January 8, 2000

gifts and memories

My friend Nancy tells the story of her life and people laugh until they cry. But you feel weird because the stories aren't funny. They are sad and harrowing for the participants. She brings the art of communication and the eye for art to the story. The stories make a movie in your mind.

She gave me a bit of her memory committed to a box. It is, I think, one of those typewriter paper boxes that open on one side, or a hinged box like that, made or found. A triangular cut has been made in the front and behind it is glued a map of Texas. Through the cut-out you see a piece of the Panhandle of Texas a highway leading from Shamrock to Amarillo. The whole box is painted blue. Inside the box are sheets of paper with snapshots of her family reproduced on them. The box holds a sheaf of papers. The title page is shown left. The memory on those pages, bouncing from the aftermath of surgery in 1998 back to 1964 to her childhood is so personal and yet so universal. It's a beautiful piece of work. Were it produced in a magazine, one would marvel and enjoy the intimacy. As a handmade work, yours alone, it's stunning and surprising. It makes me want to make things with my hands, memories of my life that are mine alone and then share them in this way. My abilities don't match Nancy's, though. Must still learn to write a screenplay and try to write this story.

But today...today. I decided it would be good to go to work. I am threatened with a business trip next week. I have to prepare some things to present. I am not fond of business trips although I love to travel for fun. I also have to prepare a presentation draft for a conference in May. It's due February 2. I go to work around noon. It is nice to work on a weekend. I play my music a little louder than usual and there are few interruptions as I do my research and do battle with PowerPoint. (You know you have reached the twilight of your career when you find yourself using presentation software and searching for clip art rather than coding or designing!)

About four o'clock, there is still light. I go home and the eXtreme dog walking team goes out in search of exercise and adventure. We go 'on the other side of Burnet.' I guess it's technically our neighborhood, but it feels different. There is a certain amount of gentrification. Three expensive two story in-fills hulk over one street, the smell of new lumber from the one still in frame strong in the air. Across the street, three people poke around one of the out-of-service cars as if to return it to usefulness. It has a flat and engine parts like the air cleaner lie in the engine compartment, unconnected.

On the street with the cow car, two slackers meet in the middle of the street. Man and woman. She has her hair in a towel. He has that goatee and untucked shirt look of Austin youth at ease. He may live in the cow car house. I smell their cigarettes long before we reach them even though we are in the open air. I am certainly sensitive to cigarettes. If I have to be in Europe next week, I'll have to get over that. "I'm having a lazy weekend, which is just what I wanted," says the male slacker to the female.

A dog named Ariel comes out in the street to race around with Zoey. Her owner retrieves her and apologizes. In this neighborhood many front yards are fenced and have dogs snarling right by you at the sidewalk. There are yards full of junk and debris. Wonder where these people will go when the area gentrifies which it is slowly doing?

After the walk, I eat a dinner Forrest has prepared. Swordfish steaks on wilted spinach with a side of beets and red onions, steamed. Very tasty. I wash up the dishes and we decide to see a movie. We settle on 'American Beauty.'

SuRu picks us up for the movie. The Arboretum is crowded with people. Barnes and Noble is swarming with people spending Saturday reading and drinking coffee. There is a line at the box office. We have plenty of time though. The movie has been showing for a while. It's now relegated to one of those smaller theaters in the back. We think we will be alone watching it. But everyone is just late. People climb over us well into the beginning of the movie and finally it's pretty full.

The movie is very dense. Sort of serious and sort of funny. Great effects with video inside video inside film. The trailers made me think it was all about Lester. But it isn't. In a way, all the characters are developed pretty well. My favorite line was when the cocky but secretly insecure Angela says, when Jane suggests she'll walk home with Ricky, "But it's, like, a mile!"

We go to the Four Seasons after the movie. Rebecca is playing. There doesn't seem to be an event at the hotel. Just a bunch of different people coming in for one reason or another. We sit with a guy who is seeing Rebecca. Must be hard to date someone who only has Sunday and Monday nights off.

"Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength."

Charles Lamb