Renaissance Men Don't Surf

So I'm set. I'll leave the 'bags are packed' lyrics for a later post, but I at least now have a little thing I like to call a plane ticket. Allowing for one David Wilson to hop-scotch his way over the Atlantic to London. But wait, it gets better. For I... have two plane tickets. The second allowing the aforementioned David Wilson to fandango himself from London to Fez. Three weeks in Morocco as a last fling with freedom. Surfing in Rabat and racing camels across the Sahara, maybe an epic night out on the desert with an oasis crawl or two. And then it's back to England and the crushing realities of the Real World Oxford. Ah, and if you're interested in coming to see me, which you should be, for I am the light in your dreary life, well then Google Maps kindly supply driving directions:

http://maps.google.com/

Go there and search 'Austin, TX to Oxford, England.' Seriously. Do it, like, right now. It'll save time later.

I think you'll find that Step #28 is the crucial one.

Can I Ask a Favor?

Umm... excuse me, God? I'd like my childhood back. Not all of it, of course. Like I don't want to relive throwing gumballs at cars after school and hitting an ambulance. Nor breaking my arm, or my wrist, or my other wrist. And I'm not so keen on that time I... ahem. Anyway. I don't want those things back. What I want back is my fledgling sporting career. For I missed out on playing the one sport I'm certain I would be a, forgive the comparison, god at. Baseball was never it for me. I retired before joining the league with real pitchers, for I was awfully darn small, and those bruises from bad pitches looked awfully darn big. And soccer, well I loved it, but I was never superstar caliber. Nor bowling, football, swimming, tennis, croquet... No. Maybe ping pong though... But now, had dear old Nacogdoches had an ice hockey team, well, my name would be in lights. Little ones, on the back of the sporting page, that nobody reads. But still, lights. I feel I missed my true calling, simply by some slight happenstance of geography that placed me in a state where ice is a rare commodity. So that's all I need back. Got it? Just rewind, put me on skates from the age of 3, and I'll take care of the rest. Yes? Hello? I'm serious about this ya know. Completely serious. Hello? Little help here...

Are you even listening?

Heil, Casbah!

So I had rather a surreal last couple of days. Not the days themselves so much, but certain moments contained within them. Besides having locked my keys in my car for two hours this afternoon, while it was running, and witnessing a car wreck by campus, later finding out one of my friends had been involved, and almost getting hit by a cop car as I jaywalked across Guadalupe, I also got coffee nazi'd by the tea guru at the Casbah, night before last. Now, keep in mind this is a coffee house. One which I frequent rather, well, frequently. Only when I ducked in there about midnight on a Thursday and ordered the traditional house coffee, I was told by some bald-headed HJ that it's a hookah lounge. They don't serve coffee there. Cue my eyes to the menu above his head, where the first item on the list is, coffee: small, medium, or large. 'Course being me, I was quite taken aback and ended up leaving, thinking of any number of cuttingly witty barbs only after I was several blocks down the street, en route to watching a car wreck. Oh, and don't worry, my friend was ok.

No coffee for you!

These Clouds We’re Seein’

Care to talk of days gone by, and the nights we remember forever? Even if it’s safer to gloss over the beginnings, for some nights are better to forget. Follow? What I mean to say, is that some shows have a good and a bad, and, provided the bad comes before the good, we still love them for it. And so we welcome Eluvium to the stage, and he gifts us a beautifully wrapped package of delicate guitar on a loop, before victimizing his guitar in a shocking display of instrumental abuse. Halfway through the song I began to feel as if a thousand Cockney louts were taking it in turns to kick me in the skull, shouting ‘Give us two quid what for a bot’le o’ Boddingtons you bloody Yankee sod!’ To which I could only writhe on the ground in agony and scream in reply, ‘A Major7 cannot follow a minor 5th chord progression!’ But they wouldn’t listen. Savages.

But, and I freely admit this, it was a very necessary sort of savagery, for it delivered us, whimpering and frayed, into the loving arms of the headliners, who led us gently by the hand into a garden of sound and put us to bed under the privet hedge. Literally put us to bed, or at least my neighbor in the audience, who drifted in and out of consciousness. But one got the feeling that that was the point. That consciousness and focus didn’t really matter, as long as one was there. Who needs the earth to keep spinning beneath their feet? Not when this world of sound is revealed to them in a greater glory. And I’ll say that my mind was anywhere but here, or there rather, but still every time I floated gently back to awareness it was in that, oh so sought after state, of bliss. And please let me add, lyrics are overrated. I saw visions of Moroccan sunsets and Italian coastline, and I didn’t need a singer to describe them to me. In fact, I’d rather he didn’t. I’d rather just be given the soundtrack to my life, and I’ll include the details. And they gave that to me. So for that, I’ll say they’re not bad. They’re even good. Maybe, maybe they’re wonderful.

They’re Explosions in the Sky.

I Have a Giftcard

I’m obsessed by this Starbuck’s phenomenon. What cultural miscue has made this such a place of desire? Why are we as a society so drawn to commercialism and familiarity? Is that it? Is it just familiarity? Fast food chains and the like used to boast the added benefit of being cheap, as well as familiar and comfortable, but Starbuck’s differentiates itself from that mold. Cheapness has never been one of its virtues. It’s taken the opposite route, and yet still inspired such… devotion?, from its customers. Maybe there’s something in the coffee. Something that blinds us to all else. That erases doubt and fear and suspicion, and inspires loyalty and blind devotion. But if real coffee houses go under and are put to flight, leaving only this corporate icon, well then I’ll… I’ll… I'll be a very, very sad individual. Yes. That’s it.

That’s exactly what I’ll be.

Psychology of a Pretzel

When I was little I couldn’t tell someone if I wanted ice cream for dessert or not. And that hasn’t changed. Except that then I didn’t want the ice cream, but didn’t want to hurt anyone by refusing it; whereas now, I simply don’t know. And I think that’s the only way in which my life has gotten simpler in the past twenty years. Heavens but I wish for the simple life. But being given that, I know I’d wake up the next day longing for the adventurous life. You know what I fear? That I'll spend a lifetime somewhere, open my eyes, and wonder where it all went.

Tell me ‘why can’t it be true?’ ‘Because truth doesn’t exist,’ said the man who knew the world. Who sure as hell isn’t me. I don’t even know what I want. And that should be all we have in life. Our own dreams. And yet mine are a confused mixture of what I want, what I think I want, what I want to want, and what others want.

Somehow I feel all twisted up inside.