05)17(05 its 310pm

A hazy humidity sits over the lush South Congress St. district of Austin. The bamboo sways in the backyard I’m sitting in, and the birds sing constantly. I can hear the sounds of traffic and city life, cars shifting gears, sirens in the distance, and that constant mid range hum that a city carries with it in warm weather.

I’m sitting in a reclined green lawnchair in Kate’s sisters apartment complex. It feels like home though we’ve been here only about 24 hours. Tess and Arnold and Gabriel have been warmly hosting us, showing us around their favorite spots in Austin, making sure we have everthing we need, and providing a comfy safe spot to rest up for a little while.

It has been over a month now that we’ve been on the road, and far too long since I’ve had time to sit down and sum it up. I started with the money, since that is a big thought on our mind, and a decent enough way to keep track of how its all going. We’ve been pretty good, frugal enough, three hundred dollars a month or so on food, about twice that on lodging, too much, two hundred plus on eating out, mostly burritos that we split, no big meals, and again too much on coffee, fifty bucks in a month getting coffee in coffee shops. But that’s how it goes. Money goes, and you know, I can justify the coffee, all the coffee shops we’ve been in are probably the most accurate portrayers of a particular slice of culture in a place, and if there is no coffee shop, well, that says a lot too.

For instance Austin. Yesterday we sat at a nifty hip place called Bouldin Creek Coffeehouse, ‘coffee dealers’ they advertise. We needed a place in the shade to sit while after sifting along the Congress street treasures and finding what was what in the 90 degree heat. All around us tables of young and fashionable sat, unshaven no doubt band mates, college kids leaned over big books, and thirty something liberal type families whose kids swung restlessly from the trees. And that kind of provides a good glimpse of Austin in a way: a plethora of college age kids, kind of wandering the tree lined streets, somewhat affluent and politically minded families, buying up the cute real estate and planting attractive gardens, bumper sticker buyers asserting their tendencies, and all in all, a healthy mix of easy going people.

The fact that it has been a whole crazy short and long month is hard to believe. Where we started in Yosemite feels as fresh in my mind as yesterday, on the shores of Inks Lake State Park, in the Hill Country of Central Texas. But I can feel myself changing in positive ways, I can gauge my travel smarts beginning to come naturally, and I can see Kate and I getting to be pros at the packing and unpacking game, the starting of campfires, and the cooking of healthy meals on a two burner propane stove. We’ve found ways to save money, seen more interesting sites, had a lot of fun, written a lot, taken a lot of pictures, generally loving it all.

The only thing I’m not loving is my sorry state of writing affairs, and today I want to begin catching up. Its hard not to procrastinate, as procrastination seems to be inherent with HUGE projects, and as such, I have found that even my past updates have been grossly understated.

But I’ll start from The Southwest, because that is where I still am, and hopefully I can make a little story out of it.

Ahem:

THE SOUTHWEST

Seeing the Grand Canyon is one of those things you hear about from childood when you grow up in the west. There is such a huge feeling about the whole geographic location that inevitably the mind fills itself with mythical images of it. In my mind i had pictured sort of a gian notch in the earth, a giant parenthesis filled with emptiness and bottomed out by a magnificent river. Always it seems the topic of the grand canyon ends with: …but I can’t explain it, its too big for that’. And so I pictured in my mind a really big parenthesis, so instead of this:

( )

more like this

( )

Its just how my mind explained it.

But its much more than this. The Grand Canyon is of such vastness that it is in fact many canyons with in one canyon. The bottoming out of flat land from out of Northern Arizona truly comes as a surprise, and the Canyon falls gracefully and with many hues of pink, blue, red and green down thousands of jutting points of rock. Waaaaaay down at the bottom the river moves along, from the general tourist vista nothing more than a pencil line silently there. The shapes are mystical and strange, and the vastness, no matter ow long you stare out at it, never really makes sense. I know that had Kate and I gone for a big hike to the floor and mule ride back up we would have had a much better perspective, but we had only a short afternoon.

We had only a short afternoon because we decided to miss the touristed campground. Our experience in Yosemite was fantastic save for the parking lot circus atmoshpere of the campground. We were pulling in sadly on a Saturday early afternoon, and so of course there were hoardes of people. In fact, the only disappointment in the whole of the Grand Canyon has got to be the noise. We quite word for word heard one person say “did you get the picture? good, lets go shopping!” (I promise I am not kidding or exaggerating).

The attitude of the general public at the easy to reach points of view is that they should yell at each other instead of talk, let kids run wild and scream if they get “too close” to the edge, and generally be thoroughly disrespectful to the grandeur, excitement and I would guess, though I didn’t experience, peace of the place. Tess (Kate’s sister) was telling me that the early explorers noted a sense of sadness dormant in the Canyon. I felt sad that there wasn’t at least a quiet area to sit and reflect, but was otherwise thrilled. I must admit too that I was thrilled to be able to say I saw it. Yes its superficial, but it is one of those places on earth that merit a certain “I joined the club” feeling, like Las Vegas, for instance.

