Except I don't know what I am running from

I buy a sub-machine gun in the same way that Llewelyn Moss did in No Country For Old Men. Except I don't know what I am running from.

I don't remember much of what happened that night. I run out of bullets, I think, and am trying to come up with other ammo. Powder wrapped in paper didn't work. I don't even know what else to try, and when I open the thing up it has turned into a double barrel shotgun. Dirt or mud or dust or rusty resin creep out where the shot ought to have been thrust inward.

I have visitors at home in Austin. We're in my bedroom. They're younger. Maybe much younger. This is probably when I'm coming up with new ammo ideas. I talk to the father of one of them. He reminds me of Hank Hill and tells me all about guns and ammunition. I mention my powder-paper idea and remind him I know how they did it back during the Civil War and that my way was not at all how. He was neither impressed nor not so.

I am a rebel like Carlos. I kill all sorts of fascists with my sub-machine gun. Sometimes it is a straight up machine gun.

Another night at the rec

I leave my table of friends and approach the bar at Roger's Rec to pay my tab. No, I didn't order this or this or this.

Someone is going to pay for this.

I decide to stick around until the whole mess is sorted out, which means hanging out around the hacienda that comes out after the Rec shuts down. Pony rides under the gazebo and moonlight on spring-green grass. I spend the night in a van.

The next morning I approach the bar again. Everyone recognizes me as that guy who didn't pay his tab. Look, there was a bunch of shit on there I didn't ask for and I'm not going to pay for it.

Well, you cost us thousands of dollars by waiting until now to tell us that.

I apologize very sincerely: I didn't know it was so important to you.

This sounds kind of snarky, but whether they notice they make no mention. I pay my tab and suppose it is settled.

A pair or no?

I wake up to too much sun in the living room of the Blue House on a larger-than-life bed to a view of the larger-than-life television.

I cannot find my brown pants anywhere and I probably need them for something important. There is a pair of nail clippers in the khakis that I wear and I wonder now whether the clippers are actually a pair.

Albuquerque

Beth and a few others I do not know take me in her car to a sort of office supply store within Fiesta Square in Fayetteville. It turns out we have gone there to feast on Mexican food. The feast is spread out near the front of the store, entrance in view, near the checkout counter. These people I am with explain what all the food is as if I have never eaten something similar, showing me the enchiladas, the cookies, the cake and the different kinds of wine, which jugs in the foyer hold - vino tinto and vino loco. I explain that my Spanish professor, Sergio Villalobos once told us, his class, that white wine is so called because it makes one want to fight.

I ask what kind of meat is in the enchilada in a brown tortilla and covered in a dark green sauce. Beth explains what an enchilada is, and when I clarify that I am interested in the meat only, she says, "Chicken. It's called pollo."

I go up to the front of the store to pay, and a woman who knows my name, and Beth's too, is at the counter to check me out. I don't catch her name, but I think she must know me having been a lunchlady in my elementary school days. I owe three dollars. I start to pull out my debit card, but then realize I may have enough cash to pay that way. It turns out I have two dollars and one Turkish lira. Before anyone even knows this the woman behind me in line says something to the lunchlady about Turkey and I say, "Well what do you know. I have a Turkish bank note here," but they are far less than impressed.

One of Beth's friends is looking for her backpack, asks if I have seen it. I say, "No, I don't know where it is," as I walk towards the dining tables and show her to what she has been seeking.

I exit the store alone and find myself feeling like I am in Austin. Before, I was worried about wearing shorts, thinking I would get too cold (Beth made fun of me for that), but it is comfortably warm outside and other people (it's quite crowded) are wearing shorts and short sleeved shirts too. I weave my way through the crowd towards Beth's car, still all alone. I have to do a kind of dance to make my way there, maneuvering in and out and through people who do not seem interested that I am trying or having to do so. When I make it at last to Beth's car, I think I am the last one to have returned, as the front and back seats are full with me inside, but another friend comes sauntering towards the car and I think "Oh no, I'll be squished," but somehow when he gets in I have avoided such a fate.

