Home, a Growing Theme
We were born in Texas. Being back here also feels like home, not on some small global scale, by city or state, or even country. No, it feels like home on the universal level (curiously this is becoming a theme for me). Our first stop in Texas is in El Paso. Driving in you can feel Mexico and even spot it as the simple urban sprawl behind a modest but imposing metal fence, that's about twice my height. You're looking at Juarez, Mexico, "Murder Capital of the World," where more than 3,000 people were murdered in 2010.*
Karla is an art history major for the university here, we meet her grabbing a drink in the funky part of the city. She smells like roses- a hostess who greets us with a funky, genuine spunk at the door. "Expressing yourself through art helps answer the questions you have about life. That makes you more able to connect with others in a real way," she poeticizes. We take off for her place where we chill in her backyard swapping our reflections on life. She sends us off with warm hugs and a bag of cookies from her home in Nebraska and Kyle trades works of art with her. It's 12:15 am and we're hitting the road for as long as we can stay awake to Austin.
Austin is a college town. We swim in rivers, drink local brews and jump off bridges. We go dancing at cheesy clubs with strobe lights. My favorite part is when everyone lines up for group dances. It's like the line dancing I learned in middle school in this very state. We plant a garden of tomatoes, corn and beans at a friend's.
Then we're onto Grandma's to make church on Sunday. It gets hotter and muggier as we go. The air is thick here in Minden, Louisiana, with a heat index of 106 degrees F. We go swimming in a lake and meet Howard, a 47-year-old alcoholic Deadhead, who has been a rambler his whole life. He has 7 months to live due to thyroid cancer. We spend a night with him, listening to his engrossing tales from the road. He twangs like a banjo and leaves us with, "Y'all, I tell you what, I'd been feelin' down these last few days since I got my diagnosis. Y'all just brightened up my life, though, comin' in like this. It's been a pleasure. Thank ya'."
Next day, Grandma takes us on a road trip down memory lane for her to Dodson, Louisiana, population 350. Her stories are energetic and her smile is the brightest it's been all week. We visit the old house she grew up in, the creek she learned to swim in and Carpenter Road, named after all the houses our Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma built in the tiny town. We stop by our Great-Grandparent's house where we used to sit on the front porch and shell beans from the garden. We find our Great-great-grandma's house abandoned and do some exploring within. We find an ancient looking piano with only one single key still managing to strike some sound in a muffled and dusty and vaguely haunting, "clink, clink, clink."
*http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/movies/murder-capital-of-the-world-a-look-at-ciudad-juarez.html
Karla is an art history major for the university here, we meet her grabbing a drink in the funky part of the city. She smells like roses- a hostess who greets us with a funky, genuine spunk at the door. "Expressing yourself through art helps answer the questions you have about life. That makes you more able to connect with others in a real way," she poeticizes. We take off for her place where we chill in her backyard swapping our reflections on life. She sends us off with warm hugs and a bag of cookies from her home in Nebraska and Kyle trades works of art with her. It's 12:15 am and we're hitting the road for as long as we can stay awake to Austin.
Austin is a college town. We swim in rivers, drink local brews and jump off bridges. We go dancing at cheesy clubs with strobe lights. My favorite part is when everyone lines up for group dances. It's like the line dancing I learned in middle school in this very state. We plant a garden of tomatoes, corn and beans at a friend's.
Then we're onto Grandma's to make church on Sunday. It gets hotter and muggier as we go. The air is thick here in Minden, Louisiana, with a heat index of 106 degrees F. We go swimming in a lake and meet Howard, a 47-year-old alcoholic Deadhead, who has been a rambler his whole life. He has 7 months to live due to thyroid cancer. We spend a night with him, listening to his engrossing tales from the road. He twangs like a banjo and leaves us with, "Y'all, I tell you what, I'd been feelin' down these last few days since I got my diagnosis. Y'all just brightened up my life, though, comin' in like this. It's been a pleasure. Thank ya'."
Next day, Grandma takes us on a road trip down memory lane for her to Dodson, Louisiana, population 350. Her stories are energetic and her smile is the brightest it's been all week. We visit the old house she grew up in, the creek she learned to swim in and Carpenter Road, named after all the houses our Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma built in the tiny town. We stop by our Great-Grandparent's house where we used to sit on the front porch and shell beans from the garden. We find our Great-great-grandma's house abandoned and do some exploring within. We find an ancient looking piano with only one single key still managing to strike some sound in a muffled and dusty and vaguely haunting, "clink, clink, clink."
*http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/movies/murder-capital-of-the-world-a-look-at-ciudad-juarez.html
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