Happy visit review

I went to the Texas State Fair twice this year. I still didn’t see all there was to see. I love the Texas State Fair. But the coolest thing was the people who went there with me.

First, I took a friend I’ve known since first grade who came to visit me for a weekend. I treasure my times with faraway friends, and this is the first time an old friend from my hometown has come to visit me on my home turf. I’m not used to being around someone who shares so much of my life history. It was very refreshing.

My grandparents stopped by a couple days later. I went to the fair again with them. Their average age is 80, as they put it, and they traveled around the country in a camper van for several months this year. They used to run a campground in the summers, and Grandpa was a forest ranger for a while, and they still cultivate their adaptability.

“You know, we’re campers,” Grandma says when I apologize for the limitations of my guest suite. “We’re used to it.”

My friends and coworkers were amazed to hear that they slept on my futon for a couple of nights. We walked all over Dallas in cold weather. We rode buses and trains and trolleys. We climbed in and out of my little two-door car. As octogenarians go—as anyone goes—they’re low-maintenance guests.

It has struck me lately that Grandma and Grandpa never complain. Being with them is nothing but pleasure. Grandpa is curious about everything and has great stories. Grandma is humorous and sincere. They’re both good at being grandparently, making you feel special and interesting and loved. And I like seeing them work together like people who’ve been together for decades and decades do.

Forever, O Lord, your word
is firmly fixed in the heavens.
Your faithfulness endures to all generations;
you have established the earth, and it stands fast.
By your appointment they stand this day,
for all things are your servants.
If your law had not been my delight,
I would have perished in my affliction.
I will never forget your precepts,
for by them you have given me life.
I am yours; save me,
for I have sought your precepts.
The wicked lie in wait to destroy me,
but I consider your testimonies.
I have seen a limit to all perfection,
but your commandment is exceedingly broad.

Back in time

I want to share some experiences from a trip I took a month ago. These scenes may seem weird, but for me they were refreshing and encouraging. I think I’ve lived in the city too long.

It’s an overcast Labor Day in Quanah, where the panhandle meets northeast Texas. Nothing is moving in all of historic downtown except me and a kid on a bicycle. Nowhere here looks like anywhere anyone would want to go, even on a business day. The department store has closed down. The bookstore has two empty shelves straddling the floor at odd angles. I finish my sandwich and drive back towards the highway, past the courthouse square. As I pass the courthouse on my left, I see three men come out of the police station on my right. The first one is a tall sheriff in a ten-gallon hat and long dark brown pants. I don’t remember anything about the second one. The third is a prisoner, without handcuffs, in a baggy black-and-white-striped suit, glaring at me.

It’s late afternoon and it’s raining now, 100 miles from Dallas. I pull off for gas but the pumps are all taken. I park and wait in a long line for a sticky blue bathroom while flies and small kids circulate around me. When I get to my car again I see that the gas station next door is completely free. I guess it’s because the three gas pumps, one for diesel, one for super unleaded, one for regular unleaded, are exposed to the sky. So I drive over. The lower half of an inscription (“after 9 p.m.”) is taped to the pump, written on a lined piece of paper in blurred magic marker. It’s not raining too hard. When my tank is full I remember the amount and go inside, where the clerk puts her cigarette down in the ashtray and smiles at me. There are a couple of families waiting for their food in the next room over, a warm, ugly old diner. “$18.93,” I say, handing her a $20, since the sign in here says they don’t accept credit cards. There is a jar full of black plastic combs on the counter by the register, 49 cents each.

Feels like spring

During the past weary months, Shelley’s lines changed seasons in my head:

If summer comes, can fall be far behind?

We Texans are coming out of our caves to breathe the fresh air and sunlight after weeks and weeks of over-100-degree temperatures. So, even though fall is what we expect to happen next, can you blame this poor mole for sniffing spring?

Pluviosity

I can’t remember the last time I was so happy to see it rain. Check out the U. S. drought monitor.

Only in Texas

Trees

I like what’s happening in Addison. I’m not sure how long the town has existed or if it has a historic downtown, but they’ve built an urban center called Addison Circle, with shops, cafes, and markets along the street and apartments and condos above. There are plenty of trees and numerous lovely park squares like you might see in London or Portland or another civilized, people-friendly city. You come out at noon and eat your lunch on a bench, in juniper-shady Bosque Park or along the central mall under rows of redbuds, while people walk around and fountains splash.

Even though it was 95-100 degrees during my lunches these past two days, I didn't sweat. I had my hat and the shade of trees. You only start to sweat when you get into your mobile gas-powered greenhouse and sit still in the sun surrounded by blazing concrete.

In a roundabout at the end of Addison Circle there is a vast blue sculpture. It’s shaped like the end of an elephant’s trunk or a snorkel, from a distance. It’s like a giant blue duct flaring out of the ground. You can see it from all around and it draws you towards this urban center. I can’t say I fully appreciate it, but I figure the fact that it’s blue is reason enough for it to be there. How nice that someone allowed someone to build it.

It looks sort of messy, but you work with what you have, I guess, when you are building gigantic tubular artwork. It seems to do quite well at what it does. It is a circle of big thick blue tubes flung upwards and outwards in exuberant curves, and the ends of them support tubular meshes with signs and figures attached to them. One way I thought about it was that they’re pieces of paper held up to the sky, kindergarten artwork held high in pride, the work of our hands presented for the approval of someone really tall.

I dreamed a few nights ago that I was in an old town of rickety buildings and creaky floors and secret entrances. There were giant owls inhabiting the land. When I finally glimpsed a few of their lower legs through a window, I was thrilled. In the dream, the fact that they were clearly giant people dressed up in ill-fitting brown flannel costumes did not compromise their grandeur. My heart leapt at the sight of these baggy stockings and quixotic hanging flaps of felt.

