Vacation, Day VI

Today constituted one of the most important days of my life. I drove for six and half hours today, around an area the size of the state of Massachusetts. I set out from Presidio around one-thirty this morning after a tempestuous hour at the gym this morning (my quads hurt; my self-esteem was hurt as well). From then we drove up to Marfa, Alpine and back to Fort Davis, then past through Valentine and back down into Marfa, passing through the Wild Rose Pass, a large group of ancient basaltic mountains crowned with fresh oaks. Creeks and draws abounded with spring water–they stood out, bright acid green, against the brown, red and stone colors of the landscape. The actual essence of driving hightens the profundity of driving through West Texas. It is like meditation–slow, precise, wary, alert–all those things, all at once.

I have wanted to do this by myself all my life, and finally, after much time not being able to do so, I have done what I wanted to do.

We took lunch at a Dairy Queen, in the lavishly unimportant city of Alpine. I have eaten nothing but junk food, sugary, sweet drinks, soda, save for crackers and peanut butter. Diets have been banished from my schedule for this upcoming week, which will serve as the conclusion of my vacation, sadly. I have tied up all the necessary odds and ends related to my stay, after this day being the most unstable day I have had, was met with much clarity, and finally, after several years, peace.

Although a drive to record every single event forces me to abstain from sleep to write here, they are all but a jumble of images in my mind. I do not feel as desolate as I used to; I have gained, to some degree, a measure of closure–something that I had always wanted. That has finally come, and I am ready to start thinking about where else life might take me.

Needless to say, this will probably be my last excursion in this part of Texas for at least awhile, though many memories, from this trip and the last, will remain with me ’til my dying day.

Vacation, Days III, IV and V

The same milky white haze encumbers the mountains like a wedding veil–it lifts only at suppertime, which it is doing now–to give way towards evenings.

Wednesday I made the second of three pasta dinners and watched a movie, Meet the Robinsons, in keeping with my host’s preference for juvenilia. I also managed to see another film, some tedious English picture about Dame Judi Dench and the English obsession with nudity in the public sphere.

The large amounts of time I have spent alone has provided opportunities to review my current emotional, fiscal and organizational situations, and, thank God, I have made some clear decisions as to my education that no longer are inhibited from outside obligations.

The weather has been most agreeable albeit humid. It has not rained, though the adiabiatic east wind routinely runs through the dusty streets at dusk after a whole day refreshing hikers at the State Park, east of here.

Thursday fared better, with several scenic drives through the old and new town. This town has been resettled many times over and over again; no one ever bothers to look after the ruins, numerous as they are. They litter the town, along with small, almost quaint settlements of border-style colonia housing; it obviously puts to mind the proximity of Mexico to this country: often in the middle of the day one hears the crowing of roosters in someone’s yard–that is reminder enough.

I took dinner at Escondido’s restaurant, off the main highway, on a shoddy road that goes past what appears to be a series of fenced-in residential lots. The drive curves around a draw and into a gravelly driveway with a small plaza, reminiscent of certain faddish films from the 1940s that exploited in a lavish way the poverty of Central America. Various tropical trees and a small cabana served as an outdoor dining post, with small, uncomfortable chairs, third rate cuisine (the salad already comes with dressing; no, you may not request any other salad dressing aside from the one provided), and it altogether reminded me of dinner at the house of dear, aged relative. The air was filled with the unmistakable scent of manure, from the local abattoir up the road.

After dinner I saw The Last Unicorn, a movie with much significance, and one I had never seen previously.

Today was boring; a trip to an empty gym, Editbody Fitness, was fruitless. As I am not privy to the custom, apparently one may step in without checking in, do whatever they please, and presumably leave, which probably accounts for the largest and to date most frank display of honesty I have seen in this state. The walk back was tedious, as well; I felt bad for not having worked out, or for more or less wasting the money it took to get a week’s membership while I stay here. “Something to do during the day;” I’ve been told, when very obviously it’s just one of many things to do carless, or worse.

Vacation, Days I & II

8:00 AM. Arrived at the terminal only to find that my reservation has been “broken” by an unforseen schedule change. I have to wait some four hours more (after an agonizing wait the previous night before, digesting badly cooked Easter Dinner from my uncle’s) for them to resolve the problem. Home. I slept for forty minutes while on hold with customer service; and when I call back, I am promptly disconnected.

