(Phaysis)

For what it’s worth, I’m heading to Texarkana for the Labor Day weekend. 3-ish days of living la vida familia. I plan to do a lot of distracted hanging out while a TV is on, do a bunch of drowsy driving around town feeling bummed because everything has changed so much and nothing has changed and I’ve changed and my friends haven’t changed and so on. Also on the agenda is sitting at IHOP for burnt coffee and journal time. Hard couch.

Actually, I’d like to spend actual time with the family, like at my sister’s house with her kids, and my mother, and some pick-a-nick happenings. Maybe I’ll cook something. Dunno.

What I do know is that I have a few days to get ready for the trip. Car’s up and running, got new tires, alignment, got the SRS light issue figured out. Picked up some new music for the road. Got the laptop jukebox problem hammered out. Looks like I’m all set. Hopefully the drive will be smooth and problem-free. That’s the worst part about visiting because I spend 12 hours round-trip behind the wheel. Driving used to be fun, now it’s just a transport that can’t legally go fast enough.

So I’m getting ready to begin the start of my prepping for my departure to Texarkana tomorrow. I would already be all packed and loaded, but this coffee won’t drink itself. Besides, it’s my life, it’s my time.

Not really. It’s work, coffee, Ruby on Rails. Sleep. Rinse and repeat.

I really should’ve had this Ruby on Rails project finished long before now. It’s supposed to be simple with RoR. Shit simple. But I keep making it difficult. Keep adding stuff like “secure database queries” and “input validation”…and I’m not even started on the Posts models yet! One of these days, I’ll do a proper writeup of my RoR experiences, but there’s no time for that, what with my staring dumbfaced at code and drifting off to play minesweeper for 3 hours before bed.

I need a break. Really, I need a break. I guess part of my fascination with the latest U2 album is that the band sequestered themselves to a villa in Fez, Morocco while they wrote the album. It’s the idea of being someplace else for a while and finding my voice again that appeals to me. I don’t travel, and I typically don’t make plans to leave town for the weekend. So I end up being here, doing the same ol’, for months on end, with little variations in the pattern. It’s no wonder I’ve grown old and inflexible.

I feel like leaving for a while, but going to Texarkana this weekend for 48 hours will have to do, I guess. I won’t have the time, energy, or space to throw myself to the muses; trips home aren’t for that. Travel isn’t for me; that’s my feeling. Travel is for people who have accrued vacation time and have managerial approval to spend it. Travel is for the unemployed who have friends in distant cities. Travel is for people who don’t have to worry about supporting themselves or paying rent on a place to store their stuff. Working stiff contractors like me can’t travel. Time worked is time paid, and I am running broke.

Maybe I should just sell all my stuff and roam. Eh, I’m too old for that. At my age, that kind of behavior is just two steps away from being a homeless bum. I dunno, maybe it’ll be therapeutic, or maybe if I throw myself at the bottom hard enough I’ll bounce up higher than I am now. Maybe I actually flourish in the face of change. Who’s to know?

I just ordered tickets to Texarkana aboard Amtrak. This is a first for me, the riding Amtrak thing. Leaving Saturday morning at 9:30, arriving at 9pm. Coming back 5:30am a week later on Sunday to arrive home at 7pm. After being a rail afficionado for a lifetime, I finally have the opportunity to ride the rails. I’ve heard it’s classier and more comfortable than Greyhound; I can leave my seat and walk around, and there’s food available onboard. It’s just that in this part of the country, it takes forever to get anywhere.

Amtrak, in Texas, has to share the rails with freight trains, which get priority; Amtrak just leases time and space. So the trips promise to take longer than marked on the schedules. And god help us if there’s a train breakdown somewhere on the tracks, or a train hits a car; that’s at least a 3-hour stop. And nobody can leave the train except at the rail stations. Good thing I don’t smoke anymore.

So I’ll be staying at my cousin’s place, on the couch. Her housemates are night-owls. There’s pets and smoking and alcohol and cold conditions. My mother, who lives in the apartment out back, has promised to let me use her car when necessary; hopefully there won’t be too much inconvenience on either part. This’ll be my first time in Texarkana without the available use of my own car since I moved back from North Carolina in ’98. I’m not used to that level of living, coordinating with others to get around instead of hopping into my car at-will. Get settled in my ways, y’know?

