A book and back in Texas

It is hard to say at what point exactly a wave of nostalgia fell over me, but The Son, by Philipp Meyer, certainly brought it out. It's a Texas epic spanning two hundred years, and in that, like few novels have accomplished, you see the full depth of an infamous place layered in blood and power and greed. Texas smashed different types of people against one another over years and years and years, one epoch clinging on for dear life while the next quickly unhinged it, and any examination of history makes you realize this all repeats itself again and again. So that is Texas to me: that is, a microcosm, an intense, confined dose of the world as it has always been, just rougher around the edges without much to water it down; a story of survival and opportunity, untouched land to sprawling cities, buffalo to cattle to railroad to oil; a crossroads of Indians to Spanish to Mexicans to Americans, all in so short a time.

"But that is the story of the human race. Soil to sand, fertile to barren, fruit to thorns. It is all we know how to do."

And so in reading about the time of the Comanches, when the Llano spread out untouched for as far as the eye could see and buffalo were more numerous than people, I found myself drifting back to walks and drives and nights on the town around the emblems of my youth. The Fort Worth Stockyards, the State Capitol, old town Dallas, the Texas Hill Country, the Alamo, the Riverwalk, the Arboretum. Small towns that aren't so small anymore, Georgetown, Shiner, Fredericksburg, Greene, Bastrop, Mesquite, McKinney, San Marcos, all dots on a map which millions of personalities from Davy Crockett to George W. Bush once called home. All these dots and black and white photos, street names and old town cemeteries, former flags and constitutions and kings, gun laws and death penalties, cowboys and fraternity kids, arrowheads and oil wells, Texas Rangers and state troopers, stadiums turned mega churches, they add up and make Texas what it is, both a place and undoubtedly a state of mind, and in that an ever evolving identity.

I've cursed it and I've defended it all over the world, and there are parts I love and parts that make me irate, but I am proud my earliest memories are there, and I'm proud to speak of it knowingly when I'm somewhere else far away.

A few predictions

I'm not often wrong when I do make predictions, so I'll paint a picture now as the days roll by: a quiet beach with no one on it, the kind you see in pictures and wonder how there is still a place that remote in a world so developed, where the sand is fine and the palm trees come right up to the water and when it is dark you listen to the waves and look up and see real stars; rain that comes frequently and out of nowhere, one minute absent and the next minute blurring the sky, drifting in fast from the water and disappearing as fast as it came; turtles that come on shore in the night to lay their eggs and mellow stray dogs without a care in the world napping right in the middle of rural roads and curious little monkeys screeching up in the trees, jumping from branch to branch; sprawled out on a swinging chair, head resting in a lap, kindles, paperbacks, notebooks, the sun warming everything it touches; intertwined legs on a towel, drunk off something, talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking; not wanting to go to bed at night because you do not want the night to end, and not wanting to get up in the morning because you do not want the morning to end; an overwhelming hard to describe protection instinct, wanting to keep something safe and okay and maybe even yours, and wanting it to see the things you see and enjoy.

So the days keep rolling by, July, August, and September, in a steady way, where you aren't gasping for breath or making giant leaps of faith, nothing radical, outlandish, or improbable, but just putting one foot in front of the other, like each step is the most natural thing in the world, even if those steps stop tomorrow and even if they wander on forever.

I went to India

I stared a man with a deformed arm and massive tumor square in the eyes, not looking away, as he asked for change in traffic on one of a thousand roads. I am guilty, like most, of ignoring things unpleasant to us by just not looking at them at all, but this time, for whatever reason, I decided to shift my ways. So I watched until the cars started moving, and this I found brings forth an interesting array of questions, those that grow progressively bigger, like why him and not me, and how you live off of coins, and what it must feel like to be so invisible, and what social mobility means to someone living and dying in a slum, and finally, how any of this even mildly gets fixed when you are looking at such large numbers of needy hands. I know talking about poverty and associated resilience is a dangerous cliche, infused too often with a peculiar glamor when in reality there is none to be had. But I have enormous respect for the blips on a map, those who live and die forgotten, and if whenever the lights go out for good and all our great cities grind to a halt, I think it will be these people who learned long ago how to survive on nothing that will end up surviving the longest.