I saw them gathering outside on the sidewalk and waiting with the more ordinary citizens of the town for the king to come outside. He came out of the modest next-door apartment, and I stood in my musty room with its wooden floorboards, looking at the small crowd through the window, pondering the idea of these people’s allegiance to a king. People in my society would not feel comfortable showing reverence and obedience to such a man. But Giant Owls & Co. were clearly delighted to speak face-to-face with this humble-looking gentleman outside his front door.

Then I was in a big musty room with an old schoolmate waiting for the king to come in. We had written out an important declaration to present to him. He came in, and I knew how the neighborhood folks had felt. What a splendid feeling to be in his presence and to have his ear. I was just about to present my paper when I woke up, to my great disappointment.

Curse Texas!

Scarcely six weeks after clasping me into her bosom, Texas has spit me out like a piece of gristle.

I used to be pretty gung-ho about running before dawn when it was “cool,” but several times recently I’ve run in the evenings and survived. I thought I had developed tolerance of the heat.

But clearly there is a difference even between 7 in the evening, when I had performed these recent tolerable runs, and 4:30 in the afternoon. Today I was playing the metaphor game to take my mind off the misery. The best comparison I could come up with for my sensations at the moment was the way it feels when you take your bread out of the oven and the hot air comes whooshing up into your face. Unfortunately the whooshing had only occurred when I was running into the wind; on the way back the only movement was life-giving moisture trickling down my body.

Then I saw a happy sight! Ahead there was shade—not tree shade, but cloud shade! A general cloud was providing shelter from the sun just ahead. I thought benevolently of Elijah and his hand-sized cloud. Mine was even bigger and better, befitting this great state.

Then I remembered I was running in the same direction as the wind. The shade was advancing ahead of me! I would never reach it! Curse this abominable state!

I plotted to transfix idle guests at next week’s wedding with my glittering eye, and force upon them my shocking tale.

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
We could nor laugh nor wail;
Something something something something
and cried, “A sail! A sail!”

Why had I memorized such a boring stanza? I wondered to myself. Yet this was the one that kept coming to me.

There was no one to blame for my misery but Texas, who in her laziness chose this angle to sprawl out on the globe, making the entire day inhospitable for humans wishing to take the slightest advantage of their natural mobility.

She has sent me no more glossy water-snakes. The only notable wildlife I saw today was one of those nasty mutant eyeball-looking acorns. Texas, I renounce you!

Hail, Texas!

Some of you, like me, may have been required to read I Heard the Owl Call My Name in eighth grade English. I forget what the significance of the owl's call was. It was either a portent of death or a signal beginning the rite of passage into manhood. I bring this up because I saw a portent of parallel importance this morning. I saw my first big snake.

What this means, I reckon, is that the Republic of Texas is finally welcoming me without reservation, finally opening up her truest self to me, finally clasping me into her bosom. When one thinks of Texas, one often thinks of big snakes, but I have lived here for two years and five months without a single glimpse of one. It's been difficult.

It was a grand, thick serpent, nosing its way onto the bike path at White Rock Lake. As I pedaled past it returned on itself, folding itself beautifully alongside itself as only a creature with such majestic bendable qualities can do. I have a horrible memory for colors, so I forget whether its underside was a nuclear-moon-mold tint of green or a toxic-oil-spill hue of orange, but I am certain that it differed from the dull matte finish of most of its dark body. It was immensely satisfying to see.

Ah, Texas! Thank you!

Dallas, Dublin

yes I said yes I will Yes.

These final words of Ulysses are the title of "A Celebration of James Joyce, Ulysses, and 100 Years of Bloomsday," edited by Nola Tully. It's a fun book. I got it as part of my quest to bring Bloomsday to Dallas. As far as I know, there are not even any Bloomsday celebrations in Texas!

It's weird how quickly one can absorb the Texan rhetoric about the state's being a world in itself, lacking nothing, doing everything better than everywhere else. I mean, it's easy to mock this attitude, because of course it's not true, but part of you wants to make it true. So when you see something lacking (like Bloomsday), rather than saying, "Aha! So much for bigger and better! Silly Texans!", you try to help Texas out. You try to make it complete. Rather than refusing to believe the myth, you work to make reality match it.

Dallas, Dublin. It can happen. Anything can happen for a day.

This (yes I said yes I will Yes.) is a really fun book, like I said. It's kind of a hodgepodge, including a term paper by Tennessee Williams ("speaking of Ulysses, there is, in the first place, too much of it"), a chart in which ten critics rank various authors, composers, characters, and periodicals on a scale of 25 to -25 (Krazy Kat gets a composite 7.6, Lenin a 0, Flaubert a 16.8, Joan of Arc a 3.3, Teddy Roosevelt a -9.5), quotes from friends and critics about Joyce and his novel, descriptions of Bloomsday celebrations around the world, essays, forewords, and so on.

Robert Spoo's essay on copyright is relevant while turmoil rages over that Harvard girl and her silly book. Spoo says, "The mustache on the Mona Lisa always washes off," which seems sound to me. Not that the people she borrowed from were deathless literary masters, but in any case time will tell who's the better writer. We sort and sift. We waste time on unworthy things. That's life.

I was sort of confused by the collection of statements about Joyce. You have people who say he was a true, loyal friend and all that, and then people who say he was insufferable and conceited. I guess you could say such divergent things about a lot of people. It reminds me that there are a lot of people I don't really want to be friends with, but I'm glad they can find people who do. It balances things out.

Valuing trees

A fellow member of a native plant society mailing list estimated how much the trees on his campus in north Texas were worth. He decided about $10 million.

"Since it is very difficult to move a 40' Oak, especially a long distance, I simply figured $30K minimum for a specimen tree.... and I still feel this value is way low," he writes.