Showing posts with label CC Filson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CC Filson. Show all posts
06 January 2010
Travelers
Oftentimes, in unexpected and unusual ways the past has a way of catching up and when it does in some painful or unpleasant way, I retroactively reconnoiter in an attempt to discover exactly at what point in time the decisions I made or actions I took set in motion events that led to whatever outcome. Sometimes it's not hard at all. I was aware as I was doing it and so, like jumping onto a moving train, the repercussions and changes they heralded came as no surprise. However, that's not what I want to write about tonight. Tonight, I want to write about the future because my son, Logan, and I are about to jump off a platform onto a train that is moving very fast.
At this moment there is an eleven year old South Korean boy named David Lee hurtling toward us across the Pacific Ocean, seven miles high and close to 600 miles per hour; he'll arrive in Austin late tomorrow and then he'll come to live at our house for the next three months. There are reasons for this.
Though eleven seems startlingly young to me, Logan's school routinely hosts foreign exchange students from SK. This past Monday, the Principal sent out an email to the effect that there was a desperate need for a family to host David, as he was about to board a plane and come over and so far, no one had volunteered.
28 December 2009
A Small and Perfect Gift
This year I woke to the first white Christmas Texas has seen since 1926. As I was beginning my drive from Austin to Dallas, fierce head winds sprang up from the northwest and the weather deteriorated rapidly into the kind of instant storm we sometimes get in Texas. The wind was gusting to forty plus miles per hour, snapping off road signs and hurtling icy rain punctuated with snow, slantways across the highway and into that variant beyond which is a highway's only constant, so fiercely that keeping my FJ-40 Landcruiser on the road became my sole focus. By the time I got to Dallas snow was general from there on north and west, but I didn’t expect it to last, because it almost never does.
My parents have a bungalow behind their house which is where I stay when I’m in town and when I arrived, dad had already built a mesquite wood fire and it was nice to drop my bag and
My parents have a bungalow behind their house which is where I stay when I’m in town and when I arrived, dad had already built a mesquite wood fire and it was nice to drop my bag and
07 October 2009
All My Friends Are Gonna Be Strangers
It's Southern Decadence week in New Orleans and I'm standing on the wrong end of Bourbon Street surrounded by literally hundreds of sweaty, horny, and very drunk gay men. Here, there’s a six foot six cowboy who’s built like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime and wearing only a straw cowboy hat, pointy toed cowboy boots and a black leather jockstrap. There, a matched brace of youths that might weigh in at buck thirty five a piece in matching sailor hats and white briefs. They’re singing "Anchors Aweigh" and seem very patriotic, albeit in a rather unconventional way.
It’s swelteringly, tropically hot and love is in the air, in the street, in the bars, the alleys. Am I uneasy? No. Am I straight? Yes. Am I offended when some men hit on me and some don't? Not exactly, though I do wonder why. Primarily I’m impressed with the sheer force of abandon with which these boys are partying and at the same time amazed at how well groomed the majority of them are. During beach season one year I tried to thin the hair on my chest with an electric beard trimmer, but the results were not as I see before me tonight. When I finished I didn’t look any the better, in fact I looked as if I had mange.
In any case, though dwelling on the past is as inevitable as it is futile, one needn’t dwell on the worst of it. I turn to why I even have the capacity to stand here and take all this in and it’s this: Georges Bizet and The Dallas Opera.
A lifetime ago, after college but before grad school, with no idea of what to do or who to be, I impulsively auditioned to be a supernumerary, a non-singing extra in the Dallas Opera's production of Carmen. The interview consisted of sitting down with the diminutive stage director who expressed relief when—after inquiring if I had any acting experience—I answered “No.” I told him I considered myself completely free of any opinions on acting, productions, plays, and anything else theater related.
“I couldn’t stage a coup in South America,” I quipped.
As he looked me over for a long moment I expected to be shown the door. The he broke the silence. "That's good," he said. "You have no idea how trying these bitches with a little experience can be."
It seemed sensible to agree, so I did and that sealed it. In short order he gave me the run down: rehearsals were every night for two weeks, afterwards there would be four performances: Friday night, Sunday matinee, Wednesday night and Saturday night. He paused before delivering what many in my position must have received as highly offensive information.
“The pay is five dollars per night.”
He may have taken my silence as the preliminary stages of shock. “Per night,” he reiterated. “Not per hour.”
I shrugged my shoulders and said “Sounds great.”