The car horns - erratic melodies of the great subcontinent - never stopped really: on the street outside my hotel room window when I woke in the morning and went to bed at night; on the impossibly cramped side streets weaving like arteries through Old Delhi; in front of all the bustling temples, mosques, and occasional churches stacked side by side in prayer; and all the other places you would like to find escape but instead were inundated with noise. This was India by initial observation, a sprawling mass of land soon to be the world's most populous country, potent in tastes, sights, and smells, dirty, dysfunctional, and utterly chaotic, and somehow working day after day. At no point in my life, I confess, have I ever been drawn to this place that is so many small places, so many people's romantic dream, but it is something I think you should do if you want to really talk about this day and age and not sound like an author describing a scene that takes place somewhere he has never actually visited himself.

For my mom's birthday

One image that always stuck with me was a baby in a satchel strapped onto a mother's back somewhere out in rural Guatemala I could doubtfully find again. It was fascinating to watch really, as the mom ran about, washed dishes, and swept up the floor, the baby like a kangaroo in a pouch, bouncing up and down, head bobbing back and forth, eyes wide but calm during these vigorous and abrupt movements. It was in this distinct moment I remember thinking for the first time that children are not as fragile as we think them to be. Complicated strollers and backward facing car seats are for peace of mind as much as all practicality, and it is just a fact children grow up quicker in places that are not immersed in so much luxury. That baby, it occurs to me, is three years older now, living in a wooden shed with an aluminum roof, and unlikely has he ever left a radius of five or six square kilometers. This memory and associated thoughts join a number of others when I think about my own mom, mostly because out there in the world you see how many ways it could have gone if even a few small things had been different.

I am grateful for what I got, and the complaints are few and far between. I grew up well and easy, and while there were plenty of things to question, love in that house was never one of them. I think this factor alone has the greatest impact on the people we grow up to be, and said another way, you can get a whole lot wrong as long as that part is still right. A wonderful documentary called "Babies" tracks the first two years of four kid's lives from Asia to Africa to the USA, and in that, you see both what is common and what is different about how people are raised. I think the takeaway, or what I chose to take away, is that character is less impacted by a hut in the bush or a high rise apartment in the city, and more by what happens within those structures.

There is no point to this other than outward appreciation: for a mom who brought me up with love and other fundamental tenets, and showed great selflessness in that endeavor, as many mothers and fathers do; for her tireless support in my five years far far away; how she bounced back after deaths and endless departures, as many of us must; how she helps other people feel better day after day. I have enjoyed getting to know this person, my mother, from a very young age, and I will enjoy getting to know her now in a different stage. This is all so very short and basic. I will probably spend all my life trying to get the above words just right. It is one great ineffable really, telling our parents exactly what they mean, and I only wish I remembered more precious bits from all those bittersweet years, evidence and inspiration to draw off of in the night, to show all those things you feel.

Somewhere in the foreground, I see this building slowly, brick by brick, the foundations of a time I might play a similar role to some small being, and I think back on my mom and dad and all the other mothers and fathers I have seen try and succeed and fail and fall somewhere in between, and that famous Hodding Carter line always seems to fit in somewhere:

"There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots; the other, wings."

KL

The ride into Kuala Lumpur from the airport takes thirty minutes on the KLIA Express. It is a fantastic train really, clean, organized, not crowded, and it has the little flat screen televisions that tell you news and random facts like where petroleum comes from and why a particular football star does not want to return to Marseilles. You speed through tropical marshes and greenery until the concrete slowly begins, tall suburban high rise apartments, more and more congested, then arriving at the city center and an impressive skyline topped by the Petronus Towers lighting up the night. I have come to love Malaysia, my second time in, and looking at it all, this impressive array of complex infrastructure and architecture and design, you think for what must be the hundredth time if this concept of America paving the way in everything, so popular in election season rhetoric, is perhaps a concept that should be revisited by the masses. A friend and I once weighed the benefits of dropping every high school graduate from the west in the middle of China with $1,000 and telling them to find their way out, in order to better mold foreign policy. The more I am out, and the more I go back home, the more pressing and more pertinent I think this idea becomes.

