Memories

Douglas MacArthur wrote that his earliest memory was the call of a bugle. True or not, what it unquestionably is, is fitting.  

The earliest memory I have is pressing my face up against the glass at an underwater display and a platypus appearing out of nowhere and frightening me so much that I fell over backwards. Not quite a bugle call, I'll grant you, and I hope not as fitting. 

[This, surprisingly, is not the only point on which MacArthur and I differ. He was married twice - I've never even been engaged. He graduated with honors from West Point. I graduated with honors from the University of Texas. He was born in the 19th century. My birthday falls in the twentieth century. I could list more, but I would run the risk of torpedoing this post, so lets return to bugles and platypuses and the early memories that children latch on to.]

I write about these early memories because I wonder what Lilly's first memory will be. She has many to choose from. It could be standing poodles or flying camels, music class or an old deaf dog. But one can never guess these things [I still to this day don't know why I can sing the melody and lyrics to a Sesame Street song: "Waiting for the bell to ring/waiting to stop everything...", but I can't for the life of me remember the name of Pink Floyd's lead singer]. Whatever her brain decides to latch on to, it has a fine pool to choose from, and a better pool than I suspect practically all children her age have. And what she doesn't remember, well between myself, Joef and Wells, Gigi and Papa, Mummy and Jim, I'm sure we can more than fill in the early gaps. 

Lilly is such a wonderful little person. Her world is overflowing with love and curiosity. It's full of blankets that need to be named and dolls that need to be dressed and books that need to be read over and over and over. Lilly herself is brimming with good advice and a healthy level of skepticism towards her grandfather. She comes up with the best nicknames, gives the most genuine hi's and bye's. She dances to songs she likes, and ignores jokes that aren't funny. In short, she's a fantastically genuine little girl, who's allowed and encouraged to be little. 

But one of the most beautiful things about Lilly, and one of my favorite, is how I've gotten to see Amelia. It is like watching a kenyan run. You wonder how they can be so good at something and make it look effortless that you wonder if they were genetically engineered to run, to be a mother. I've never been great around children. I just try to smile and laugh and ask dumb questions, and all of that comes naturally enough. And if that was all there was to it, then I wouldn't be writing this. But it's so much more, and if you ever watch Amelia with Lilly, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's the singing, the way she holds Lilly and kisses her on the head and gently taps her bottom. It's in the hundreds of little guidances each day. It's in the bows in the hair. It's in the things you don't see it because most people don't even know it should be there. But Amelia knows that bows and books and Lilly lambs and ack-doodles are supposed to be there, so they are there, and you do see them. And so does Lilly. 

The relationship between Amelia and Lilly has impacted me profoundly. Much more than I could have imagined. Take a few weeks ago for example. I was talking with this somewhat attractive girl, [I know, surprise surprise, she didn't run the other direction], and somehow we got on the topic of stay-at-home mothers. And this pleasant enough girl proceeded to tell me how she could never be one, that she had too much she wanted to do. A few minutes later I found a way to kill the conversation [which I must say, I've become increasingly good at] and I wondered what that poor girl thought was more important than what Amelia and Lilly have. There is no dollar amount, no job title that excites me half as much as the prospect of one day getting to walk into a house and seeing my happy wife teaching my curious child why they shouldn't put pens in their mouth. 

It would be a shame if I didn't mention Pummy somewhere in all of this; it was around this time of year that Pummy passed away. Reading what Dad wrote about him has also had a profound impact on me. Pummy understood so clearly what that pleasant enough girl didn't. And though my memories of Pummy are limited -- I remember his cologne, his glasses, his attempts in vain to try and get me to ration those delicious raspberries he would spoil me with, and driving toy trucks over him -- what strikes me most is the way we still speak of him, the way he is remembered. The older I get, the more I realize there is to be read, the more I appreciate the need to be quiet and listen, to accept instead of force. However, I am young enough to think that I have one of life's main duties figured out: to leave the world a better place than you found it. And by doing much the same of what I see between Lilly and Amelia -- loving unconditionally -- Pummy did just that. His name is mentioned and almost immediately everyone smiles and a funny story is told, or the one about him holding hands with Granny one last time comes up and your heart fills. The more I read about Pummy and hear stories about him, the more I wish I could have had a glass of scotch or two with him. He had so much to share, so much to give, and I have so much to learn. 