12:00 PM. The problem solved, my mother and I wait while my ride is prepared. She dotes over me, needlessly, and I feel guilty, scared and somewhat nauseous as I depart. “Call me when you get to West Texas”, she says. I shed tears and kiss her on the cheek.

2:00 PM. On the road to San Antonio. Miles and miles of brush; buzzing flies that stain yellow on the window. A scattering of papery, spider-bitten flowers that dispense a sharp, stinging fluid. A few cookies from the lunch mom has packed me. Chocolate Easter candies from yesterday and water.

3:00. Somewhere near Falfurrias. I am asked if I am an American citizen, and where my place of birth is. Two men with large valises and a guitar case are promptly directed to immigration processing for possible deportment.

4:00. Fremont. The plains become rolling, oak covered hillocks that rise suddenly from the chaparral like two stout pillows, with the road bisecting them. Mesquites, mesquites, mesquites?

6:00. San Antonio. Rush hour on I-35. The sun, once obscured for some strange reason by clouds further south, is a bright, golden ball in the western sky, beckoning me to follow its blazing path out west. A cool wind blows. The air is considerably more palpable than the air in South Texas, and definitely more comfortable. I call Mom and tell her that I am fine. She tells me to give her a call collect next time, and to not fault on letting her know how I am doing.

7:30. Presumably in the upper part of San Antonio. A truck, overturned on its top, has stalled traffic in the principal thoroughfare. A detour in some twilit hills proffers up a lovely, almost biblical view of the surrounding Texas countryside. Stars and wind.

9:15. Somwhere near Kerrville, Texas. At the last bend the soda I had carried dropped and exploded, causing soda to spill all over me and my clothing, as well as the floor of the vehicle. I stop by in Junction to clean up. The meticulous sandwiches which were performed are soaked beyond edibility. I weep as I get back in, hungry and practically penniless.

11:15. Junction. Hills, cold air, and the countryside absent of all Hispanic influence. The signs on the road either advertise small-town chain restaurants with dubious ascendancies (Taco Casa, Pizza Place), or rather unpronounceable German last names (Hoefstadler’s Insurance). The hill country ends and the real Texas begins here—brush, stars, slight rises in the landscape, and the unmistakable smell of skunk, coyote shit, sweat, and the pudor of bad gas, occasioned some 30 miles ago by roadside fare.

Midnight. On the road, between San Angelo and Sonora. A great broad gibbous moon rises up out of the east (which bears south, curiously) in a forest of stars and moves up and out over the road. A great desolation and hopelessness comes over me—the kind of desolation and hopelessness that can only be described in great works of fiction. The road branches off into small, dusty byways that lead off into the great and tree absent eroded mesas in the distance. With a rather Nabokovian bent, I begin to describe things outloud in complex sentences flavored with obscure literary influences.  (e.g., Near Brady, a woman, with the worst case of facial cirriohosis I have ever seen, waited outside the Get ‘n Go with several plastic bags of foul smelling tamales, a la Flaubert).

1:30. Near the quaint town of Ozona. While driving up to Lubbock for college with my old friend Isaac (live long, my Marine dream), I exclaimed naively that no possible place in Earth or in Heaven could satisfy my love of small town Texas than Ozona. It is the only populated town in an otherwise yucca-covered, isolate county. A bevy of Armenians on their way to Los Angeles make conversation with me at the gas station. It is an eerie, almost Feldman-esque town in the middle of the night, all ghostly sleep and 1960s roadside elegance, very much like a cheap whore adorned in fashionable clothes.

2:00. Road and road, it never ends. The plains soon become broken, and skyglow now illuminates the distant edges of ridges and hills, which presently become broad mesas full of brush.

2:30. Fort Stockton, finally, a cache of amber and diamond on the black velvet of the Texas night. A futile effort to find accomodation ends in uncomfortable sleep; a man taking the bus from Austin asks me under the canopy of a roadside gas station if he can share space; naturally I am alarmed if he is propositioning or not. I remove my shirt discreetly and settle down but am unable to sleep. Around four I am awakened by groaning; he is having a wet dream (erection and all) by lying about on my yellow blanket. Giving me change presumably in exchange for letting him use my blanket, I procure some candy and try to watch a movie on my iPod but to no avail, sleep finally comes in an awkward position.