In any case, I went straight to my Whisky Bar on Changkat Bukit Bintang, for a dose of sophistication and a cigar. Sitting out on my chair that hasn't changed since I sat there last, I watched the most interesting group of people walk up and down that electric street, ladyboys on the prowl, old white men in town for vague hazy reasons, and backpackers lugging their luggage and spreading their dime as far as they can. It is a melting pot of people really, where a Bangladeshi boy trying for college waits on an Australian businessman who sits next to a girlfriend from the Philippines half his age, whose family back home is assumedly supported by that relationship. I always find myself gravitating towards these concentrated places where everything comes together, vice and incredible goodness, hand in hand, all out there and visible to the attentive eye.

From there a whirlwind, too compressed, as these things always are. A rooftop dinner and the Kuala Lumpur skyline, a helipad full of wine, a club full of Asians jumping up and down, a taxi ride, a short night's rest, a hangover, a trip to the suburbs, powerpoint presentations that do not end, more wine, more food, more talk, the good kind, the best I can remember lately, all bleeding back into the KLIA Express, the world in reverse, the concrete slabs, the green marshes, the airport and the big full ocean below. 

I'll tell you what it's like for me

Back in Seville, my old host brother got a dog and is dating someone now, but I'm not sure how much else has changed. I think about him often but don't catch up often enough. I think about all the family there really, nesting away in Triana, another year or two older. Out from their house I still remember that shuffle of people coming across the bridge and walking down San Jacinto and people drinking their small lunchtime beer or gossiping in the surrounding plazas from 10pm onwards, old men with canes and a newspaper and young girls in love with boys on scooters. All that Spain is to me can be defined by that feeling in the air on a nighttime stroll, that very street, the buzz, the smells, the humming of voices.

And meanwhile in Colombia the streets are packed on Friday and Saturday around Medellin's Parque Lleras, a similar language spoken with a different tint flowing through the air. I miss my salsa school and mountain views and go-to restaurants and the Velvet Cafe where I sat one day and met a person who just immediately without rationale felt different after meeting so much of the same. Gone, gone, gone is that country now, brought to life only in short lived moments when I shut my eyes and put Bomba Estereo or Romeo Santos on as background noise. How lucky we are to have such beautiful places and such beautiful people to miss. How empty would life be to have never had those things at all?

I remember the toxic smog of Nairobi traffic and the pureness of the air once you escape, which is still today on this very day no doubt toxic and no doubt pure. When you go far enough north towards Nakuru you come to a hill that peers out on the Great Rift Valley, the real cradle of humanity, a coming home of sorts, and there it looks like the world goes on forever and never ends. One trip took me beyond this point to Meru County, remote, untainted, in the heart of Kenya. The national park was full of wild animals and no one on the road and in all my months in that country, full of so many bitter memories far too vivid to this day, I extract a few happy ones from this tucked away part of my mind, looking out at elephants as they looked back at me.

And meanwhile in Nigeria, Lebanese millionaire playboys still take their armored cars out and run through the decade long motions - work, clubs, drugs, boat to the beaches with the female flavor of the month, and back again. It's a place that harvests vice, more dysfunctional than you think a place can be without entertaining a civil war. I'm glad I was there and saw what the world can be, and what the world will continue to be, because none of these themes will change, but it is not my place to decide on the reoccurring cycles of people, much less countries, that are also reoccurring today.

I imagine the cafe culture of Melbourne still carries on, as do the waves that pummel the Great Ocean Road and the runners along the Yarra. All those people I never met, and the tiny percentage  of those I did. I was so young, and too inexperienced to have context for it all, but certain parts stick out through my 21 year old eyes: seeing the Southern Cross through the clouds each evening; the flying foxes scattering the sky at dusk; the cold tram ride to work each morning; a bottle of wine alone one night on a park bench. I really don't know if I'll ever go back, to these places that were once all there was, but I hope to, like everywhere, if it is in the cards. There are so many places like this now, and yet so many more to see.