Baby Clark #2 is set to arrive any day now. And I must say, I'm excited. I get to be an uncle again. I'm in the running for Godfather again [the thought of being double godfather excites the hell out of me]. But mostly, I'm excited to know that another little guy or girl is coming in to this world and their parents are going to be Amelia and Jim and their older sister is going to be Lilly Grace. I can't think of a better and happier family for a child to join. I'm excited to see if Lilly ever lets this baby get a word in. I'm excited about the phone call. I'm excited about seeing the look on Amelia and Jim's face. I'm excited about six months from now, when it will be impossible to picture the Clark family without this baby, just as it's almost impossible to picture the new baby in the family right now.  I'm excited about the name, about the person this little tyke will become. I'm excited that I get to see my Gigi and Papa with another little one, to see them exude the love and warmth which I so fondly associate with my grandparents.  

I'm all over the place right now, I realize that. Let's blame it on the construction next door. Before we find our way back to the differences between myself and Douglas MacArthur [his son was named Arthur IV -- I don't even have a son], I'll end it here, with a quick word or two to anybody who may be reading this. That seems a good a way as any to wrap this up. 

To Amelia and Jim and Lilly - I can not tell you how much your little family has influenced and shaped me.   

To Mom and Dad - Between Dad's growing intolerance and Mom's small stature, you both are well on the road to being a sweet old couple. Mom, still to this day I don't know why you stuck around, I'm just glad you did.  

To Joe - Babies don't come from storks. 

To Ellie - Please explain to Joe where babies come from.

Sports Fans

Whether it was playing imaginary games of football on the trampoline for hours [where I was always forced to overcome a huge deficit due to a poor defensive showing in the first half, but no matter how large the deficit, I always managed to triumph thanks to an uncanny ability to find my fullback and tight-end], or whether I was collecting baseball cards in folders and studying the stats on the back -- sports were the love of my childhood. I had a Dad who I could kick a rugby ball around with, a Mom who would say "safe" if I slid head-first on the wood floors at home, a brother who could beat me at everything but basketball, and sisters who would come cheer at my baseball games. It was a boy's dream -- to have birthdays where your presents were new footballs and batting gloves and Emmitt Smith jerseys and a batting net in the backyard. I played and watched as much as I could. I would ride my bike and sneak into Landon's gym to practice my three-point shot, no matter how many times a janitor kicked me out. I would go outside and Dad would help me work on my juke moves after he got home from work. I excelled at sports and so I loved and studied them even more. I learned where everybody in the pro's went to college, I bought books on offensive theory in football, and bugged my coaches to explain why a 2-3 zone was better in certain situations than man-to-man. 

Now, I work in a sports bar, or as I've come to call it -- a bar that shows sports. And strangely, I find myself less invested in them than ever. I haven't sat down and watched a football game from start to finish this year. Same with baseball. And while I check espn.com and know what's going on, I'm as detached from the world of sports as I can ever remember. As the weeks pass, I find myself trying to put even more distance between myself and them -- the sports, and their fans. 

It started a year ago, when I went to the Cowboys-Giants game with Carinne; the game where Tony Romo broke his collarbone. The Cowboys lost, which was unfortunate, but I had a great time, we held hands and joked [and at her behest, took tons of photos]. We had overpriced food and walked a fair ways to get to the stadium [since I refused out of principal, to pay $50 to park]. 

Sitting in our section was a large contingent of Giants fans. The Cowboys took the lead early on, and so the more vocal Cowboys fans berated the Giants fans. And then Romo broke his collarbone and the Giants seized the momentum and trounced us, so the Giants fans taunted the Cowboys fans and by this point it was the fourth quarter so everybody was drunk and the taunts were becoming less and less clever and just increasingly loud and vulgar. I saw these people so happy, so upset, over things they had no control over. 

