’ That’s what I told her. I’d rather use that money for something else. Take a vacation or something, you know?” He laughed. “Yeah man, I hear ya. So you went to jail in Dallas?”
“No, the bus is just coming from there. It was in Abilene.” “What did you do in jail?” “Nuthin man. They had my ass, you know. I just slept.” “So you’re married? You got kids?” “Yeah, three daughters.” “You own a home?” “Yeah.” “So you make mortgage payments and all that?” “No man, I own it.” “Damn.” “Yeah man.” “Unbelievable.” “Yeah man, eighteen days. But it’s no big deal. I told her man, ‘With the money we save, we can take a vacation together.’ Plus it was a good vacation from her and the kids, you know man?” “So it’s no big deal then?” “Nah man.” He smiled. “Hey, what time you got?” “Five to eight.” “We should be there soon… but it depends on if we hit traffic.” “Cool,” I said, and hit ‘play’ on the walkman. A few minutes later he tapped me on the shoulder. “You see that place?” He pointed out the window at a men’s club under construction. “Yeah.” “I’m gonna go there when it opens. That’s a nice place man. I bet it’s got some nice girls.” “Yeah.” “I ain’t going to work today man. I may not go tomorrow either. Hell man, I may take the whole week off. I can afford it. I got enough money.” “Yeah, I’d say you’ve earned it.” “If I needed the money though, my ass would be at work today!” “Right on.” “Hey man, what time you got?” “Eight, straight up.” “Damn, we’re not gonna make it by eight ten. Look at the traffic. My wife is picking me up. She’s got to be at work by eight thirty.” He laughed. “My wife man, ooh dog, tonight’s gonna be good. Hell man, I may take the whole week off. It depends on how frisky she is. She gets really frisky man. She can wear me out sometimes.” He laughed again. “Hey man, what time is it? You see that place over there? That’s Water World or some shit. I go to Fiesta Texas.” The bus made the San Antonio station at eight twenty-two by my watch. We shook hands and he left in a hurry.
September 3rd, Friday, Austin, Texas. I don’t know if it’s me that’s changed or what, but I lived in Austin for seven years, and never, in all that time, do I recall seeing a sunset like the one I saw on September 3, 2003, with a beautiful woman no less – it doesn’t get much better. I swear to you that I tried to take a picture, but the camera battery was dead. It was great consolation when Brian told me that the spectacle was visible to all sixty thousand people attending the ACL fest that evening – I’m assuming someone snapped a picture. So my loaner cell phone es mierda; no landline in BA’s apartment; BA out on the town for the night; no wheels; major itch to flow in downtown Austin: “Fine then, I’ll walk.” Ah, the advantages of crashing on your brother’s couch in the epicenter of A-town. Phone calls at the Tavern; 7-11; billboard truck that drives around all night seducing drunks to Sugar’s and The Yellow Rose – both fine establishments, but not on a Friday, and; to the driver: “Hey man, can you give me a ride downtown?” “Yeah, let me pay for this gas and we’ll head down there. I was headed that way anyways.” Ten minutes later I jumped from the cab of a truck sporting the biggest ta-tas in Austin to the curb in front of Cedar Street. And that was the beginning of one of the most surreal weekends of my life. Unexpected connect with the uber-Urbach, mind-blowing connect with Daltonius Bogelite, who I hadn’t seen in over five years, and a truly cosmic connect with Dean, of Mexico fame, who I hadn’t seen since San Miguel de Allende and who does not live in, nor has ever visited Austin in his life… until this weekend. He was the first person in my life who ever told me, in language I could comprehend, that I am what I am, to never apologize for being intense. The brilliance was in the simplicity of his delivery. He said, and I quote, “You are what you are. Never apologize for being intense.” Yeah, but wait, then P-to-the-P rolls in on Saturday and we slip into the K-State game for $13 a piece, bump into a righteous half-time hippy in the conservative Alumni Center, and spend the rest of the afternoon making decisions of the highest caliber – to be happy, or to be otherwise – always a decision within our control, whether we choose to realize it or not. Whoa, but could Widespread be playing their second night at the Backyard? And could we go? Please? And could we, thanks to Stace and Meredith and friends, for a few hours, get taken by the groove? Affirmative. ¡Que buena onda! And this brings us, after watching the diehard BA return home exhausted after two full days in a row, to the Austin City Limits fest, the final day of festivities which, gracias a Big Jake, I managed to attend, said