Sunrise. Fort Stockton. Cold. We immediately set out to relieve ourselves and change (for warm weather is prognosticated). My companion (Carlos is his name) tells me is to be at court in Fort Stockton to answer for a crime he has committed (fell asleep at the wheel, crashed, two people killed). He buys me a breakfast taco which I cannot finish and tells me all about Austin, where he lives now. I drop him off at the courthouse and go for a better breakfast.

11:00. An older gentleman, on his way home from a veteran’s hospital appointment in Albuquerque, starts conversing with me about his knowledge of his travels in West Texas. He is delightfully reminiscent of my late grandfather, chain smoking, cursing and all. He lives in Alpine. Rather than allowing him to wait for the bus to take him, I drive him to Alpine myself, and he carefully points out various feature of the landscape and historical tidbits (this is the old Hovey Draw line, I crossed this some forty years ago; you see those two tits up there? Mountain water comes out from the top).

1:30. Marfa, Texas. “New York gays”, my elderly companion tells me, “have ruined this town”. I of course am reminded of a terrible electroacoustic album by Stephen Vitiello all about Marfa, with the sound of locusts and crickets and the dreadful train distorted out of any possible enjoyment. There are, however, some fine houses, more like New Mexico than Texas in their design, and the Chinati foundation going out of town, with Donald Judd’s great concrete boxes sitting flush to the road, monuments in minimalism. Up ahead are great mountains. Foothills of mountains, mountains and mountains, and nothing ahead except for ranchland and flat land, for some 30 miles.

2:00. Near Alpine, Texas, a college town with a fine college that sits on quaint hills bathed in morning sunlight. A group of some 8 or 9 enthusiastic Mexicans, returning from a shopping excursion up north, stop by with loads of overpriced American goods (everytime I see them, they always have several parcels of goods to take with them across the border). They are from Ojinaga, a town to the south, in the intermountain ranges of Chihuahua, a fine town I am also going to.

2:25. Hills and mountains become monumental, decidedly ancient. One can see several caves upon up in tall hoodoos shaped by the ever present wind; their peaks tall and covered in warm tones of green, slate and bright prehistoric red sandstone. Suddenly the profile becomes vertical, and mountains loom in a milky white haze, there beyond the plain are mountains and mountains and eventually Mexico. A trip through the Glass Mountains.

2:30. Silence in the house of God—the house presumably being a rock formation, Cathedral, on the same road, curving up, over and past the ridge, Devil’s Backbone, one immediately thinks, but that is far north of here.  Elephant Rock, a large, funebric looking outcropping of rocks that looks like the death masque of Topsy the poor electocuted elephant.

3:00. Shafter, a ruined silver mining town in the mountains, in all its pre-Modern glory. Even the ruins themselves have a certain grandeur to them, its fine church and schoolhouse still used by traveling missionary priests from Presidio and elsewhere. Everything blazes in a sunlight that only can be found in the monstrous busy works of late 19th century Russian realist paintings.

3:30. Dusty, amid the smell of cooking garlic and beans; I arrive in Presidio, Texas, a little town in a big county (the second largest in the Union). Sleep, spaghetti and special effects; so have these become the presents of the city itself.

It is Holy Week–the most wonderful, sacred time of the Year. Even Nature herself is endowed with that holiness–for down here everything is covered in bloom, and new growth. My azaleas have set out fine, papery white flowers with two hybrid blooms, which we introduced last year. It seems that the white flowers have had the upper hand, at least in terms of growth, as the other plant–pink azaleas–were perhaps overtaken by the Bauhinia that planted itself in over the summer.  The driveway of our house is now littered with the formerly white petals of the orange trees, which, thanks to a series of windy days, have dispersed not only the petals, but their sweet, elegant fragrance all over the house. 

 

Yesterday was also quite windy, though for only one part of the day. Then about three in the afternoon we had a sudden and intense shower of hot rain. It had not rained here for several weeks. I thought the clouds looked quite peculiar, for it merely looked cloudy for a bit, then it became suddenly beige, and then it rained. Today, Paul informed me that there was a dirty film in the form of raindrops on my mother’s car. And indeed, it was true–we had a dirty rain, from what I think the north wind driving so much dust up into the air lately, that it came down in a brown rain. Such conditions have happened before, though very rarely. This is the second or third omen we have had this month–the last being a fairly conspicuous display of ice crystal phenomena around the sun, last week, in the heat of a brilliant afternoon. There were two sundogs, plus a slightly visible circumzenithal arc above the sun.  