Even still, I was excited for football season to start. Summer is the slowest time for our bars; UT students are away, football and basketball are in their offseasons and traditionally, not many people go out to watch baseball games. Football was going to make me a lot of money. Saturdays we'd be busy with college football. Sundays would be pro football. Monday Night football would turn a slow night into a good one. Not to mention, I'd be working while the big games were going on, so I'd get to catch a fair amount of them. 

And after four weeks, I'm less excited. I'm tired. Not of the game but of the fans. I'm tired of the men who put on jerseys of other men and get drunk and yell in my bar, and taunt when their team wins -- as if they've accomplished something. 

Just a few days ago, a large man started screaming at the top of his lungs when I told him he had to leave the bar. [He had been asked to leave because he had screamed "FUCK AMERICA" at the top of his lungs during the national anthem, and then "FUCK YOU, FAGGOT!" after the first play of the game]. He was irate and drunk. Why couldn't he yell in a sports bar? Did he have to whisper when he was excited? He made a scene. He was forced to leave. He tried to come back in two more times. A married couple in my bar was so concerned that they called the police on him. What a sad way to spend a Sunday.

And so, here I am, working in a bar that an eighteen year old me would have loved. You can watch more football than you should ever be able to watch -- inside or outside. There's a food trailer out back that serves hot dogs and burgers and nachos. We have cold beer on draft. But unfortunately, we also have people who wear jerseys and see Sunday as a day to be a "fan", and not much else. And in doing so, they destroy the game they so proclaim to love. 

Sports are too often romanticized. The players are heroes, gladiators. The coaches are generals, geniuses, masterminds. The truth is that they are men who are good at a sport, and very often, not much more than that. Far too many players are terrible or non-existent fathers, or functionally illiterate. Too many coaches are obese, or alcoholics, or have anger-issues. And so it is with the fans. We love the sight of a stadium with 100,000 people on their feet, cheering, towels waving. We love the atmosphere, we say that sports brings out the best in us. But it doesn't. Sports brings out beer, which brings out the worst in almost all of us. It turns an engineer into a belligerent asshole. It turns a husband and a father into a fourth grader as he yells "fuck you and fuck the steelers" at a couple wearing Steelers jerseys. 

It is sad, to think of how pure the sport was to me as a boy and how corrupt it seems now. It is sad, that the sport that gave me a creaky shoulder and multiple concussions and yet I still loved it and followed it from the other side of the globe -- it sad that drunk men have tainted it. A part of me wants the NFL to disband, for the players to be fathers instead of gladiators, for the fans to be husbands instead of drunk. I want Sundays to be as they were when I was a boy and I would sit with my Dad and my brother [and the girls, if they had nothing else to do, or were waiting for the games to end so they could watch Dawson's Creek] and I would ask my Dad if he ever thought I could be that good and he would say yes and then I'd go outside and play catch with Joe and we'd quiz each other on where Stephen Davis went to college [Auburn] and I'd pretend I was as good as my Dad said I could be.


But mostly, I just want to be on the road, racing a triathlon somewhere. There, strangers applaud and encourage you to keep going and they tell you that you look great even though you feel like shit. Your family carries you. You realize that the drunk men in their jerseys have it all wrong,  that it's not about beating someone else or taunting. It's about the quiet conversations you have with yourself. It's about moments and reflections like these. 

There is an amazing paragraph in a book that Dad gave me. A young man is sitting on a bus in the early morning, about to make his first flight as a mail-pilot. He's scared, alone with his thoughts and on a bus full of businessmen on their way to work.  

"I heard them talking to one another in murmurs and whispers. They talked about illness, money, shabby domestic cares. Their talk painted the walls of the dismal prison in which these men had locked themselves up. And suddenly I had a vision of the face of destiny... Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you to escape. You, like a termite, built your peace by blocking up with cement every chink and cranny through which the light might pierce. You rolled yourself up into a ball in your genteel security, in routing, in the stifling conventions of provincial life, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as man. You are not the dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. You are a petty bourgeois of Toulouse. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning."

Back On The Bike

This photo is from the Marble Falls race that Joe and I talk about so often. You are all familiar with the story -- how close it was, especially on the run. You're also familiar with the speedos, and how fantastic I look in them. The speedos have stayed in the closet for a while now, and thanks to the sponsorship of an awesome bike store, they won't be making an appearance anytime in the near future. 

