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...