Snoctopus Triplets (Monday-Wednesday)
I had a late start on my weekly unbreakable vow due to not being a planner and to being sick. I was also troubled by trying to remember creatures from nature that might match the color of thick infected phlegm hawked up into the bathroom sink at 3AM until I recalled that many species of octopus are experts at creating custom colors. Behold the Snoctopus, also notable for having only seven legs.
I can't tell you if moving to Austin at the start of the SXSW festival while trying to eat nothing but pizza had anything to do with being ill. However, I wanted to vow a more physical vow this week to jumpstart my recovery. At first, I wanted to have an adventure entitled 40 Ounces to Freedom, relating to Sublime – I hadn't heard of the band until I found their CD in the storage closet at Cajun Country Cookers (World Champions), where I busboyed high school senior year. That CD changed my life: believe it or not, but I'd never really patterned my life around music until then. Driving to work no longer meant getting there on time but timing my approach so as to hit all of my favorite tracks on the album.
Even fresh out of college and living next to freight trains in Charlotte, North Carolina, I wanted to recapture that sublime discovery. I thought a neat way to do that would be to drink a 40 right before hopping on one of those freight trains. I've always pronounced it 'fright' train (this, 'bon' instead of bong, and 'I earn' instead of iron are survivors of a bygone era despite taking a speech class in the first grade). Anyway, I did ride several, slow-moving fright trains in Charlotte for short-lived periods but never coordinated that with drinking a 40.
In Austin, there are 40s and trains too! A little more broken, a little wiser, I decided to do a cursory search on trainhopping. I read about this kid who got drunk, hopped a train, and jumped boxcars until he landed on a chuted one that deposited him onto the tracks. The train wheels ripped off his right leg. His friends yelled at him to stay still, but beyond hearing, he tried to sit up and the undercarriage smacked his forehead. He squirmed and his left arm was also severed by the fright train – not an adventure for me.
If not crazy, it'd be downright disrespectful to combine 40s and fright trains. Okay, so I'd do it sober but what then? Where was the challenge, the preparation, the sacrifice? Would I ride for 500 feet, 5 minutes, or 5 days?
With my fevered Tuesday mind I studied the ways of the fright train more closely. This inquiry traced a thread of disdain for the yuppie newcomers treating trainhopping as a quick adrenal fix, a low-budget form of sky-diving. This measured distaste came from seasoned trainhoppers who described the feat as a way of life, 1% excitement and 99% riding the tracks. Yeah, both sides sounded unappealing.
The point for me, for my freedom (whether it came in 40 ounces, a pint, or a measurement unknown), was not to live in harmony with the fright train or harness it to my will. I wanted to beat the fright train at its own game... I do not yet know how to do this.
However, there was one fright train lair known to me; it runs parallel to the Lamar pedestrian bridge. I swear that I've seen it pass once over the water there. Regardless, there are train tracks. I ran in that direction on Wednesday but was still a mile away when I heard its klaxon call. I was weak and had to stop several times to cough up Snoctopuses before walking altogether. The fright train or whatever had made that call was gone by the time I arrived.
Honkerday (Thursday)
As I do on most weekdays, I biked to a cafe, devoting hours of my time to my lucrative web writing career. That morning, I was at the Riverside Starbucks, but by early afternoon I needed a change in scenery, so I biked to the Lamar Starbucks to complete my brainstorm session with a Biology instructor on how we might best use flying, fire-breathing hamsters to illustrate population genetics. All this brought me closer to the Lamar pedestrian bridge once again.
I clocked out at five to ambush the beast. Instead, I spent an hour studying grafitti, sitting on a bench dedicated to 9/11 victims, and reading Ursula Le Guin's “The Left Hand of Darkness” (yet another book of hers that stretches my mind when it comes to sexuality). That hour should've been enjoyable, but dammit the week was half-gone, and I was no closer to completing or even articulating my vow! A line in the book quivered, or perhaps I trembled:
“Fire and fear, good servants, bad lords.”
