Tuesday, June 30, 2009 | by nathan

World Tour

Internet, I’m having one or two minor problems with anxiety in advance of my deeply imminent travels abroad. It’s crazy - I mean, remember that one time when I LIVED IN EUROPE FOR SIX MONTHS? Why am I freaked out about going back? 

Part of it is that Brian isn’t here; he left on Sunday morning, early, to jet out to Washington, D.C. for business. I’m leaving in about 48 hours from now to join him. In the meantime I have to do a whole sh**load of laundry, get my house nice and clean so that my buddy Casey, who is house-and-dogsitting for us, doesn’t have to live in a pig sty.

Last night I stayed up packing - most of my clothes are already crammed tightly into my freshly-Febreezed duffel bag - I REFUSE TO CHECK LUGGAGE. To aid myself while I packed I watched all six episodes of the first series of the BBC black comedy Sensitive Skin, starring the lovely Joanna Lumley (Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous). I only meant to watch one episode. I SWEAR I did but that sh**’s addicting. Careful, though; it’s about the most British thing you’re likely to have seen in awhile.

I’ve got a ton of stuff to do before I leave, including a freelancing deadline for an article I pitched BECAUSE I AM TOTALLY NUTS. In other news, I am the cover author of the local alternative newsweekly - for the second time in a year, holla - so be sure to pick that up if you’re in town.

Maybe it’s the lingering worry of having a largely-uncompleted to-do list hanging over my head, or maybe it’s that I’m always weird when Brian is away, but the past two days my stomach has been fluttering wildly, wobbling so much that I can see it through my shirt. It feels the way that I would imagine a kicking baby does. Also, I’ve become entirely obsessed with my passport, with knowing where it is at all times, to the degree that the first thing I do when I rise and the last thing I do before I go to bed is to check and make sure it’s still in the same place it was. I pick it up, I flip through it a few times, and I set it back down EXACTLY where it was before, but then come the next morning, there I am, rushing to it to make sure it hasn’t been moved, or ran away.

One can only sustain this level of mental illness but for so long; in 48 hours I’ll be in the air and headed east, and when I set down in Washington, D.C. to begin this next adventure I’m sure everything will have come together just as it’s meant to.

Monday, June 8, 2009 | by nathan

People, Dancing

We had a wonderful time at the Okemah Jazz Festival over the weekend. The music very rarely became even jazz-adjacent, however, which is fine. We got to hear Susan Herndon play, which was nice as I’ve heard her name, seen ads for her shows, and yet somehow never actually encountered her music:

My favorite part came during the act that followed Susan. They were a sort of soul/R&B/rock and roll group, and it wasn’t their music that made it the best part of the afternoon. Their music was fine, but the part of the show that had me enthralled was that I got to watch people dance, which is always a great thing to do. They were constantly calling on the crowd to come down and make use of the expanse of empty grass in front of the stage:

Now, I’m usually the kind of person that would rather die before I’d get up and dance by myself in front of a bunch of people. Be it at a bar, a wedding, a bar mitzvah - I don’t care, I don’t want to be the first person on the dance floor. Part of this is my natural aversion to being on stage or having people look at me in any way. But another part is that I don’t want to take away from what’s going on with the music; I don’t want to distract audience members away from the band. This lady didn’t have a single qualm about doing it, though; she’s living her life to the fullest:

She was the first one to start dancing, and after a few songs she was joined by a few other people. This lady in particular seemed to be enjoying herself:

I ran this photo through the "Seventies" filter in Photoshop, because, well - the haircut. Anyway, don’t tell me that if someone told you that this photo was taken in 1979 that you wouldn’t believe them. I kid, but seriously this lady was having a great time. Best among them all, though, was the little girl who danced down front during the whole set. We later found out she was the lead singer’s daughter:

Adorable, right? Seriously, keep on the watch for this one. She had the moves and was a natural performer. She’s going to be famous one of these days and I’m going to get a cease and desist order telling me to take down this photo.

These people were having a great time dancing, and though I was too self-conscious to join them I did have a grand time watching. I got to sit there with my Frozen Rose, which is this wonderful concoction they have at Grape Ranch that’s basically a red wine smoothie (I think we’ll be drinking them in Heaven). Seriously, those things are the best; they give you a neat little buzz and keep you cool. So even though I didn’t get up and dance, I have absolutely no regrets.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009 | by nathan

Yellowstone

Yellowstone from Andrew Curtis on Vimeo.

My dad’s doctoral thesis was all about Yellowstone, and can you believe that I’ve never been there? This video makes me want to go; it is, after all, in one of the 14 contiguous states I have yet to visit. This video also makes me want to trade up my SLR to something that can do HD video, but if I had to guess which one of those two things was gone to happen first, well, it’s anybody’s guess. Someday!

