Shalloween Freedom

OK, for once, I didn't feel the effects of Shalloween. There were no random make outs and slurs laced with drugs or Smirnoff. And, could this be a first? No bare asses hanging out of any costumes. Phew. If I saw one more slutty maid's butt...........

I was with an awesome group with inventive costumes. I mean, the fact that I could dress up like Sylvia Plath and actually have people recognize me is a big step up from gettin shwasted on 6th Street. Instead, there was creative concoctions to drink from and a strobe light that made the beams of light coming at you palpable. There is nothing better than seeing a well-organized Halloween party. I mean, a fire pit out back, a skeleton greeter at a creaky door, and even ghouls awaiting you in the bathroom. To say the least, I was dancing with more than one bloody creature last night.

Ladies.....Halloween has not always been our most adorable and classy day of the year (in fact, most of your costumes start with slutty as your adjective) but, this year, I saw many of you looking downright homely. But hey, I got quite a few laughs, and could it be that the evolution of men (or perhaps I am just entering a more pleasing and mature age bracket) is really occurring and they now really appreciate a good, well-thought out ensemble? I mean, smart people are sexy, and it's about time we all started acknowledging this!

I will give away one Halloween outfit that I saw, in case you need something for next year....some guy bought REALLY hairy arm/sleeve things and said he was the 2nd Amendment. Can you guess what he was? The right to bare arms! Brilliant, I mean really top notch.

So get your pens out and start documenting for next year, because let's face it, you're getting too old to be a sassy devil or the oxymoron that is a slutty angel.

Happy Halloween!!!

Austin City Budget Limits

So, as most of you know, ACL was this weekend. ACL is one of the biggest music festivals in Texas, and certainly the 2nd biggest in Austin (second only to South by Southwest). But, the problem is that it can be a little pricey, and you have to rely on potentially pretentious Hipsters to choose bands you actually like. This year I, unfortunately, was too poor to go on any of the days, and worse yet, I had to watch all the college students around me wave around their 3-day wrist bands like they were snooty religious zealots showing off purity rings to the damned. How is that I have a reasonable job and can't afford a one-day pass, when these fools don't work at all and are going to the entire music ensemble? Well, I guess that is just life, and I have to admit I have blown a VERY substantial amount of money travelling, so I can not be too harsh of a judge.

On the brighter, and creatively frugal side, I did make an effort to at least hear some music. Miss Heather and I biked our butts downtown and, once seeing the herds of people, decided to park our bikes prematurely. In case you don't live here, let me tell you that it is not SO close from downtown to Zilker. But, it's October, and people were walking with vigor and biking with sloppy grins so all was fine. I even saw a rather mystical man painting with the same intensity I have seen mother's exhibit while tracing the lines of their daughter's faces. At times it can be nice, too, to be swept up in the crowds of others (especially the intriguing outdoorsy crowds and those wearing flowy skirts and Indiana-Jones type hats.

After finding the correct, ACL outsider/hovering crowd that was the same likeness as us, we proceeded to wander the trails and outskirts of the temporary fencing in order to listen to any and all bands. What was not expected, was the wildlife that seemed particularly vivacious on that Saturday afternoon. Turtles were abundant, and jumping off logs like synchronized swimmers in snug one-pieces, and we saw a few feisty swans have a go at some grackles. Per usual, there was that one couple that insisted upon feeding these "delicate" creatures, only to find that the power they can cock their necks with is really quite frightening. So, while some people moshed on the insides of the festival, I climbed out onto a sturdy branch and watched as the most peaceful part of Austin refused to be rippled from its lazy afternoon rituals. And hey, we even got to grab a beer and watch some football afterwards, so all in all I would say it was a rousing success (and very reasonable workout) for one day!

I suppose the best part of Austin is that even though you FEEL like everyone else has money, in reality, there are many people that are in the same precarious, unsteady boat as you, and you know what? You're gonna have a lot more fun winding through the river than the others, and it feels kinda nice when you finally let yourself fall in :-)

Besides, isn't it better to have those unobtainable dreams dangling above you like lovely bobbing clouds than to pluck them down one by one like bruised apples?

Fall-ing

Some people just look at the sky and don't listen.

There is always silence, if you seek to find it. It is hard to be around these people, who are disappointed at the slightest thing, and can be surrounded by friends and all the while wishing for someone else.

