AUSTIN, Texas, May 31, 2004 —
Preparing to travel.
Distracting yourself with TV, movies, books.
Preparing to leave the media-rich environment of home.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 30, 2004 —
Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
Nor all your money in one wallet.
Present a confusing target.
Sadly, the bad guys will go for someone easier.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 29, 2004 —
Put what you need in a suitcase.
Just what you can carry.
Think about, when you pack.
Being put on a train.
And taken to a place where you want need anything.
Again.
Where your possesions and your very self will be salvaged by murderers.
The perspective.
Of a suitcase.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 28, 2004 —
Watching kids with a toy, how they exhaust the possibilties of building and destroying or making something from their imagination.
A cane is a gun.
That's not a toy!
We exclaim.
A door is to be opened and closed.
Again and again.
For practice.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 26, 2004 —
A child's very interest in small things.
Can be an advantage.
Who needs a great and complicated adventure?
When gravity's acceleration down a grassy hill will do?

AUSTIN, Texas, May 25, 2004 —
Freedom.
By quitting.
Ending a self-imposed task.
Don't I have enough freedom?
Maybe. Maybe too much.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 24, 2004 —
I was just there and...it's gone.
Many have said it.
Only a few.
Caught in the crosshairs.
Relatively speaking.
Most of us are lucky?
You think?

AUSTIN, Texas, May 23, 2004 —
Family.
A subject of controversy.
A feeling.
A support system.
The family.
The family?
Would that be Tony Soprano's version?
Proof that too much family feeling at the expense of a general respect for your fellow man may not be a good thing?
Should a family be defined, as a reproductive group?
If so then FFP and I aren't a family but that Mormon polygamist and his brood are?
Does that work for the family values folks?

AUSTIN, Texas, May 22, 2004 —
Writing Austin Lives.
What is a life?
What you live?
What you share?
What you write?

AUSTIN, Texas, May 21, 2004 —
Marking the years.
Since birth.
Since a special day.
Since an amphibious landing.
The annual reason to remember.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 20, 2004 —
You know.
Or at least can hope.
That you are safe.
Will have food, a place to sleep.
And fantastic entertainment.
Plus.
You are not putting millions in harm's way.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 19, 2004 —
Meetings.
Agendas.
In the corporate world.
The solution to everything is a meeting.
Not a decision.
The agenda, really, is almost always hidden.
People who are meeting for altruistic causes.
Sometimes escape the banality.
That is the meeting.
But not always.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 18, 2004 —
You don't care.
What they think.
Or say.
The mirror tells the story to you.
Good or bad.
You don't want to look like them!
You don't care how they exercise.
Not really.
And you like to go solo on your problems.
Plus.
You aren't that interested.
In their trip or which museum they don't think you should miss.
Or whether they found the Hilton the best possible hotel because, get this, there were sidewalk cafes nearby!
Think of it.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 17, 2004 —
Just a gap in the calendar and a false sense of accomplishment for playing at this and that,
causes me to let my guard down.
Let the time pass.
Doing nothing in peace.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 16, 2004 —
We hurt.
Things don't work.
We feel weak or disabled.
It's the condition of man.
To not be in top form.
As my dad says, "If it don't hurt, it don't work."

AUSTIN, Texas, May 15, 2004 —
Famous. Recognizable. Renown.
I'd rather fewer people recognized me.
Especially if they seem like strangers.
How must it feel to get press.
To have strangers sip their coffee over your picture.
To have strangers see your name in bold over and over.
Until their instinct says.
"I know you!"

AUSTIN, Texas, May 14, 2004 —
You figure if you need a ride or a hand at entertaining.
If you need to meet the right person.
Or have a small loan.
You figure if you need work or a tip on a workman.
It will come.
As a favor.
From someone.
Who understands the karma.
The giving into the world.
In the hope.
That the world gives back.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 13, 2004 —
You notice a gap or hours between commitments.
You find the time to reflect.
To do a favor.
To look at something from a different angle.
You find that blessed space.
The retirement rhythm.
Where while not bored you are also not overwhelmed.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 12, 2004 —
Each movement takes a moment.
That moment then gone.
Lost to anything else.
You can think this while doing that.
But it can be dangerous.
And if you observe yourself, your position in space.
You change it forever.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 11, 2004 —
To travel, you pack.
Everything you'll need.
In a few cubic feet.
When normally you live in thousands.
It's a lesson.
In the essential.
The trivial.
As you divide the necessary from the nice to have.
The essence from the extra.
When you travel you realize you can 'rent' beds and toasters and dishes and furniture.
That you only need a few things, really, to wear.
That you are only really reading one book while owning thousands.
That decoration can be left to someone else.
Travel light.
Lighten your load.
Mentally, too.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 10, 2004 —
One step.
Another.
Slip on the loose rocks.
Skin your knee.
Learn about healing.
One day.
Another.
Gone.
Hear a word, use a word.
Look it up.
Again.
One step.
Another.
An education.
A life.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 9, 2004 —
You depend completely on your mother.
Then you still cling, close by, comfortable if she's in sight.
You rebel.
You return.
You find solace as a young adult.
You begin to be a friend and helper.
She depends on you.
Then, motherless, you go on.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 8, 2004 —
Sleep wraps you up.
In a down cocoon.
Where you gulp down the precious elixir.
The escape, without which you perish.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 7, 2004 —
Other people expand our reach.
They let us reach outside our location.
Expand our minds.
Upend our beliefs.
Look past our pain.
Experience places and scenes.
Unseen to us.
On days when we were elsewhere. Or when we were not yet.
Perhaps.
Without others.
We simply don't exist.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 6, 2004 —
Inhumanity.
Is the history of humanity.
It isn't the exclusive province.
Of Republicans.
Or corporate leaders.
Of Fascists or Communists.
McVeigh. Unibomber. Al Queda. Hitler. Stalin.
The Crusades.
Rwanda. The Sudan.
The plight of women.
Man.
Inhumanity.
Is man human? Woman?
Why are we surprised?
That we blow ourselves up.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 5, 2004 —
Without rules there are really so many choices.
That you will lose track of self and stuff.
A few simple rules allow us to coexist.
Thrive even.
Side by side.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 4, 2004 —
Nice to have things neat and clean.
Everything convenient and where you'd expect it to be.
But what's the fun and surprise in that?
What would replace discovering something hidden in a drawer, being quietly quaint?
What would add the spice of obsolescence and fuel the memories of another time?

AUSTIN, Texas, May 3, 2004 —
Twenty years changes things.
And people age.
Especially if they were merely teens, back in that time.
Success, disappointment, maturity.
And the world has gone all cell phone and Internet, digital photography and cable.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 2, 2004 —
I should be better.
In the kitchen.
Better prepared to entertain.
I should be better at lots of things.
And why am I not?
Because fear keeps me from doing.
Instead I'm stewing.
Over incompetence.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 1, 2004 —
Weird is relative.
The capacity to shock.
Based on the surroundings.
In a Whole Foods checkout line.
A tattoo.
Is de rigueur.
Maybe a couple of piercings.
Hair neatly combed, undyed and not spiking in some direction.
Is almost unknown.
Here or anywhere.
Many in Austin appear to dress from what the thrift store bales for overseas shipment.
And not just the homeless.
Little coffee houses and cafes seem to thrive.
Full of the fully qualified weird connected via wireless with thousand dollar laptops.
While Starbucks and Big Boxes move in, too.
Does weird need an advocate?
In Austin.
Is what I ask.