I sing to Beth, "Oh no, okay," with the melody of Eliott Smith's "Oh well, okay." Beth asks if I have heard "Albuquerque."

"Is that an album?" I ask.

Laughing out loud at the basketball game

You are too beautiful to be everywhere, but still you are everywhere. You are right beside me, I vaguely remember, as I am catching the bus at the bottom of the hill near the high school. And I feel your presence especially as I am getting into trouble for laughing out loud at the basketball game, for which you thought I was especially dumb. I try not to speak to you, or look at you for that matter, because you are so beautiful it hurts.

Family matters. It really does.

Mother and I are at Zilker park, watching Frazier and some other guys play some combination sport, which mixes basketball (dribbling), soccer (kicking, heading) and football (endzones, touchdowns). I want to play and think I could fit in, as there are only three or four players at this point, but I have forgotten my athletic shoes. I didn't know there would be a fun game to join when I decided to go to the park. I didn't know friends would be there.

I am not sure which shoes I am wearing, but they are inappropriate, this is certain. Lying in the grass next to me is my older pair of cognac-tinted dress shoes. These will not work. I beg my mother to take me back home to get some appropriate footwear, but she insists on staying. I beg then to take her car, but she will not let me. I berate her as I would have as a teenager. It reminds me of the time we had teriyaki chicken and rice for dinner. She and my father would not let me go to the fair with my girlfriend. I must have stormed upstairs and told them they would be sorry someday.

Like in my adolescent arguments, she does not give in and I berate her further. "You're the one that always tells me if I don't want to be so depressed I ought to start exercising. Now I have the chance and you say no. You don't even care," I scream to her.

She begins to cry and I think I feel sorry.

And then at some point much darker in the day, I look up to find dozens of people playing this sport. I enter the field of play and ask if I can join, explaining that there is an odd number of people on the field and that I know Frazier well, but my audience does not respond with much, and what I do get it cold and despondent.

***

Memphis Pencils play a local version of CMJ in a movie theater. Eric Jensen is the emcee. Yani is in the crowd. I spend time on stage and in the crowd, studying the schedule to find that we are the best act at the festival.

***

I am with Maw Maw and my mother, watching an old film of the two of them and Paw Paw, the grandfather of whom everyone seems to think I am the reincarnation. They all look so young at this enormous banquet celebrating something like a wedding. Maw Maw is on stage, singing a song I think, and looks just like Aunt Sandra. Paw Paw takes his turn and looks just like me. They are so young, all of them.

I am then with Lois at the house on Ascension, in the living room. Upon my request we look at some old photos. At first Mimi just gives me a sheet of white paper with faded, black and white photos of my father as a child. I can barely make them out. Then she hands me a sheet of negatives. I hold it up to the light and can make things out a bit clearer. Each new sheet contains more recent photos. Then comes a book of photos of my father's baseball days. His face in the photo morphs in and out of mine, as if sometimes we are the same person.

***

My mother's side of the family and mine are gathered at my parents' house on Lafayette for Christmas dinner. Paul Rawlings is there too. Things are going well. Cousin Eron plays guitar while Mariana sings the words to some combination of Hank Williams' "There's A Tear In My Beer" and "Hey Good Lookin'." We are all so impressed that this five year old can read, and even more so that she knows the melodies of Hank Williams, her father's namesake.

Soon my father and I get into an argument, the content of which is not clear, the intensity of which is apparent to everyone. There is no dining room table. I take a break from the argument to get a beer from the refrigerator. It's slim pickins, just one bud light on the top shelf, which is for my mother, and some nasty stuff on the bottom. Paul is in the kitchen with me. He seems confused that I'd be drinking at a family gathering. For some reason this is not even acceptable in dreams.

