Dear Mom,

I just called my husband at work to ask if he can take Saturday off so we can put Chloe to sleep. The vet gave me a few times she is available to come to our apartment and do it. I chose Saturday at 12:30.

At first she said she could come tomorrow afternoon, and I said, “But that’s tomorrow.”

And Friday is Friday. And Saturday is Saturday. Which day is the right one?

Which day is the right day to lay her body on my lap and kiss her goodbye and try to be calm for her as they give her one last sleep and then stop her heart? Which day will be best to hand her limp body to a stranger, follow her psychically to the crematorium, and try not to imagine her carcass—of which I know the weight on my chest, how the heart murmur flutters under my hand, in which places it is damp and cold and where it is dry and warm, where it has crusted with the bumps and ulcers of old age, where the fur has worn away and where it is still soft and lush, exactly like it was when she was 6 months old and we rode home together from the shelter in my boyfriend’s van, me an impulsive and stoned 19-year-old giddy with conviction that this was the perfect gift for you, my newly single mother, all alone in that house in south L.A., in chat rooms, spilling wine on yourself and on the verge of once again loving and nurturing another loser, and who would wind up giving this dog magical abilities and who would take her to work and on road trips and to the beach and let her run free without a leash, which drove me nuts but you both were free creatures and I couldn’t control anything until you were suddenly gone and the dog was missing and I prayed to Whatever was listening that if Chloe showed up I would forgive Whatever, and then the call came from the police and she and I threw our bodies against the cage bars until they were opened and we kissed each other and cried and I swore to never let anything happen to her and to love her with all my heart until the world spun in reverse and I could make everything that ever went wrong for you right—try not to imagine that body burning to ash?

On what day do you end a ten-year blood oath?

After you had Chloe for a few months, you called me in a panic. Chloe was missing, had jumped from the open window of your car while you were in the bank. In spite of my rage and worry, I drove you around town for two days until we found the dog in a Taoist church parking lot, unharmed and happy as you please. When I was 20, another phone call: Chloe is listing and stumbling. And an immediate call back: it’s okay, don’t come down. We think she ate a pot brownie. I’m 21: Chloe stepped on broken glass and I can’t afford a vet. Can I bum $100 for stitches? I’m 23: Chloe was bitten by a rattlesnake, but she’s fine. They gave her anti-venom and we’re picking her up tomorrow.

To the untrained ear this might sounds like bad parenting. No offense. But listen to me, I’m another creature raised by you: it was one animal respecting another animal’s joie de vivre. Emotional license, you used to say to me, when we fought. “I gave you emotional license! I never told you what you could and couldn’t think or feel.” Chloe traveled, met children and jazz musicians, played in the surf, rolled in mud, got taken to bars (and thrown out of them, with you), slept on a human bed, ate boiled chicken and rice. Mom, the measure of your love wasn’t worry and restriction. It was pleasure.

You’d hate the way she looks now, this long, thin caramel-colored body with its jutting shoulders and spine—but she looks peaceful swallowed up by the down comforter we’ve indulged her in. Every now and then she shudders, as she has for about a year, at first seldomly and now frequently. She flinches, too, violent facial seizures that chatter her teeth. She paces at night, gives this heartbreaking whinny. She groans, reluctant to lie down, stiff and stumbling with the pain of arthritis, confusion. We tried anti-senility drugs, but she still docks herself into tight corners and can’t back out of them. She is mostly blind and deaf. Pain meds? Valium? And what then? This isn’t the dog you knew. She’s 100.

It just occurred to me that you left her when she was around 50, your age. A couple of wild, middle-aged ladies. Thelma and Louise. Can you imagine being 100? Do you blame me for making this choice?

There are four Greenie bones left. She loves her Greenies. On Saturday I’ll give her two.

What about this case of dog food—it’s good stuff, expensive. Grain-free, hand-cooked by virgins in a cathedral in Paris, I don’t know. I just can’t cook chicken and rice each week, like you did. I’m selfish and I’m lazy and I never had children and I don’t have your hands.