Since we had resolved to avoid the tourist throngs at the Grand Canyon, we headed down through Flagstaff (again) to join the tourist throngs in Sedona. OF course, we didn’t expect this, but there is just cause to the number of people that vacation to the cool creeks and red rocks of this amazingly picturesque town. As you approach Sedona from Flagstaff you head down a winding canyon into a creek bed lined with trees, oak and pine and you get your first glimpse of the soaring spires of red rock. We had our maps pinpointed with the three National Park campgrounds along the way toward Sedona, and, since we are picky with our campsites, we took a while to choose a spot among the very crowded very busy sites. But we had to settle, we were tired, and there wasn’t a whole lot we could do that evening, aside from driving ourselves mad with stress and ignorance of options. So we settled down, and then drove into Sedona. Over coffee and bread at a ritzy balcony having coffee shop we determined that:

Sedona has easily one of the best natural backdrops of any city anywhere.

People with minidogs in their arms wear gucci sunglasses drive Lexus SUV’s and vacation or live in Sedona.

It would be neat to check out the several “energy vortexes” that surround Sedona.

As the sun set, we drove up a dirt road just outside of the town close to the most easily accessible Energy Vortex. I had determined this location by stopping in one of the many new age shops and perusing one of the many books about energy vortex. The place I found my information was called “The Center For The New Age” and was looked over by a bored looking woman and sat nicely over a rushing creek. Up at the energy vortex I must admit that the sunset was amazing in the way that light refracted among the spires of red rock. There was a creek running 200 feet below us and birds chirped serenely.

I felt a sense of meditative peace, and it may or may not have been a vortex, but it was a nice scene. Also, I had a kind of misunderstanding with Kate about an hour before and we talked it over nicely, me feeling humbled and dumb for the insensitivity I had displayed. I always consider a good look at myself and my actions a good example of meditation resolving stupidity. The tiff had occured when we were in a New Age-y gallery on the main tourist strip of Sedona. I had thought it would be interesting to purport myself as not only an art collector but as a working artist who may or may not be famous. I did this because 90% of the galleries I had been to, especially on this trip, had treated me somewhat disgustedly if I walked in in my usual trip attire with obviously no intention of buying something. And so I faked it, and sure enough, the gallery owner or worker was enthralled to know what I made, how I sold it, whether I would like to show them any works et cetera. All this when I didn’t have a “work” to show. And Kate, well, this is her world, or her deserved world. Kate is such a talented and original painter that she deserves to be selling pieces for ridiculous amounts of money in the most glitzy of yuppie galleries. But you see, that is the problem… the art world can be so pretentious that it is hard to imagine actually being excited to immerse oneself in that sort of vacant and superficial culture. And you have to immerse yourself in it to sell paintings, and Kate is young, so its this exclusive world that is intimidating, promising, and revoting all at once. My feeling is that I shouldn’t fake being an artist, and shouldn’t care about what gallery owners think of me, and that Kate will whatever course she chooses, find her way without bullshitting and pretensing her way along. So thank you energy vortex for that resolution.

The next day we visited a visitor info center to get a feel for some sights we ought to see. I asked the older white haired and healthy woman working there if she could tell us more about the “energy vortexes” and actually made the quotation mark gesture with my hands. She kind of reproached me with a serious look and told me earnestly that the vortexes affect different people in all different ways. She commented on how either way these places would be a good place to meditate and pray. I was glad she had taken a reverent approach to the whole scene. She obviously appreciated the beauty and the potentialities of Sedona and was proud of it. As we set out with our marked map for the vortexes, I earnestly wanted to be there, and to think awhile on the trip, and on our plans for the future. I wanted to pray a little, to whatever, for some guidance and protection. Alas, it was Sunday afternoon, and every spot we made it to was literally run over by people chatting, snapping pictures and generally doing anything but thinking meditatively.

We did make it to the amazing Chapel Of The Holy Cross situated on the way out of Sedona. Its architect originally envisioned it sitting on the banks of the Danube in Budapest, but the World Wars delayed the project indefinitely. It was worked, with the help of Frank Lloyd Wright to be a skyscaper sized tribute to the image of the cross as a modern testament to a living Christ. I liked a thought that the architect Margarite Brunswig Staude had about the one of the ideas, that it could be a testament to a more “modern” God, a testament to God as a contemporary. Whatever thoughts one might have of the idea of God, it was to me a peaceful building, and its reality, from conception to perfect completion, was very inspiring.

We headed out from Sedona and camped that night by a nice little river at Beaver Creek Campsite. Kate started to come down with the cold I had imported from Las Vegas casinos and we spent the evening by a huge campfire contemplating and talking.