 

I am still torn concerning vacation. I was very depressed early in the week, anxious, and suffering from great swings in emotion, from unspeakable grief and apprehension, to anxiety, anger and a crippling bitterness that makes existence not worth living anymore. Non-existent conversations take place. I am always arguing with the past or with some possibly non-existent event in the future, some person I’ll never meet or will never see again, or some company I will never keep. And that sort of bleakness touches everything–like some sort of blight it makes even the most beautiful and enjoyable things hateful and tedious. It reminds me of something in Madame Bovary, in which the narrator describes how Emma’s ennui allowed for “near movements” to “pain her”; and I can most certainly identify with that sentiment, for even the movement of persons near my body can be greatly exasperating. It can be quite nauseating. 

 

Peter has suggested that I take up meditation, though I am not sure if I have the time to pursue this wonderful discipline. The American in me says that work is meditation–and of course I do not mean that kind of work which is dreary and hateful but rather the engaging work of the mind and the hands; the work of Art. This sort of concentration has taken on various forms this week, from a terse essay I wrote for Javier about the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake to a new piece for cello and piano, which was based on a folk hymn in Spanish I heard at the Chrism Mass last week. Now I am greatly fascinated with Moravian brass band music, and their traditional old-world chorale sound. I seem to find a great consolation in the Protestant hymnody–more consoling than the bland, formless sequences of Gregorian Chant, for inasmuch as that music is beautiful in itself, I think it does not have the kind ofimmediacy that these hymns do. Artistically speaking, I also have a great fascination with the names of the pieces right now–names that are either reliable, simple, arbitrary, romantic, or all of these. I have felt compelled to write a grand piece for violin and strings based on two “ancient” melodies. One is a very early piece from a tablet, in the Phrygian mode, dating from around 1600 BCE, the other a gorgeous anonymous piece from the 3rd century and found, believe it or not, on a neglected parchment somewhere in the Bodleian library at Oxford. Either I like ancient music, or very contemporary music. I like it when both worlds operate within perfect harmony with one another. 

 

I feel the passing of this week will prove decisive, at least in terms of my sanity.  It is now well known, I believe, that I am a terribly impatient person. It pains me so much inside–I am not sure how much it hurts–but I worry incessantly about pecuniary things that it no longer seems fitting to even think, or to say anything. I want to shut myself off and sleep for these next four days–four days of agony and unrest. 

Last night I sang for the Chrism Mass. It was actually that night, and not on Saturday. I guess somehow I must have gotten mixed up with my dates. The churchgoers were raucous (many of them were children and teenagers), rooting for their local priest. I believe the Chrism Mass is the yearly renewing of their priestly vows, and so therefore it was deemed cause for celebration in the usual manner, even though the Bishop of the diocese was there to principally celebrate. We had no problems, aside from those related to acoustics; apparently someone had fiddled around with the organ enough so that the poor harpist who was invited to accompany was practically drowned out in a very loud pedal. I rode back with three philistine Catholics all over the age of 40–returning late in the evenings and retiring also late. However this is the second to the last mass I shall sing this season, praise God, a little extra money to satisfy the coffers of this house.I am not sure how I feel today. Many emotions have been running through me in these past two weeks. Last week Ryan did something to me that was very hurtful, and it almost killed off our friendship. It seems now that perhaps I am too open with certain persons wh only seek to utilize me when they need a quick answer or a paper written, without ever considering that I have feelings and emotions. Now I don’t even want to visit Ryan. I shouldn’t have this much inner pain inside; I shouldn’t hurt this much, when he tells me things like these. But then again I am so pathetic of course I can’t change or move, because it will upset me so easily. And perhaps I know now, out of all these trying things, that it is inutile trying to express any sort of sentiment to Ryan, because he will not understand it. I have tried to find comparisons in the lives of others, and it is nonexistent. But maybe in the grand scheme of things this was meant to happen. As for him, the only thing I can presently mention is that he will be returning to Dallas for the spring holiday and returning on Easter Sunday, but he has told me that he will be attending some sort of social event for the “bear community” (as he calls it, anyway) in that city, that he has rented a hotel room expressly for that purpose, and will be congregating with his friends who have done the same. The idea of congregating in some dingy hotel with a bunch of bored middle-age perverts seeking the last dying throb of their alcohol-soaked youth is altogether repugnant to me. But then again, as an outsider, I will never understand why anyone would do that sort of thing in the first place. I shouldn’t have to go to a hotel or a convention space to be able to express myself fully, at least sexually speaking. And the truly horrible and frightening thing is–Ryan has more friends than I do–and if that is not a clear indication of what sort of expectations I have, than I do not know what else might satisfy the conclusion.I am confused and bewildered, and perhaps a little frightened too. I am in one of my depressive states, and I am cycling back and forth. And while I do not crave death here and now, I long for peace in my body and soul. I have more arguments with nonexistent, mind-born entities than with anyone else. I do not know what to do. 