attendance comprised almost exclusively of cruising around a veritable ocean of music swimming with sixty thousand peace loving hippies just telling people “hello” – I love peace loving hippies. It was a full weekend – I was too worn out to stick around for REM – I know, that’s lame. Oh come on, those Afghani terrorists attacked us on our own soil! We’ll put a boot up their ass Texas style! But watch our aim we must, lest that boot end up in the ass of the Iraqi people, not to mention the unimaginable gash to the domestic space-time fabric of Los Estados Unidos that was unilaterally railroaded by the same interests that profit from all wars, while the Reality TV-grazing masses of America stood paralyzed like goyim in the reality of an oncoming eighteen wheeler loaded with mammon – namely the wholesale gutting of the very freedoms and liberties for which kids are ostensibly killing and dying in some barren desert, so far from their loved ones. But no worry, we will justify it somehow, and while we will not justify it truthfully, we can at least justify it through the needs of “civilized” nations to feed off the liquefied carcasses of so many reptilian beings long submerged in the geologic strata beneath Babylon. But please, whose side am I on? My own? Or the handful of corporate entities that control the Industrial Age energy supply of the human species? Because the gig is up, whether the puppets on TV talk about it or not – the experimental cosmic blip of fossil fuels is over. Don’t believe me – do the research and prove it wrong – I beg you. This is not an impassioned cause, but a cold scientific calculation. Without even researching anything, but merely by engaging my own cognitive faculties, which I admit are limited, I ponder the following: 1) fossil fuels will run out, whether in five years or fifty; 2) one acre = the amount of land a man and an ox can plow in one day; 3) the overwhelming majority of “First World” civilization, to take only one example, rests on the concentrated and entrenched ownership of a house of cards that is an agro-transnational, genetically engineered, chemically saturated, food supply for the masses in the form of Soylent Green, that is without debate, leveraged fourfold by the use of tractors, grain elevators, transoceanic vessels, trains, farm-to-market roads, interstate highways, eighteen wheelers, delivery trucks, refrigeration equipment, air-conditioned offices, executive air travel, server-based logistics, and processing plants – ALL OF WHICH, at this precarious moment in human space-time continuum, depend upon fossil fuels. And then I ask myself what will happen to the human collective – politically, culturally, spiritually, economically, militarily, and otherwise – when those fossil fuels croak their final dying gasp of carbon soot? Personally, methinks it better that we never find out – that rather than wage war over the precious few fields of remaining goop, we begin to apply that remaining goop, as well as our limitless faculties of imagination, to the harmonious coexistence with the infinite supply of universal energy that exists as our birthright. As Esteban would say, “muy heavy, eh?” However, I think it’s not so heavy, but more a matter of perspective. The concept of infinite free energy seems at first so foreign to our domesticated cerebrums, but it wasn’t to the ancients. If they could harness the power of the cosmos, which they most certainly did, not to mention the tripped-out dudes who hotwire OVNI’s for the purpose of interdimensionally buzzing duendes, then so can we – I know it. But where to start? This is ultimately a personal question, but for me, oceans and atmosphere filled with perpetual movement and radiation and magnetic fields are a good place to begin. There are infinitely other places to begin and I suspect that all are equally valid, even fossil fuels. Tesla also had a few interesting things to say on the subject, although we’d probably all be better off today had he been allowed to say them freely in his time. Wherever one chooses to start, it is surely better than resting on the empty promises made by those few who are vested in the accumulation of ever more power and control over the trajectory of our species, whether their intentions are conscious or unconscious, positive or otherwise. Yes, I know, the advertising trucks waving the breastages of Sugar’s dancers up and down Sixth Street run on fossil fuels – no argument from me – every drop in the bucket counts, and yet I wonder, what kinds of research and technology conversion; how many wind farms, solar panels, and geothermal turbines; not to mention electro-magneto-transmogrifying-resistor-transisting-convergiatative-triple-back-flip-with-a-tuck-seminconducting