Where's that Dutch girl I travelled with for four days around the Great Barrier Reef? I have no idea really. Or the Australian I smoked a deadly cigar with on a hill in Guatemala? Those Turkish girls from a night out next to Istanbul's glowing mosques. The students around Honduran ruins?

The divorced financial planner at the brewery on my epic ride through Monterrey. My only real one-night-stand, on my final few days in London. The Egyptian that joined me for an illegal midnight swim on Qatar's side of the Persian Gulf. The actor from Breaking Bad I saw roped with a blonde at a bar in Cape Town. The prostitute I spoke with for awhile one night in Abuja. The President of Tajikistan whose hand I shook one afternoon in Brussels. The potential ladyboy who delivered a foot massage in Bangkok. The Argentinians and the rental car that circumvented Tenerife. Ex girlfriends turned wives turned parents in far off places. All these people I've lost track of, nearly forgot, and to my knowledge are out there living on somewhere. Hello and goodbye, hello and goodbye, the list goes on and on.

I am fascinated by these connections, the ones we have lost and the ones we still have and the ones we didn't even realized happened. I am fascinated by how the realities continue, are happening now, in every corner of the world without us. I am fascinated that there are billions more I will never see. So at present, this is the scope and how far the world extends for me.

I cannot describe to you the paradoxical feeling of both great fullness and great emptiness that accompanies having been everywhere and hardly anywhere still, and wanting to be all those places at once. This feeling comes often and with great force, and it is the benefit and the drawback of a life that has expanded so big. 

From Sri Lanka

One part I have come to love is the birds outside my window. They nest in the trees that rise up and peak a few floors down. They start chirping at any hour of the day or night, but I prefer it best when I rise in the morning, tropical sounds, off some relaxing rainforest mixed tape. It is hard to pinpoint exactly what kind of birds they are, but occasionally you will see a bright green parrot or a yellow beaked black bird and other times fearless ravens all flying between the brush, and it could be any one of these. They are sometimes accompanied by miniature squirrels, smaller than I have ever seen, running along the rooftops, and then if it is dusk, giant bats come out by the hundreds for feeding, their silhouettes flapping against the dimming sky. Nature, above all things, points you here. It is indicative of this small island in the Indian Ocean, and a reminder of where you are, how many miles you have come, when the buildings and the roads and the cars all start to look the same.

The morning run takes me with the birds, out of my apartment down a buzzing street until I reach that gaudy government building that signals the beginning of Viharamahadevi Park. Past the big statue of Buddha and down the cobblestone paths, the sweat is noticable already pouring off your face in the equatorial humidity. The captured heat of the grass and the trees and the pond encapsulates you as you tune into your breath, the pace of your steps, and the subtle looks from those around you, all very reminiscent of that one afternoon in Singapore's Chinese Gardens. There is a special feeling to a run in this part of the world, almost spiritual in this weather, where the rain can come at any moment when the skies are still blue and then vanish without a trace leaving curious little puddles in the street.

And that is how a day begins, before a suit flies in and characterizes the rest. How different are things in Dallas and Austin and the rest, where all those people from past lives scurry about fighting and finding their way, one person in a crowd of millions, with one or two overarching themes soon to define a decade? I gauge often the merits of both - there certainly are merits to both -  but to be honest these days, a brief examination of all the lives I could have had, normally plastered over people's Facebook walls and Instagram accounts, provides all the motivation I need to keep moving and wait patiently until I find the right kind of rest.

So I arrived here in this place, fittingly welcomed by a tropical downpour on the cusp of monsoon season, with so many unquantifiable things put behind me and any number of new things laying ahead. That was that. Old colonial hotels beckon afternoon tea, plantations sit waiting up in the highlands, and a thousand untouched beaches on far corners of the island call out to my Saturdays and Sundays just a train ride away. There are new routines to find and be made, and even a little trust in life leaves no doubt a piece of writing from January 2016 will proclaim how all this could not have been any other way, another lovely year in the books which one does not get back.