Friday, May 29, 2009 | by nathan

Crs th Brzs @ Wco

In the last week my freelancing load has grown from 2 travel articles about the state of Oklahoma and all the neat stuff to do in it, due by the 15th of June and (in my optimistic mind), the end of June before we leave for D.C. and Ireland, to FIVE ARTICLES, one of which I just finished writing about very small cattle and how they might rid us of CAFOs forever. It’s a neat story; look for it, and my travel pieces, and then two more pieces for the gay pride issue at the end of the month. Why all the work? BECAUSE WE’RE LEAVING THE COUNTRY AND I’M TERRIFIED WE’RE GOING TO GET TO IRELAND AND NOT HAVE A CENT AND HAVE TO WORK IN A FISH-GUTTING FACTORY OR GO ON A HORRIFIC GAME SHOW TO EARN PLANE TICKETS BACK HOME. (Read: "Because I’m not a well man.")

Speaking of Ireland, here’s a photo of the place we are staying for the latter half of our journey, in Kenmare:

That’s pretty neat, right? Yeah, I’m stoked.

Before that, however, our summer looks pretty good, even if we’re spending the vast majority of it having fun for free, as most of our money is being poured into this trip. I don’t know why I’m getting so weird about money; the last time I lived in Ireland, FOR TWO MONTHS, I don’t think the entire trip cost as much as the amount of money I’m taking with me over there this time. I’m just going to do us all a favor and blame George W. Bush; I’ll figure out later how this is his fault.*

This has been an emotionally exhausting week. We lost someone we love very, very much last week, and it’s sort of colored the seven days since very darkly. I had one really good bawl about the whole thing Thursday morning before the funeral, and then that afternoon two very good friends of mine rolled through town on a cross-country road trip they’ve been doing, and though I had to go straight to the funeral from seeing them, it did my heart good.

Tonight we’re headed down to Texas to see our buddy K.C. perform as a mainstage artist at the Kerrville Folk Music Festival in Kerrville, Texas. It’s a whirlwind trip - we’ll be back Sunday evening - and when I get back I’ve got 3 stories to complete in just over a week, which will be SO GREAT**.

*For Republicans who were offended by that: come on. Have a freaking sense of humor.

**Well, no, but I’ll get paid for it, so.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 | by nathan

Three Trips

Traveling has been on my mind of late. I just finished the third in a series of travel articles I’m writing for the local alternative newsweekly, and in about six weeks I will fly to Washington, D.C. for a weekend of patriotism and mayhem before Brian, two of our great friends and I take off for a week in Ireland. To say I’m excited wouldn’t quite be fair; I’m having throes, people. Throes.

I’ve been to all of these places before, of course. But the gist of the travel series (which is based on last year’s Road Trip), is that even within my own state there is so much to see that often goes unseen, and so to that end I’ve been thinking about how much of America I have yet to see for myself. Brian and I were talking about this the other day. I was telling him about how when I was a kid we used to take these crazy-complicated road trips all over America - from Oklahoma to Los Angeles to Northern California to Colorado and back, or from Oklahoma to Cincinnati to New Orleans and back to Oklahoma. But if you drew a horizontal line through a map of the U.S., there is a great deal of stuff north of that line that I’ve never seen.

So, to that end I’ve been thinking about how to cover the 14 of the contiguous United States I’ve never visited; I figure Alaska and Hawai’i, while more than worthy of visits, are trips unto themselves. I used to dream that I’d take all 14 at once, in a Kerouac-esque hitchhike-a-thon across the northern half of our country. But now, encumbered and enhanced both by the wise caution that comes with growing older and a sense of perspective, I came up with three potential road trips to cover all 14 states and as much ground as possible.

Trip #1: Middle America

This trip begins and ends in Des Moines, IA, mostly because I have been fascinated by Iowa ever since I read On The Road, wherein Kerouac states that "the prettiest girls live in Iowa." I’d like to wind through northern Nebraska and the Black Hills of South Dakota (with a stop at Mt. Rushmore) before traveling north to visit North Dakota’s Audubon National Wildlife Refuge and Audubon Lake. From there it’s into Fargo, then to Minnesota, hopefully catching a live show of A Prairie Home Companion in St. Paul. This followed by a jaunt through Wisconsin - Eau Claire, Green Bay, Milwaukee and Madison, before winding back through Iowa. Middle America writ large.

