12 Little Big Things

When I was an undergrad at the University of Texas at Austin, I went through a leadership program sponsored by the YWCA that gave me specific tools that I have used ever since to manage my life. The core of it seemed simple enough but the entire six week process ultimately served to unravel my way of thinking and showed me how to my live on purpose.  Certain things had to be undone and broken down and cleared away before the good stuff could sink in and take root. The people closest to me could sense a profound change in me and marveled at the person that I was becoming. I couldn't see it then but in retrospect, it was like someone turned on all the lights.

Whenever I see lists like this, I recognize what that innocuous little class taught me and I feel a profound sense of gratitude.  I have pretty much incorporated everything on this list into the most mundane moments of my world. A big thumbs up to #6 -- if anything has kept me outside of my comfort zone, it's growing and thriving as a working artist in New York City.

Interestingly, the first habit is the most important one. I constantly refine my goals and priorities -- two lists that live and breathe, on paper and in my mind's eye, in technicolor, all the time. S.M.A.R.T. goals are Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic and Timely.  If you don't get this one right, the wheels are coming off the bus with a quickness.

What's especially vital is having your very own private working definition of success -- one that you refine and nurture when you see fit -- and a teflon coated attitude that won't let anything or anyone encroach upon it.

*sigh* If I knew then what I know now...

swim, swim, swim

nablopomo's theme for july is SWIM - whatever that means. since i could use a distraction from the funeral i attended today, i'll answer today's daily prompt: Where would you love to go swimming?

why, barton springs in the nation's capital, of course!


located in beautiful zilker park, barton springs -- and yes, that includes barton springs pool -- is a thing of wonder. without a doubt, austin texas was one of the prettiest places i knew of, and those natural springs set off every season just right. picture it: sunny days, blue skies, world-class mexican food, the best bbq you've never had, live music everywhere and lots of swimming holes. i couldn't have picked a more perfect place to go to college. but that was then. the austin i knew no longer exists.

with barton springs pool remaining a relatively toasty 70 degrees in the dead of winter, swimming in austin was a year round essential moment to cherish.

we grew up with a swimming pool in the back yard, so i could swim -- but i was lousy at it. wading around and dog pedaling it was good enough until i got to school and watched everyone else take to the deep end of the lake with abandon. i promised myself that i would take lessons and become a strong swimmer and maybe become a lifeguard before i left texas. and i did become a strong swimmer. i worked at it until i could swim and dive comfortably. baywatch knocked the idea of being a lifeguard right out of my head, thankfully. finally, i could enjoy barton springs the way the rest of my friends did, instead of looking nonchalant at the water's edge whilst posing in a vintage one piece swimsuit and nibbling on things.

of course, there was also hippie hollow, the clothing optional situation that everyone knew of and no one frequented. well, just about everyone went there, actually. i imagine that back in teh 70s, everyone was smoking pot and sunning themselves endlessly and whatever. (frackin' hippies!)

austin had such a hippie vibe when i was there. lots of outlaw biker hippies chillin' out all over the place. but that's another conversation...

what is the what

zeitgeist: the spirit of the time; general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time

i remember a band called zeitgeist that was fairly popular in austin while i lived there. i didn't dig them, necessarily. i was way more in like with their name. and as is often the case with college bands on a college campus in a college town, that name seemed to be everywhere. somebody was always putting up some poster for some gig they were doing, someplace. or it was an old poster somebody refused to take down, or forgot about, because they thought it looked so cool. like that old poster, they somehow became a part of the everyday inner workings of whatever was happening in the fabric of our collective liberal arts existence. when they eventually changed their name to the reivers, everyone and everything seemed to flow right along with that. and that was that.

i remember sitting in some coffee shop on the drag (probably captain quackenbush's, now that i think about it) and asking some friend of mine (probably a texas-german who spoke german -- more common than you will ever know), what does zeitgeist mean? their expansive yet succinct explanation (college! coffee shops! intellectual discussions! fun!) and the way that germans can say everything with so few words illuminated so much about german culture that i still find interesting.

so when i say that word, i think of that band, the one everyone seemed to like except me. and that sends me careening back to my college years in austin and all the other bands that were the soundtrack to my world. i liked oboyo but i loved reverend horton heat -- and i still do. i saw him at hole in the wall, once. they had ten cent beer happy hour and a bunch of tex-mexicans dragged me in there. i didn't drink at all, i was just there to buy up as much beer as i could for my dollar so everyone else could drink with abandon. oh -- and play pool. bull and i played a lot. i actually got good at it, from hanging out in that bar. oh, yeah -- i liked agony column. i distinctly remember going to the french house to hear them and having way too much fun all night long. i didn't drink beer -- still don't -- but there was an impressive 25 kegs at that punk rock soiree and your $5 at the door meant that you could drink as much as you could hold -- and believe me, they did.

and of course, there was the butthole surfers. i still love them. a lot.

this is the part where i tell you that rock and roll is supposed to be dangerous, that it's supposed to scare you, freak you out, and that fear is a part of the fun of it all. i challenge you to think of the last time you saw any rock and roll that put the fear of God in you, or that even made you raise your eyebrow just so. were you even moved? probably not.

for the record: i've never seen any rock and roll in new york city that was even remotely dangerous. i've heard tell they had quite a bit of it in the 70s but that's another conversation.

the first time i saw the butthole surfers, i was at the ritz on 6th street. at one point, they were playing onstage and this hanna-barbera cartoon of augie doggie and doggie daddy was showing over them (literally) and superimposed over that there was this black and white documentary type film showing this guy getting castrated. tata the shit woman was throwing her filthy, half-naked body around with a fury. it looked like some invisible monster had her by any available limb that it could grab and was flinging her all over the place. somewhere in there, the lead singer gibby haynes -- who looks like he just committed a murder -- pulls out a double barrel shotgun and fires over the packed crowd. everyone was mesmerized.

maybe what i was identifying with was the wierd element they wallowed in, not necessarily the dangerous vibe.

