Finding an answer to the question of the previous blog, we discover that Homer is overwhelmed.

I really hate discovering what I can’t do.

Maybe you’ve heard about the flooding in Texas. A big ol’ storm system decided to sit over central Texas, north of San Antonio. As a result, a huge flood of water is coursing its way down the watershed toward the gulf of Mexico, taking out a couple dozen or so small towns along the way.

Interestingly enough, my parents own a house on the Guadalupe river, just north of New Braunfels, the flooded town you’ve probably seen on the weather channel if you pay attention to such things.

The house has been under water for a few days. Really big water, too. The kind of water that filled man-made Canyon Lake upstream, and then started spilling over the dam’s spillway at 3000 cubic feet per second. There’s never been a flood this bad in the region, though there have been bad ones.

The house is their vacation home, so it’s not as huge a tragedy as if it were their place of residence, but it’s still tragic. Mostly because the house is built above the 100-year flood plain, and this is the second major flood in, I think, 5 years. The last flood all but destroyed the house, and they had just put the finishing touches on the repairs a few months ago. Now they start over on it.

I’m sitting here in Austin waiting for the call. My parents are going to let me know when they get to the flood area, and then I can go join them in shoveling mud while trying not to be overwhelmed.

I’m in Houston, TX, now. No, no… Your pity is appreciated but not necessary.

Heh.

Anyway. Tonight was one of those lovely nights that epitomize Houston to me. Big lovely pink clouds at dusk, reflecting in the chrome bumpers of the SUVs. Sparkling crackling electric light filtering down through humid air to illumiate asphalt and the manicured tiny green spaces in the parking lot. Walk into the fast food place, order, make a stupid joke the server doesn’t get. Eat while the next booth over emits one side of a phone conversation… “Yah, he said a hundred and twenty four thousand. Can you believe? The place is only worth a hundred.” Children fight in the booth on the other side. Exquisitely manicured Texas businessman eating a sloppy hamburger at a table covered in formica imprinted with gaudy patterns. He’s tall and looks like he shaves three times a day, and combs his hair twice that. He has a bulky gold ring, a money clip with semiprecious stones mounted on it. Pinstripe suit. Shiny shoes. He moves like a stage magician. I’m in Houston now, where money talks and greed turns you into this guy.

Live in New York City? Want to avoid surveillance cameras?

Consult this database.

Pictures from the camp.

Wandering around the South Harpeth river, just down the hill from the cabin, I found a row of these plants with extraordinarily shallow roots.

Later, I snapped this pic of my uncle Bill and three of his grandkids.

And finally, I told my dad to smile for the camera, and he said he would as long as the picture was in my ‘blog.

My grandmother will be 99 next week. We’re here in Nashville to celebrate her birthday.

Usually, for the 4th, the whole extended family gathers at a log cabin in the countryside near Nashville for a big ol’ potluck, where we cut watermelon with string and complain about the heat. And since longevity is a family trait, it’s an increasing strain on many family members to go out there, just from the heat alone. So this year we’re going to celebrate Ma’s 99th in air-conditioned splendor at the retirement community where she lives.

Here’s a picture of the camp. Here’s another.

That’s the setting. The story goes like this:

Yesterday, since it was the 4th, some of us went out to the log cabin, the name of which is Echo Lodge, but which we call ‘the camp.’ Some genetic call surged deep within our beings and we had to go there, so we did. This included Ma, of 99 years.

Thankfully it wasn’t as hot as it could have been, so there were a few moments of ease and comfort. We sat on the porch and looked at family pictures, old and new.

Now, at 99 I hope I’ll be able to remember as much as Ma does, but she still has a few lapses now and then, where she forgets who she’s with, or what was going on. And a few of times during the afternoon she’d look at me and say something like, “Oh, I remember who you are…” and smile, pleased with herself, and pleased that her relatives were with her.

