This weekend Jess and I are driving down to Austin to see Bare Naked Ladies and Mike Doughty play together. Jess has only been to Austin once and it was a pretty hectic in and out. I’m hoping to take some time enjoying the city and its culture.
The weekend after that a bunch of friends are heading down to the Texas Renaissance Festival near Houston. I really want to go (less for the festival itself and more for the people that are going) but I don’t really want to go without Jess and she has to work that weekend. I’m not one of those people that refuses to do anything without his/her wife, girlfriend, significant other, or best friend in tow. Quite the contrary, actually. Jess and I have very entwined lives but, at the same time, we both have our own hobbies, friends, and activities that we do away from one another. But this is one of those situations that is made drastically better by her presence and in which so many wonderful memories will be made that I almost feel bad for experiencing them without her knowing that she’ll be sad that she couldn’t go too. On top of that, we’ll have just gotten back from Austin the weekend before and will be heading out to West Texas for 7 days the following week, so spending a weekend at home might be a good for the wallet and the household chores. So, I’m considering staying home. I know that doing so will make a lot of people sad and possibly even upset with me but, I have to take care of Jess and myself first and foremost.
El Capitan’s south eastern face at sunrise. Taken in the Guadalupe Mountains National Park.
But, oh! West Texas! My heart is already beating uncontrollably at the thought of standing at the foot of those mountains again and looking up at them so high. So high and so beautiful in fact that, at first, you only glance in small doses, fighting off vertigo. Until finally you steady yourself, and stare into them until your eyes weep from lack of moisture. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, you climb inside them and wrap yourself in each majestic fold. And then, as you come down you see the vast expanse of flat land between these mountains and the next, and you sit and stare into the majesty of that. I can almost feel the cool dry air entering my lungs. I can almost see the incredible desert sun rises and sets.
My last trip out there really broke me down and then built me back up. It took everything I had in me to keep moving. I would have been content with leaving myself behind, growing my beard out long, and living in the towns and wilderness until I grew old or died for exhaustion or malnutrition. It planted a sweet, simple tune in the very center of me that is easily drowned out by the clatter of daily life. I have to listen carefully to hear it. But Jess! Oh, Jess! With our lives so tightly twisted together, she has to listen carefully too. But I couldn’t explain to her what to listen for. I tried. Believe me, I tried. It’s just too much to describe. I might say that I saw the face of God and good and evil in just one glance, but how do you explain what that means to someone?
I took thousands of photographs and yet I’ve shared none of them. Despite how beautiful the photographs are, they’re not the same. Something is missing. It’s almost like photographing a woman with the most beautiful eyes in the world and, afterwards, finding that, in every photograph, she’s got her eyes closed. You start to ask yourself, does she really have those eyes, or did I just make them up?
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