The blue Cannondale has stayed inside as well, though too big to fit in the closet. You know that story as well -- of why the bike, the running shoes, the goggles haven't been used. 

This week, after a quick wash and a few well-placed sprays of tri-flo and with the assistance of a bike pump, the bike was looking ready to go out again, so I obliged and took it out Sunday. 

The Sunday ride was magnificent. Joe and I left my house at 2:30 in the afternoon [a good dentist joke is begging to be told there, but I'll let it slide], and we set out for a short ride. It was a hot day, which is rare in Texas this summer. As we rolled along the familiar roads, I realized that I'd drained my aero drink and water bottle in the first few miles. Joe's water hadn't lasted much longer. And so we stopped at a grocery store and I went in and grabbed too much water and ice and gatorade and coke, and we sat in the shade and talked about football and baseball as we drained these wonderfully cold drinks.

The remainder of the ride was surreal; when I went to look at my bike computer to see how long we'd been riding, I realized I hadn't even turned my speedometer on. Joe and I talked about things that brothers should, about what we were wrestling with, what we were looking forward to, what we had overcome. It was a talk most have over a beer and we had it over the hills in the outskirts of Austin; how fitting. 

I'm excited for more days like Sunday. Far too often I worried about pace and distance instead of enjoying the sun and the road and the fact that I get to ride with my brother.

I also went out again today, this time with Ryan. Ryan, since he's been in Austin, has only done one route in Austin -- the Fitzhugh out and back. Figuring he'd appreciate a change of scenery and that I would be as good a guide as any, we set out to do the same ride Joe and I did a few days earlier. 

The clouds were out today, and it provided periods of shade which you can only appreciate when you've cooked in the sun before. I still drained all my water in the first hour or so, so we stopped at a gas station and drank the coldest water and gatorade we could find. 

Again, there was something amazing about being on the bike. Something not forced. I climbed the hills and felt strong. I was riding not because there was a race to train for, or some program to follow, but because it was nice and I could. 

At one point today Ryan called out from behind me. He said "Look, who am I? I'm drafting you." I guessed Joe, which Ryan told me was correct and we both laughed and continued riding. Those are the best kind of jokes. 

We continued to pedal and we talked about how moronic a sign that said "Noah's Ark Pre-School" was; Noah had many things on his ark, and we were both pretty sure that a pre-school wasn't one of them. As the conversation progressed, Ryan shared his belief that Noah had brought a supermodel on the ark. 

The conversation rolled along with the road, and as we neared home, Ryan asked why I was flicking off a few birds. 

-"Because birds don't do anything," I said.
-"They sustain our eco-system."
-"No they don't. They shit on cars."
-"They also make this planet livable."

-"Yeah dude. It was a few crows and an owl that started the big bang, wasn't it?"

Ryan shakes his head in disbelief. 

-"That's what I thought," I said. 

And so we pedaled home, both convinced the other was an idiot, and both right. 

It's good to be back on the bike. 

A Neighbor and Her Fucking Porch

After close to a month of looking for a new place to live, and with both of our leases either already expired or on the verge of expiring, Joe and I were running out of options to find our new residence. It was the middle of a record heat wave in Texas, and looking for apartments and houses ranked below drinking beer and reading and sleeping in between work. So we put off the search until the last minute, and surprisingly, there weren't as many options as we'd hoped. And when we finally did start looking extensively, we experienced the frustrations that accompanies house-hunting. A place looks great but it's too expensive, or the price is perfect but it's too far from your work and/or civilization. Or it's a great price, great location, but the person who lived there before you had cats and was a chain smoker. The stars need to align on price, location and the property itself. Towards the end of the month, I was beginning to doubt they ever would. 

Then one day Joe called me and told me about a place that had just been listed on craigslist. He asked if I could call the number and inquire [he was too busy with work, he told me. Typical older sibling]. I did call. The woman who answered told me that she was showing the house to people at three that afternoon. I told her that I could meet her there at two-thirty, and that so long as it wasn't crawling with roaches, I'd sign the papers then and there. 

