do not bring shampoo, lotion, or snakes on the plane

I’ve been incredibly busy the past couple of weeks working on a freelance book project (designing cover, laying out insides), so between that and the mini-vacation that I took to Lubbock and Houston last week, I haven’t had a whole lot of free time.

The book is DONE! I think. Just waiting on final client approval and then I’ll FTP it off to the printer this evening or tomorrow. I don’t know what I shall do with myself and all of my free time. The whole process has been kind of a nightmare of way-too-close deadlines. I think that we’ll all know better for next time, to allow ourselves about 300% more time at the end of the process, between final copyediting and the printer deadline.

Doc had some crucial work stuff come up, so he unfortunately wasn’t able to go on vacation with me. I knew I’d miss him, but I didn’t realize quite how much I’d miss him. It was only 5 days, too. We’ve both been gone before, to conferences and other work-related things, so I wonder if maybe this time it was because we expected up until just a few days before that we’d be going on the vacation together.

Anyway, the vacation. I went to Lubbock to watch Bob, my BABY BROTHER, get his PhD. That was pretty surreal. It sure made me feel old. Mom reminded me that when we were young kids, a friend of hers tested our I.Q.s for some schoolwork she was doing. Apparently Mike and I are unusually smart, but Bob is off the charts. He moved to Boston for his new job with a government contractor and he has to get security clearance… which I guess means he can’t tell me what he actually does. Heh. Not that I think I’d quite understand it anyway…. his degree was in math and his job has something to do with that.

Lubbock burned hot (though not as hot as Dallas has been) and dry, except for the Sunday morning thunderstorm that I went jogging in. I know that Montana is known as “Big Sky Country” but I think West Texas deserves that descriptor too. The skies are just… big. Huge. This poem is called “Mesa” and I wrote it in 1994 or 1995.

sometimes we long for
the night after the day

day
of endless blue sky
where the shimmering heat of the west texas sun
bounces in ripples from the road
and bakes color into golden skin
a full tank and nothing to do

yes the day is good but still
we wait for the night
after the day when black lines on the gray asphalt
ooze shiny, sticky on a beautiful barren land
a thin ribbon stretching miles through sage and sand
reaching for the place the sun will rest

and mesas in the distance
sit flat, too flat

blue sky days go on forever
as we wait for the night
we wait as sleepy engine drones on
-but silent enough out here-
away from civilization and towards civilization
hot wind and the top off your car
my hair gets lighter; your lips get redder

even as the sun drops
and evening sneaks into the air, the sky
like the colors of me
even as the sun sets and azure turns to chrome turns to dust
turns to rust
even as the stars emerge
like ice crystals on black velvet
and the engine stops

we lay on the mesa
we make love with the stars with each other
lying on the mesa
on someone’s table waiting, waiting to be eaten up
on a world whose sky spins too fast overhead

we lay on the mesa
we see the divine at work
making stars, blowing winds, growing trees
sending the thunder to you and me

on the mesa
the night storm lightning piles up in the western sky

we lie
heat insidiously soaks up from the ground
and wind lifts the hairs on our arms

the mesa is not the end of the line you say
your finger traces my lips
is it enough to get us there?

yes this is the night after the day yes
there will be yes another day
yes another day for us to lie
and wait for night
on the mesa

So yeah. I talk about hating Texas and wanting to move to somewhere that has cool rain, tall trees, hills, and doesn’t regularly reach 90 or 100 degrees during the summers. But I think that part of me will always be drawn to the desert… landscapes like West Texas and New Mexico, with flats and mesas and big blue skies and violent storms.

I arrived in Lubbock on Friday night, Bob got his degree Saturday morning, and my plane didn’t leave until Sunday afternoon. We ate at One Guy from Italy (Best. Calzone. Ever.), and tried to go to the County Line BBQ which had been recommended to me by a friend – but we found it closed and renamed to something nutty like “Peacock Cove.” It sat way out in the middle of nowhere by the airport, and there were a bunch of peacocks roaming around the property. Right across the road was a ropes course/survival camp or something strange like that. The whole setup was just kind of bizarre.

I recognized a lot of the city from previous times I’d been in Lubbock. Actually the whole trip brought back some interesting memories, stuff I haven’t thought about in eight or ten years, so that was kind of weird.

so my quest has led me here,
here to a landspace of dry endless sands
and it is my oasis
i thirst for truth and for knowledge
and here i can drink from your mind
cool breeze in bright blue skies here
and the fury of the storm

Sunday I flew to Houston via Dallas to visit mom and dad for a couple of days. That was nice and relaxing. We did some shopping, some cooking, and lots of eating. I performed minor surgery on mom’s 4-year-old iMac (as she said, it was so fucked up that I had to “use the unfucking software to fix it.”) They’re moving to Sequim next summer, and so she had me take photos of some of the furniture that they aren’t going to take with them, in case we want any of it.

The whole liquid-explosives-terrorist-plot-foiling thingy happened the day before I flew to Lubbock, so I had to check my bag instead of carry it on (no big deal), and put all my toiletries in my suitcase (if you put everything in plastic ziploc bags to prevent leaking, it’s not a big deal either). The only thing that I missed was my chapstick and a carryon bottle of water — air travel makes me thirsty and dry. The rules were relaxed between my first flight and my last flight, though, so I was allowed to have chapstick on the way back. But still no water, lotion, shampoo, or snakes allowed on the plane. Three of my four flights were only halfway full, and I cannot remember the last time I was on a Southwest flight that was not completely full. Almost nobody brought luggage for the overhead bins either — they remained mostly empty. I’m guessing that a lot of folks just canceled their air travel that week. I don’t know how else to explain the empty planes.