If I were going to evince the sort of humor so prevalent in my family as I grew up I’d say this is the end of an Ear, which is true enough. But that pun was already claimed by a record store in Austin and anyway that particular form of joke-making is a rotten one anyway, so never mind.
I’m writing this on the morning of my last day in Texas, from the shore of a fishing lake in the far northeast corner that's close to Paris and even closer to the Red River. In a little while I’ll finish packing up the truck – most of the work was done before the sun seriously began its ascent, the bank thermometer in Honey Grove yesterday read 100 at 4:30PM and every indication today’s going to be no better – and head east, then north, and in a very short time I’ll have done it. I’ll have escaped.
A few years ago a woman in the Saturday morning writing group, one of the few people of color to attend on a regular basis, wrote that Austin, in spite of its benign appearance, is actually a prison in disguise. You come there and at first you’re so busy with the town’s wonderfulness that you don’t notice it but just wait until you try and leave. Things interfere - loss of money, legal problems, deaths in the family – and before you know it you’re back in town for another few years and no idea when you’re going to be able to muster up the resources to make another attempt at escape.
Now admittedly this is a rather dire view; the person who
held it had spent some time in an actual prison awhile back and it no doubt colored
her view of everything afterward.
But when I heard her read that it struck a chord within me because I was
long past starting to feel really bound to the town myself and not willingly so
– more like well into how I was going to make it out, and when. That must have been back in 2007 and I had already started
working at UT, which as you know changed my relationship to Austin for the next
several years to come.
People in Austin are prone to making jokes about being stuck there – The Velvet Rut, and all that. Mostly it’s out of fondness, because when it comes down to it you could find a lot worse places in this country to spend a quickly-passing decade in. Some of them are just a few hours’ drive away, or so I hear – I managed to be in Austin over nine years without once going to Dallas or Houston or even San Antonio. Shit, until yesterday I’d never been farther north than Bruceville and that’s not even Waco.
Yet this morning here I am, enjoying the gentle breeze in
the shade and the absence of human-generated noise (have the campground to
myself apart from a few fishermen who were out on the water hours ago) and
farther from Austin then I’ve ever been in any direction except west and
feeling blissfully free. Sure,
there are little things here and there wrong with the picture; last night was
close to too hot to sleep (got to remember to stop in Paris and get a plug-in
fan for the camper), and my neck and shoulders are locked up with residual
tension of getting on the road and a day of driving manically while fighting
sheer exhaustion every mile of the way, and the brand-new inverter I paid $30
for just doesn’t work except for the USB plug, and so on. But it being the end of one phase means
it’s the start of another and more often than not that’s a good thing, and better
yet I’ve got a nice slow day ahead with relatively little ground to cover
before I get into the Ouachita and find a spot for tonight. I will relax, and eventually sleep (cut
the Lunesta dose to half last night and plan to be off it entirely well before
July) and get into the groove of traveling aimlessly before too long.
Groove, not rut. I’ve had enough rut to last me for a very long time.
So with this end and new beginning I’m signing off on this journal, which was essentially a chronicle of what I imagine I’ll come to call The Reluctant Years – my time at UT, staying in Austin long enough to get it together to make a break for good. I don’t know what to call the new period – The Footloose Years, however apt, lacks flair and it’s too soon to tell anyway – but I’ll keep you apprised and when I start a new URL I’ll keep you apprised of that too. As always, thanks for reading. And for sticking with me.
The sun is fully out now, and it’s very bright. Time to go.
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