Also, this’ll be the first time I’ve spent a whole week in Texarkana since I moved to Austin. Usually I’m ready to return to the comfort of my own bed after four days, so it’ll be a stretch. I may hate life after the week is over, I may find myself, I may cancel the train reservation and hitchhike back home. I don’t know. Hopefully it’ll go well.

So this is a warning to those of you in Texarkana who are my friends and family (and who still bother to regularly read my mostly-dead journal): I’m coming to Texarkana for the Thanksgiving holiday. Prepare your tables.

Went to the opening weekend of Texas Renaissance Festival. I give my weekend’s experience a score of 65%. Friday night sucked, saturday morning sucked, but saturday afternoon and evening made up for it mostly. I hung out with my Texarkana friend Brian. We set up camp close to this group of people from Houston and San Antonio. A bunch of party animals. I made sure to get myself drunk saturday night on some of Brian’s camp-famous punch and two rum-and-cokes. Over two evenings I was able to eak out less than eight shoddy hours of sleep.

After the higher-than-expected ticket price, the flat tire made when looking most of friday night for Brian and his camp, and my expenditures on food, drink, and supplies, coupled with the lack of sleep, I made the choice to strike camp sunday morning, skip the second day of Festival, say g’bye to my new friends, and drive home where a shower and bed awaited. After unpacking and cleaning up, and during the process of getting dressed, I fell asleep. Woke up enough to transplant to the bed and stayed there for 11 hours. Got up around 2am sneezing my ass off, then went back to bed at 4 for another 4 hours of sleep before work. Sunday just did not exist.

65%.

The presidential debates are under way. Watched the Vice Presidential debate. Wasn’t as clear as the first Presidential debate last week. Both sides made good points.

Currently feeling something resembling the leading edge of a case of bronchitis. I’m in the denial stage. Feeling a little better after vacuuming my room and cooling off. Funny what a little cleaning up can do. A cluttered, unsanitary room with papers, tissues, and stuff everywhere is totally the way my room is when I’m sick. It’s not that way any more, so maybe it’ll work in the reverse direction.

Water + vitamins + cleaning = healthy Shawn

So, I got paid today. Rent is now paid, as are two of the three house bills. I got one of my breathing medications refilled. Got my three rolls of Austin City Limits film processed. I’m now certain that my camera has outlived its life expectancy. Quite a few of the shots are seriously lacking. Some are even double-exposed. I’ll have to do some creative cropping and color correction to get anything decent out of them, as most shots have the members of the various bands consisting of small blobs of film grain. I hate to admit, but I fear it’s time to get a digital camera.

I’ll see what I can do about the pictures; I’ll have to edit and decide which to post. That’ll be later. Sorry.

I got the inspiration to work on some Glass Door songs the other day. The desire waned by the time I got home from work and commenced to screwing with my music software. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it to even bother with the Glass Door venture.

Course, same could be said for Chrontium, Glyph (the planned website engine for Phaysis.com), the image gallery tool, and some other secret side projects.

Shawn, the Great Initiator.

Sleepy now. What follows is a bit I wrote a few weeks ago concerning an element currently no longer in my life. Enjoy. Signing off.

This back is broken shapeless, the bastards got it beat
hands empty to the merciless, on knees to pledge defeat.
Running from the headache, to flee from venom’s might
I could have won the battle, but I have lost the fight.

These ears are filled with sludge, from months of backstab hate
and petty bicker laughing, the faceless fools’ berate.
Holding back the bile, who cares if you are right
I know I’ve won the battle, but I have lost the fight.

Hands burning from the liars, who tempt and tease deceit
who promise love unconquered, then pull from under feet.
Bowing to the heartbreak, I’m lonely here tonight
I may have won the battle, but I have lost the fight.

Heart aching from the lesson, each passing day is learned
you think of me as nothing, your silence has me burned.
I leave your cold contempting, and make my burden light
tonight I’ve won the battle, but I have lost the fight.

I felt something this weekend.

I sit here at my computer, and I’m still trying to digest all the events of this weekend’s trip to Texas Renaissance Festival. Being away from Austin and all that my selfsame lifestyle entails, even if only for two short days, has given me a different perspective of myself and my angle on life.