There are six cans left, and Saturday is two dinners away. Should I instead give her a hot dog? A warm one, bun and all? Or I’ll make her a meatloaf. I’ll give her a can of tuna—the kind with sodium. Anything you want, my love. She flinches so hard her teeth chatter, then she whimpers.

There has to be another way out of here besides loss. Loss, again. Also, it’s not my right. It’s not my call. It’s your call, and you’re gone and I have to pull the trigger on my own. And suddenly I look over this long expanse of time and I’m embarrassed. Did I really think I could make this dog live forever? Did I really think that I could reverse the turning of the Earth? Did I think that by loving Chloe enough I could undo all of your tragedies, one by one, until you were undead and we had all the time in the world again?

How long after she started feeling pain and misery did I keep this dog alive, waiting for the miracle to come?

After you died, almost ten years ago (really?), I held Chloe and thought about the eventual end of her life. We were fresh from scattering your ashes in the Pacific. In those days I was finding meaning all over the place, tying up cosmic loose ends—making oaths. I’ll write a book was one promise. Another was this: when it was time for Chloe to pass, whenever that would be, I would whisper in her ear, Go find Mom. I would bring her ashes to you, off the coast of Dana Point, and make right what once went wrong. Put back together what violence had torn apart.

But that was when we were young and glorious and nothing could touch us—when there were no Saturdays at 12:30, only tomorrows stretched out as far as you could see.

Mom, if you’re anywhere you can feel this, go to the Eastern Gate on Saturday and meet your dog.

Oops, I skipped a few. Pretend it’s July 18. I’m doing it right now. Mmm, so 18thy.

Because I’m a native, or maybe because my theories are the electrifying sort that touch both madness and genius, people ask me why Southern Californians are “like that.” You know what I mean, and if you don’t, you might be Southern Californian, but I’ll get to that.

For the last three days (or since it’s July 18: “For the next three days…”) a weird thundershower has moseyed across the hot, sunny afternoon. You’ll be doing something — say trying to cull your magazine collection because you’ve just taped up your TWENTIETH box of books and your New York apartment won’t even hold that many, only you can’t bear to part with four years’ worth of Bust Magazines because you might one day send a letter to your friend Crystal with odd cut-out photos glued to the envelope, and Bust has the best. Anyway, you’ll be doing, say, THAT, and then you’ll hear this general leafy commotion and will open the back door and, lo, It’s perfectly sunny…and raining! In sheets.

In mid-July!

Only two years ago, it was the Summer of Our Discontent, over ninety days of triple-digit temps, no rain, and Rick Perry praying away the magical wildfires that DEFINITELY aren’t caused by his d-bag constituents tossing lit cigarettes out their car windows during a scorching drought. Freedom! Pewpewpew!

This summer has been just as crazysauce, but on the other end of the spectrum. Everything’s green and lush and happy and the cicadas just will not shut up about it. Everyone you meet comments on it, like they do when it’s extremely sucky — which it could be in another week. You never know. Last winter came and went so fast it didn’t freeze a single flea, but the winter before that it SNOWED. Remember that? For, like, an hour.

Which brings me to my eleventh love in Austin: the weather’s as crazy as a shithouse rat. It’s wild and unpredictable, and the small town churches have signs up saying “Pray for rain!” It beats us down, it humbles us, it makes us appreciate the auspiciousness of a good run, which can turn on its head like that. 

If Southern Californians seem arrogant, blissed out, and out of touch with the rest of the country — or human bone structure, for that matter — it’s because an eternity of 76-degree-and-sunny weather stretches out before them, indistinguishable day after indistinguishable day. Everyone becomes Bill Murray in Groundhog’s Day, running their morals off of cliffs and into oncoming traffic, hoping to find the outer limits of this bizarre infinity.

Without a force mightier than divorce attorneys and plastic surgeons to humble them, people lose the connection between cause and effect. In the absence of wrathful weather, to what does a whole population adapt, together, at such a mortal level?