I go back to the living room where my father and I continue our spat. We begin wrestling in a manner which I find no more than playful, but he seems to take it quite seriously, as does the rest of the family. My glasses are broken, probably in the process, and though he has fixed them once before, he says something to the effect of "Well, that's your problem."

"Then I guess I just won't have glasses," I counter.

***

My mother and I are watching a mystery unfold on CBS. We know not what is going on nor whether it is fact or fiction, nor whether it is documentary or dramatization. But we are perceptive enough to see that it is strange.

***

Growth And Potential: It's Like A Motivational Speech!

In a house I'd never been in before I am watching TV. I am in a dark room where the only light is from the television. There is also a light on outside the room, in the hallway leading to the bathroom where Neil is, I think. The carpet is brown and not at all sexy but comforting still.

The program on TV is an 80s version of Pokemon, supposedly. Pikachu only appears briefly. The other characters are played by Sarah Schultz and Jocelyn Smith, whom I have known since childhood. Jocelyn is dressed in black with a veil covering her face and this last detail makes it difficult at first to tell who she is, but I do after some time.

I call to Neil who is in the bathroom, or hallway leading to it, out of sight, to tell him I have seen familiars on national TV. He comes in, shaded greatly and obscure and not impressed. He probably doesn't even know Sarah. My father is in the bedroom across the hallway, sleeping with the door open and is annoyed by my calling, whether he says so or not.

I am in the kitchen of my parents' house with my cousin, Luke. Standing in front of the toaster, I look down to find a single, larger than usual egg on my plate. It is covered in pepper, really covered, and the yolk has been punctured and runs just barely. The orange is quite stunning and beautiful.

I am looking at myself in the mirror, in this house here in Austin, at my beautiful, long hair, which reaches my jaw. It is shaped perfectly, which tells me, at long last, that there is nothing wrong enough with me.

Sandgarden, silently impressed

In last night's episode a party was thrown, I think for me, at my parents' house. This parents' house was different, maybe made so just for the party. It had a big city apartment feel, the likes of which I might have seen somewhere in a Woody Allen movie.

The Russians had sponsored the party and there was Vladimir Putin zeitgeist hovering about the whole affair, including the giant metal structure dominating the living room. It was a thing out of the county fair, like one of those rides that I was afraid of but my brother insisted on riding.

The Russians weren't there but managed to be upset about the Bulgarian contingency at the party. Understandably. Their zeitgeist rivaled Putin's to say the least.

Bebe came over to talk to Hank and all the kids (that's us) had to leave.

****

I watched as an older American interviewed and wooed, in my booth at the restaurant of all places, a British woman who could have been Sally Carter. Is Sally British? I can't remember.

****

Later I am waiting in line to walk down, underground, along a Mobius Band path in a giant, Mobius Band room. Really. The room was a three dimensional Mobuis Band.

Samantha and I made our way to the bottom floor where each dance couple member was made to stand on a platform, facing his or her partner before beginning the gallop-dance. Someone cut in front of us and Samantha had trouble balancing on the platform. We ended up in a gigantic, pale yellow bed with Sabine Schmidt and countless chatting others. I asked, excited at my level of knowledge on the topic, about a fundamental quandary of anthropology. I think Alex Tripodi was there, which would explain a quandary of any subject.

Samantha was impressed. Sabine too, though silently.

****

I am in an institution of education, all a shady cardboard-bland brown. I try to get something out of a machine, something like a vending machine for index card-sized pieces of blue and yellow paper. They won't come out and sudden mess of sand has amassed on the floor. The glass facade must have shattered.

I walk down the hall to an inlet with grey plastic garbage cans holding brooms and such, but only find one relevant instrument in an over sized zen sand-garden rake. It doesn't tidy well and the janitor offers me a broom from my childhood, which may or may not have worked.

On some road to nowhere or another

As he was constructing some sort of taco [watermelon shell; dark, flat celery; fuck ton of butter] and before he had instructed me to the store for orange juice (he asked if I could handle that), my father told me the story of marijuana through the eyes of the Native Americans. "They all did it, though sometimes it was a little scary."

