My Time as a Human

As Mike, a cashier at Wheatsville, handed me a can of black beans I looked up past his grin to behold the end to a long search. It was crushed and mangled and the blue cotton had been crudely splatter painted by the sun, but it was none other than the perfect replacement hat.

My previous “normal guy” hat served me well for many years. It was just the right level of normal to get me through airports, police stations and other places requiring discretion with my culturally conflicting hair. It was also dear to my heart, as the logo on the front came from Enchanted Rock, a natural area near Austin revered by native americans and modern rock climbers alike. A wiry French speaking Tahitian man wears it now. After spending a night drinking on the beach with him, he gave me some amazing pearl pieces he’d pulled from the ocean and hand carved himself. I wanted to give him something of value to me.

Mike found his hat under a seat in the back of an Austin bus. He ran it through the washer and up onto his head where it had now been sitting long enough to have its own cowlicks. The patch on the front was circular and read, “City of Austin – Founded 1839″ in light blue letters around a yellow and red shield. It was crude. It was simple. It was about my favorite place on the earth.

Sadly, he didn’t have many leads on finding another one of these gems and so began a quest, one of many in the collection of ongoing quests and missions that carry me through life. It wasn’t until about a year later, working as a theater manager for the SxSW Film Festival, that I saw the hat again. I immediately abandoned my post to run across the convention center and grab the man lucky enough to be attached to it. He worked for the Austin Department of Public Works, maintainers of my city and the secret source of the hats that are blue. While he at first feared for his life, after hearing my impassioned plea he said, “hell, I’ve got another one in my locker. I’ll just give it to you.”

When he returned I told him that I wasn’t going to pay him, and at even the suggestion he held up his hands. Instead I wanted to give him something equally cool. My wallet had carried a treasure for six months, waiting for the right moment. I pulled out the crisp two dollar bill and gave it to him.

That exchange, the fact that he gave me the hat as a gift, is part of what makes it so valuable. It’s a thread woven into the cotton that hugs my head and rests gently above my ears in reminder of the simple kindness of the people of Austin, the city who’s name it bears, the city I love.

My dad’s father died when my dad was still a teenager. It was a fact that, as children, was so puzzling and mysterious and incomprehensible that we simply couldn’t grasp it. He was never overly willing to talk about it. He told us that it had made him sad and nothing more.

One day while poking around his closet I found an amazing old felt fedora and begged him to let me use it in the high school play. We were doing a production of The Sting and even with a couple of paint drops around the edges, it was perfect. That’s when I learned that it was the last thing he owned that had belonged to his father. When he at last acquiesced, I was extremely nervous that something might happen to it. Now I’m even happier that something did: it picked up another story, another thread, another piece of what makes things like old hats so magical. I’m glad that my new hat is well on its way.

[ed: It should be noted that the blue hat is, in fact, one of two normal guy hats I have. The other went with me to India and can be seen here. It has a Mad Penguin logo on the front, and is probably the coolest gift my sister has ever given me!]

The flaming tetherball-induced burn blisters on my right arm are beginning to heal. A couple of rounds of cheap shampoo took care of most of my funk and the socks I wore have been properly disposed of. After an intense, relentless nap I’m ready to type out a few lines about Flipside 2008.

“It’s like Renfaire. And hippies. But not at all. Much smarter. And also, dumber.” My friend Zekahh was struggling to use her first few hours of the event to crush it into an intellectual box as we floating naked in the creek during the hot afternoon. I’m always curious about how people see these things now. When I first went to Burning Man in 1996, it was the most incredible experience I’d had to date. People treated each other in a universally playful, intellectual, and loving way that I found astounding and helped break me out of a shell I’d put around myself. Being surrounded by so many people that felt like me made me feel much better about letting the weirder parts of myself out.

These days I’m immersed in that culture. Going to the desert is like going home and Flipside is a family reunion picnic. Huge fireballs thundering into the sky, crowds screaming, tesla coils surging webbed streaks of lightning overhead while singing in harmony… these are a familiar backdrop as I hug friends and catch up on their latest projects and romantic entanglements. It’s really hard for me to imagine what this would be like for someone new.

Every year’s event seems to have a personal theme. This time mine was about spending time by myself and figuring out who I am when I don’t have someone else’s needs and desires to concern me. Without a girlfriend and without having convinced anyone to come, I was responsible for no one but myself and it gave me a chance to remember that, hey, I’m not such a bad guy. I’ve been letting the fact that I wasn’t giving everyone what they wanted creep in and strangle me with guilt. I reminded myself, yet again, that I’m not responsible for making sure everyone around me is happy all of the time.

