My bearings are still set to Chicago. The Midwest still my home country. I rarely realize how far south I am. The temperatures are high but I’m acclimated for summer. The insect swarms are new, so is the prevalence of greenery.

Mainly I spend my days scouring the job boards and staring at her who brought me here. I have, I think, come to understand how blessed I am. I feel her belly and the life growing inside and I think it inconceivable that I had something to do with it, no matter how small.

I’m changing. Growing perhaps. I can’t imagine my life before all this or how every event of my life didn’t lead to this. I look for time to write, but I’m happy to let the days slip by into memory. For the first time I feel as though I’ve made the world better than I left it and in that there is nothing but eternal gratitude.

The other day we drove to the capital building and generally drifted through the streets of Austin. The city is booming. The grid can’t contain it. Skyscrapers rise in days. Highways in mere hours. I imagine myself returning to Austin ten years from now and feeling like I’d never been here before.

It may be cliché but everything really is bigger here. The food is fresher. The air cleaner. The optimism of the West energizes every square foot. The promise of the New South drives every conversation. Johnson era liberalism mixes equal parts with fiscal conservatism. The economy is probably better here than any place in the whole of the United States of America.

But it’s still not Chicago. I doubt any city could replicate the factory thunder of the great Midwestern Metropolis. I doubt any city would ever want to. Life is slower here. Easier. Kinder.

I’m still getting acclimated. Still settling in. For now I imagine it’s too soon to tell.

Texas has come a long way since 1963. Even in this economy. Construction is moving forward everywhere. Cities and towns are booming. In Dallas too, beyond the decaying shrine of Dealey Plaza there is prosperity. The industrial north has turned to rust and it is the defeated south that is on the rise again.

But they don’t lie. Stacy told me as much. The heat here is like nothing you’ve ever known before. Of course I’ve been in the south in summer even further, but now the temperatures seem so much more oppressive. Weightier. Perhaps it’s permanence that peaks my senses. Maybe my winter was just too long.

I tell Stacy that she brought me this warmth. She asks why I don’t write about her anymore. I’ve been so overwhelmed by having her I haven’t written anything in six months, I reply. But now we’re in Texas. I can write about Kennedy, our trip to Dealey Plaza, and the heat. It’s a start, isn’t it?

I’ve said goodbye to the prairies of Illinois, trading in the Midwest for the dusty roads of Texas. My life is in boxes. Packed and stowed into a fourteen foot Uhaul quietly roasting in the parking lot of a Super 8 in Hope, Arkansas.

We’ve been on the road three days. Out of Michigan, through Chicago, then down the Mississippi toward Texas via Memphis and Little Rock. Mainly there’s just the blacktop. Endless. Rolling by in clumps and patches. But we do stop now and then. I was at the Lorraine Motel yesterday and will probably stroll through Dealey Plaza tomorrow. Moving has somehow become an assassination tour. So it goes.

The South is still a stereotype for me. The history of the Civil War and Civil Rights. A dozen Johnny Cash ballads. Humidity, poverty and race. I suspect this will change in time, as we move further down the road. Further south. Further west. Further into an uncertain, but exciting future.

More tomorrow. For now back on the road.

An undiscovered country lies just over the horizon, or so I’ve been told, and from here to there so many small steps. Too many small steps. Progress, the very idea of it seems comical.

But there’s forward momentum. But we are pushing on. Into blessed hope. So much hope that we sink to our knees, hands raised to the heavens.

All there is to say is God speed. Good journey. Be safe.

I want to scream. I want to murder. In this way I’m not at all different from everything I despise. I’m a man afterall…

And the world tumbles on. The dread machinery of rough hands, sweat collecting at the veins like a downpour. I’m the center of the hurricane. I bring with me destruction and pestilence.

Fear me. For this is all I have left to give.

So it was at the beginning. Chaos and gratuitous violence. Rape. The pilfering of what otherwise could have been a faithless, absolute clarity.

For this too I am to blame.

So it goes. Right into the firestorm.

Consider the first half of March my vacation from myself. Don’t you dare ask what the second half will bring. The point is that I’ve been cleansing and I don’t plan to stop just yet. Personal matters need to be sorted. Court documents need to be filed. There’s only so much aged Gouda in the world. Oh, and of course there is the ever present agony of self.

I was standing on a bridge over the Chicago River smoking one of the last few dozen cigarettes I’ll smoke this winter and for a moment I could see the waters swell over the banks. I imagined the river rising twenty stories in twenty seconds. Streets devastated by tides of sewage. Cars washed away within the inland sea. It wouldn’t be long from that point until the overpasses were submerged and skyscrapers began to topple over like dead trees. At the surface only blue flesh and forests of loose-leaf.

These are the thoughts that occupy my mind in the brief intervals of silence between the near constant booming volleys of undeserved, but certainly long overdue joy. Sickening isn’t it? And you wonder why it is I need a month away.

Hoopleton will be back in stride very soon. Stay tuned.

Today I noticed a yellow house with a red chimney creeping across my front lawn. As I walked out to investigate it suddenly planted its foundations into my driveway making any attempt to leave by way of the garage impossible. I’ll wait till tomorrow and hope the house continues down the block, if it doesn’t I’m afraid I may be forced to lodge a formal complaint with the City.

