I WANT A MONUMENT KINDA LIKE THE EIFFEL TOWER: A POSTCARD FROM TEXAS

The Broken Spoke is not another bar with a neon sign and some T.G.I. Friday's style memorabilia. It is not a tourist trap, even though it has a room full of Texas tchotchkes, announced by a burnt-wood sign that reads, " TOURIST TRAP." It is not a dive bar that has been overcome by hipsters who enjoy slumming/sucking the authenticity out of their surroundings, in fact, irony cannot exist there. Any kind of coy post-modern detatchment evapporates under the seven foot plywood ceiling strung with Christmas lights. When Willie Nelson is home, this is his favorite hangout.

All of this is to say: I went two-stepping tonight. And really, "two-stepping" doesn't completely describe the experience. First of all, it's two shuffles forward and one back, almost a waltz pattern but over a 4/4 beat. Couples glide counterclockwise, like in a rollerskating rink, frequently bumping into each other with gregarious spins. The singer is wearing a black leather/pinstripe suit and tonight it's everybody's birthday. Lots of people are wearing cowboy boots and hats, utterly sans irony.

Before I moved here, lots of people told me constantly, "You're going to have the time of your life." And it was probably nerves about the MFA program, nerves about meeting people and being so far away from Pittsburgh, but in any case I didn't completely believe it. I smiled and nodded and kept my dirty secret. But the Broken Spoke makes me believe.

NINETEEN CENTURY MAN

So you say it's Wednesday night. That's true, but it's the beginning of the weekend for me because I don't have class again until Tuesday. That means that I just spent an hour on youtube looking up clips of talking cats. And I think that's pretty great.

YOU ARE A PRETTY VILLAIN

It's like I woke up one day and remembered that I don't have to dress for office work anymore. It took a few weeks for this fact to sink in, but now that it's sunk, we are back to 24/7 ratted hair, girl. Maybe I should worry for myself that I consider wig hair the ideal, but damn it, that's the way things are in this corner. Oh, and in other exciting hair news: this fall, a return to glamor. A return to romance. A return to bangs. Maybe. Stay tuned.

So, I woke up at 5:30 and couldn't get back to sleep, so I said fuck it, got up and cooked myself a classic Pittsburgh breakfast: scrambled eggs with ketchup, black coffee, and three cigarettes. The idea here was to get a lot of writing done in the early hours, which I did (sort of), but any time I have an "assignment" for a "class" I'm suddenly interested in one of my crackpot projects, like attempting to string together a hundred one-liners into a poem of some kind. Oh, grad school, you indulge me too much.

For example, this is what I did yesterday: woke up at ten, made myself an egg/soyrizo breakfast taco (see, I can adapt to living in Texas, at least in regard to breakfast foods!), read Pride & Prejudice until five or so, did my dorky jump rope calisthenics routine while watching the second half of the Jaguars/Cowboys game, and went to a reading at my favorite bar in Austin. In the parlance of my former life, that would have been a fairly wasted Sunday, but reading all day is now not only allowed, but mandatory!

If I lived in a comedy of manners, I would be fucked. That's what I learned from Pride & Prejudice. All those long passages about how Mr. Darcy is so superior and standoffish, when really he's just SHY! well, let me tell you, it got me thinking. And it has also made my lexicon rather dainty, but that, my most generous sir, will wear off in the fullness of time.