Stopped in my car on some road to nowhere or another I am with a girlfriend, unidentifiable and in the driver's seat, and two friends, unidentifiable and in the rear. Somehow Pepperdog is implicated and it turns out he is dying, his black parts fading quickly to a blizzard white.

It is hard for me to say how or why, but I am at one point searching a Turkish-English dictionary for the morphology of "kadın," which of course becomes "kadınlar," a bunch of other things, and according to this reality, "adının."

*Kadın = woman
*Kadınlar = women
*Adının = name

It should be but isn't a surprise that the stereo in my car works. I suggest we turn the motor on as not to disturb the battery too deeply. What should be and is a surprise is that outside the car, the ground beneath the dirt dust on the ground is frozen solid. "It's tundra," I said as Todd Gill delivered a pizza next door.

Wenn ich nur mehr Zeit hätte...

It was like the sneeches all over again, I swear it, girls in red vests and boys in dark blue, at my neighborhood grocery store back in Fayetteville. There were a couple of cute ones in do-rags, but I was too busy figuring out the cash register to do anything about it. In the back of the store where the produce and florist used to be I sat with a guy about my age and way more white trash who spoke Spanish to me, and too quickly for me to understand. I never reckoned he was actually speaking Spanish. White trash gringo after all.
In the movie theater there were German students in front and back of me, taking up entire rows themselves. I, in the row between, figured out pretty quickly they were German and asked what program they were part of. GAPP, the same as I. I spoke to those behind me about where I lived in Germany, but it turned out he was asking about which bands I'd been in. "Zehlendof" is not an appropriate answer, I discovered. I tried to get a comment in, starting and stopping several times as I realized the speaker hadn't finished, over and over again until finally I got in my two cents - wenn ich nur mehr Zeit hätte...

I haven't done anything...

I didn't seem too shocked to be back in school. Even the elementary configuration wasn't too startling and those old, rickety desks from the years of times tables and spelling contests were less than impressive. Someone resembling Mrs. Lilquist from my Washington Elementary days was presiding and a semblance of Maggie Bates sat somewhere near me. I sat in a desk, enormous chalkboard ahead and vast, blindless windows to my left, as the announcement of an exam came. It was no surprise to my classmates, most of whom I had been oblivious to until the news came, that we would be taking an exam about a Jane Austen novel, which we had had the entire vacation to get to know. I began to worry when I saw the stack of paper placed somewhat neatly atop an empty desk in the center of the room. The exams were alternately neon blue, pink and yellow, and I excused myself from the classroom after confessing to a classmate that I had "not done anything."

I made my way through the distorted streets of Fayetteville near the university.

In what was my bedroom for many years, Sara Miller waited on me as I gathered my things, mostly clothes, for our journey to her house. It was important what I chose to take with me because I was eventually to participate in a boxing match. At Caitlin Briggs' house down the street we discussed whether or not we would walk the couple of blocks up the hill to her mother's house. I was in favor, she opposed because it was raining. My persuasion almost brought her to tears. A few shadowy figures appeared outside of the glass pane, which constituted the entirety of the home's facade. One of them was Chris Byrne and I joyfully called out his name: "Gangster!" He entered the house, gliding in without using any door or breaking any glass. We shook hands the informal way and reveled in the fact that we were seeing each other for the first time in ages. I gleaned the dark corner across the street.

My breath really does smell pretty deathy.

