Underneath the tangle of modernity I have found many beautiful things that make Texas unique and worthy of a place in my heart. On my daily walks alone I have discovered a diversity of wildlife that I would have never imagined had I chosen to keep my conveyance to the inside of an automobile.
Despite the burning layers of concrete and smoky asphalt I am serenaded with birdsong wherever I go. A delightful variety of red squirrel has dug into the cultured landscaping and scamper across the bows of perfectly spaced oak trees.
The contrived universe of a corporate hotel suite that I stay in is also flawed with humanity intruding at every opportunity. I listen to lilting Spanish folk songs that drift beneath the door frames as I write. The expatriate staff laugh and joke with each other constantly in the halls as they pass. If I close my eyes to the blank walls and shut my mind to the fact that I stay in a hotel room I can imagine for a moment that I have woken to a morning in a busy Mexican hacienda.
The sun continues to stream down here in Dallas, for that I have no complaint. As a man from the northern lands of ice and snow I view every second I am here as a luxury of incalculable benefit to my soul. My routine is well established, I do as little physical work as I can possibly do, instead I read , write and contemplate what comes next.
The mixed staff of Filipino, Mexican and Jamaicans were at first amused and somewhat bewildered by my worship of the sun, until I explained that I come from a place where the sun never shines, so they understood that I was like an innocent kitten playing with a novel intrusion of sunbeams scattered through the windows of my world.
Once I told them that I was a writer, an artist, they discontinued their wonder of my strange behaviors and slavish attention to my suntanning. In every culture, artists are expected to be minds that occupy a different space than the rest. Writers on the other hand remain wholly misunderstood and mysterious.
(to be cont’d)
J West Hardin Road Trip 