With the week's earlier sickness, I'd been rushing to uncover the mystery of the fright train. I wanted a drink to think this over. I texted LandLady, a valued and valuable Austin friend who'd rented me a divine little blue house for all of February while I looked for more permanent abodes. She recommended that we go to the Gypsy Lounge to see the unofficial start of Honk Fest. I didn't know what to expect – all she told me was that it involved marching bands.
At her suggestion, I stuck this wooden treasure in the fence right next to the tracks, planning to retrieve it later should destiny permit.
With the advent of Honk Fest at Gypsy Lounge, I came full-circle to my high school Sublime musical experience. So, what is this Honk Fest? Well, you know those kids who may've not been extremely popular back in high school? Yeah, those kids whose involvement in marching band might have been one of the few worthwhile experiences during those hellish years. Unlike those whose life peaked during high school, they only continued to grow more awesome. And, they stuck it out with their marching band instruments.
The first group, from Boston, was Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band (ENSMB). Probably the best description I've heard of their unique sound is gypsy steamfunk. Even sitting down and listening, I discovered that I had hips. LandLady recommended that I amend my weekly vow to follow all of Honk Fest religiously.
The flute girl convinced me. I first beheld this modest goddess as she played with ENSMB. I couldn't decide if her eyes were light green or hazel. I didn't know what it was about the way she carried herself that had me stuck. I can't list the combination of factors telling me that she was self-reserved and shy yet succumbing to a greater joy of self-expression drawing her to the spotlight. But she was there, and I wanted to be too.
Friday (or Friday)
Honk Fest didn't resume until later that evening, so I took advantage of the lull to perform more fright train reconnaissance from my pedestrian bridge perch. On the lower bridge behind me, kayakers were climbing the supports to jump into the river. They shouted at one another that the water was 12 feet deep. In front of me construction workers on a crane did maintenance work on the higher tracks. And the train bridge spanning the river stood empty. I focused on the “Focus One Point BREATHE” artwork on the bridge. The lack of punctuation annoyed me as I pondered the Le Guin line from yesterday (Fire and fear, good servants, bad lords).
I bypassed fire and focused on fear. How could I let it serve me as I learned the rules of the fright train game? Patience and calm, long waiting, seeing. In others words, more than a week.
As I was departing the pedestrian bridge, a train came chugging along the corner from its Lamar roost, but it was only an Amtrak, servant to all people. Still, I stopped to watch, noting its proportions in relation to the rest of the bridge and estimating side clearance.
Honk Fest on Friday took place at two side-by-side venues, the Volstead Lounge and Hotel Vegas. I decided to start a tab each place with two separate cards (that's not excessive at all, right?). While oscillating between the two places, I first spotted the flute girl in the Volstead Lounge carrying a painted trombone. Had my eyes lied? No, she was just that talented. I realized that she was playing in multiple bands.
I alternated between Titanium Sporkestra, from Seattle (Dave, a horn player staying in LandLady's divine little blue house alerted me that they had started out as 100% drums before adding horns), and ENSMB with Bulleit bourbon waiting for me at both places. In the close quarters of Hotel Vegas, ENSMB (especially the flute girl, who didn't have a snare drum attached to her that night) shined a little brighter.
When it comes to dancing, I can be painfully shy and hesitant. My latest role model to overcome this obstacle is the bike messenger from Spaced. But, with bourbon in my belly, I was spinning and clashing imaginary cymbals with the cymbals lady from Minor Mishap, an Austin-based band. As Honk Fest trailed off for the night, I met the blue-haired violinist from ENSMB, a beautiful magnetic artist all unto herself, and asked her about the elusive flute girl. She told me the flute girl was from Chicago and encouraged me to talk to her when I got the chance. I waited for about half an hour but couldn't find her and started to feel like a creeper (solitary, drunk male hanging out near the bar entrance and checking out passerby).
Against my better judgment I fed my restlessness by visiting more bars. I ended up at White Horse, where yes, there are sometimes horses.
