carsick but so what

got a headache from car sickness. don't know when i started getting it regularly, but i think it's one of those "old age" things that creep up and kick you square in the dingding. i used to be able to read hanging upsidedown from the car roof at 90 miles an hour around hairpin turns. now, however, ask me a question from the back seat and have me turn my head too fast from passenger window toward driver side and you're risking an issue of vomitous koleidescopes. what the hell happens to youth?

austin is weird. and the bumper stickers admit to as much. they DESIRE as much. "keep austin weird" they proclaim. cool eh? they like their dizziness. their befuddledness. their weirdness in the head is not pain. it's pleasure. too bad ann richards ain't in the picture no more. i have a feeling austin liked her.

i got a really nice complement (sp?) today from the prof i just finished my first intensive graduate seminar with. (has america decided yet if we can end sentnces with prepositions?) what a great class. and what great classmates. "You have a great deal to offer the profession of English studies," she says, "as well as the world of readers to whom you choose to write." isn't that great? her style had a lot to do with the quality of work coming out of us, i think. something about being progressive in a situation where you can be so much less. it's inspiring. it's like greta erlich wrote: "the world constantly invites us to be what we are." thinking about this, and taking my prof at her word, i discover regularly that this place (read: this care-starved planet) could really really use my assistance and my commitment.

i tell you, the longer i live the more i like wisening up. not losing my youth exactly...just gaining strength. appreciation. it's as deep and beautiful as a tiny ocean. and it's weird too. weird and wild enough to steep inside of once you find it. sortof like austin. and it's soothing enough, i think, even to get rid of this carsick headache.