I too, am guilty of this. Do I not crave my friends from home? Do I not project their faces, qualities, quirks upon the skinned slabs of others? Yes, indeed I do. But I do try and appreciate those around me, and instead of making irksome faces at those that do not come, I try to hug those that did.

You must cherish the marbles you do have, and put them in your velvet casing even if they are scratched and not as beautiful as the ones you once had. If you don't, they will roll out, one by one, and become lost in the edges of carved tables and sneaky floors. Better to have any game to play than none at all.

But I am guilty, now, of judgement. And that is a gruesome thing to be a part of. So I will just sip my coffee and appreciate this lovely Fall Sunday where all I do is Spring up into the person I want to be on the weekends (but rarely get around to being). One that fills their blustery days with tennis, coffee shops, bikes and baking.

Yes, I think today will be a lovely day, and I will sing to the leaves. I suppose they may be scared, so close to death as they are. But we will celebrate the life, the life, and watch as they spend their last days here in a fiery blaze that we will think about deep into the bleakness of winter. There is always a beauty at the end, for it is a continuous wheel that begins again.

It will set you free

There is a tide inside of us, that whips and tosses all of our sanity until it is frothy and trapped in undercurrents of despair. I have felt this, the strength of the ocean. Recently I have found myself walking up to it and letting it chase me up the beach until the game grows old and I know longer have control over how much I am made to run.

And I thought, the cacophony of the ocean could never be silenced. And if it could, is there any joy in it? For when we are given silence, are we not holding our ear out to to the sky just waiting for a speck of sound?

But this, it is too loud. I do know the difference between a hymn and the sound of a broken string.

Through grace, through months of beatings by this body of water, I have sooner found that no matter where I stand, I am an island. That I am made for others to want to destroy but I reach deeper than my land shows, and there is hidden strength beneath the line of water.

And perhaps the waves come for me not because I am weak, but because I am that glorious land that has risen, risen above the sea.

Now, as I lay my head to sleep, the ocean cradles me in its fury until I am woven in its ways and we create a work of art that has an incandescence.

That incandescence is what will set you free.

Honesty fits a little smug

Alright, so.....I am supposed to be honest so I will be. I guess I do as I'm told. I woke up this morning, rubbed my eyes with the unnerving feeling that my roommates had left the house over an hour earlier. But, they are getting fat checks so no bother to feel TOO guilty, as my "part-time job" so far has paid me nothing for the HUNDREDS (dare I say thousands?) of hours I have been enslaved to its creation. So, I decided I would take a trip to the library given my particularly flexible schedule. I was gathering up Dylan Thomas, throwing him on top of D.H. Lawrence while slipping in the fabulousness of Gertrude Stein. While I gathered six wonderful books, including the one I LOVED about the friendship between Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, I found myself pondering....

Why am I so reluctant to let GO of books? In every city, most small towns even, these books are readily available and in circulation. And yet, I find myself wanting to OWN OWN OWN them. I have grown used to how their spines rest on my dresser, how the colors of their covers add contrast to the others. It is like a big messy painting over there, and when I remove even one, their is a significant loss in vibrancy.

I would like this to be the ONLY reason. But, if we are being honest, then I to admit that a part of me wants people to KNOW what I read. For them to see a copy of Dante or Kundera and know that I have read them, digested them. ICK. That is painful to even write. But, it's true, isn't it? I mean, I think a lot of people feel this way, which doesn't validate it in any way, but it does make it a much more interesting topic to delve into.

Think about it. We are choosing books based on the complete trajectory of not only the great literary canon (which is painfully limiting) but also by how the books represent US. They tell people how smart we are, how meta-cognitive, how worldly and well-travelled. They even tell about our fantasy life; can you be swept up in the allegories of C.S. Lewis? Facebook, mass-produced clothing, Target, you are constantly trying to chisel the individual statue that is you. You want to look so effortlessly polished and unique that sometimes the statue becomes too thin in places, from over-exertion, and it begins to disintegrate.

I am guilty of this too. Certainly the US heightens this feeling of wanting to be ORIGINAL. But why do we pine for it, when it is already innately true? My fingerprints are the most rare things in existence, because they can not be replicated or copied or seen on anyone or anything out there. But somehow, I want someone to see an old floral Victorian chair and think, "That is so Kristen."

