#hiaustin

[atlantastrippersrus]

Recap of my week in Austin Texas. #austin #austintx #austintexas #atx #mytravelgram #mytravels #visitingaustin #businesstrip #travelingforbusiness #traveling #beautifulscenery #ontheriver #hiaustin #recap #slideshow #pictures #picsofmytrip #trippics #travelingpics #myweek #hostel #hostels (at HI Austin)

[americawithkimberley]

Reservations

Some about going - how long do I go for? Original plan was 6 month, then I wondered if 3-4 months is more appropriate. I need to be able to sustain myself financially and if Mark and I ever get back together *fingers crossed*, it makes sense to make things work.

There's also some reservations to be made - I need to book into the ONLY HOSTEL IN AUSTIN before it gets booked up in January. They're not taking reservations online yet which is rather annoying.

Looks decent enough, and they have all kinds of social events so as soon as I rock up I won't find myself pottering about waiting to start work.

I can't get my visa or flights until October, which is fine - feels way to far away still at the moment. To be honest there's so much else going on in my life I can't really get excited for this, it feels like it's hindrance.

:(

[hostlr]

Lazy July 4th @ HI Austin, photo courtesy of Ben Barclay (Melbourne, Australia).

[characterbank-blog]

Paul (a work in progress)

Fitzgerald couldn't hold a flame to him if he wasn't 67.

He keeps a quarter that he spins on the table while he talks on the phone to his ex-wife and his girlfriend and someone who might be his daughter or sister. We count the times he says the words money and Chicago.

Let's get some beer! we say and he stands up. Of if you're going, could you get some for me? I don't care what kind. Here's four dollars. Thanks so much! His voice shakes but we shrug and say sure. Two of us leave and the other two stay behind. He talks with us until his phone rings again. Later on in the night we sit at his table. He talks about music and Chicago and his wife, Nina, and his friend Nora who we think is his girlfriend. We can't really tell though.

The only thing I care about with you boys, is the music any good? he interrupts one of us. We respond politely: my music? Yes, of course, and so we explain our music. The title of our new album is Your and he laughs in our face. That's ridiculous! That's so fucking stupid! We know he's being a jerk but his laughter is contagious. We laugh at him, and then wonder away when he finds an acoustic guitar and plays what he can.

The next night we pass him a joint. Is this what college kids do? You do drugs? We laugh at him. None of us are taking classes right now. Later he snaps his fingers at one of us and we turn on him, angry: Did you just snap at me? Who do you think you are, my dad? Then we turn away and laugh,incredulously.

He looks down, dejected. His eyes are red and droopy, almost dripping. Are they dripping? We don't think about it. Later he stands up, enraged about the assassination of John Lennon. He can't stop laughing as he yells about the CIA and we laugh along at him, at the up-in-arms stance and the red, watery eyes.

Things are getting too intense for me, one of us says, and Paul goes inside. When he comes back outside the next day he has decided he is the authority on the patio. He gives us nicknames: Ty and Ky, Benjie, Hannah pronounced with a round a instead of a flat one. He doesn't smoke any more of our weed.

A few days later three of us leave. He disappears into his room and we disappear into our headphones and collages and groceries. Without the other three we're as empty as Paul is, and when we see him snoring on the couch we ask ourselves why we bought him that first six-pack. We've heard stories of him trying to pee on walls and forcing his wife to talk on the phone with teenagers since. He went wild, but now he's in a lull again. An obvious depressive. And so we try to write about him.

We just end up writing about ourselves instead.

[characterbank-blog]

Malinda Sue

Her sweater, the same one she’s been wearing for the last week, rides up to show some of the red-brown fat pushing over her sweatpants. She mumbles to herself and pulls something out of her bag. Come here, I need help, she’ll say the next afternoon, after telling everyone around her that she once worked for Disney, was the mayor, suffered a brain injury in a car accident, knows 80% more than the public does because of her connections to the military. They humor her. They smile and nod when she tells them her stories, which are more than likely false. People are surprised that I’m old enough to have a 35-year-old daughter. How old do you think I am? They say 63 even though they think 67, and she laughs and frowns and tells them she’s only 56. They make up some kind of excuse.

At night, after everyone has left the dinner table to go outside for a smoke and a beer, she cleans the room, clears the food which she didn’t eat. They roll their eyes at her efforts because they know that if she really does have a daughter, she was the friend’s overbearing mother with good intentions. Her daughter probably didn’t make many lasting friendships because of it.

Sometimes she can’t take it and bursts: What good ever came from alcohol? They laugh and tell her, Plenty of things! while reminescing over the good times facilitated by beer and wine and whiskey. She doesn’t realize that when she questions their favorite passtime she is only reinforcing in their minds its worth. She is reminding them that wonderful things have come from alcohol: the five-day romance that resulted in a relationship and eventual marriage, the purchase of a plane ticket that took them across the country, the hobnob plans that followed through later. She remembers only the domestic violence of which she was a victim, the alcohol poisoning she witnessed her brother die from, the drunk driver who took her mental capacities for three years.

She travels because she has no home. Even before she sold her house it wasn’t a home. She is searching for one in the thrown-together communities she finds, but they will never be her home. They are full of the old-young, those young enough to be immortal but old enough to be parentless, and the old-young do not need nor appreciate her. She lies in bed reading in the dark, and wonders what happened to the wide-eyed children that these old-young used to be. She lies in bed praying in the dark, praying that others will pray, and wonders what happened to the wide-eyed child that she used to be.