I have now officially entered the ranks of the authentic Austininte; I have a bicycle. It has been a long and largely languid road trip for my sturdy Schwinn. I purchased it in Tennessee, destined only to have a flirt with self locomotion before the chills of the north necessitated my dependency on fossil fuels. After my brief sojourn in the shadow of Nashville, we parted ways; as I hitched a ride north to my Ohio origins, ol’ Red was strapped to the back of a hatchback little VW Beetle, blending in all the way to Dallas. About the time I hopped a flight to Sacramento, he hopped into a Ford bound for Austin. Once I caught up with him here in central Texas it was only a matter of time until the weather, the wheels, and we were all back in sync. Welcome home Red. 
Bicycle Acquisition
Hello again, and thank you Ms. Woolf
I regretfully am surrendering to my now almost month long effort of stock-piling drafts of past days posts in order to let them all loose in a torrent that would get me up to speed with my ambition. I have been trying to keep up with the post-a-day resolution, if it wasn’t on-line then on paper, but even that has fallen by the wayside. So I now admit that I will not adhere strictly to the resolution’s timeline but rather to it’s spirit of continual creation. (I will be posting past entries for the next few days so keep checking the calendar) The fissure between my past and present beliefs occurred this morning through the combined voice of Garrison Keillor and Virginia Woolf. In hopes of bolstering my recovering immune system by means of the body and the soul, I listened to the Writer’s Almanac on-line while preparing some breakfast. The result was even more than I had hoped for. I must start by saying that today is the birthday of the great novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf, born in London in 1882. While I sheepishly admit that I have yet to devour one of her works, the increasing number of quotes from her novels and essays that have left me in awe lead me to believe that now is the ideal time(as it always reveals itself to be). But before I continue cutting the potatoes or whisking the eggs, I am compelled to both convey this brilliant quote of hers to you now and also to expunge my artistic gatekeeper who has been so hard at work this past month in an attempt to truly do what I wish to do: create, inspire, admire, repeat. “So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity, which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.” –Virginia Woolf, A Room Of One’s Own
Atonement
Ok, ok, ok. So I’ve been lax in my blogging. Alright, totally delinquent is a little closer … or is it? It is true that I have not been posting over the last two weeks, but I have been cataloging my experiences, day by day via pen and paper in order to submit them en mass here. Why you may ask? I wish there was a higher artistic principal at work here but alas there is not, I was lazy, in the midst of travel woes, getting wireless internet set up, then overwhelmed with the amount of blogs I had to enter, … you know the plight of the procrastinater. But now I am back on-line and if you simply scroll you will witness the fruits of my lazy labors. I hope you enjoy perusing my profundities. Heh heh, yeah right; or at least enjoy a few cheap laughs at my expense.
Death By Distraction
Work, moving, busted internet, laundry, and the occasionally necessary five chord progression, has made it difficult to blog on-line, so I’ve composed these last few entries in the old-school fashion of bringing pen to paper. Looking ahead at the next few days, I’m resigning to the notion that I will not yet commit these mental yarns to cyber-memory for a few days days to come. Although the mere formation of this entry creates in me an interestingly intense ‘tenseual’ trepidation: should it be in the past, present, or future tense at the time of entry to the blog page? An interesting conundrum. At the time I physically write this I am speaking about the past condition of my distracted nature, my present state of lethargy, and my hectic future which will cause a lag time between the creation of these thoughts and the communication of them to anyone, including my future self. If this entry is placed in the present tense, then at the time of posting to the site, which is currently the future, it will be to me, in that moment, the past, and yet I will need to type these words as though they are the present, knowing full well that when you read them you will note that it is posted under a previous date and categorize them as being in from past! So what does this all boil down to?I’m lying to you.
…
loss is real I cannot hide from its harrowing harangue fear is real failure is not a frivolous feat but an unfortunate profundity I know these things from my experience of them, and yet my knowledge of them suggests a medium more ethereal than real; and yet the attachments to these trivial things; these disdended details of the day to day; these life altering trivialities can, with the encouragement of our will, seemingly subjugate our lives as a mouse on a throne of lions.
Austin Countdown
I’ve been in Austin now for four days, working for three, back in an apartment meant for two, and in one more day the Buckeyes will play … pretty good start I’d say!
The Lebowski House
As I was serving away today in the wonderful little cafe where I call work, I was given a wonderful little peek at the scope of influence one of my favorite films has had. I was in a rather hipster sort of mood when I left our apartment and the weather was permitting, so I threw on a graphic T of the Dude and Walter and rolled. As I was waiting on a table of sunny side uppers one said to me as I sat down his plate, “Well, the dude abides, man.” Pleasantly plucked from my manic serving mentality and finding myself in the midst of an honest to God human interaction I stopped and replied, “Far out, man.” My newfound friend and I began discussing how well made and easily accessible the film is. He then proceeded to tell me that he had actually stumbled across a Lebowski shrine, of sorts, in Dresden, Germany of all places! He said that as he was walking down the street they passed a little hole in the wall that was called, “Lebowski House.” He made note of it and continued to his destination hoping to have a spare moment in the future to return and at least get a photo opp for his own sake. As fate would have it he did have time to revisit it and what he found inside was an homage to the movie itself. Movie posters lining the old world wooden walls, music from the soundtrack rumbling away in the background, and of course there was an ample supply of white russians to be consumed. How incredible. Unable to find the pub’s website, I’ve found something that might be just as fun to peruse.
The Pants
I think Kimberly said it best when referring to our two family’s widely varying perspectives on my infamous patch pants when she said, “His grandpa cringes when he sees them, and my mom makes a movie about them.”
Home to Awesome Austin
I’m home!!! I’ve got a job too!!! And I’m about to poop myself with exhaustion. Nights.
