Just took an hour and a half to get my hair cut...heard an old man commenting on the mystery of white people adopting "colored" children. As I writhed uncomfortably, thinking about all the razors in the room, my barber caught sight of the smoke starting to seep from my ears and changed the subject to the recent death of the Great Fat Bigot Himself, Jerry. I was able to talk about how the old intolerant, self-serving, hypocritical fucker will not be missed--now grant that I have no idea if Falwell was racist, but he was certainly intolerant--and hope that got the message across. I was afraid for a minute I would be finishing my haircut at home.
So, the books I'm taking with:
Dress Your Family in Courduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez--and no I haven't read that yet, really!, why no I haven't, so piss off--but I am looking forward to it.
Some Cicero, On Moral Ends, as I was supposed to read it for a class years ago
A blank journal, huh.
I may well find some awesome trash at the airport or in Mexico. What I especially look forward to is reading local phone books and neighborhood papers once I get there and yes I can read enough Spanish to get it on. God help me when I speak though. Terrible accent and mind-lock and every tense ever invented fighting for primacy and leaving old squid paste on my tongue such that when I open my mouth horrifying clouds of disarticulation pour forth. Anyway, yeah.
Got this habit of reading phone books from my dad. I don't travel often so it doesn't much come up, but Larry, if we found ourselves in a sterile motel room in some warmed over vacation town would prop himself with phone book on his lap and do strange things...not depraved, but definitely strange...the kinds of things an anthropologist or geographer might get away with, but he was neither. I suppose an urban planner had every reason to do these things without embarrassment, but who even knows what an "urban planner" is? Anyway, Larry would read the yellow pages, giggling and sighing and saying, "Son of a bitch" in quiet tones, blowing smoke and flipping pages and possibly wishing his son were not sharing the room with him. Still, here was Larry, giggling, "Twenty-four gun specialty stores, holy shit." Pages flipping, "Oh ho! Bill's Taxidermy on Montero Ave., established 1927. More taxidermists than the last town I was in." Smoke and silence and air conditioner peace eventually stillness leading to something about maps and rail yards rivers and orchards and time, always time stalking us both, though I can't remember Larry ever facing time.
"Owen, there are more grocery stores in this town than car washes...Son of a bitch."
So I'm looking forward to reading the phone book, if they have one and I'm sure they will, when I get to Mexico.
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