Trip #2: Northern New England

I lived in New England for a time, squatting in a New Haven walkup and trying to be a Yale student. We all know that it didn’t go great. Since my time in the northeast was cut short, I missed out on exploring as much of that area of the country as I’d liked. So this trip starts in Boston (I’ve already been to Massachusetts, but) and winds up through New Hampshire and Vermont - the town of Rutland is of special interest to me because of Time Chasers - before rounding out the inner portion of Maine and then returning to Boston. I consider the part of the country that I’m originally from - Oklahoma - to be basically the exact opposite of New England, and so the idea for this trip really thrills me.

Trip #3: The Northwest

But this idea here is, to me, the most exciting. Starting in Seattle we’d drive up to Port Angeles, Washington, then down the Pacific Coast before turning inland to visit Portland and Bend, Oregon, then traipsing across Oregon, through the southern part of Idaho, to Casper, Wyoming. From there it’s north to Billings, Great Falls, and Kalispell, Montana, then across the panhandle of Idaho to Coeur d’Alene, up to the Grand Coulee Dam, then back to Seattle. Everything about the idea for this trip - except for the cost, really - excites me, and I hope to get to do it someday soon.

So, those are the three trips I’ve conceived to cover the 14 contiguous states I haven’t visited. Who’s in, and for what part? Also - if any struggling car companies want to reach out to me to, say, creatively market a  new car, especially an SUV hybrid, by sponsoring me to take one or more of these trips and blog about it, well, THAT WOULD BE FINE. JUST FINE.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009 | by nathan

Go Bragh Yourself

I took this photo in the summer of 2000; sometimes when I go to my "happy place," this is what I picture. This is the coastline of the Irish sea from Greystones, Ireland, looking north toward Bray Hill, beyond which lies Dublin harbor, barely visible through the haze. I’m going there again this summer and it’s entirely possible I won’t come back. So, Happy St. Patrick’s Day, and anyone who pinches me will get punched. You know, Irishly.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009 | by nathan

Come On Baby, Let’s Get Away. Let’s Save Our Troubles For Another Day.

Sweet Fancy Moses has it been a hectic couple-a weeks. For starters, Brian’s company raced inexorably toward their year’s biggest deadline. When people ask me what my husband does for a living, I tell them, "He makes the internet happen," which is almost unequivocally answered with the question, "WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS, AL GORE?" This, in turn, is followed by a loud laugh from the person making the joke and a blank, flat, dead-eyed stare from me.

So that happened. I’ve been dealing with a difficult situation in my life, one that has ruined my mood even on days when it was far away, and one which I’m handling but not with as much grace as I’d like. In addition I realized recently that someone from high school blocked me on Facebook, which doesn’t really bother me as it does just strike me as remarkably lame and passive-aggressive, but it’s okay, because if you’re reading this, which I’m sure you’re not, all I can say is, wow, you really showed me.

I think I can chalk all this rambly difficulty up to the fact that it’s February, which is my second-least favorite month of the year behind August. It would be my least favorite month except for the fact that it’s so mercifully short. It’s February every year when I decide that winter is not going to relent this time, that it’ll be cold and dark forever and that we’re all going to die soon. All of which would be true, except that I have a teaspoon of hope about Obama and the stimulus package, and I just designed next month’s banner for this website and I think it’s my best one yet. Also, in addition to two plane tickets from JFK to Dublin, I am also now the proud holder of a hotel room for the Fourth of July weekend in Washington, D.C. and, soon, a set of plane tickets that will get me all these fabulous places we’re going over the summer.

But it’s not enough that we’re planning to spend a week away from our lives and our country in July, because somehow we have ended up with tickets to see David Wilcox in Dallas over the last weekend in March. I can’t say for sure of course, but I’m reasonably certain that my life would be completely different if, on a random road trip over Martin Luther King weekend in 2000, my friend Tish hadn’t introduced me to David Wilcox. I’m pretty sure it would be very, very different. He and his music have had a profound impact on the person I’ve become in a way that not many artists have, and yet I’ve never seen him live. In addition to smiling like an idiot on LSD throughout the whole show, I also am considering knocking on every door in our hotel to see if he’s staying there, as the people who own it also seem to own the space where David will be performing.

As ever, we’ll be staying here:

Because, no matter how many times we go to Dallas we never get sick of lounging by their kickass pool. This year I’m going to try a Cucumber Collins or a blood orange martini and be nice and calm and relaxed and secreted away from all that currently stresses/bums me.

Prospects for future travel include a possible weekend at the Price Tower in Bartlesville, though that’s more of a work-type thing as I’m considering it for my current article series, and there’s a "literary" conference going on in Tulsa in April that I’m considering attending. I will tell you, though, that no matter where or when we get away, that once Daylight Savings time arrives (is over? I never know) that you will find a much calmer, more relaxed and well-adjusted person who will have miraculously survived his 29th February without shooting up a post office, and for no other reason than that, I deserve that damn drink.