But one time, she said this: “I remember you. You’re the one who had trouble understanding. Understanding what was going on.” Of course this sent my mind into all kinds of tangents… If only you knew, lady… And what else can you say to something like that other than to joke, “I’m not so sure that’s changed…”

Anyway. It was nice to be there. I’m not sure what’s on the plate for today. Perhaps we’ll work on setting up the party, which is tomorrow.

I’m in Nashville, FINALLY.

I set out Sunday night from Denver, and have been driving or riding ever since. Like Neil Finn says:

When I’m away from home
And it’s a way of life
Now I’m a-flying high
Now it’s a way of life
Now I’m a wheeling gull
And now I come to rest
Under a lion rock
Over marine parade
Maybe this time
Here I’ll stay

Of course, I’m not flying or near a marine parade, but that song always comes to mind when I travel this much. I especially like the image of the lion rock.

I’m exhausted.

After writing the last blog about dreams and waking, I had some very vivid dreams. They were repeats with slightly different spin (I was Count Duku from Star Wars in part of one), but quite vivid and overwhelming enough to wake me up at 5:30am.

The most striking part was at the end when just before waking up. It was a sort of ceremony involving elaborate music with drums and chanting and singing, and a magical circular altar where a priestess unfolded a circle of cloth that was a face. She’d fold the cloth and unfold it again, and it would be two faces, then four, and so forth until it was an infinite number of faces. The music rose to a huge crescendo and I woke up.

Human:

It’s 7am. I never get up at 7am. Whose idea was this, to get up at 7am? Sure, we have 800 miles to go today, but 7am? Fug.

Primate:

Tribe awake. Wake up with tribe. Eat together ‘free continental breakfast before 10am.’ Talk and eat and drink and say happy things with tribe. Tribe of nomads. Tribe leaves motel, does tribal things.


Travelling with your family is much different from travelling with just yourself. We’re in a motel in Texarkana, TX, which is so named because it’s on the Texas/Arkansas border, just north of the northwest corner of Louisiana.

I remember that during elementary school, I think it was fourth grade, we had to write a chamber of commerce and, using whatever they sent back, write a report on their town. For some reason I ended up writing about Texarkana.

I’m sitting in this motel room unable to sleep, for a few reasons, but the most blameworthy reason is that our next-door neighbors are very, ahem, busy. They make a bunch of noise, and then someone knocks on the door, and then there’s some quiet, and then some more noise and another knock on the door. Now it’s stopped… I wonder for how long.

The A/C turns itself on, pumping dry cool into the room. Someone walks by on the balcony/hallway ouside. Distant semi-trailer compression brakes.

There’s something I’ll never get used to in motels. The smoke alarm. A single unblinking red eye on the ceiling. Just invisible enough to be easily forgotten, just visible enough to catch your attention *again* for the thousandth time and make you remind yourself that it’s a smoke alarm and not some one-eyed alien creature poised to suck out your brain. You ask: You’re seriously scared there might be an alien creature crawling on the ceiling? And my answer is: Yes, part of me is, if you substitute ‘unknown source of barely-liminal red light’ for ‘brain-sucking alien creature.’ I can only describe it to you as such, because you probably don’t know what ‘liminal’ means.

Shortly before I picked up this computer to start writing, I was trying to get to sleep. My mind was wandering, and all it could come up with was regret. The night of a thousand regrets. These regrets hound me. They turn me into a fox who doesn’t enjoy being cornered. They make me feel bad, and make me think about what I *could* have done, all while I’m trying to get to sleep. Sometimes I think that all my life, both waking and dreaming, is an attempt to minimize this bridge moment between those two states.

Waking life is like when you’re playing Monopoly, and you got off to a bad start, and you keep landing on other people’s spaces all the time, and all you can do is just roll the dice and move around, knowing full well you’re going to lose. You might get out of jail free once or twice, but for sure you’ll end up out of the game. One way or another. Dreaming life is like having a conversation about metaphysics with someone while you massage each other’s feet. Frivolous meaning and pleasure.

Now I try to sleep again. Wish me luck.