*sigh* how green was my valley...

reconnections

i was clearing out my junk room (believe it or not, it's almost done!) when i uncovered a box that had a lot of letters and cards in it from old friends and loved ones. as i began to sort through them, i unintentionally read a few. amazing, the power of the written word. actually, what's really amazing is the power of letters. not emails - letters. it was all so personal and heartfelt and...intimate, somehow. even the most casually tossed off note from my neighbors, thanking me for spontaneously gifting them with pound cake. i loved the handwriting, the little drawings in the margins instead of photos to show me things, the random postcards from all over the place. it made me want to get some stationery and write, write, write.

so many of them were from people that i hadn't seen or heard from in years. one of them, from a friend who passed away several years ago, was so full of love and feeling for me that reading it made me cry - in part because it made her so real, and it made me realize how much i miss her.

where on earth were these long lost friends? what were they doing now? were they happy? did they remember me?

of course, these letters were written before the age of facebook (or even friendster - remember them?) so of course i jumped on facebook to find one friend that wrote an especially compelling letter that i never answered. his name was mo and the letter was a fast paced catching up on his happy creative life in northern california, a place that my arty/guitar driven/punk rock undergrad set in austin texas seemed to gravitate towards like moths to a burning man bonfire. he gave me all his contact information and was looking forward to a return letter. i can't even begin to tell you how badly i felt when i realized i probably never wrote him back.

mo, beautiful mo. pasty as a glass of fresh buttermilk, with hair that looked as though it was cut at random by a blind, drunken barber. refreshingly, he had no tattoos - at least, none that i could see. his clothes were mostly safety pinned onto his lean, lanky frame, and he wore heavy steel-toed boots, even in the summertime. he would dumpster dive for fun when NO ONE was into it and emerge from what i considered to be unimaginable filth, victorious - with delicious things to eat, cute things to wear, fun things for anyone's home.

once i remember him hitting a particularly odd motherlode - more donuts than even he could carry home. (heh.)

the thing about mo is that he was basically a very sweet guy. he didn't seem to have not one hateful mean-spirited evil bone in his sturdy, sickly looking body. he looked like he was an alcoholic, drug addled mess - but he wasn't. he was polite, smart, and kind of a goofball when we were alone. he would occasionally make me laugh so hard, i'd snort. mo was a good time, especially at a punk rock show. i vaguely remember seeing some pretty cool shows with him around. and i distinctly recall that he was respectful of the fact that at the time, i wore a beehive for a living.

why didn't i jump all over him like a spider monkey when i met him? i have no idea. probably because he didn't jump all over me. and anyway, i was so not into schtupping my male friends. i knew girls who befriended guys with sex in mind - they considered that to be an option, somewhere in there. i grew up with a lot of brothers and no sisters, so i naturally assumed that God would give me more when i made my way into the world. sisters, too. and lots of play cousins.

so i found mo on facebook. crazy, right? in our last exchange, i thought, wow. i should write him that letter. so i'm working on what's becoming a not-too-overwhelming package.

now i'm remembering bull, whose real name is raoul, who would protectively walk me home from the p.a.c. at night. and then sometimes we'd make a pit-stop at the hole in the wall and play pool. he was mexican, with a peruvian grandpa i think, and he was from eagle pass, texas. the kind of guy who could build or fix anything. i loved him just as soon as i met him. his hair was falling out in clumps all over his head. he said it was drugs. i had no idea what he meant by that. i thought he had the mange.

he was bespectacled and straight-faced and frank and always thinking of someone else's feelings. or mine. even mine. really strangely super-animated and goofy, in our finer moments. to this day, we are siblings, to the soul.

good grief. i'd better write him, too.

today's top five

1. yesterday, after many fitful dreams and sleepless nights, i wrote the beginnings of a song about red ryder -- and i think it might be good. but i can't tell from here. it just won't leave me alone -- and neither will warren. i can't imagine going back to austin and not seeing him again. that's really going to break my heart.
2. i'm going a little nuts because i cleaned up my apartment so thoroughly that i can't find this blank book that i filled with bits and pieces of songs that i was sketching out. (and that's not all i can't find...) i have to find it. all i can think is, it's in here somewhere. if everything was a complete mess, this wouldn't be a problem -- and that book would be right where i left it. so much for spring cleaning. (well. at least i didn't leave it at my parent's house in ATL.)
3. i'm losing my winter weight, finally -- not because i'm working out, either. it's because i'm drinking water all day and not eating late at night. (well. actually, i think this contraption might be helping me, too.)
4. freakin' bar chords are tearing my fingers up. i can't remember when i had a manicure but this is ridiculous. i have the hands of a day laborer -- and i don't like it. one thing's for sure: when i finally learn how to play guitar really well, i'm going to be one arrogant bastard. God help me -- i'm actually planning that last detail. (ha.)
5. talk about "escape from new york" for real: my friend wants me to show him austin, texas (the nation's capital!) -- so he can finally see what i've been going on about. we're planning a 5 day visit. his idea, not mine. i'm not sure the austin i remember and love is still there. i guess we'll both have to find that one out when we visit my friends this spring.