The house looked nice and wasn't expensive, it was located near the important parts of Austin, and most importantly, was in a quiet and safe neighborhood. Papers were signed. Rooms were painted. House became a home. 

One thing the owners forgot to mention when they listed the place online is that this house seems to have a firm grasp of irony. This new, supposedly safe neighborhood was the location where my car window was smashed and my stereo was ripped out. And the supposedly quiet neighborhood full of old people; it now sounds more like Tokyo in the late 1940's, when Douglas MacArthur and the Allies were rebuilding the grand city that they had firebombed into rubble and ash. 

Our next door neighbor, who I've only met once, is a sweet old lady named Ruth. She is no longer our neighbor for the time being because her entire house is under construction, or to put it more aptly, expansion; after all, nobody can live in a place where there's drilling and sawing and hammering all the time. And Ruth, bless her fucking heart, was so thoughtful and considerate of her former neighbors, that she decided to wait until everyone was at work -- 9am -- before she'd have her workers start the drilling, sawing, hammering. And then, after a long day of work, she knew that none of her neighbors would want to be disturbed by her little construction project, so she has her workers stop each day somewhere between 4 to 5 pm. 

There's just one problem. Ruth didn't realize that her next-door neighbors, the people who are a mere ten feet from all this fucking construction, work in bars. So we're actually at home the entire time they're working, and we're at work the entire time they're resting. And so each morning, Brogan and I, after working until 4 or 5 or 6 in the morning, are woken at 8 or 9 am to the sound of construction. Actually, it's not "construction" that wakes us up. It's the whine of a buzzsaw, the incessant pounding of a hammer, the "thoop...thoop" of a nail-gun. Those jolt us awake, four hours into our sleep. 

This of course means that we wake up in terrible moods.

I can't tell you the number of times Brogan and I have spoken about burning that place to the ground, but we've decided against this because it would mean that: 

a) they might start the expansion all over again [though I've proposed to keep burning it down until Ruth's funds dry up]

and

b) since the drought has killed most of the grass and turned it tinder-dry, there's a good chance the fire would spread uncontrollably and possibly burn down our house [which at 9 am, when a hammer is banging five feet from your window, doesn't sound like a bad trade-off]. 

There is an unhealthy level of spite in the peaceful neighborhood, at least in this quiet little house. We talk about renting jackhammers and turning it on at 1 am -- when we're at work. We dream of renting a crane and wiping the piddly little fucking porch off the face of the earth, and then smiling and going back to sleep. We wonder why the fuck Ruth thinks she needs a bigger house than the one she's already got -- is she really so ignorant as to think that a new porch, a new room will bring her happiness? If she's unhappy, she should talk with her husband, or go see the Colosseum. In fact, we pity Ruth; just as she thinks that all people work from 9-5, she thinks that bigger houses bring a sense of happiness, when in fact, they usually give you more room to feel empty and alone. And even worse than pity, we label her a coward. She left the neighborhood behind with a mess she fucking made. And like a cowardly general, when the porch is completed and the neighborhood once again livable, she come back to the front-lines, smiling and talking about how much work it was and how nice it looks. 

And then we think about our landlords. Did they know about this ahead of time? Were they chuckling quietly to themselves as we signed the lease, because they knew that in a month's time, we'd be living next to a fucking Home Depot? Are they sitting there, cashing our check, laughing maniacally?

We don't have answers to the questions. We just sit in our house and occasionally peer through the window. 

Fuck our landlords if they knew and didn't tell us. Fuck Ruth. And fuck her porch.  

The new porch, as seen from my window.  

Super Monster

Right around a week ago, I ate a burrito the size of my forearm. It took somewhere in the range of twenty to thirty minutes [in the excitement of taking this burrito head on, I forgot to set a timer], and when it was all said and done, when there was nothing left but aluminum foil and barbecue sauce stains and a memory of the 2,000 plus calories that were now a part of me -- after all that, there was a bizarre feeling of accomplishment. I had finished what I had set out to do.

There is not much else to report -- after all, eating, no matter what ESPN tries to tell you, isn't that exciting. It was by no means easy [or even pleasant towards the end], but I did finish, and even had enough room for a Shiner afterwards. 