Friday:

I took friday off from work and headed out to TRF to meet with Jon, Laura, Liz, and Doug, my friends from Texarkana, at the campground. The drive was steady and swift, and never minding my lateness in leaving town, I still made it there in good time, albeit an hour and a half late, as is my proper idiom. My friends had taken a bet as to when I’d arrive (thankfully, not “if”). Liz won the bet over Laura.

I set up camp, got my things organized, and proceeded to take in the surroundings while hanging out with my friends, cracking wise, bringing up memories. A major kick to the memories was the presence of our mutual friend Jason who I have not seen in the 13 years since my high school graduation. He brought a few new faces; his wife Christy, his brother Eric, and his brother’s wife Amy, and some other folks who, and I will be honest, I did not learn their names (apologies if any names are wrong). So, all told, our camp was fairly sizable this year and lent itself well to having very few dull moments.

Friday night went kinda quietly. Sort of. We made dinner and continued drinking and unwinding, getting into the “proper mood” for the weekend. We met a guy who came to us first to ask permission to set up camp next to ours. We consented wholeheartedly (and thankfully), and in no time he was set up. His name is Jeremiah, he goes by “Lord Nightshade”, and makes some pretty kick-ass chainmail and fetish clothing (if you are in the Dallas area and looking for some well-made stuff, I can give you his number). Luckily, his being a total stranger paid off – he was totally cool.

So, many drinks, a couple of drum circles, and one campfire later, we crash out one by one to get some needed rest for Saturday.

Saturday:

The next day, we go to the first day of the last weekend of this year’s faire. I dressed out in full garb for the first time in three years, and if not for the heat and humidity of this mid-November day, it would’ve been completely perfect. I toured around some time on my own and ran around checking out the jousting match, a few booths and shows, and met up with three of my friends who work at various shops. It’s always a pleasure to see Stacy and Kate at Dream Shoes. Pete, a friend of mine from Houston, works at McCoy’s Armory – I didn’t get to meet up with him until later in the afternoon.

During my wanderings, I found Jon and Laura at a cafe, so I joined them at their table, finished my meal, and enjoyed this incredibly good band from San Antonio named [E Museki]. They play traditional Italian, Greek, and Gypsy folk music, and they are really good. After we bought CD’s we wandered on back to Dream Shoes so I could introduce some of my Austin friends to some of my Texarkana friends. We later ran into Doug and Liz on the sculpture trail, walked together for a bit, and split off again in Sherwood forest.

After some refreshments, we checked out the animals there, among which were two camels and four elephants available for rides. The urge was overwelming me, so I just had to ride a camel — that was incredible, being something like twelve feet over the ground on the back of this lumbering, tottering creature. I had Laura take pictures of me on the camel at my request (Perl programmers have a thing about camels…). At the elephant ride we saw someone working there whose job, I swear, bears an uncanny resemblance to The Poopsmith. We got quite a bit of mileage out of that joke. We had some more wandering, checking out stuff and joking around, then parted ways near closing time as I went off to chat with my TRF friends while my Texarkana friends went back to camp.

Pete and his coworkers were unwinding and getting ready to close the booth for the night, so he invited me into the area behind the shop to talk. I had the chance to meet several more people, among them Ed McCoy, who owned the shop. We talked about the way business is run at TRF, and I was enlightened; I had misconceptions until then. I like knowing more about that place. I get a better perspective on it.

Pete had to go back inside to close everything down, so I stepped out to watch the very impressive fireworks. He had invited me to join him in his quest to sneak over to my campground and visit his group brothers and sisters at camp Chaos. While I was watching fireworks and he was gathering his things, we lost each other, so after fireworks, I headed back to camp and changed into comfy clothes, getting ready for whatever may happen that night. We had dinner and started the campfire while I managed to reconnect more with my friends. Jeremiah came over to hang out and figure out some plans for the evening.

So, as we’re all sitting around and carrying on, we hear a bunch of shouting and merrymaking in the campsite 20 yards from ours. Someone looked over and remarked, “Hey, are those people naked?” We all looked, and sure enough, they were indeed naked and quite noisy about it. They were a wandering group of roughly 20 guys and girls in robes and cloaks who were going from campsite to campsite flashing people (I later learned they go by the group name “The Church of Shrinkage”). And wouldn’t you know it, they’re coming our way!

