by Herocious
tonight.”
Bridget agrees. She says it looks as big as a planet.
“It’s not,” I say. I say, “It’s a moon.”
“I know that,” she says.
We pad paved terrain with four quiet feet. We reach Congress Ave.
“But can you believe,” she says, “that we’ve walked on that moon?”
It is incredible to think humans have been oh-so-far-away from earth. I don’t know if we’re meant to go oh-so-far-away from earth. I’m an isolationist. I don’t even think humans should’ve crossed the ocean. The ocean is hostile enough. Think of Space.
Why do we always want to push farther? Why do we always think we’re missing out if we haven’t seen everything? We’re like cats, always curious what’s behind the closed door, or inside that cabinet. Stay within natural boundaries. Learn yourself right where you are. I’m all for traveling by foot and by wheels, but by ship, airplane, rocket? These are absurdities. They’ll only lead to exploitation and further trouble.
Dear Lord, I know my frustration makes me speak nonsense. I’m prolific in the art of guff. According to my understanding of Your story, we bit into the apple of knowledge and You exiled us. Banished us from the land of sweet ignorance. I’ve had my share of apples. I’m going to smoke an apple tonight, after Bridget and I drink 24 ounces of high-gravity cider. I’m not asking for the land of sweet ignorance. I renounced that place almost directly after I was born. Some may even think I renounced it before.
But, dear Lord, if I can’t live in the land of ignorance, if it’s no longer possible for me to live off Your bounty, please give me the wherewithal and the freedom to continue putting together my own legend, but not – I repeat, not – at the expense of those people I love and trust. I’m no starving artist. I simply want to make my own legend.
4
To have the ability to move fast without an engine, to get places in record time without polluting, to use calories as your fuel. It makes so much more sense. It also frees your mind, riding on your bike.
Bridget and I are keenly aware of this when we ride to Pecan St, known as 6th St these days, for an arts and crafts fair.
On the way there, coasting north down the sidewalk without a helmet – stupid us! – we pass an older woman doing her lawn on South 1st St.
She has a small bungalow she neatens up on Saturday. Every Saturday she takes out the trusty lawn mower and rake and puts the landscape around her bungalow in proper order, and she does this wearing a cotton tee that scans:
FREEDOM IS NOT FREE
If freedom isn’t free, I think, how much does it cost? Would I pay for freedom? It seems like if you have to pay for freedom, you probably aren’t very free to begin with, and besides, it completely goes against my anti-consumerist way of being.
On the opposite side of South 1st St, I recognize a moonlight tower straight out of the stoner classic, Dazed and Confused. I try to alert Bridget, but she’s too far ahead.
The next point of interest is a cluster of trailer park vittles. Austin is famous for late nineteenth century moontowers and these street vendors. Keep overhead low and food quality high – a winning recipe. But I hear unctuous city officials are doing what they can to make it more costly and bureaucratic to get vendor permits. They also want to make inspections more stringent. Local economists predict one out of every five will have to shut down shop. Leave it to city officials to keep the population safe.
4
Miami Beach was death defying. Where did I get that descriptor?
I wrote it in haste, thinking that hastiness would make me honest, but that doesn’t answer my question.
Miami Beach was death defying. I can’t make any sense of it, yet I feel it captures the spirit of my Miami Beach.
We lived 0.5 miles from the actual beach. A ten-minute walk was all it took for us to reach paradise. Where we lived, paradise was reliable. I could depend on paradise. I could count on it to always be there.
The sea,
always there.
The cut of the bluest sky,
always there.
The sands,
The sun,
The seashells,
always there.
The horizon,
always there.
Such an open space, full of fractals and the golden ratio,
always there.
Austin?
5
I’m ashamed of the way I just treated Honeyed Cat. I don’t know what came over me, and I’m sorry.
The shower was cold. The water was little more than a trickle. Quite aggravating. I’m not trying to make excuses for the way I behaved, but it is tough to shower for a new purchase on the day under these conditions. Shitty showers should justify, at least to some extent, shameful behavior.
Backstory:
We asked the woman with purple boots for a visit from the exterminator and a replacement showerhead. I think ours is corroded. Something as simple as a new showerhead could fortify our water pressure.