Even the employees were excited.

You can imagine how the jokes that were made as we looked at this photo.

    

All that remained. 

A medal Ryan crafted for me, using paper napkins and some of the foil used to wrap the conquered SuperMonster.

The author, in desperate need of a shave, wearing the medal outside.  

Letters

Jim, Joe, Dad & Brogan,

Before I say anything else and get sidetracked, let me congratulate you. I still maintain that getting to the starting line of an Ironman is often tougher than the race itself. And you all have made it to that line yet again, and for that alone, you should be unashamedly proud. Each and every one of you have reasons why you shouldn't be there -- travel, the pressure of raising a family, focusing on and building a relationship, embracing retirement, too much work, a cracked bike, injury setbacks -- but still you found a way. Again, that in and of itself is a testament to what you are made of. 

Collectively, you have raced this distance close to two dozen times. That's 57.6 miles of Ironman swimming,  2,688 miles of Ironman biking, and 628.8 miles of Ironman marathons. You have battled and overcome, you have vomited, wheezed, sunburned, and climbed your way to the finish when you had to (and in one of our less proud moments, even drafted). You know how the weight of a medal feels around your neck, and how good beer tastes the next morning.You are all Ironmen and will renew your vows Sunday -- of that, I'm sure. 

I write this for a few reasons. Perhaps the most obvious one is because I'm not there. I can't raise a glass and tell you this in person, though I wish I could. More than you know, I wish I could. 

But I also share this with you because it comes from my heart. It is the only place this could come from. 

I decided to stop racing a few days before my birthday. I was planning on doing the 70.3 in Lubbock. But my heart wasn't in it. I was racing to say I was racing; to be the Ironman that everyone thought I was. The weeks leading up to it had been average training at best -- I was cutting swim workouts to sleep, shortening bike workouts to have a beer. It ate away at me; not that I wasn't training, but that I didn't want to train. In fact, I saw training as an obstacle to what I wanted in my life: a non-trainwreck relationship, a social life, to write more. So I walked away. From the training, the races, the bike and the pool. I still haven't been back.  


Not a day goes by that I don't think about this Ironman, and as the race draws closer, I think about it every hour, and probably more than that. I want to high-five you out on the course and maybe pretend to pull a hamstring the next time we see each other. I want to stand side-by-side race morning for the pictures, and then stand side-by-side somewhere in the post-race chaos for the same, yet very different photo. 


I now realize that I don't miss the race, but I miss being there with you, being one of you. 


When most of your friends and family are Ironmen, it is easy to forget how uncommon of a feat this truly is. How rarely people stare at the water, next to thousands of other men and women, and stare out at the water and think, "Holy shit, this is real... Am I ready?" 


You are there. You are ready. And you'll be in my thoughts all day. 


Enjoy it. Be strong. And say hi to the little one out on the course for me.  

And to Amelia, Liana, Lilly and Mom (and Ellie, who is as veteran of an Iron-spectator as they come, and who I know would love to be there), 

You are the heart and meaning behind this day. Your presence, not to mention your applause, your high-fives and your hugs -- they are the reasons to finish. Do not underestimate your importance. 


It is because you stand by the side of the road, because you are there waiting at the finish, but mostly just because you are there, that it is much more than a race. 


Cheer for me out there. 

Broken Glass

I went for a walk late last night. Even the nights off work, I still can't sleep before 3. It was chilly for an Austin summer night - low 60's - and so I put on a long-sleeved shirt, grabbed a pad, a pen and a flashlight and wandered through the new neighborhood. For close to two hours I walked up and down my neighbor's streets, occasionally the lights of a passing car lighting the way for a second or two before they disappeared and went home. I walked without a destination in mind. I walked to walk, to be outside and feel the cold in my hands and on my face.  