It all started on TV. Mike Conley was playing for some Laker-colored basketball team most of whose members had ridiculous mohawks. Mike didn't though. And he wasn't wearing their jersey either, now that I think of it, so maybe he was on the other team. Way to go, Mike. Beat those stupid haircuts.
The jersey I was wearing was from my first year playing basketball with the Washington Wildcats, one of those reversible bits. I was wearing it with the white side and not the blue side showing. It was so tight that when I decided to take it off I had to get help from my father. I was quite grateful until he told me, at a volume audible to every person near, that my breath smelled horrible. And so I played the angry pout.
I couldn't understand why there were no instructions further than "Write about the Civil War." I couldn't get an explanation from anyone and time was winding down and I couldn't decide just what to write about and WHY CAN'T I BE ASSIGNED A MORE SPECIFIC TOPIC? "Surely I will fail," I thought, mesmerized by the scoreboard.
On our way out, my father and I ran into a rather cheery Yani. She needed a ride and my father more or less ignored her. We were the ones giving her a ride, but she led us to our car, which wasn't quite ours. It was an old Subaru-looking piece. She got in. And so it ended right there, Yani, in the car my father was supposed to drive, and I, standing outside wondering where the car came from, wondering where any of it came from.

Joe Hill, but not the freedom fighter.

I witnessed from the side of the room - in front of a door, I imagine - King of Hill's Dale leading a classroom of youngsters. They couldn't have been older than thirteen. Dale focused on one boy in particular and that boy turned out to be his son. Making an example of his pride and joy, he berated him with questions about Columbus's landing in the "New World" and I got to thinking about the word "discover" and "descubrir." The bell rang - or maybe it was something else that marked the end of the class - and time slowed as my vision zoomed to focus on the boy's face. It was, I think, Joel Booth's little brother. His hair was wind-blown and reminded me of a lion's mane. He was rather regal.

I got a telephone call. It was someone doing an impersonation of Joe Hill: "Meehhhhhh!"

A Moment Pale And Frozen In Time

In that jungle, which is anything but sublunary I follow a family from Italy along that river that leads to either Rome or hell. I am greeted first by Father's penis, a moment pale and frozen in time.

Mother and Father come from different sides of the river which rushes through Rome and shares its name - she from the bank of hardliners, he from the compassionate. This distinction all made sense once we reached the waterfall, a thing nothing if not vast and vertical, as Mother suggested they throw Son - about my age or older - down it as if he were some action figure one lets slip joyful down summertime backyard water slides.

Father refused, though without the anger one might expect. It was never made clear to me just what happened to Son about my age or older.

We made our way through that jungle on that narrow path. All was rainy save the sky, which seemed to have given nothing for quite some time, but remained grey as grey can be. And then at last, just as the path had become most narrow, perhaps too narrow, we reached a cottage, something like a cottage, with small screened-in porch whose coziness I knew all along from the blankets and rocking chairs and overall air of dryness.

But before I could decide that it was there that I should stay, the Italians insisted I take the impressive path which led below, the path vertical just like that waterfall I'd seen before. It was arduous to say the least and murky despite a mostly non-liquid consistency, but the descent flew by (as I remember nothing of it).

Next thing I know I am at the bottom, part of some army preparing itself, ourselves, for some rope course drill, which I handle with ease as it was more like a soft and swinging non-metallic set of monkey bars from youth. The reward for this entire journey is my arrival in the locker room, a sepia place less masculine than I expected.

I have a dark memory of floating at night some satanic river through Rome. The red, judging statue is ablaze and glowing from the inside. The sentiment is mostly blood.

Slow down and start making sense.

We waited forever for that damned interview. Everybody just had to be at that performance. It was so important to be there. But we weren't there, and maybe they held that against us. I don't know. But I do know that when they finally got around to taking our pictures, my antics were too much for them. They wanted everything to flow a certain way. Nothing should be mixed up, they thought. Well that's just too bad, I thought. When at last the interview started, the questioner spoke so swift I couldn't understand anything. After her first question I paused to give my brain some time to make sense of what she'd asked, but before anything sensible could register she moved on to the next question. I didn't understand that one either, so she moved flustrated on to the next. I didn't understand that one either, so rudely I asked her to slow down and start making sense. She stormed off and in a classroom somewhere away from the festival I consulted a very tan guitar player. He turned out to be Portuguese and I thought I could pronounce his name just fine, but he did not agree.