Strange, because no inanimate object can BE me. Only I can.

Why are we playing this elaborate game of cut and paste, where we run around trying to glue claim on simple things? My hands feel sticky from it, and sometimes the scissors slice too deep and we end up losing more of ourselves than we intended; all while trying to claim territory for our selves. We can't just shove a flag into a style or song and say it is ours, that it is the reflection of some fickle piece of our soul. It is just ridiculous and, dare I say, SHAMELESSLY self-indulgent.

But I am guilty of this a thousand times over. Every day, every minute, I am trying to cultivate a uniqueness when all I really want is to feel a sameness with someone else.

So for today, I will drop the library books off, push them away like precious jewels into the unyielding tide, and I won't look back because there are thousands more waiting, breathing on the shelves, for me to choose them and bring them home into the cozy nook of my room.

Maybe this time I will read them as they are, and hate them or love them based on the guttural, not the societal. I can let them speak to me, in whatever language escapes the dusty lips of the page, and I will listen.

(We can dream, can't we?)

The Epoch slots of being

I sit here in a coffee shop named "Epoch." It is, so far, my favorite coffee house that I have found in my tour of Austin. It is a neat pocket of Hyde Park (a northern neighborhood) that stretches from a funky street filled with vintage clothing stores and ambiguously-named businesses. After being in the mind of my 17 yr old character, Ian, all morning I find I am quite excited to write from my own perspective. It can be quite exhausting keeping up with the elaborate plot of Ian's life.

I start to wonder about this Epoch word, and learn that it is a subdivision of the geological timescale that is dependent on rock layering. We are currently in the Holocene epoch. What most intrigues me is the obsession of man to label increments of time. That we are so dependent on these labellings to quantify change, when innately, change is endless, inevitable, and impossible to swallow.

I wonder, about the layering of rock, and how humans can be labeled in the same fashion. How we are each just layers of experience, that are stacked from our ribs to our softest, most exposed pieces of skin. There are so many things that make up the rock; heartbreak, sadness, loss, joy, hope. When I start to feel that I am crumbling, it is nice to know that I am made up of many levels, and that when a part of me disintegrates, that it only makes way for the next, fresh layer to become exposed. That the pain is part of this grand stripping and the only thing we really fear is the anticipation of the transition. My layer now, is sandy and feels like it sinks into every part of me. But, I know, in the parts of me that are open to truth, that I am made from the holiest parts of earth. Even when it all falls away, erodes and violently cracks until our ears bleed, that there is always more beneath.

Sometimes, the shininess of the redemption can make you cry.

And there are some people, that can dig in you, feel your grittiness in their hands, and love you anyways. They are the excavation team that are trained to find every last uneven part of you, that will flatten you out when you become uneasy mounds of self-deprecation.

Maybe you have to own a shovel, to be my friend. Or, better yet, maybe I am only given people that enjoy geological surveying. They wear those white safety helmets and goggles, and smile with fat grins at the challenge.

I hope, that I am at least that piece of earth that feels like home to others. That when they're tired, no matter which layer I'm on, that they can roll out their sleeping bags and lay upon me. And as they stare up at the sky, and I cradle them and weep, that they see all the complexities of the stars and translate that into something wondrous.

For, I ponder, what is the point of being constructed like this, formed by symmetrical compartments of evolving land, without being able to feel the weight of your lovely little feet?

Drumsticks that can't be eaten

Yeah yeah, you live in Austin and you think you are a ROCK STAR! I am sad to say that your geographical location doesn't make you Kurt Cobain. I mean, if I was moving to London, I would not start saying things like, "Oh! I've to go to the loo!" Ick. So why, I beg you, must you pick up a guitar and strum with your fat little fingers and yell incoherent words at the blue walls of my house? I feel that my weird hobbies only harass me, only batter the skeletal structures of ME, so it is especially irritating when someones pipe dream comes splashing into the precious spaces between my ears.
But, I do want to support musicians, and that infiltrating creative energy that slips in the cracks of Austin's steamy streets, so I let the music continue and try to string thoughts that can be rhythmic on SOME level. After all, I live in Austin, and there is certainly a plethora of goodness swirling around for me to reach up and smile at, to let a few slinking irritations at my ankles be left as nothing more than minor annoyance. Every one's an artist, and hey, everyone sucks at some point.