A Random Day In Austin

Years ago, I once wrote...

If I could sustain a single uninterrupted precious thought, my mind would be one kid in a straw hat and jean shorts, swinging ina backyard hammock on a beautiful day, playing a ukulele, drinking lemonade and singing old folk songs, without plans for the afternoon.

And, today, I feel like I reached the closest I ever have to something like that, after Sam dropped me off in Downtown Austin.

- I went to an art museum featuring a Chuck Close exhibit (called "A Couple Ways Of Doing Something") and slowly wandered through there. I studied a book collection of Gregory Crewdson photographs called "Beneath The Roses" and read Bob Holman's witty but sometimes stupid poetry on the walls.

- Afer the museum, I moseyed through the downtown, with its southwestern architecture rivaling its random southern architecture. I wound up sitting in a coffee shop theater called The Hideout and worked on fiction.

- Filled with hot chocolate in the heat, I walked over to the busiest city bridge and, bored of the hot sidewalks, meandered down the stairs and steps to a short trail along the lake that the bridge passes over, listening to the noise of traffic disappear. I found a small dock among the lush green foilage on the lake (which looks like a river) and untied my shoes to put my feet in the water. After reading a few pages of James Joyce's A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, I realized it was Sam's copy that she had purchased in Ireland and I had better not ruin it. So I got directions from the hotel behind me and walked a good number of blocks in the heat to buy a copy of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea.

- The book store I ended up at was called Book People and it was amazing. It's the largest independent bookstore in Texas and it's decorated so radically. I asked for an application without even thinking. I was just so stoked. They didn't have The Old Man And The Sea, but I wanted something short and suitable for lounging around in the outdoors, thinking. So I purchased Milan Kundera's Identity. I finished his most famous novel, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, earlier this week and absolutely adored it. Also, Identity seems to fit some themes of this trip anyway. I also bought the seventh volume of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, because, well, it's just unbelievable, really.

- On my way back to the dock, I stopped at a southern-looking eatery called Opal Divine. I made my way up to the outdoor podium where a waiter in his late 50s was hanging out, just spacing out to his left. Imagine Sam Elliott as a hippie. All of his hair was gray and he had a bushy handlebar mustache and goatee as well as a lengthy ponytail.

“Hi, how are you?” I asked very politely and possibly too cheerfully.

“I don’t know,” he said, not even looking at me.

“Yeah, it’s hot out today, could fry your brain.”

“I hadn’t noticed. But it’s not that I’m not sure how I feel, it’s just that I’ve lost the ability to tell.”

“That’s a drag.”

“Yeah. So, what can I do you for?”

“I was wondering if there’s seating inside.”

“I don’t know.”

“Bummer.”

“Ok, tell you what, I’ll give you a seat inside for five dollars.”

“I only have a card,” I tell him in mock regret.

“Two dollars.”

“I only have a card.”

“Eighty cents.”

“I only have a card.”

“Well, you seem like a nice enough guy. I’ll just give it to you for free. Sit anywhere you want and I’ll find you.”

I sit in a corner booth. There’s a happy hour, so I order two dishes (Irish nachos and fried dill pickles), and I tell him that I’ll take whatever local drafts he suggests. Periodically, through the meal, he makes jokes and just weird observations, almost with a sage-like humor, at one point explaining how restaurant technology is screwing up his people skills. He asks how I’m doing from across the restaurant, over people’s conversations, yelling, “How’s that beer, buddy boy?” He was relentlessly entertaining, and I mean that with all seriousness. He may sound hokey, but he was just the most solid dude. If I hadn’t accidentally bumped into him, I’d think he was fictional. I read Identity throughout the meal and he said, “Oh, good, at least someone can read and drink simultaneously.” Fuck, I wanted this guy to build my house or marry my wife and I in the future. But then, all I could do was save my receipt (just to remember that Carl was real), give him a 40% tip and write on the comment card, “Carl has mastered the art of being a waiter, a trait and characteristic few waiters have. Somebody please promote the man to president.” And then I left.

- On my way back to the lake, I stopped into a pharmacy to buy some chocolate and licorice, along with some lemonade.

- I strolled back to the dock, untied my shoes and put my feet in the water, letting them dangle and float. I continued reading Kundera but was distracted by a nearby squirrel. The squirrel ran up to me and his eyes asked me if I had any food. So I fed him some licorice, which he grabbed and ran to the other side of the dock to eat alone. Then he came back and I gave him some more, and then he ran off. We did this two more times before I made a pile of licorice for him next to my shoes. When I tapped the dock to show him the pile, it seemed to scare him and he ran off for good. I tried feeding some to the birds, but birds are a bunch of assholes.

- I watched some turtles swim in front of me like a lazy show on a Sunday afternoon. Two of them seem like they’re playing hide-and-go-seek. I give the closest one some of my lemonade (sort of).

- There was a spider web under the dock. Two dragonflies got tangled up in it, so I used my bookmark to cut the sticky webs. I set the orange dragonfly on the dock and he flew away. The green one I almost lost to the water. It was very much like an action movie. I almost knocked my laptop bag into the lake as I cut all but one string of the web, so he dangled lower and lower, almost hitting the water, but then I got him to safety.

- There was a fire ant crawling on my leg. I tried to brush it off onto the dock, but it landed in the water. I tried to scoop it up, but I failed. I tried again, but I failed. And then I realized all of my failed attempts just made him float farther away. He was quickly out of reach. He withered in panic, and I sent him to that watery grave. I took my feet out of the water and just stared at the sky for a while, dealing with my guilt and grief.

- Finally, my candy and my lemonade gone, and the much of local wildlife disappearing, I continued to read. I was now just in my shorts, reading, letting the hours pass. My feet floated in the water and I watched the local rowing teams pass by me. I waved to a few.

- Sunset was approaching and I finally put my shirt on, as it wasn’t unbearable any longer. Others started to sit on the dock with me, waiting the bats to fly out from the bridge. I continued to read and lay with my head on my bag and feet in the water, with the turtles and now fish swimming around the rising tide. Soon, Sam joined me and we watched the bats fly out over the lake of Austin with everyone watching. It was like a plume of smoke twisting in the sky, perfectly moving and enticingly magical. It was something to watch, as simple and quiet as it was, like fireworks in silence. The sun was down and the sky was a color that you think can only exist at Disneyland. It was a very piercing and just...strange moment.

In fact, the entire day had this surreal daydream sort of prose to it, and I felt like I was spending a day the way I had wanted to long ago when I first wrote that note to myself. There were, of course, characteristics missing and replaced or changed, but the themes of solidarity and traquility were there in a sort of...enigmatic way.

Shrug. I don't know. In more basic terms, it was just fuckin' weird, man.