Dead Letter Department #89
weather report
It was a whole week with no responsibilities greater than figuring out how to load the fancy dishwasher—truly luxurious. The friend I was visiting even flew me out of the local airport, instead of the Seattle behemoth, which meant I entered the great digestive tract of sky travel at one of the easiest apertures, passing through TSA easily, even as I was sweating nervously onto my clutched ID & boarding pass, and everything after that went smoothly, all the way down to the bright corridor of sunlight and grackles screaming right outside the Austin airport arrival terminal.
Everything was different—low rolling hills, little puffs of clouds blowing along above the wide river, Indian paintbrush & bluebonnets & black-eyed susans blooming in low, lovely banks next to the highway, & best of all, my friend N. for a whole week, both of us off work & free to beach ourselves on his enormous blue velvet couch for one documentary after another.
Mostly we just hung out, with his extremely delightful partner whenever she could get away from work, at the shockingly good restaurant a couple of doors down or the open air bar patio looking out across the river where I drank the pinkest margarita in existence & eavesdropped on an impossibly long story involving about ten episodes of blacking out & vomiting on various pairs of shoes, the house in Austin where I cooled my feet on the smooth concrete of the porch & listened to the thunder rolling across the wide open sky, wind rattling away through the palm fronds. There were a couple of little storms, just enough to satisfy my longing for them, but most of the days were gloriously sunny and blue skied, making me feel like I’d stepped straight off the plane and into summer, even though my friend kept telling me it wasn’t really summer yet, which was probably just as well, since I think real Texas summer would have wilted me completely.
The grocery store had fresh tortillas and tamales, the gas station sold sliced brisket sandwiches and candied nuts, and my friend made us fancy Chemex coffee every morning, measuring the ground beans & water on a scale like he was wizarding a carefully calculated potion of caffeine. The result was inarguably delicious, especially with maple syrup. I had my own little house in the backyard, a freshly renovated casita with a clean black & white tile bathroom, a mini kitchen to stash my seltzer & Cheerios in & a private little yard overshadowed by a blooming chinaberry and a newly planted burr oak, leaves still looking soft and fresh.
N. took me to the McKinney Roughs, where we sprinted away from an entire elementary school’s worth of kids to peacefully wander along the trails watching butterflies, & the Texas State cemetery to pay our respects to Ann Richards & Barbara Jordan, one of the most immaculate graveyards I’ve ever seen, & South Congress Street in Austin, where we had cocktails in the beautiful garden at Hotel San Jose & I fantasized about staying at the hotel & writing a whole project, the way that bands sometimes do, surrounded by the scent of the blooming wisteria & the sound of people passing on the street, just far enough away behind the walls to be a pleasant burbling.
It’s always a delight to get the personal history tour of your friends’ city—the little glimpse into all the versions of them that have walked the streets there, especially someplace fast-changing & ever-expanding like Austin. We passed a famous piece of graffiti that had been preserved on a chunk of wall, the rest of the building torn down around it, but the landmark preserved, a shard of something old sticking up in the rubble of what’s to come.
We’ve been friends for twenty-four years—I joked we should do something celebratory next year, for our silver anniversary—seen each other through every attendant struggle, some of which we seemed unlikely to survive, and getting to have a little taste of him fully embedded in his life, both doing useful, necessary work with his customary compassion & very happily partnered, was a true delight.
It was good for my brain, I think, to get stuffed full of different views, that faraway horizon, the pecan trees just starting to leaf out, the little brown houses of mud daubers shoved into various crevices, cranes jutting up out of impossibly tall buildings in downtown Austin’s skyline—even the way people dressed was so different. I’d go back in a heartbeat, though probably not until the next brief cool season, since I’ve only gotten softer and softer about the heat, living where I do.
It was the right choice not to bring what I would have needed to work, though the little house would be a good place for it. I would have constantly been calculating how much time I should be spending on that, instead of concentrating on what was in front of me, and taking the option away entirely just cleared the path. In fact, I was largely off my various devices for the entire week, & social media, & found I missed neither. I read the book of Borges short stories my dad gave me last year, a big stack of back copies of Vogue & New York magazines I’d hauled along in my suitcase. On Sunday morning we all went through the design issue of T Magazine, which is always fun, to see what other people like or are horrified by. It was a long enough visit that we fell into a nice little routine, but not so long, I think, that any of us started to feel scrambly & overwhelmed.
It’s hard to leave, after such a lovely time—I miss both of my friends already, miss sitting on the porch in the dark with them, the insects sing-screaming in the shrubbery, drinking cocktails I’ve never had before, waking up and having coffee together while we’re still sleepy & largely incoherent. I don’t like to think about how long it’s like to be before that happens again.
Today I’m back to work, interrupted by going to Costco this morning in order to re-stock my vacation-emptied fridge, which feels like a rude awakening, but a necessary one. Perhaps having to elbow my way through the teeming masses will put me back into the slightly sharpened mode for work, after all the softness of vacation.