gizmos, would $84 billion fund? The past two hundred years of exponential human growth has been a gas for the species. It’s been as though a high school senior found the keys to his father’s Lamborghini while his parents were away for the weekend. You can bet your ass he raised hell and had a blast. You can also bet your ass that he put every other driver on the road that weekend in danger. Was the experience valuable for all involved, whether they realized their involvement or not? Probably, because it added to the pool of What Has Been, from which all of us might learn and evolve, especially the kid in the Lamborghini. Was it sustainable? Probably not. Fossil fuels have enabled us, in a galactic blink of the eye, to leverage our mind into material technologies to explore the distant corners of the globe, the depths of its oceans, and the void that cradles it; alter the very blueprint of organic life; accelerate atoms to the threshold of their manifest integrity; atomically engineer the mineral kingdom; manipulate entire ecosystems; shuffle physical goods from just about any point on the globe to any other; exchange information between just about any two human incarnations on the planet with the click of a button; wage epic wars of dramatic devastation, tremendous technological innovation, heroic destruction, and tragic waste; and of course, detonate ourselves into the stone age. The irony of the situation is that it is even in the interests of those brokers for whom War is Art, to move beyond fossil fuels, because, to the best of my knowledge, today’s high-tech war machines run on crude baby. This warring aspect among ourselves will need a new source of energy to fuel its Art of War, and I propose that we destroy ourselves with windmills and solar panels – at least it would be interesting. We are not however our technologies, and we are not our minds. If we continue on this trajectory, it will be painful, that much is certain. But pain is one of the greatest teachers I have ever known, and perhaps we will create some flavor of global pain and suffering so intense that we have no further option but to learn, together as a species. But I don’t think it’s written in stone that we must suffer, and it sure as hell isn’t coded into our DNA – never ending though it may be, it’s just a decision – mine… and yours. OK, enough of that. The next weekend – I think it was the next weekend – I attended the Green Festival in Austin and discussed with several progressive companies the potential of alternative power sources such as solar, tidal, and wind – all of which have a substantially longer lifespan than that of fossil fuels. If I am not mistaken, most individual consumers in the great state of Texas can now buy their energy from Green Mountain Energy with little more effort than a phone call – all of which, again, if I am not mistaken, is derived from renewable sources, or at least clean sources. And in fact, the bulk of their revenues is derived from transnational corporate customers that understand the bottom line benefits to shareholders of locking into price-stable long term supply contracts for energy, energy which just so happens to be clean and renewable. Is there a connection between clean renewable energy and corporate profitability and fiduciary responsibility? Creo que sí. I don’t know Green Mountain Energy well enough yet to personally endorse them, but here is their website: www.greenmountain.com. If you like to run (which, historically, I don’t) and ever get the opportunity, run the greenbelt from Shoal Creek Saloon to Town Lake. You will be alone smack in the downtown middle of a Metropolitan Statistical Area and you might see a wicked old snapping turtle the size of a Cocker Spaniel that must be at least twenty years old. After that, head to Dog & Duck for a Guiness with the cinematic visionary we will call Director Hayes. “Yeah Dad, come on down. We’ll make a weekend of it.” And so we did: Z-Tejas, Huts, a brief string of pars at the Pitch & Putt, Mt. Bonnell, and Mezzaluna. And that was Austin – can one ever get enough? Well, maybe, if you spend seven years there stuck in school - learning what, to this day, I am not sure!
What I spent two weeks on in Lubbock would not interest you, but it was invaluable for me because I got to spend a lot of time with Dad, and had an excuse to drive the Nomad crazy, for which I am deeply thankful. I also had the most heavenly glass of Argentine Malbec ever, because, you see, that glass was shared with Mom. Man, what a special evening that was. Thanks Mom. OK, so the two unscheduled weeks spent in Lubbock were about as slow as the drainage of a flooded playa lake, but they always are… and slow can be good… and it was.