He pursed his lips and continued. Though vital to large productions, supernumeraries play only a small part and are always expected to do exactly what is asked, nothing extemporaneous, nothing additional and “No acting!” We were scenery. Even so, we were expected to be polite scenery and call ourselves and each other "supernumeraries"—or “supers”—as opposed to the trade slang “spear carriers” as that was considered a derogatory term. Upon entering the room I had noticed
It’s swelteringly, tropically hot and love is in the air, in the street, in the bars, the alleys. Am I uneasy? No. Am I straight? Yes. Am I offended when some men hit on me and some don't? Not exactly, though I do wonder why. Primarily I’m impressed with the sheer force of abandon with which these boys are partying and at the same time amazed at how well groomed the majority of them are. During beach season one year I tried to thin the hair on my chest with an electric beard trimmer, but the results were not as I see before me tonight. When I finished I didn’t look any the better, in fact I looked as if I had mange.
In any case, though dwelling on the past is as inevitable as it is futile, one needn’t dwell on the worst of it. I turn to why I even have the capacity to stand here and take all this in and it’s this: Georges Bizet and The Dallas Opera.
A lifetime ago, after college but before grad school, with no idea of what to do or who to be, I impulsively auditioned to be a supernumerary, a non-singing extra in the Dallas Opera's production of Carmen. The interview consisted of sitting down with the diminutive stage director who expressed relief when—after inquiring if I had any acting experience—I answered “No.” I told him I considered myself completely free of any opinions on acting, productions, plays, and anything else theater related.
“I couldn’t stage a coup in South America,” I quipped.
As he looked me over for a long moment I expected to be shown the door. The he broke the silence. "That's good," he said. "You have no idea how trying these bitches with a little experience can be."
It seemed sensible to agree, so I did and that sealed it. In short order he gave me the run down: rehearsals were every night for two weeks, afterwards there would be four performances: Friday night, Sunday matinee, Wednesday night and Saturday night. He paused before delivering what many in my position must have received as highly offensive information.
“The pay is five dollars per night.”
He may have taken my silence as the preliminary stages of shock. “Per night,” he reiterated. “Not per hour.”
I shrugged my shoulders and said “Sounds great.”
He pursed his lips and continued. Though vital to large productions, supernumeraries play only a small part and are always expected to do exactly what is asked, nothing extemporaneous, nothing additional and “No acting!” We were scenery. Even so, we were expected to be polite scenery and call ourselves and each other "supernumeraries"—or “supers”—as opposed to the trade slang “spear carriers” as that was considered a derogatory term. Upon entering the room I had noticed
28 August 2009
Al Dente
Al Dente
Each summer here in Texas that as the heat climbs, the rains stop and the temperature builds at a truly ferocious pace, I increasingly find myself standing trancelike on my front porch. My mind travels northwestward, through the pecan groves and the oak stands, the mesquite thickets, skimming over the Brazos, Pease, and Red rivers, further and further, leaving the cotton fields of the panhandle behind and finally soaring over the wild, high Texas plains and the deserts of New Mexico. This goes on for days, and for days I shake that vision off and I shake it off until something clicks—or snaps—and I recognize what I knew all along; there’s a long drive in front of me.
As with many of my lifelong habits, this started innocently enough. One August day a few years ago I got a phone call from my friend Evan Voyles, who is one of the strangest and most wonderfully interesting people I have ever met. We first met in Abilene, TX. I lived alone in a small stone house on College Street; Evan had a small house too, but shared his with four hundred pairs of custom made cowboy boots he'd collected from all over the Southwest. In addition to his boot collection, Evan also trade in Navajo blankets, antique firearms, knick-knacks and old neon signs, the kind you see advertising hotels, department stores, long defunct products such as Bull Durham Tobacco, Four Roses Whisky, AM radio stations, greasy spoon diners, in short any of the old, quirky stuff that that was
Each summer here in Texas that as the heat climbs, the rains stop and the temperature builds at a truly ferocious pace, I increasingly find myself standing trancelike on my front porch. My mind travels northwestward, through the pecan groves and the oak stands, the mesquite thickets, skimming over the Brazos, Pease, and Red rivers, further and further, leaving the cotton fields of the panhandle behind and finally soaring over the wild, high Texas plains and the deserts of New Mexico. This goes on for days, and for days I shake that vision off and I shake it off until something clicks—or snaps—and I recognize what I knew all along; there’s a long drive in front of me.
As with many of my lifelong habits, this started innocently enough. One August day a few years ago I got a phone call from my friend Evan Voyles, who is one of the strangest and most wonderfully interesting people I have ever met. We first met in Abilene, TX. I lived alone in a small stone house on College Street; Evan had a small house too, but shared his with four hundred pairs of custom made cowboy boots he'd collected from all over the Southwest. In addition to his boot collection, Evan also trade in Navajo blankets, antique firearms, knick-knacks and old neon signs, the kind you see advertising hotels, department stores, long defunct products such as Bull Durham Tobacco, Four Roses Whisky, AM radio stations, greasy spoon diners, in short any of the old, quirky stuff that that was
27 August 2009
Terrae Cognito
This an old essay, one that Stephanie G'Schwind of "The Colorado Review" was kind enough to take after offering some much needed suggestions resulting in many, many revisions. It is in the CR 2004 Summer Issue XXXI. Check them out at http://coloradoreview.colostate.edu/.