The first to reach us looks around, asks, and makes sure there’re no children present before anything naughty happened, and then the whole group swoops in and surrounds our pavilion to wait for the count from their leader. On threecount, the robes are open, and sure enough, they were all very naked. Wow. We laughed our asses off. They stood there for a good ten seconds wagging around their bits and having fun. Wow. And, if you ask me, not a single one of the girls was ugly, and they all were shaven (even some of the guys!). Wow. And there I was without my camera. Damn. But they moved on and we were left there totally dazed and laughing; most definitely lightened up our moods. I found myself completely unsettled (in a good way) for the rest of the evening because of it. Damn.

Later, Jeremiah and I headed over to the main drum circle to watch some members of Chaos and some other groups doing their firebreathing stunts. Absolutely amazing to see. I took many pictures. And guess who shows up to do some firebreathing? PETE! So after he finished doing his thing, I met up with him for some congratulations. He invited me over to the main Chaos camp to meet some people and just hang out. Since I only knew Pete and no one else there, I felt out of place, so I ended up wandering off after a while and walked around the campground. Meanwhile, drum circles were happening — the main one, a lot of smaller ones elsewhere, and the drunken and debauched one that I completely missed out on by leaving the Chaos camp. Double-damn!

So I’m back at camp, and later on, folks start filing off two by two for bed. Jeremiah and I sat around the campfire and entertained whoever happened to be passing through. I headed off to bed around 4:30am to get some necessary sleep.

Sunday:

This morning I got up around 10:30 with my tent, by my guess, a toasty 100 degrees. Completely groggy and gross, I stumbled out to take care of business and try to wake up. After sitting with my buddies joking and whatnot, I get myself cleaned up and strike my camp. Most of my friends didn’t go in today, either because of illness, lack of money to buy another ticket, or lack of interest, so I sat with them until something like 2:00pm. I caught up a bit more with them on Texarkana happenings and other stuff, then I made my farewells and went off to the faire.

Today’s wanderings were solitary, and I reflected a good deal on the happenings of last night, many details of which I’m leaving out here. I dunno, but last night gave me some perspective. Somewhere along the way, I think I lost touch with the thinking that goes along with having a good time, with becoming a social creature, with letting go. Both nights of faire I found myself gravitating back to the campfire where I became sedentary, just letting the activity wash over me and flow on past. Even though I had fun, I still missed out on a lot because I was too inside myself looking out. There’s still a lot I’m trying to digest, but walking around by myself gave me the chance to start the process.

I touched base with Stacy and Kate, then went on to get some food and smokes. Watched a few of my favorite stage shows and took a bunch of pictures. Actually found myself browsing shops looking for jewelry and chzotzkies. Around 5pm, the clouds that’ve been building and threatening all afternoon finally dumped everything they had on the faire. For some reason, I found that incredibly amusing. I simply pulled my umbrella out of my satchel, walked deeper into the faire and had a good giggle while watching all the people running like mad for the front gates. Heh. Like that’s going to help anything.

The crowd dwindled down to only of fraction of what it was (which today wasn’t nearly as much as yesterday), which was fine with me. But the shopkeepers weren’t happy, to be sure. I walked over to McCoy’s Armory and found Pete. He invited me to the back of the shop again and he gave me the lowdown on what happened at camp Chaos last night, after which I expressed my grief and regret over leaving too soon. We caught up on some more stuff before the word was passed around that the fair was to close an hour early, and I bid him farewell. He invited me to come visit him and his friends in Pasadena some time – I should take him up on that. I walked back to Dream Shoes to bid farewells and seeyalaters to Kate and Stacy before I made for the front gate and on to my car.

On the drive back to Austin, I listened to the E Muzeki disc I bought and fell in love with it. It touched the sadness I feel about seeing the end of something, the sweetness before the parting, the looking back on what all just happened and where I had missed so much. Sure, there’s always the net and the easy communication with people who’re far out of town, but that doesn’t replace actually being in their presence to hang out and carry on.

And it’s somewhere in all that that I felt something. I felt humanity touch me again. I can’t believe I’ve been giving a lot of these things the pass for so long. It’s there if I’ll just reach out, wait, or speak first. But I’m still digesting. I’m still learning.