Archive for the 'driving' Category

ALBUQUERQUE

Published on July 7, 2011 in driving. Closed

This place is my soul zone. My pores give up their gunk and my skin tans to the color of a biscuit. I put my wet clothes on the chair behind the house and they’re crisp by early afternoon. The pads of my feet thicken against hot stones. I drink gallons of water and my cells glow. My heart grows arms. I fall asleep inside a sopapilla.

Tonight, my friends and I are going to El Santuario de Chimayó, a destination for pilgrims suffering from handicaps and broken hearts. Here is a picture of their crutch room:

After we collect some of the miracle dirt into a pouch and ask the saints to heal our hearts, we will take a night soak in the arsenic pools of Ojo Caliente. I’ll cover my body in mud, even my face and eyelids and the tips of my ears and my scalp and achilles’ heels, both of them. I’m saying my entire body will become mud, all of this will come to pass and my heart will be healed and my pores will seal and alchemize and I will have metal skin and a guitar riff will sound from the heavens and yea for it will be righteous.

Baking & driving

Published on November 9, 2010 in driving and Interviews. 1 Comment

Last night I made white cake properly for the first time, which was kind of a crazy miracle because I was measuring out the flour and sugar and milk into this huge 4-cup Pyrex deal and, now that I think about it, put the Pyrex on the floor for the milk measure, because I didn’t want to get too far from the fridge. I cook slow but bake fast because I’ve got in my head that I’m not a good baker and the slower I go the more failed it seems. But the white cake came out really well, and that’s a hard cake to make. Thanks Martha Stewart for your freaked out complex recipe and thanks to Pyrex for making a magic 4-cup measure that allows for accuracy. Now I’ve got ten cupcakes making a Maginot line between me and the microwave.

I made you and I will destroy you

In plugging in the camera to upload the picture I took, for some reason, of cupcakes, I see there are still pictures from the ABQ to AUS drive.

oh, there it is

I wish I had a better shot of the Owl Bar & Cafe mural but the sun was working against me. My phone’s crummy camera is full of Texas murals and New Mexico has some cool ones too.

New Mexico rest stop

celebrated suffrage on this sign

I’ve been feeling lately like there’s an unlimited number of things that must be done in a too-limited amount of time. The problem with this feeling is that any scope of time (1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 life) isn’t enough time for the xyz that must be done. I can’t stay in bed because there’s work, but then I get up and can’t do any work. It’s causing some general elevated heart rate. Violent dreams too, which seem to happen whether or not I have three cupcakes before bed. I’m living in a Cathy strip this week.

I don’t know if all this means I need to get on the road again. I might go see my girl Sarah in Dallas later this week. She will give me a hug and pour me a glass of wine and we will sit in her father’s house and she will tell me that I’m not having a low-level heart attack that has lasted for a week, and she knows this is true because her mom is a nurse.

Hey speaking of talks, I’m doing Writers in a Room Wednesday night with Doug Dorst and James Hynes. Come by and ask me for the secret to a good white cake. I will tell you but first I will act like I am the only one who knows.

Please find a short Q&A on The Story Prize blog, wherein spare statistics get spat. Thanks to Larry Dark for the Qs.

Austin to Victoria to Austin to New York

Published on October 24, 2010 in driving, ghosts and Sasha Fletcher. Closed

I packed two peanut butter sandwiches and drove to Victoria TX, a city full of gentlemen and ladies. It’s about a half hour from the ocean and you can smell it and feel it in the air, but people I mentioned that to says that’s something you get used to and then can’t feel anymore. I liked it there. We ate some good BBQ and I read for the Junior League and a retired physician told me a ghost story. I saw Carmen and Tom and their baby Finn, who is one of the more handsome baby boys in this world and shows three small teeth when he smiles.

Now I’m staying with friends Sasha and Skyler in NYC. Sasha cooked a hot dog in a pan for me and Skyler made us rice krispie treats with browned butter. Today I woke up on their couch thinking that the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway sounded like the ocean, a comparison I’m sure has already been made by a number of this city’s 8.3 million, likely has already been made this morning, in fact you could find everyone who said this morning that the BQE sounds like the ocean and serve them a continental deal with corn flakes and machine that dispenses two kinds of milk. It would be a good-sized group, I’m saying.

Austin to Aransas

Published on October 11, 2010 in driving. 3 Comments

This morning I thought I was running into the wind but then I turned around and learned what wind is.

Yesterday I saw a huge woman walking up the side of  SH-183 outside Lockhart. She was talking on a cell phone and walking on the highway’s solid line, ignoring the shoulder. Her shorts were clamming into her crotch and her presence caused a semi to throw itself hard to the left. She was a powerful woman.

I saw a dead dog on its side with its four legs stretched out straight like a toppled statue of a dead dog or a statue of a toppled dead dog.

The Dairy Queen in Nixon was blowing up. They were celebrating 25 years of Blizzards. I got the kind with corn syrup and ate it on the road.

Next to me in the cab was my suitcase and a grocery bag with grapefruit juice and Crystal Light and a jar of peanut butter and a plum and coffee and two loaves of bread.

I drove through Luling and Lockhart and Leesville and Karnes City and Kenedy and Tulsita and Pettus and Tuleta and Normanna and Odem and Beeville. The sun set as I drove north on Mustang Island.

Last year I sat on the beach at midnight and wondered what it might feel like to get married to the man sitting beside me. This morning I ran with the wind and then I turned around and ran against it. I still feel jealous of that woman on the highway. My only power is I can drive a long damn way.

AUS to ABQ

Published on September 21, 2010 in driving. 1 Comment

They sell good milk

Billy the Kid's grave

Billy the Kid's view

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