On the bike ride home, I hit a guy wire with the left side of my face. I stretched across the sidewalk and took the best picture that I could to chronicle the first major setback to this weekly vow. A block from home, I biked through the Wendy's Drive-Thru. The man at the window informed me that my face was bleeding before giving me free fries.
A Blade of Destiny (Saturday)
Luckily, other than some road rash and a minor cut, my face was relatively unscathed. Plus, I wasn't hungover! Skipping any time for self-reflection, I ate three pieces of bacon and three over-easy eggs housed in a fried jumbo tortilla before biking to the next round of Honk Fest at Adams Park, near 30th and close to a UT campus. There were four possible spots from which to witness the wonders of Honk Fest, but I stuck close to Trudy's lawn to witness ENSMB and the flute girl. In the sunlight, I noticed that she had an adorably long neck somehow made more interesting by the aviator goggles that she wore pulled up into her bangs.
In happy happenstance, another one of my friends, BioGirl (who works hours you wouldn't believe and is hard to keep up with), was there. I joined her on the Spider House patio (a bar where one of the themes seems to be a peeing child angel) before we set out to watch Young Fellaz from New Orleans. They were easier to dance to and had this sense of cultivated cool that I didn't see in the other bands. My little brother, who lived in New Orleans for about four years, told me that being in high school marching band is considered super cool.
In moving from band to band, I passed by the flute girl and stopped to speak to her, hoping that my voice didn't squeak:
“Excuse me, I just wanted to say that I think you're amazing. You play the flute for Emperor Norton, right? And so much more! I love you, you guys. Thanks for making my weekend.”
She was very nice and politely thanked me before continuing along her mystical path. Only later did I realize what she plays isn't a flute but a half-sized flute, a piccolo I think?
BioGirl introduced me to this shop named ToyJoy, where most of the customers perusing the toy merchandise were in their late 20's or older. It was there that I bought my first miniature hippo.
BioGirl also took me on a tour of that part of town, which I want to come to know better. The turtle pond was of particular interest; it consisted of three pools. While the red-eared sliders frolicked freely in the lower pools, BioGirl told me that snapper turtles lived in the upper pool. We couldn't find these finger biters under the lily pads in the moonlight, but the idea of them reminded me of the fright train, a strange, well-built creature that may lop off body parts.
On the way home, I stopped near the E. 5th train tracks to see if that mysterious wooden object from Thursday (possibly from a broken chair) was still stuck in that fence. I know that the timing doesn't sound believable, but as I approached the tracks, the bars dropped, red lights flashed, and bells dinged. I snatched my wooden treasure and crouched near the fence, praying for readiness. But the train that approached was a MetroRail, local transit similar to Amtrak. I tucked the strange wooden object into my belt and avoided guy wires the whole way home.
Sunday
This day was marked by a giant parade that started at Pan-Am Park before funneling into Republic Square park. I was a sunburned messenger of joy as I rode from band to band. Minor Mishap formed the rearguard, and their sound was so awesome that they soon had their own trailing parade of bicycles, Segways, and small children. I held my breath as ENSMB crossed the tracks on E. 5th. Alas, you weren't there, and I just erased 12 pictures from my camera phone that had some of the best parts recorded (I'm either technologically challenged or still learning).
“Life never ceases to amaze, such as this hippo. Did you know that it can sometimes kill crocodiles with one snap of its jaw? Well, in such a way, you've proven with your many talents that music is from the heavens and that lyrical goddesses can walk among us. Please take this and keep lending your light to this world.”
Instead, I wilted in the heat and knew that I had to be some unimportant place by 5:30, so I left. No! This was not a good note to end on – I turned around, withdrew money from an ATM that charged $5.75 per transaction, and biked back to Republic Square Park. The first person that I found from ENSMB was their leader/conductor, who I think goes by Handsome Chuck. I bought both CDs from him and gave him the tiny hippo without mentioning the flute girl.
Well, that's what came of following Honk Fest, which I intend to follow in the future. In that future, the fright train and its many mysteries still await. One more note – I've come to think of broken things as rearranged. What may have once been a broken chair part now has altered potential, yesterday disintegrates into today, and it's time to start a new week.
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