Of course I also got to ride a spring-loaded duck and a massive dinosaur hobby horse. I had far too much fun grabbing people in the fun house with sock puppets. I ran in sandals at top speed towards a radar gun to try to beat my friend’s record. I looked up at the stars. I counseled a confused man about women on top of a fire-spewing tower while swapping a bottle of whiskey. I ran in a giant wooden hamster wheel and rode it across a field. I had a slumber party with dear old friends who had scattered. I danced my posterior off to electric thump. I hugged strangers and was fed honey. I played Go on a dance floor later covered with beautiful belly dancing women. I loved. I was loved. I lived. It was good.

As always, click on photos to link to photographer’s Flickr page

Austin Texas is almost completely out of glass. Last night around 1:00 AM I was trying to finish up my next blog post when yet another hard rain, typical lately, started pounding on the house around me. When the hail kicked in I just let it ride, enjoying the typewriter hammering that began to immerse me and letting it fuel my furious writing pace as I tried to get the post out and get to sleep. Then it got louder. And louder. It was far more intense than the previous few storms over the last weeks and I decided it was time to go check it out. I headed for the living room, grabbing a flashlight on the way (instincts!) and by then the sound was deafening and water was rushing in through the tops of all of our ancient window frames. Housemates poured down the stairs as the power cut out and we all backed away from the windows. The floor around the front door and windows was soaked and everyone kept warning each other to watch out for glass. Finally the onslaught quieted, ultimately receding into the night. The rain continued to sprinkle lightly as though a child looking up in wide-eyed innocence to say, “what? I didn’t do anything.”

Stories of heroism followed. Zuuv had covered his girlfriend and pulled a blanket over her head just minutes before the windows above them exploded inward and sent shards of glass across the room. In a torrent of rain he lifted her up and carried her into the closet.

The carnage was fairly impressive, with sixteen windows broken out of our old house. The hail and glass shot completely across most of the rooms where it made its way in. Throughout the experience I kept having the slowly building sensation that things were not typical, somehow worse than I was used to, and that I should be reacting more intensely to protect my friends. By the end my brain had fired through a complete list of all of my survival equipment and their locations. Backpacks, flints, knives, flashlight backups and stoves.

I can only imagine that this slow build, this sense that things really can’t really be that bad is what the people in Burma or Katrina might have felt. As our earth’s climate continues to shift and ultimately begins to make these events more common, maybe we’ll be better able to react. Being mentally aware that, yes, things could be bad enough that we need to head for the roof and a canoe will perhaps make us more skilled at survival and lessen some of the impact of these events.

The last image cemented in my brain before heading off to sleep was that of Zanson, returned to his laptop, using the final bits of battery power and a candle to finish his PhD dissertation that was due the following day. I’m happy to say that despite the storm he got everything finished and printed the next morning.

Note: The photos here were about all I could get in total darkness with a flash. These little ice monsters from the sky were huge!

Many San Franciscans seem to believe that one of the things that makes San Francisco so much better than Austin is that there are so many things going on all of the time. This amazing DJ here, that incredible artist there. The thing is, I feel like I have the same complete over saturation of cool events in Austin and so through a series of conversations I teased out the difference.

To make sweeping generalizations, San Francisco seems to foster small, tightly knit groups of friends who have insane numbers of choices to make about which events featuring high profile artists to attend. In Austin I have a huge community of people, and while there aren’t as many big names in the events here, I am overwhelmed by the number of opportunities to spend creative and social time with my large group friends.

While in SF I met a lot of people who had trouble making friends there despite the number of people packed into the city. One had, I believe, the best theory: that everything is so full that it creates an extremely competitive environment. You have to complete for all of the basic resources like parking, apartments, and jobs. You have to work hard just to be able to afford to live. This then leads to competition for people’s time and friendship as well. People are less likely to invest until they know someone is a “sure thing”.

In Austin it’s a lot easier to survive, and it’s still a small town here at the center of the city. The growth, instead of being dense, is primarily sprawling out into the suburbs and filled with people that never enter the city and certainly don’t compete for time and attention. I still walk though this place like it’s my living room and will happily drop onto the sofa to chat with anyone who walks past.