I am back at Mom's House in Kessler Park in Oak Cliff in Dallas, Texas. The weather involves mostly 90 degree temperatures and dense humidity despite the regularly intense sunshine. The flora is lush but at the expense of the fauna, in this case - us.
As always this is a blast into my past and there is much to sift through in the way of memories, reactions, reminders, and creeping claims on me I never fail to underestimate.
June 6th was Lisa's and my 8th anniversary and 11th year together.
On the advice of my Father we went to Margarita Ranch for the eponymous beverage and then across the parking area to Rock Fish for their excellent fish tacos. Delicious good times were had by all, except that, at some point, my credit card disappeared and we had to to cancel it. The real topper was that my Mom saved us wedding cake. Let me be clear, in case there is room for doubt, that this is the exact cake that we enjoyed at our Texas wedding (after driving across country with our epically patient entourage) on June 10th, 1999. Lisa opened the ceremonial container and this is what she found.
Hilarity ensued as my Mom discovered her mistake.
And all was eventually put to rights.
The cake, believe it or not, remains quite tasty once thawed.We also celebrated by taking in live, musical theater (see below) the necessity of which almost always trumps most critical considerations. To do so we dropped into yet another corner of my youth (entering Fair Park seeking the Music Hall) in the person of the institution formerly known as the Dallas Museum of Natural History. The fantastic protostega there I have no memory of seeing before and, being a turtle-guy from way back, resolved to return to admire him/her at greater length. We went in to the cool museum to kill time while the post-show traffic cleared and arrived fifteen minutes before the building closed.
Before the Music Hall we went to free Tai Chi (weekly - yum!) at the Dallas Museum of Art with Eng Khoo, who also teaches at the Downtown and Town North YMCAs, and then into the Dallas Arts District proper. The Arts District was hosting the City Arts Celebration (street fair a.k.a. sales booth opportunity) wherein we noshed
various tasty bites before heading for the cooler indoors of the Crow Collection of Asian Art - home of both the current U-Ram Choe exhibit of fantasy robotics
and an entire gathering of sublime Female Buddhas, in addition to the beautiful permanent collection.Then we headed for the Nasher Sculpture Center to join the crowd
walking to the sky from the oppressive heat only augmented by the incoming thunderhead. 
The majority of time, strange as that may seem from the accounts of these other adventures, have been spent writing, slowly at first, and helping with the Mom's computer (DSL install, OS and software lessons, website updates, etc.). Now we have improved upon her confinement to dial-up and I am back on the Net at highish speed.
WARNING what follows is mostly a rant. Only continue if you are up for it.
There are days that begin and end in tragedy, for instance, with the discovery that you've already begun to use the wrong toothbrush, or the dilemma of which yarn to buy or write.
Enough about others and on to more about Us and the tragedy of only having everything we could possibly need and only most of what we want. When people a few miles away are living with the consequences of the worst, except for Mississippi, teen pregnancy and high school graduation crises in the nation it is important to keep one's eye on what is important:
- shaking hands in the sanctuary in your newly acquired church with your newly purchased constituency living near the very expensive home you built in a hole that used to be your neighbors' sewer easement and creek water run-off, in order to secure your place on the city council from which to carry on work esteemed by neocons like Pete Sessions.
- polishing any of the S.U.V.s in the curvaceous driveway in front of your 14 room house
- listening to private home art tours,
- patronizing "arts districts" and coffee shops, and
- judging others for their narcissism.
Maybe that gives rise to imagining the right to talk from middle crassness in terms of "the world" as though the carefully trimmed, all-but-gated wasteland of neo-con sewer builders outside the window were "the world". I am oppressed by the shear quantity of election yard signs screaming the message that the alternatives are a) radical developer corporatists, called "conservative" with no trace of irony, and b) probably less radical "conservative" developers who have cultivated the use of the word "green" in discussing future expansion and re-branding plans for what were well-established communities with their own sense of local character and identity.
Sometimes I have to read Andrei Codrescu just to recover from going out.
Perhaps this burnt offering of meaning in language on the altar of the god of Winning Heaps and Minds (Votes) is what is left of possibly learning the consequences of public policy. Perhaps an utter disinterest in the context of an electorate or audience, beyond the dividends thereby provided, is related in some way to the standing ovations at the end of everything containing a shadow of a Star, even the most mediocre, like the Dallas Summer Musicals touring company of Chicago. Their don't-bother-with-set-or-costumes depthless stage eerily reflects the degree to which the
bona fide chorus and orchestra so far outshine most of the named Live musical theater is almost always enjoyable despite the various notable concerns. This was no exception to that rule. I'm just glad the tickets were comps. | posted by Unknown @ 6/11/2007 08:40:00 AM