Things picked up when I arrived to Dallas on the outbound leg. After two weeks straight seated in front of the computer, Halloween was a good release. Watching Quigs hit golf balls at pedestrians was funny as always (there’s a net). Finally entering the Professor’s laboratory, where madness is transformed to genius, was an honor and privilege. And then there was the night spent with beautiful friends over salmon and risotto and cigars and cognac (or was it brandy?), during which all manner of themes were explored, in depth, and from varied angles. What a pleasure. One friend, we will call him Fiji Five-4, an advertising executive, expressed heartfelt concern at the fact that if the typical unit of the masses hears “mayonnaise is great” enough times, it will eventually go to the store to buy mayonnaise. (It has been several weeks since this conversation, so I am obviously paraphrasing and probably getting most of it wrong.) During my flight from Argentina to Texas, I was concerned about the bombardment of psychic pollution I was going to encounter at home. I hadn’t really watched a television for almost two years and had only read newspapers to learn Spanish. I had existed in a foreign tongue where the subtle conveyances of language generally do not register with my nervous system unless I am focused on them. The extent of my news intake was isolated to the five point blurb on Yahoo when I checked my email – which, incidentally, is a fascinating way to stay current on world events. What, after all, are the five most important global headlines on a given day? And who decides that? And how do those headlines evolve over time? Is it at all similar to how the slick photos of baby-face pop stars evolve on the covers of magazines targeting the non-emotional, highly discriminating audience of prepubescent girls? Research is underway. In any event, I am not a big fan of pollution, whether it is of food, water, air, or mind, which is not to say that I do not indulge, just that I’m not a big fan. As human beings, we are equipped with gross instrumentation for the interpretation of a certain range of electromagnetic frequency, and that range is deliniated at the surface by the sensitivity of our sense organs, such as eyes and ears. Eagles and wolves for example, can detect electromagnetic emissions in greater reaches of the spectrum than can human creatures, but that doesn’t make those emissions any less “real,” just less detectable… to us, and neither does it make those emissions any less influential over our various bodies. The electromagnetic range, however, is infinite, so far as we can measure, and just as plankton in the ocean are affected by a multitude of waves that they have no control over, so can we be, if we are not aware – and how aware are plankton of the lunar mechanism which pushes a wave bulge through their environment at regular twelve hour intervals? I have long believed TV to be the devil – not the technology, but the content – and that is not to say that I never watch it, because I do. I particularly enjoy the Croc Hunter, the Weather Channel, Doppler radar, and any interview with Robin Williams. However, it wasn’t until I plugged back into the multimedia environment of the U.S., which is hopelessly polluted by electromagnetic emissions, that I realized exactly why TV is the devil. Turning off the television is not enough, because if one’s family and friends and peers all tune in, then they vibrate near that frequency, and when one interacts with them, one receives that frequency anyways and must choose whether or not to address it, and then how. Whether media is programming the masses to wage war, or stuff itself with pills, or alter the structure of its family unit, or feel guilty for some thing, or wear their hair a certain way, or be angered by something thousands of miles away, to worship material existence, or whatever might be the flavor of the day, the influence is there. If one is not aware of the greater programming that takes root in the collective psyche to later sprout anew in the words and behaviors of one’s peer group, one can be influenced unconsciously whether one actually watches TV or not, and that can be quite a confusing experience. Manipulation of mental and emotional activity for the purpose of selling mayonnaise is one thing, but what else are we being sold? And to maintain awareness of the endless devices employed by those who would sell us something other than mayonnaise, in a cultural environment that is utterly saturated with their buffoonery, while still remaining open for loved ones… well, let’s just say that it can be a constant struggle to maintain awareness of the What Is, of the truth, of the core. And who wants to struggle against that shit constantly? Not me. If I still owned a TV, in all seriousness, I would probably do what a great friend of mine recently did and throw it off the balcony! Can you hear that? No? Just silence? Good. The unexpected Loon-lunch with a clever and loving father was also an honor. “Yeah, I like it like this. Most days, I spend at least twenty minutes just driving around town through neighborhoods. I like it. It relaxes me.” And so it does – thanks for the tip brother. I spent that afternoon just driving around town through neighborhoods (thanks to Quigs), tuned into