February 23^rd

The yellow house didn’t budge all night and this morning I decided to confront the owner directly. As I knocked on the front door a kindly elderly woman answered and invited me inside for tea. After exchanging a few pleasantries and some talk of the weather I brought up the subject of property lines. The elderly woman, Mrs. Neilson, insisted that her house had always been where it is and that it was my house that was the intruder. I proposed that she inspect the property for herself, but she remained adamant. The rest of the day was spent trying to navigate my car around Mrs. Neilson’s front porch, to no avail.

February 24^th

After another unsuccessful attempt at direct reconciliation I decided to call the City. Speaking with several department heads proved fruitless. Apparently the City has never dealt with property incursion by an entire house before. The only advice they could offer was that I wait until housing prices drop and hope that the yellow house go elsewhere. When I reminded them that we were in the midst of a housing crisis they assured me that there were many neighborhoods within the city valued much higher than mine. In the afternoon I noticed Mrs. Neilson’s grandson mowing my lawn, however he assured me it wasn’t my lawn he was mowing.

February 25^th

In the middle of the night the yellow house transplanted itself closer making it impossible to exit by the front door. In the morning the Fire Department arrived and cited me for creating a fire hazard. When I tried to explain the situation the Captain of the Fire Brigade insisted that I move my house thirty feet into my backyard to provide proper clearance. I once again attempted to speak with Mrs. Neilson, but was discouraged to find a note on her front door informing the post office that she’d be on vacation in Florida for the next several weeks. I fear that by the time she returns I may be little more than a tenant in the yellow house with the red chimney.

These things are hardly immaterial. They are untoward signs of rejuvenation. Or is it reconstitution? Perhaps birthing. It doesn’t matter, our language is too imperfect, but back on point, it’s a beginning most definite.

I am only slowed by my uncertainty. I still have no real notion of what a man is, the examples I’m allotted are mostly defective. Broken and violent. Bestial. Carnal. Ferine. What has made them this way? Flawed design or illicit tampering? And in this equation what is my sum total? Am I the aberration?

Because I can feel?

Because I am overwhelmed by feeling?

Because the feelings that overwhelm me are too much?

Too much for my body?

Too much for my soul?

Too much for my spirit to repress, reverse or revile?

Because I love?

Because I am loved?

Because I have love?

Because we have everything to hope for?

Because we have meaning?

Because we as a single jarring atom have a greater meaning than the soft rhythm of a bouncing, gyrating, whirling string of energy.

And since all that has passed will come again and again I feel the replete wholeness of all that was and everything that may be. Forever. Into the sliding dark. And the sun. And the moon. And the organic entirety of celestial habitation. Choirs of angels. An orchestra of resplendent green, living agony. Until the stars rupture and only radioactive dust lingers within the cathedral gates.

Not, mind you, that I am at all closer to knowing what a man should be or to what a man ever was, but I’d like to think that gender is as meaningless as any word, the Word, spoken by any prophet or god or profiteering preacher that ever walked the Earth. And only in this do I find the certainty to let go of all my burdens. To feel. To laugh. To cry. To be the animal capable of grace, of place, of self-awareness.

To be this, as I am, as we are, this is rejuvenation. The prodigious incarnation of creation. The spark of life. The totality of genesis. Lingering for always. Right up till the falling, collapsing, foundering of the bright blue sky.

Feel better?

You feel better.

Jennifer Aniston is not unlike a patron saint, or if you prefer a more classical archetype, a sort of demi-goddess. Except, whereas in ages past lesser gods were charged with mundane tasks such as ensuring a good harvest or warding against demonic possession, Jennifer protects us from the complete collapse of American civilization.

We dwell in horrid times. The economy is stagnant. Our standing is in sharp decline. Two wars abroad drag on without end. Taxes and deficits rise. Our roads and bridges crumble. Climate change and a lack of forward thinking threaten to undo what meager standard of living we’re able to achieve. The President we elected on the fragile hope of change has proven himself little more than a mediocre politician whose real powers seem only to lay in his ambition. The opposition built against him is little more than a feckless mob of sophists. Society teeters on the brink as mass violence and acts of legislative discrimination fill our headlines daily.

If it wasn’t for Jennifer Aniston and her constant, unending torrent of personal front-page disasters we as a culture might very well lose any and all will to continue. We’d fall into utter despair. Mass suicide would sweep the nation. We’d have nothing to distract us from the bottomless pit of agony that is our lives.

Terrorist plot to destroy a flight into Detroit? The deficit hitting a record $1.35 trillion? Iran developing nuclear weapons? Huh? Wait. Did you hear what John Mayer just said? Brangolina adopted another child? Management tanked at the box office? Poor Jennifer. What were we talking about? OMG a Friends rerun! She really did have great hair. Poor Jennifer.

Yes, it’s just that easy.

Maybe one day, long from now, when these times of trepidation have past and people look back with wonder as to how any of us could have ever possibly survived such ordeals, Jennifer Aniston will finally receive the love and recognition she so desperately deserves. Statues will be built. Shrines. Maybe entire basilicas. And the people, in a collective voice that will shake the very foundation of Heaven, will shout, thank God for Jennifer Aniston!

Or, more likely, she will be forgotten. A footnote in history. Forever remembered as a second-rate sitcom actress that was once married to the husband of Angelina Jolie.

Poor Jennifer.