Considerations

I will keep brief as my mind is racing today–going from place to place, from interest to interest, trying to satisfy an insatiable need to busy myself in these three agonizing weeks before my vacation. I must sing for the Basilica on the 15th, having to go to two different rehearsals before that. I am somewhat confident that the quality of my voice (which I discovered had suffered on account of my inability to take seriously the rehearsals) has significantly improved. I am still tired when I come from practice. The weather has been warm (except for a cool spell earlier last week), and the young and tender plants have set out flowers in my garden, and everything, thankfully, is green again. The only disappointment before me is that of my Texas Mountain Laurel (Sophora secundiflora spp.) which, due to overwatering and perhaps age, did not set out flowers as it would have a year or two earlier; however they still set out, with their grape Kool-Aid smell and proclivity towards bumblebees. They are notorious for their fragility–once they are set, they will never leave, and if moved, they will utterly die.Recently I have been considering what I shall do for the rest of my life, which, if I can be so bold, is not such a terribly important question for me. I am just concerned with how I am, what I represent, and I how I display that to the outside world. For the longest time I had no idea of how my external appearance influenced other people, but yet now that everything’s changed, I can see myself in other people–all of my unattractive traits. I have ameliorated some, but at the same time, I feel like there is so much work to do. I no longer feel any sort of need to keep my opinions quiet with people who use theirs to overwhelm me. I have let so many people walk on me that saying “no” was abhorrent to me, however this is no longer the case. I started doing it with Ryan: by openly disagreeing with him on certain points of argument (like the gay marriage issue), he has come to a healthy respect for my ideas and thoughts. And even if he still doesn’t take my opinion seriously, at least I express it in very clear terms.  Discussions with Frank last night gave me much relief as I was able to finally express, through his descriptions, causes to which my own feeble words could not describe. I realize the great lot of people are so unhappy because they don’t know what to do with themselves. Either one is used, or one becomes a user. And for both of us, we both scoff openly about people’s so-called “denial of rights”, which to me seems more like a suffusion of predetermined choices, rather than rights. Marriage is a choice–you aren’t compelled to take part in it, unless you would rather do it for the mere social aspect of it–the nice house in decaying suburbia, the dogs, cats, or adopted children, the shitty 8-5 jobs working for a soulless company, and parties with vapid friends. That is the choice of unhappiness, something I can never accede to. Give me open spaces, mountains, pines, clouds, stars, and the freedom to be free from boundaries and social restrictions. Maybe perhaps what I’m so angry about is gentrification. One hears about it, and so many people practice it–using a place formerly vibrant to “jazz it up”, displacing people native to the area to fill it with coffeeshops and bookstores that sell both bad coffee and bad books, or displays of worthless, trifling art, somehow “religious” in nature when that isn’t really the case, or setting the stage, more predictably, for various lecherous sexual encounters with various bored neighbors and sickly college students alike. How is that happy? Is it happy or is it just apathetic? And of course most gay men fit into the “gentrifier” category, since they have no need for raising children, but rather the cultivation of like-minded societies and strata that have little to offer except for a drunken party here and there, an invective filled display on the sidewalk in front of a Protestant church, or a book club. I would rather someone not tied to “the scene”, but rather to the outward expression of individual identity, in a time where all we do is imitate one another, or perhaps are too involved in the meaninglessnes of our own lives to care about the lives of one another.