Hear me out, Californicators:

August 2005. I’m brand new in Austin and I get a contract job trying to locate all the Keller Williams Realtors in the Gulf. It’s one day since Katrina hit. There are about 700 agents affected across 20+ offices. Every last one of them — team leader and receptionist alike — as soon as they heard I was from HQ, would just start crying. What do you need? I’d ask them. God, they’d tell me, I don’t even know how to answer that. Depending on whether it was Biloxi or Mandeville, NOLA, or Houma, they’d either lost everything —
say, all of the Escrow paperwork on a house that the buyer now probably no longer wanted (if it even stood) and which was to be the agent’s source of income — or were doing okay but their community was ripped to shreds. I remember a woman telling me this sometime in late November: There are no trees, Erin. Anywhere.

Can you imagine what that would be like? Dependable giants like Target and Wal-Mart are even closed and flooded, looted and unavailable. Hungry? Just go through the drive-thru…of what? It’s gone because it took in 3 feet of fetid water, half of its employees are actually missing, and how did you drive there anyway when the one working gas station in your area has a line down the street?

How about a nice, hot McFML?

The company blazed through millions of its non-profit dollars and so we turned to our hundreds of offices nationwide to adopt specific agents (this was a brilliant idea, and should tell you what kind of fantastic, human-loving company Keller-Williams is to work for) and hold fundraisers for them. From Seattle to Charleston, the teams knew their adopted agent’s name, the state of their affairs, every member of their family and their clothing sizes. They were having holiday galas and auctions, and were sending boxes of clothes and gas cards, and were even offering them to come visit for a while….you name it. I was personally transformed by the care these people showed for strangers who just happened to work for the same company. (Again, I can’t kvell enough about the company’s culture, which was created and fiercely maintained by a lady from Norman, OK named Mo, of whom I do a pretty good impression.)

And then I called the office in my hometown, a lovely beach location where you can even grow tired of this sunset:

Boooooooring.

And do you know what the team leader there said to me when I asked about how things were coming for the agent we’d assigned them?

“Oh, is that still going on?”

Because the weather there is perfection in perpetuity, a frictionless circumstance where people are free to orbit each other at safe distances (except on the 405). Like water and pressure eventually rolls sand into an unyielding pearl, extreme weather forms a solid community. It’s a beautiful thing — maybe as beautiful as that sunset, and just as easy to take for granted. All of us sweating and freezing our asses off together, talking in a common tongue about how we’re going to get by.

You know what? MEXICANS.

It makes me insane to hear the misinformed national “Austin’s hot right now!” media — and the lazy yo-yos here in town that are supplying them with the misinformation — supplicate themselves before the greasy, meh logos of Tacodeli and Torchy’s Tacos. I love it even more when people say “Well, they’re not supposed to be Mexican tacos but you have to love Tex-Mex.”

No, sorry, these are not Tex-Mex. Tex-Mex comes in a later post, by the way.

They’re nothing, from nowhere. A perfect algorithm for crowd-pleasing that might as well have been formulated in the test kitchen of a Sam’s Club. Add salt, fat, sugar, and a spicy salsa and Americans will love it!

They’re aregional. They’re an anchorman’s lack of accent. They’re Yanni. Worse, they’re Yanni covering Santana.

Why so much ire? Because these ladies:

Photo courtesy of scrumptiouschef.com

These fine ladies, parked at 53rd and Airport, are serving sopes and tacos with masa and corn tortillas made to order. They’re delicious and half the price of Tacodeli’s nonsense. And you won’t have hungover UT students step on your feet.

Also these dudes:

Photo courtesy of chickenfriedeverything.com

Are you kidding me? You live in a city with Taco More in it and you’re wasting everyone’s time talking about Torchy’s? Why do you hate food so much?

Taco More will sell you three of the best cabrito, al pastor (none of that chunky pineapple garbage), and carne asada tacos you’ve ever had, and for like $6. Or try the cabrito soup — it’s about $2.50 and it will instantly cure depression, anxiety, viral infections, and boredom. The original’s up on Rundberg but there’s also a newisher one conveniently located on Riverside near Emo’s.

Torchy’s. Are you kidding me with this. New Haven could make a Torchy’s. Norman, OK could make a Torchy’s.

And while New York has plenty of Puerto Ricans, dozens of Dominicans, and several Salvadorans, it’s harder to find good, authentic Mexican. Texas wins with Mexicans. Go make use of that.

