Austin, TX:

The sun sets slowly on the North-facing hillside. Dark-skinned Texans linger, legs-wide, loading their dayswork into pickups; speaking Spanish. Pastel houses, half-completed, promise the not-too-distant arrival of middle-class whites (liberal, to be sure) to fill up the expectancies of this 'Green Community', as the Aguave Villas signpost calls it. Soda cans and rags lie piled in a trench by an unpaved driveway, of a non-existent house, where a 13-year old boy sits before his absent window, straining towards solving as yet unfathomed equations.

New Orleans, LA :

A black bean burger and guitar advice from Marilyn Manson's original lead guitarist (or so his girlfriend told me). While drunk as he was, he accused the bartender of practicing voodoo, Mississippi John Hurt playing on the jukebox. Lay Me A Pallet On Your Floor. And could she have, or would she have. But who was she, or who was I? As she walked to the jukebox and playfully chose Heart's 'Magic Man'. As the guitarist began to argue with the delta bluesman beside him – white as he was, the both of them were – about Ozzy, and Zappa, and RL Burnside; the New Orleans night turning into morning, and people still surviving, flood waters still subsiding.

And only a cool night, a gray night, a winter's impossibility – in an open-eyed city, a bloodied city raging with murder and corruption, but friendly – she walks down the street talking on her cellphone and still says hello friendly, caught well up inside itself friendly, where histories of such diversity, of blues and jazz born sandwiched between a lake and the river's almost-delta might close themselves. Where enough is enough and no more. But more. And more.

How will we save this city? This impossible, below sea-level city – in which so much of us is implicated, wherein so many of us were born – of slavery and intermarriage, crossing border and language and any hope of achieving the blessings of the familiar, swollen into one another, pregnant with circumstance, with color, with death and life woven, hope-fear tied, tied to a past that's no more. And more. And more...

Athens, GA:

After driving south on interstates 95 and 85 for almost eleven hours (through Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina) I arrived in Athens, Georgia on the eve of Andy Reid's gutsy game-on-the-line who-drew-this-up 4^th and 15 play call, still filled with hope. Mike, a friend from home since middle school, moved down here from Philadelphia roughly a year ago. He's working at a local restaurant and living with a UGA business school student (and football nut) named Alister, as well as Alister's girlfriend Sabrina. Upon arriving at their place, I ate a little bit of pasta that they'd made earlier, and we went out into the college town night to see a Guns-n-Roses cover band - dressed appropriately in 80's hairs and sneers. I can't say too much for the music. Fake Axle and Fake Slash stayed after the show talking to some ladies, many of whom, in their early 20's, as seems the local custom, are probably already engaged, married, or grandparents. The streets teemed with caucasian college students, and awfully pretty girls. As the clubs closed, we gathered into Allister's car and head for a Waffle House, feeling adequately southern. The hashbrown menu is ample, even if the potatoes themselves are not.

As Mike explains to me, in Athens, “they like their bar games”. Whether it's billiards, darts, poker, watching football, or drinking beer, there's work to be done. On Sunday night, we played poker with some of Mike and Allister's more colorful friends. Wayne, our host, some amalgam of Ronnie Van Zandt (RIP) and Al from Home Improvement, was already good and drunk by the time of our arrival. He was quite hospitable, and self deprecating as to the consistencies of his misfortune - earlier that night he'd lost an $120 coin flip to Robin, the third of three bearded fellows (his is, fittingly, red) amongst our group of seven. Some gamblers just always seem to bring along their own shovels. But hey, god bless em if they're willing to laugh a little whilst they're a-diggin'... Wayne even managed to not get too upset when, he and myself being the last two folks in on a particular hand, another player prodded me to call an apparent bluff. An indicative appearance.

In the end I finished the night up $15, the first time I've ever done anything but lose quickly in playing poker. It made my insides feel kinda warm, tingly; but that was probably just the wad of singles pressing shyly against my left thigh. I walked back to the car, smiling like a born-again stripper, in the wee morning hours, a pocket's full of tips.

So I sort of trailed off a bit, but...

Back from Europe, after five television-filled months spent slumbering in my parents basement, I've taken once again to direction. A new direction. This time westward.

I've cobbled together my books and my clothes (and even a Nintendo 64), and packed them tightly into a car not quite my own, but borrowed - from my parents - for a short time; and a long journey.

I'm moving myself to Portland, Oregon; in search of adventure and employment (preferably adventurous). I'm cutting a slightly jagged route through the American continent, extended beyond the distances that any reasonable pioneers might have chosen, for themselves, as an apt (or timely) path westward.

I'll be visiting old friends, in places I've never before seen. And then, I suppose, I'll be figuring out my life, or some modicum of what may as well be called my life, an adult life, in the real world - big old scary world it be.