Austin Trip

The guests had taken their seats, the music had started and the groom had taken his place alone in front of the murmuring crowd, the orange sunset glowing like a spotlight on his squinting face. Within minutes the presiding reverend joined him and the two stood like bronze statues in the glimmering light, silent and smiling as they watched the bridal procession march toward them. In the background, downtown Austin – outlined on its southern rim by the Colorado River – reflected the evening’s final minutes of natural light. With everyone in position, the ceremony commenced. The reverend made a speech, the bride and groom recited their vows, and a talented teenage bridesmaid performed a song before two dogs ran to the altar as ring bearers. Then it was my turn.

The groom, a friend and former college baseball teammate had asked me to read a Native American blessing as part of the ceremony. I was happy just to be invited to his wedding and was glad to be part of the event. With a microphone in hand, I stood before my friend’s family, his soon to be in-laws, a few of my former teammates and my date – an old girlfriend of mine who had become one of my best friends.

It was a beautiful evening in Austin and for a moment time seemed to stop; or at least it did inside my head. Everything was frozen in time: my teammate with his wedding band fresh on his ring finger, his beautiful wife in her white gown, my old baseball buddies who I was seeing for the first time in years, my gorgeous date in her black dress – all of us perched on a hill country deck overlooking the city of Austin where once, from 2001-2006, a chunk of my life had elapsed: I’d gone there for college, I’d nearly joined the military, I’d walked onto the baseball team, I’d won a national championship, I’d studied Creative Writing, I’d sketched a plan for my adult life, I’d purchased a motorcycle, and then I had left behind both the city and the life I’d known there. But now I was back and I was happy to see everyone again. They were happy to see me and I had so many things I wanted to ask them and so many things I wanted to tell them about all the places I’d been since I left and all the many times I’d thought of them or missed them or felt the bittersweet tinge of homesickness for the town we once shared and the memories of them I associated with it.

In my four-day trip to Texas, I visited my old friends at the university athletic department. I noticed the many updates and overhauls they’d already completed on their always state-of-the-art ball fields and facilities. I called my old barber on the phone. I ate lunch with an old neighbor from freshman year. Like me, he had also been in the ROTC. He had walked onto the football team and he too had won a national championship before graduating. In the three years since I had seen him, he’d graduated from law school and now awaits his assignment with the Air Force JAG Corps. For a night, my date and I stayed in his apartment as he and his girlfriend had gone out of town. I examined the National Championship ring on his dresser and admired how casually he seemed to regard that accomplishment. It never became his final destination. I respect that.

There was something that happened to me within the 96 hours I was there; a subtle change in the way I see my life and myself. This happens with me every few months and, like a minor earthquake of the self, it repositions or reframes the vision I have of my life past and the outlook I have of my life future. And this time, when it happened to me in Austin, it left me in a state in which all things seem possible and the world looks small and accessible and inviting. Life looks open and simple. There’s been a lot of collateral damage but in almost every way I am living the life I set out to live: travelling to every state then every country, working every job that intrigues me, telling the stories of the people I encounter, writing books, engaging in the romances and the dances I stumble upon along the way, progressing well through each evolution. I have jobs whenever I need money, my own crash pad in New York, people and places to visit all over the world, stories to write, and a website to chronicle all the experiences. My goals – to travel to every nation and to write meaningful literature – are well within my reach. Nothing is standing in my way except the illusions of my own mind. It would seem that I should be happy or fulfilled, but I know these obstacles will be the most daunting I can imagine.