I had hit something of a roadblock with my movie a week or so ago. I had finished the second draft and sent it out to friends. They liked it. It was funny and made them laugh out loud [which is good, since it was a comedy]. But there was a problem with the story itself. They all saw it, and I had felt it since I had started writing. The problem was my main character's motivation, or lack thereof. In a movie, the main character needs a reason for why they are doing the things they are doing. There have to be consequences if they fail, rewards if they succeed; that's what makes a reader keep turning the page. Think of any movie you like. I promise you, they all have this. Mine didn't. So I had a funny script that needed fixing. I put off working on it for days and days. I had already spent so much time crafting this story. So much time writing and re-writing single lines until I found the right one. So many cuts already. And to fix this problem, the only solution that I could find was to cut so many scenes I had fallen in love with and nearly start from the beginning. Because when you pull one thread in a story, the rest can quickly come undone (and if you pull a thread and nothing comes undone  -- maybe it shouldn't have been in the story in the first place).  


When Joe was studying for the bar, he had mentioned that he would walk for hours and hours around Town Lake with his notecards. It had made the studying somewhat bearable, not to mention more productive. The procedures and cases that needed to be memorized somehow became more digestible when looked at beneath the trees and alongside the water. I, of course, had ridiculed him for this at the time, tossing a few creative and witty barbs his way. Somehow impervious to the attacks, Joe kept walking and studying, and in the moments when I got to see him when he wasn't studying, I could tell if he'd been out walking or not. 


And so I sat in my room, staring at a 103 page script that needed changing, and then I'd look at a yellow pad full of new ideas that needed to be transplanted into my unmotivated script. It wasn't writer's block, because I knew what needed to be done. It was as though I was the unmotivated character in my script; I simply didn't want to start over again. I grew tired of staring at a screen that wouldn't write for me, so I thought about what Joe had told me and grabbed the pen, flashlight and pad, and decided that I'd rather be uncreative outside than in. 


By the time I returned home I had outlined the first half of the movie and had pages more of ideas for the second. I stayed up and typed out what I had written down, adding more ideas along the way.  


There was no point going to sleep now. It was 4 am, and I had to take Brogan to the airport in 30 minutes. So I kept writing. 


Brogan knocked on my door when he was ready to go and I grabbed my car keys and tried to detach myself from the script, which has become increasingly difficult to do, but I find I can do through a video game or good music. I thought about good songs to play on an early morning drive, and then  we walked outside and locked the front door and made our way down the path to the street where we park our cars. It was still cold, and even though I'd been out in it for hours, it was still a pleasant surprise.  


We ended up taking Brogan's car to the airport because when we got to my truck, this is what we saw:

I don't remember what I said, or what Brogan said. I think it might have been "Jesus Christ." But that was about the extent of it. We were laughing in the car a few minutes later, and then a few minutes after that we were talking about Wisconsin and in the long silences I could tell both of our minds were there, for very different reasons.

These things happen. Why is there such a shock when it happens to you?

I thought about the broken window and the missing stereo on the drive to the airport, trying to picture the person responsible. It is a sad life they lead, and I doubt a very fulfilling one. They are a thief and dishonest. And that is worse than being a victim. 

Bizarrely, I found myself trying to justify it all. See if I had done something to deserve this. I joked about this with Brogan, something to the effect of: "Maybe this is karma for breaking a heart." It may or may not be, though I'm more inclined to think of it as a random act, an event that is better left behind than continually ransacked for meaning.  

It is a beautiful Thursday afternoon in Austin. Mid 90's, reports calling for it to be in the mid to low 50's tonight. At this moment, a friendly enough man is fixing my window and vacuuming out all the glass from my front seat. "I was so pissed when that shit happened to me," he said. "Wanted to kill the fuckers."  

In a few hours my brother gets off work and we will go out for beers and some food and we'll chat about the window and the stereo I'm sure, and then we'll talk about Wisconsin and how he's feeling. We'll talk about the bike course, how his running's been. He'll tell me a story about Liana in a way that people who are in love talk about each other. I'm sure at some point we'll talk about dumb things that we always do. We'll figure out what time I'm picking him and Liana up for the airport tomorrow. 

And then whenever we finish eating, I'm going to drive home and park my car in the same spot. I'm going to grab the same pad, pen and flashlight, and I'm going to walk down different streets in the same neighborhood.

My stereo is gone. My window is in pieces. I will fix the window. I will buy a new stereo. If only all of life's problems were this easy to fix.