little did we know, "other people" is French for "Texas"

I don't remember if it came before or after, but this titular thought is tied in my mind to the following moment of two nights ago: crossing a street with the signal (as I am still amazed there even was one), my progress forced a pickup truck to pause mid-turn, which semi-prolonged pause clearly incensed whomever was steering said large vehicle because the moment I was no longer in his way--and several moments before I stepped onto the curb--the tires screeched/peeled/burnt their rubber as he pulled away, 0-60. Eat his dust, I did. And his smoke and exhaust and rubber as well.

So. Welcome to Texas, it felt a lot like, or Don't Forget (Ferget) You're (Yer) in It (init). Pedestrians are not welcome, perfect and abundant evidence of which is in inverse relation to the square footage of sidewalks in the state. Indeed, not only was I informed by an urban planning student at Texas State-San Marcos that SM has a) almost none of this kind of [foreign] surface throughout its city limits, and b) no plans, according to the city council, to remedy this problem (i.e., not a "problem," no "remedy" needed), but the area directly around this RV park [South Side, I guess, of Austin] is exemplary of this, as well: in order to get from A (RV park) to B (nearest place to purchase a cup of coffee (Exxon)), I have to walk roughly 200 yards, 30 of which are on a sidewalk.

Notable Interlude: And where, exactly, is this sidewalk located? Along an auto dealership lot, of course, so that one can walk and look at the fronts of the cars, of course. As in: the only time a Texan would want to walk is in order to survey vehicles, the point of which survey is, we presume, to indeed fix the problem that has put you on the sidewalk in the first place.

The coffee is of course adequate (though it should be noted that your correspondent is notoriously permissive in his caffeine-related gustation), providing flavors like "Buttered French Toast" are avoided, and it is also worth noting that, at this particular gas station coffee station at any rate, each stirrer is individually wrapped. As in, in paper. As in, like a straw.

A (quick) note about another street crossing, specifically, the boulevard I must cross in order to reach this coffee. Crossing of course not at the intersection as it is too busy and maddening, I stroll/lollygag as ungayly--not mis-spelled: this is Texas after all, and I have had hecklers in the past--as possible through the interstices in the traffic. During one such strololly I noticed a police cruiser cruising on the other side of the street and panged a wonder: would he cite me for jaywalking? A moment later I had my answer: no. A few moments after that I had the thought: of course not! Because there are no crosswalks in Texas, because there are no sidewalks leading up to them! Small, hidden benefit I in truth would rather not have.

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So. So I have been doing some thinking and wondering aloud as to why, indeed, Texas is my and JPS's hell. For it is more than just the peeling pickups and wide boulevards and individually wrapped stirrers, it is more than the seemingly ever-present danger of being called a faggot, it is more than nearly unblemished landscape of fast food options and strip malls and parking lots, it is more than the existence of "America's Ketchup," the only explanation for the existence of which, Mike has surmised, is to be a gob of sophomoric spit in the face of the Heinz ketchup and its unofficial sponsoring of the Democrats' latest offering to keep W from this nation's console. Yes it is more than that, or rather it is the way in which all of these woefully deleterious predilections (culturally deleterious, environmentally deleterious) are implemented: with glee.

Or should I say, as a teenager would. Because this is what I mean, and this is what it feels like: as though I am surrounded by the kind of arrogance that so often comes from underdeveloped awareness of the effects of one's actions in the world. I'll drive my truck and you cain't stop me. I'll eat my fast food, and make it Texas-sized, too. Walkin's for sissies. There's a battle of Good versus Evil in the world, and we're the only ones strong enough to fight it. The world is their domain, god gave them the animals to husband, et cetera et cetera and all that other Baconian jazz. They eat their meat, and they'll have it with a meat and cheese topping, and they'll drive their 'rigs' to get to it, and they'll drive their 'rigs' back. Rigs and guns and 20 oz. steaks, and no one can tell them any different, cause that's the way it is, that's the way the world works.

It is worth noting that I have on this trip missed dearly the Bay area. I see ads on the internet for the movie Zodiac--which takes place, of course, in San Francisco--and in case you don't know these ads all have the same picture: a night shot looking down from a tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, foreground fog that swallows the descending slope of the suspension cables, the city's lights aglitter in the distance. It is a shot that beckons, or at least one that beckons me, and whenever I see it I think fondly even of the two things that when I'm home I dislike--the summer chill and the rarity of heat--and of course become at once wrapped in the thrall of all that I love--the hills, the urban beauty that at moments approaches the sublime, the diversity, the food, the people who are sometimes too relaxed, the sense that this is, to my thinking at any rate, how life should be.

Which is of course the beginnings of the rub: If Texas is my hell, the Bay area is my heaven. The middle of the rub being: If Texas is the heaven of Texan's, the San Francisco Bay area must surely be their hell. (Think of it: not enough parking for their big rigs, often narrow streets impeding same, homeless everywhere reminding them of their (Texas-sized) plenitude, an even greater preponderance of non-white and more than occasionally illegal immigrants, a godless heathen on every third corner calling for George Bush's ouster, nary an anti-choice protester in sight [yes I choose that compound word after much thought; those of us who want to keep abortion legal are rarely actually pro its use], a metro area noted for its rabid, yes rabid pacifism. There are no shotgun racks, nor are there many pickup trucks in which to put them (pickup trucks that surely would not peel away for want of unbesmirched forward progress through an intersection). Vegetarianism and shoelessness and unceasing growth and study are in many corners of the city the norm. The "price of freedom" is not known or, if known, is presumed to be vastly inflated.

And yet. And yet there are similarities, quite eerie similarities, between the two. Or maybe there is just one: the teenaged gleefulness.

As I would of course be remiss in not noting that the average Bay area denizen can be quite obtuse and obnoxious in her or his held values. Case in point is a banner I saw unfurled in Union Square sometime last fall. It read: Abortion Doctors Are Heroes. Now, regardless of the feasibility of any sound argumentation that could get them there--the echo of Slepian's demise casting a vaguely lethal pall over the practices of the profession--it is indisputable that this is an incendiary banner, one that was not meant to proffer an argument, but rather poke in the eye. What's more, this is by no means an aberration for this town; I was on another occasion called a Nazi for not wanting to impeach George Bush. All I wanted to do was cross the street. The slinger of the aspersion was nonplussed by my telling him that, being of semi-Jewish descent, I hardly thought a comparison of myself to a Nazi accurate. So.

So what I mean to say is this: I guess I can't rightly call this Texas-sized state hell, while still calling home heaven. There are problems with both, problems that could be most readily ameliorated through the consideration of other points of view, the acknowledgement that others of us have just as much right to vote and act like assholes as do we. Without doubt, it is more enlightened to avoid using egregious amounts of a limited energy source, and to understand one of the most basic concepts of physics: for every action (bomb, bullet), there is an equal and opposite reaction (bomb, bullet). To name just a few things.

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At any rate, I'm leaving soon enough. Come Monday night, it is onward and eastward and slightly southward to a city this state's former governor allowed to languish for a very unchristian three or four days before deigning to do anything about. There, particularly now, I will be able to see some very unTexas-sized things. Including a population that knows, now better than all of us--even we San Franciscans--that there are limits to how much we can exert our will on the world.