God in heaven, the Greenbelt! It runs 7.25 miles through the city, a rocky trail that’s smooth in places, surrounded by trees. Everyone runs, walks, and bikes on it. Sometimes it’s officially leash-free, sometimes it’s just leash-free by virtue of this is Texas so fuck your rules (and Austin dog etiquette is pretty solid — I never had a bad run-in with a loose dog, myself).

After a good rain, park at the entrance in Zilker and walk the comfortable mile or so to where the creek widens and rushes. There’s a flat rock in the middle where college girls sun themselves, hippie boys strum guitars — even the college guys don’t seem so douchey drinking their Lone Stars and throwing Frisbees — and urbanists, like Turtle (below) hang out and trade joints for stories.

Yes, that’s Chloe. In our younger days, Chloe and I would go together. Turtle is the one who looks like Neptune, all gray curls and a torso like a leather saddle. He made roses out of river grass for the girls and told us he knows where to forage for wild foods and how to sharpen sticks to fight the wild dogs that will roam free when the apocalypse comes. When Austin cycles through its Turtles (and Lobsters and Leslies…that’s for another post) it will be minus a significant organ. Maybe its heart, I don’t know. I hope not.

I think I might head down there on Friday — we’ve had some good surprise rain this week — and say goodbye to the Greenbelt and its river people. Maybe I’ll find Turtle braiding grass bracelets and warning calamity. Maybe I won’t laugh so readily this time.

(Apologies for the grainy pictures — taken on a clamshell phone circa 2006.)

I moved to Austin for its warm nights. Never mind the soul-crushing heat of the day that’s required to make this lovely balmy sundown – it’s worth it.

Humid air just carries sound differently. It gives it a sustaining note. And in the darkness, that sound takes on an even calmer, more sensual quality: A rattling cicada in a blinding afternoon sounds like a metallic air raid, a rising and falling clatter of ball bearings in a tin drum. But by night, it’s a Voodoo priestess feverishly shaking a ring of chicken bones and shells.

A warm Austin night has its own soundtrack. Listen for the sharp, crabby caw of a common nighthawk around dusk as it circles overhead. When you sit on our porch – a grand thing with rocking chairs and a hammock, and arguably our best feature as a couple – listen for the fluting of a screech owl. They live in our neighborhood. We sometimes run silently on the balls of our feet a block or two, trying to catch them out.

It was on a visit in April 2003 that I fell in love with Austin. The heat was not yet oppressive. An old friend had a party at her little house in Clarksville, at which many very people drank beer and painted paper lanterns. The way they glowed, the way that voices carried with the music on the swampy air, it was exactly the Tennessee Williams-like atmosphere a romantic California writer would dream of. Shawled in warmth and color and a fine sheen, you could do anything, be anyone, talk to anyone.

In August 2005, I finally left Orange County and moved into my own little rental house across the street from a small plot of pecans owned by the Elizabeth Ney museum. I took Chloe on a walk to investigate it around 10 or 11 at night. As we neared the creek, a gentle quarterflash appeared. And then another. And another. Sulfuric yellow, flaring up and disappearing like a lit cigar. My first fireflies! (Outside of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, which is where all my ideas of a southern night came from.) They never get old for me, ever.

Our porch, the hammock, the fireflies, the cranky crow, the cicadas, the chirruping frogs, and the sound of a party nearby.

I will miss warm Austin nights so much, and how they hold you.

Twenty days left in Austin. Twenty things I will miss. One a day.

That Sky. You know the one.

The one that comes between thunderstorms, a phalanx of clouds marching across an endless blue.

Dat sky.

And the shapes! So many shapes you almost can’t drive safely. One time, a dragon-fish thing followed me and Nat all the way to Kerrville.

If the Pacific Ocean is what I dream of when I am too long between visits back home, the Texas sky will be what I’m thinking of when in New York I suddenly stare off into space. There is nothing so formidable, so inspiring, so unrelenting as this sky. California’s smog makes for the most showy sunsets, but the thunderstorms here inspire religion.