the excellent programming of UNT’s 88.1, and sitting on the banks of Whiterock Lake watching the ducks while a rainy cold front blew in, just breathing. Delicious dinner and excellent conversation with Arthur and Margaret in the most consciously color-schemed room I’ve ever seen. A beer with El Bandito Expectando. Sangria at Café Madrid with Ash and Kelly and P. Mounting anticipation and surging excitement to return to Patagonia… climaxing with a missed flight! As if to cultivate a state of calm and realign the galaxy such that it not implode into the black hole technically known by astronomers as “Airline-Industry-from-Customer’s-Perspective-FU2,” the following events took place over a forty eight hour period: One: I’m waiting in the store for a roll of film to be developed just watching the guy developing the film and doing nothing – the roll is almost a year old, so ten more minutes doesn’t phase me. Out of nowhere, the guy developing the film, we will call him RJ, strikes up a conversation, and upon sensing, I suppose, that I am relatively inclined toward open-minded discourse, steers the subject matter straight into the real in less than a minute. The conversation lasted half an hour – I will leave most of it in the developing lab, though it is worthy of print in its entirety – and ended with RJ, a person who interacts with the public daily at the retail level, saying something to the gist of: “It’s happening faster now, accelerating. I see it more and more every day in the people who come in here.” I agree with him, feel more hope than I have felt during my entire three months in Texas, thank RJ for the good work, and continue with the evening. Two: On a cold drizzly night, I’m sitting outside on the deck at a bar in the densified Uptown Dallas because: a) I have no car, b) the bar is across from P’s apartment where I am crashing, and c) I enjoy a beer or two before bed. Inside, the bar is jammed with classic Dallas Crowd, the more so owing to the weather, and I am sitting outside on the deck alone, mostly because it is devoid of classic Dallas Crowd, and also because I like cold drizzle and trees. Out of nowhere, a guy walks outside and straight to my table. I’d met him the night before for all of twenty seconds and he’d seen me walk through the bar to the deck. We will call him Oscar. He asks me why I’m sitting outside alone, and I answer that it’s a nice night. Turns out he’s European, but has spent the past several years living in New York, Chicago and Dallas. “So what do you think of Americans?” I ask him. “Americans are stupid,” he answers. “I’ve been in Dallas six months now. Sex with all the bimbos has been fun, but I haven’t met one person here that I consider a friend.” “Yeah bro, I’d introduce you to the people in Dallas who I consider friends, but I leave on Saturday. I was supposed to go back today but the plane tickets were screwed up.” “Where are you going?” “Patagonia, it’s in Argentina.” “Argentina eh? Have you read the Don Juan books?” “The what books?” “The Teachings of Don Juan, there’s three of them.” “Oh, those books. I started to read one on the road, but it was in Spanish, and my Spanish was horrible at that point. I ended up ditching it to drop weight.” “Yeah. I read them all.” “How were they?” “In the end, it’s all about him being his own man.” “Ok, right on.” “Well, I’m going back inside. My buddies and I should have the pool table in a few minutes if you want to play.” “Cool. Thanks. Take it easy.” And Three: Again on a cold and drizzly, but different night, I find myself sitting outside on the deck at a bar in the densified Uptown Dallas for the same reasons as before. Inside, the bar is again jammed with classic Dallas Crowd, the more so owing to the weather, and again I am sitting outside on the deck alone, mostly because it is devoid of classic Dallas Crowd, and also because I like cold drizzle and trees. A girl, we will call her Beth, comes to my table and strikes up a conversation which delves into her current relationship before settling on relationships in general. Looking back over my life, it is humorous to recall the copious amounts of bad advice and lame counsel I have received pertaining to the mystery of relationships, and belly laughable how much of it I have given. Beth on the other hand, in a span of roughly twenty minutes of easy and open communication, offered her personal views on relationships – probably the most coherent, concise, logical and realistic, comprehensible, set of principles I have ever heard. This for me, after three months of marriage talk and baby talk, was graciously welcome. I will leave that conversation hanging in the cold mist of a Dallas night, except for one of my favorite parts, the part where Beth said, “I don’t think it’s smart to get lost in a relationship. No matter what relationship I find myself in, I always maintain my own life, my own center.” And so the galaxy was spared from implosion, and the next day authorities allowed me to board a departing flight, but not before one last chance to hang with the Greek, and Carrie, Matt, Stace, and the Noonans – how could I leave Dallas without hanging with the Noonans one last time? Inconceivable. Hello, my name is Aniga Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to... ah, forget it, already been done.