Terrae Cognito
Lately I’ve been digging up parts of my family. I’ve returned after an absence of many years to my father’s homeplace, a hundred acre farm/ranch in the southernmost section of Collin County, Texas where my grandparents lived until they died. As many of the generation who came to adulthood in the fifties, my dad—realizing there was no was no future for him there—lit out for the city as soon as he could.
The house itself was not remarkable in any architectural sense, as are some of the stone houses found in the hill country and other parts of the state settled by immigrants from the northern European countries. Aesthetically it was—and remains—little more than a two-story box, cobbled together to provide shelter from the elements, and little else. But filtered through a lifetime of memories, some mine, some provided by my ancestors, it was the axis upon which my paternal family revolved. Each Sunday we would all convene there for lunch, and my grandmother—Minnie—would try to make herself heard over the din of clattering utensils to apologize for again serving the same meal: fried chicken, mountains of mashed potatoes, lakes of cream gravy, okra fried in cornmeal batter, homemade biscuits, corn on the cob, green beans, all washed down with sweet tea and followed by meringue pie. Unless she let us eat cake. To the best of my knowledge, with the exception of the tea, flour and spices, everything we ate there was produced on the farm. Thus, when in elementary school one of my teachers accused me and some accomplices of behaving in the old cliché—specifically running around like a bunch of chickens sans heads—I knew, perhaps better than she, exactly what she meant.
To the casual observer, the only thing remarkable about the house is its position relative to the road that runs into town. Unlike many of the other houses in the area—most of which are now gone—my grandparent’s house was on a dirt lane almost two miles from the main road, a fact that during rainy winters frequently necessitated prolonged periods of isolation. I’ve often heard my grandparents and others claim that the farm is on the highest point of Collin county. I don’t know if this is true or not, but standing in the yard one has an almost panoramic view of the surrounding countryside, so I guess it’s true enough to make for another curiosity: unlike most of the other houses I’ve seen in the area, theirs had no storm cellar. Perhaps after spending weeks mud-bound at the end of that long bog of a driveway, being sucked up by a tornado headed for oblivion seemed a prospect not entirely dismal.
Meanwhile, back in the suburbs, life at my parent’s home was like it was for many other middle class kids growing up in a city in the late sixties and early seventies; staid, placid and predictable. We ate supper at seven and watched the Vietnam War on the news. My friends in the neighborhood
Terrae Cognito
Lately I’ve been digging up parts of my family. I’ve returned after an absence of many years to my father’s homeplace, a hundred acre farm/ranch in the southernmost section of Collin County, Texas where my grandparents lived until they died. As many of the generation who came to adulthood in the fifties, my dad—realizing there was no was no future for him there—lit out for the city as soon as he could.
The house itself was not remarkable in any architectural sense, as are some of the stone houses found in the hill country and other parts of the state settled by immigrants from the northern European countries. Aesthetically it was—and remains—little more than a two-story box, cobbled together to provide shelter from the elements, and little else. But filtered through a lifetime of memories, some mine, some provided by my ancestors, it was the axis upon which my paternal family revolved. Each Sunday we would all convene there for lunch, and my grandmother—Minnie—would try to make herself heard over the din of clattering utensils to apologize for again serving the same meal: fried chicken, mountains of mashed potatoes, lakes of cream gravy, okra fried in cornmeal batter, homemade biscuits, corn on the cob, green beans, all washed down with sweet tea and followed by meringue pie. Unless she let us eat cake. To the best of my knowledge, with the exception of the tea, flour and spices, everything we ate there was produced on the farm. Thus, when in elementary school one of my teachers accused me and some accomplices of behaving in the old cliché—specifically running around like a bunch of chickens sans heads—I knew, perhaps better than she, exactly what she meant.
To the casual observer, the only thing remarkable about the house is its position relative to the road that runs into town. Unlike many of the other houses in the area—most of which are now gone—my grandparent’s house was on a dirt lane almost two miles from the main road, a fact that during rainy winters frequently necessitated prolonged periods of isolation. I’ve often heard my grandparents and others claim that the farm is on the highest point of Collin county. I don’t know if this is true or not, but standing in the yard one has an almost panoramic view of the surrounding countryside, so I guess it’s true enough to make for another curiosity: unlike most of the other houses I’ve seen in the area, theirs had no storm cellar. Perhaps after spending weeks mud-bound at the end of that long bog of a driveway, being sucked up by a tornado headed for oblivion seemed a prospect not entirely dismal.
