Wet Air

This place, for gods sake. All the heat and humidity. It could not be more unlike Eugene if it tried. Meteorologically, and otherwise.

I'm enjoying myself immensely, don't get me wrong. There's been so much to see and do and see. Jesus, I'm boring-just driving around and shopping, seeing the buildings and the streets and the tangled bayou is rich entertainment for me. Drinking it all in. Which is more than I can say for the tapwater.

Seen a bit of Houston, bunch of Galveston. Put my feet in the Gulf of Mexico, which is a first. Glassy sand and dirty sea, broken down ruins like a modern ghost town. Great beautiful turn-of-the-century buildings, buildings five and ten stories high. Abandoned. Boats on the street, detritus left where it lay. Empty businesses and quiet streets. Blocks and blocks of empty boarded-up sea-ravaged homes.

It was beautiful. Terrifyingly beautiful. My own burgeoning end-of-days pessimism sees it as a sign of things to come. A look at what America will look like once we've reached our national tipping point. Learn to squat, learn to carpent. We're all going to have to figure it out, once everything wraps up here in a minute.

Then we went to some museums, the Menil and others. I miss that about the city, extraordinary works of art and spaces that are human and artificial, but beautiful just the same. This is a pretty place, lots of strange nooks and crannys. Lovely homes, one of which I get to inhabit, if only for a moment.