So now Patagonia is tearing at my organs. I finally catch a flight. The connection in Miami is delayed and we circle for an hour and a half. I watch the spectacle of black storm over the ocean pierced by bolts of pure energy and send love to Quigs and Steph who I know to be below, doing the hard work, the shit that simply is not easy at first, but worth more than all the gold on Earth. Exhausted; three hour layover; fall asleep in the deserted Santiago terminal. Five minutes before my plane pulls away from the gate, a crusty old guy bangs on the seat rack to wake me, without saying a word; I look up and the lady at the boarding desk asks me if I’m supposed to be on the flight; “sí,” I answer, and move to her; the old guy walks away and winks at me; I wave at him, incredulous. It happens this way now. Why was he sitting there, in my bank of seats, in a deserted terminal? He wasn’t on my flight. There were no other flights in that terminal, no bar, no store, no reason to be there – and yet, there he was, to wake me with a rap on the seat rack, five minutes before my flight’s departure, only to leave immediately thereafter with nothing more than a knowing wink. I don’t question it anymore. I love it. I cherish it. I worship it. At this point in my mind, the future in Patagonia seems so razor thin that I employ every device available to feel the fear rightly. “What the hell are you doing? Why didn’t you just stay in Texas? You know it. You’ve done it. You’re loved ones are there. Why are you doing this?” I pop in the Air cassette and breathe. I’m so exhausted that I fall asleep in minutes, despite the rich opportunity of the moment to chamuyar with the good looking girls running the cabin. When I wake, we are over the Andes; I see endless ranges of mountains utterly devoid of humans, and river valleys and glaciers and snow and rock and erosion, and I remember why I’m returning. I smile. Excited electricity surges through my channels. Plane touches down in Mendoza, Argentina. Throw my cargo of way-too-much-shit into a hotel room and head to the restaurant where Marcelo works. I’m starving; Marcelo’s restaurant is a godsend – asparagus, palm hearts, roasted red peppers, the best veggies. I eat until I am perfectly satiated. Then Marcelo insists that I try the best cuts from the parrilla. When Marcelo offers, one does not refuse, and so I accepted. It’s true, the beef in Argentina is the best in the world. Then he brings me a bottle of wine and insists that I try it. “Bueno, pero una copa, nada mas.” He leaves the bottle on the table. I partake. It is 3:00 in the afternoon. Wine flows in Argentina – the best wine. I’m no aficionado, I just like what I like, and Argentine wine is up there. After a ridiculous lunch to kill a carnivore, and a bottle of Malbec, I bid farewell to Marcelo and make for Plaza Independencia where I pass out on a bench for a long afternoon siesta. Three hours later: “Eh, what the? Who’s? Ughh? Oyeee… Marcelo! Que onda che!?” Marcelo found me in the park where we caught up on the past three months before making a night of it in a basement boliche packed with the beautiful dancing co-eds for which Mendoza is famous. I think we closed it down some time around six in the am, which is early in Argentina. I woke the next morning, “Where am I?,” totally disoriented. I love waking from one dream into another. The hotel room was tiny and it took me several minutes to figure out where I was. I love traveling. Is this a way of life or an addiction? I don’t much care. If I’m addicted, let me die from it. After a brief afternoon mate with Marcelo’s family, the bags and myself board a plane bound for the long anticipated Buenos Aires. Arrive late, end up staying in a flophouse in San Telmo. Lunch the next day followed by a full afternoon… of sleep. That evening I meet Ximena from Palermo at Lomo, where we drink wine until I am dizzified by her sexy mouth and accent. Los Porteños, people from Buenos Aires, are a different breed. It’s true, to understand Argentina, one must spend time in Buenos Aires. The next night my path wound randomly into a bohemian jazz club – don’t ask me the name because I don’t remember it – the band was nothing great, but the guy playing the saxophone was good. That night was cold and rainy and windy. I stepped out of the bar into the weather, trees blowing outside, soaked sexy women scrambling to get out of the driving rain. “More wine or sleep?” I ask myself… Next day, Recoleta; I’m cold, wet, alone, in a city of 14 million people, hate being in this giant sprawling, screeching, suffocating jungle of pollution, just want mountains and rivers and eagles. I am lost. Truly lost. I do not belong here, no matter what kind of mental shit I try to pull, every ounce of my being is crying for Patagonia. Cold, rainy, windy. Duck into a corner joint for lunch; Air Supply (I liked the song when I was a kid, not so much these days); rolled a cigarette and lit the match; the rich brown eyes of the baby girl at the table next to mine crushed me with their innocence and I shook out the match. Next night I meet some actor who is famous in Buenos Aires – it’s his birthday. As I’m the only gringo in the bar, I become a novelty and the actor’s new drinking partner for the night. OK, fine, endless champagne… and headaches the next day. When I tell the actor I live in Bariloche, he introduces me to one of his friends who also lives in Bariloche. We hit it off, I roll us each a cigarette, and we proceed to chamuyar, “bullshit” in Texanese. He asks me if I’ve seen a duende yet and I answer that I’ve only heard one. He then recounts a duende story – the most interesting one I’ve heard to