Meanwhile, back in the suburbs, life at my parent’s home was like it was for many other middle class kids growing up in a city in the late sixties and early seventies; staid, placid and predictable. We ate supper at seven and watched the Vietnam War on the news. My friends in the neighborhood
Chicken Slayer
This is an old essay, but I wanted to post something and everything I'm working on at present is either going elsewhere or is in no shape to show. It first appeared in "Iron Horse Literary Review" First Frost 2004, Vol. 6, Number one.
Chicken Slayer
This is one way you could spend a Saturday morning: standing ankle deep in Johnson grass, shooting chickens. And though I'm fundamentally opposed to killing for the sake of killing, that's pretty much what I'm doing, all in the name of dog training.
I have a friend named Dusty, whose last name I’ll omit and he’s a pretty good dog trainer. He’s not the best, as all of his dogs that I've hunted over him had some, shall we say, progress to make in regards to obedience. On the other hand, Dusty tries to train dogs the old-fashioned way, which is to say he does his best to hunt them a lot and despises shock collars, which though effective in the hands of one with some sense and patience, all too often become an instrument of torture when misused by
Chicken Slayer
This is one way you could spend a Saturday morning: standing ankle deep in Johnson grass, shooting chickens. And though I'm fundamentally opposed to killing for the sake of killing, that's pretty much what I'm doing, all in the name of dog training.
I have a friend named Dusty, whose last name I’ll omit and he’s a pretty good dog trainer. He’s not the best, as all of his dogs that I've hunted over him had some, shall we say, progress to make in regards to obedience. On the other hand, Dusty tries to train dogs the old-fashioned way, which is to say he does his best to hunt them a lot and despises shock collars, which though effective in the hands of one with some sense and patience, all too often become an instrument of torture when misused by
18 August 2009
Coyotes, etc.
Okay. So I'm tired of the Facebook debate my comments about going on a coyote killing spree sparked, not because I'm tired of the debate itself, just the forum. Besides, I've been having blog-envy for some time now, but just haven't really felt moved to write anything here. That has changed.
Last Thursday, 13 August, my cat Gris went missing. I've been scouring the ranch, fearing the obvious and hoping for the improbable. Specifically, I suspected all along that a coyote had killed him, but as I hadn't heard any howling for some months and as none of my chickens had been killed for the same amount of time, I hoped that Gris was off being a cat and having a nice time. Around 10 this morning while I was out looking for Gris, I came across where a coyote had killed and eaten of of my hens.
Now, for those of you who don't know me, I live on a large ranch that is situated between Round Rock and Austin, Texas. Both cities have grown up around the ranch and I can see the top of an apartment complex from my back door. The apartment swimming pool is just across the fence from the ranch and in the summer I can walk a quarter mile in that direction and hear children playing in the water. At night it's loud music and beer bottles thrown over the fence. One or more of the apartment dwellers think it's great fun to drive golf balls onto the ranch. There are literally scores of them littering the southwest corner of the ranch and I see them every time I ride a horse or go for a walk. The point of course is that as their habitat has evaporated, the coyotes have been forced into narrower and narrower confines.
I'm an educated man and I understand that--as the poet said--"Nature is red in tooth and claw." I have also known and accepted that by letting Gris be an outdoor cat, his chances of being injured or killed by a wild animal or even a domestic dog were good, perhaps even better than average. And so, it seems that that has now happened.
So yes, I intend to kill coyotes
Last Thursday, 13 August, my cat Gris went missing. I've been scouring the ranch, fearing the obvious and hoping for the improbable. Specifically, I suspected all along that a coyote had killed him, but as I hadn't heard any howling for some months and as none of my chickens had been killed for the same amount of time, I hoped that Gris was off being a cat and having a nice time. Around 10 this morning while I was out looking for Gris, I came across where a coyote had killed and eaten of of my hens.
Now, for those of you who don't know me, I live on a large ranch that is situated between Round Rock and Austin, Texas. Both cities have grown up around the ranch and I can see the top of an apartment complex from my back door. The apartment swimming pool is just across the fence from the ranch and in the summer I can walk a quarter mile in that direction and hear children playing in the water. At night it's loud music and beer bottles thrown over the fence. One or more of the apartment dwellers think it's great fun to drive golf balls onto the ranch. There are literally scores of them littering the southwest corner of the ranch and I see them every time I ride a horse or go for a walk. The point of course is that as their habitat has evaporated, the coyotes have been forced into narrower and narrower confines.
I'm an educated man and I understand that--as the poet said--"Nature is red in tooth and claw." I have also known and accepted that by letting Gris be an outdoor cat, his chances of being injured or killed by a wild animal or even a domestic dog were good, perhaps even better than average. And so, it seems that that has now happened.
So yes, I intend to kill coyotes
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