Although the woman with purple boots promised us a new part, it’s been almost two months since our request and nothing. The exterminator has come, though. He banged on our front door one morning and, since no one seemed to be answering, decided to use his universal key to open sesame.
I jumped out of bed, stumbled into some dirty shorts, and shouted, “Wait!”
But he continued to jabber with the key. Little did I know, it was impossible for him to enter since I had bolted the top lock, which can’t be manipulated from outside.
Honeyed Cat was frightened of this foreign man. She played statue in the corner as he did his thing with the little spigot that hissed like a serpent spitting toxins.
“Did I spook her enough?” he asked, chuckling and reeking of cancer.
“I think so,” I said.
Bridget was asleep under the covers. She wore a shirt and shorts, but it looked like a beautiful naked girl sleeping in my bedroom since the sheet was wrapped tightly around a bare shoulder.
The exterminator came, yes he did, but the showerhead has been politely ignored. It isn’t a terrible inconvenience. I’ve lived for many years with worse water pressure, so none of this backstory sufficiently reconciles what I just did to our tiny cat, shitty shower or not.
Apparently, she isn’t feeling too well. Something is awry. Her tiny stomach is giving her trouble, or it could be more serious. Whatever the case may be, when I got out of the shower, sprayed across the carpet: her vomit, acidic and chunky. Her silent ailing didn’t keep me from shooting her an evil eye. Of course, she was looking at me, already trying to gauge my wrath.
Is he going to be sympathetic, thought Honeyed Cat, or inhuman?
“Why didn’t you vomit on the linoleum?” I asked, crazy-eyed. “Or why didn’t you go outside and vomit on the balcony? The door’s open. Just why on the carpet?!”
Looks like he’s going to be inhuman.
This train of thought got me all in a rage, and before I could stop myself, I was taking Honeyed Cat to her vomit and making her smell what she had done.
“No,” I said, “don’t do this again. You realize I have to clean up your mess?”
Yep.
Not feeling my message was communicated, I accidentally let her honeyed belly rub into her vileness. She growled in disbelief as I carried her to the balcony and locked her out to clean herself.
Inhuman.
Bridget believes people are born inherently good. Most Christians believe in original sin, or people are born inherently bad. Jews, Muslims, and Hindi reject this congenital guilt. Then there are others who believe people are born neither good nor bad. These believe in tabula rasa at birth and it’s life itself that makes us one way or the other.
Honeyed Cat assiduously works to make me live up to my inherent goodness. Even I’ll admit she’s making progress. I do treat her gentler. I no longer throw things at her and I don’t throw her. Testament of my progress is the lack of scratches on my hands and forearms. Back in the day,
we got into scrabbles often. It couldn’t be at all avoided. These scrabbles usually started out innocently enough, with me teasing her using a string of some sort, and then I’d inevitably try something that made her angry, like tying the string around her honeyed belly.
She’d scrabble for the fluidity of freedom, scrabble for her precious life, scrabble to make me treat her as an equal, and all her scrabbling has worked. Now she doesn’t have to scrabble anymore. She merely eyes me steadily until my shameful behavior is reflected on her jade. And she sometimes growls.
But I’ve learned and I’m learning still.
More importantly, I’ve come to understand this is Honeyed Cat’s time on earth and she’s spending it with me. I want her to pass this time pleasurably. I make sure she always has food and water. I give her fishy treats, tuna juice, and, every now and then, a cut of cheese. I clean her litter box and sing her name even when I’m away.
I know I probably seem cuckoo addressing a tiny cat, but animals have souls.
To my credit, unlike the previous time, I only leave Honeyed Cat on the balcony for a few minutes. She sits like a tiny Buddha and studies me from the other side of the glass pane until I smile and open the door. The vomit is gone. We’re on good terms again.
Asshole.
9
Moving is educational. After this trip, I’ll never look at a rental truck on the interstate the same way. Now I know how much these trucks set you back.
Not only that, I know the proper way to think about possessions, in particular, large pieces of furniture you like a lot.
Moving within the same city, or even the same state, isn’t the