date. He then tells me that Bariloche is a very energetic place; that on the night of September 10, 2001, all the power in Bariloche went out, and the police station was inundated with calls of OVNI sightings. Interesante, no? I spend the next two days with Ben via email trying to revive an ailing keyboard, manage to get in some good sleep and live music. La Boca was cool. A slow moving train hauling heavy-duty industrial coils halted my path and I waited patiently along with a growing contingent of pedestrians; no warning signs, no gate, children playing a meter away from the whine of steel wheels, enveloped by a bright labyrinth of colored buildings. The train finally passed, meandering resumed, and the blare of tango seduced me to a large rusted speaker resting on a concrete loading dock perched above a patch of asphalt, not special, except for the sultry young couple dancing tango with the drivers of oncoming traffic. I grabbed an outdoor table at a nearby café, ordered a cortado, kicked back. Children played soccer in the street, two men worked on the engine of an early model pick-up truck, a group of mother’s talked on a loading dock, one of them breastfeeding her infant. Later that night I waited for a taxi under the canopy of a parrilla as rain fell in waves from black nothingness through the antique glow of street lights. The wet sheen and puddles on the cobbled street beneath two pizza delivery mopeds glowed red with the flicker of the pizzeria's neon sign. A taxi finally pulled up, I jumped in, and in search of one wild night for which Buenos Aires is famous, I asked the taxista which of the chic trendy neighborhoods held the evening’s most promise. “They’re all the same,” he said, “they just smell different.” Three months of traveling and six cities later, I touched down at the Bariloche airport, laptop sick, but otherwise unscathed. Stacked my bags on a luggage cart and headed for a taxi; the laptop took a dive for the pavement, my heart stopped briefly, and twenty minutes later I stepped into my apartment, a wreck, just as I had left it three months prior, after a day spent with Quigs on a mountain of fresh powder. Bariloche is a ghost town on Sundays; the afternoon was gray and wet and lonely, just as many days here had been last autumn, when a lady working in a kiosko told me that one must have a strong inner fire to live here through the winter. The clouds cleared late that night and I stepped onto the patio and looked up – there are a lot of stars down here. The realization that the laptop was in critical condition from the luggage cart debacle came crashing down on Monday afternoon. “Always back up your data,” is my father’s mantra – “damn, nine months of work gone. You should listen to Dad.” Rather than wrestle with full-on panic for the balance of the evening, I headed to South Bar for a beer with Leandro, which went from an occupancy of three people to the hundred-strong Congress of Argentine Biochemists in less than ten minutes. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that Argentine biochemists aren’t sexy. The conversation with Nica from Rosario, who specializes in parapsychology, went deep fast and took a turn for the “out there” with equal velocity. I love the “out there,” but this night I didn’t have it in me and retired early. Tuesday was spent in the backroom of an apartment across town jammed with computer equipment and wires and chips and boosted software, with a wild-eyed character who breathed life back into the Dell. I learned that night that the biochemists partied at Leandro’s pub until 7:00 am, leaving nothing in their wake but one bottle of beer. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that Argentine biochemists don’t know how to party. On Wednesday, I finally retrieved my mountain gear from a friend’s basement… and my stereo. Brian played a few songs on his guitar from Some Devil the whole time I was in Austin. He burned a copy for Lynn just before I left Texas. I popped it in. A smile spread across my face as a flood of new and special memories exploded in my heart, filling me with love for Brian and Austin and everyone back home. Bariloche is a dynamic place, lots of fluye. After a week, it’s obvious that much has changed. But Lynn the poet is here, and so are el muy loco Dario and Willy, los Cubiquitos, La Colina, aspartame-free chiclets, the girls at La Esquina, the guys at the gym, the dog that hangs out on the doormat of Telecom at the corner of Rolando y Mitre, Monica and Juan Carlos, Pablo and Leandro, and of course, the Baron. The beautiful Kim of A.L.A.S. fame is also making a guest appearance this month, and what a pleasure it has been to get to know her. The mountains are still here, and the rivers. So is Nahuel Huapi. The fly rod has new line. So I reflect: “What am I thankful for this year?” Well, my life has been filled with blessings for as long as I can remember, and those blessings have flowed, without exception, from the people in my life. What I’m thankful for this year is easy – the web of love that binds me to the people in my life – you. Thanks for being you. Thanks for blessing my life with reasons to be thankful. PS – The month of December had me in a cabin for almost two weeks, as of this writing, my laptop has a virus that is blocking me from transfering files, and I will be in Chile for New Year's, so even though the bulk of this was written on Thanksgiving Day, you will probably not receive it until after the New Year. Please consider this belated best wishes, in advance, for a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! And to all a good night!!!
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