Saturday, January 31, 2009 | by nathan

Eire

"South County Dublin, Ireland" by Kevin McGarry

Shortly after starting college I joined a wonderful church. Through them I met some fantastic people and, over spring break of my freshman year I got to go meet a bunch of really amazing church leaders in and around Dublin, Ireland. The country drilled into me, and when I found out about a summer internship wherein I’d be working with the same church leaders, I immediately felt like I absolutely had to go. A calling, if you believe in that sort of thing, which I do.

I applied, got accepted, and in June and July 2000, went. Even almost nine years later I can say that those two months in Ireland changed me greatly and had a lot to do with turning me into the person I am now. But over time, experiences like this get woven into the fabric of who we are and we don’t give them a whole lot of conscious thought. Such it was with Ireland, a place I fell in love with, where I felt connected with the place, the physical land, as much as the people I knew or what was happening to me there. I have all these amazing memories of being in Ireland - standing on a sidewalk, or waiting for a bus, or sitting by the sea, and feeling rooted, deeply at home. The only other place I’ve ever felt like that was in Oklahoma - not in North Carolina, where I lived for four years, and not in Italy, where I lived for four months just after my time in Ireland.

So last year when our good friends told us they wanted to go to Europe in the summer of 2009, I couldn’t stop gushing about Ireland. So they added it to their itenrary and asked - "Why don’t you and Brian come along?" I gave what is always my initial response at the outset of a great and wonderful dream - "Yeah, wouldn’t that be great?"

But good friends always let you know you’re invited, and as the two of them started planning the trip they kept us in the loop, and encouraged us, and repeated, every time we hung out, how much they’d love to have us along for this journey. So after the holidays had passed I took a long, hard look at our finances and ticket prices and realized that it was possible. Not easy, necessarily, but possible. Last night our good friends came over, we drank beer, and I booked two tickets for me and Brian to Dublin in July.

It’s exciting on a number of levels, as the first stop on the trip is in Washington, D.C. for the 4th of July festivities, which I’m really excited about, and an Amtrak trip to New York City for the flight. Mostly I’m excited to reconnect with a place and a people I haven’t seen in almost a decade. Though I’m not entirely sure of the effect that being back there will have on me - I had a deeply emotional and spiritual moment recently when I re-read through my journals from that summer - I do know that it will be fantastic to be back in a place I love so much with some of the people on this planet who love me best. That, and Caffrey’s. Sweet, sweet Caffrey’s.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009 | by nathan

On A Boat In The Adriatic Sea

In the fall of 2000 I somehow lucked out and got to spend four months living in a giant villa on the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. I’d spent the two months prior kicking around Ireland doing some work for the Lord, and by the time I arrived in Venice I felt like an old salt, with my bright yellow duffel bag filled to the gills with everything I’d need for weekends on the train and kicking around southern Europe.

The house hosted about 20 students and a professor every semester, and the sala was filled with these old journals that every member of every class had signed at the end of their tenure. A few weeks ago one of my former Venice-mates sent me a Facebook message that the Wake Forest library had taken the journals and scanned them into .pdf files and placed them on their website.

I had such mixed feelings finding these old words, which I didn’t entirely think I’d ever see again, or at least, not this unexpectedly. That semester was such an important turning point in my life, and not in the way that people talk about when they tell you about their semesters abroad. I was challenged and afraid and scared at every turn, but so proud of myself for having made this dream come true. I was poor, and I hated it, but I also felt sorry for some of the people I knew who went abroad and for whom the adventure was dulled by an overabundance of money; after all, there’s no way to enjoy a foreign landscape except by worrying that you might be stranded there for the rest of your life.

So much changed for me this semester; I’m a person who processes things when he’s alone and away from them, and in Italy I basically had 4 months to process my entire adolescence, which was ending. It was difficult, but it was amazing. I’m still grateful for that time.

Some of the specific things I reference in the letter are stories and posts in themselves; I’ll remember to tell you sometime about Mauro.

It made me happy to read these words, even if I did cringe a bit at the poor writing and even more at the haircut (or lack of said). A week after this I buzzed off my hair, and while I’d forgotten that I used to sign all correspondence with Romans 8.38-39, I totally did.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009 | by nathan

Woody Visits Oklahoma

This is my good friend Woody:

He’s from Lexington, Kentucky, where he was raised on a horse farm that is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. Now he lives in Atlanta; he came to visit me just before the New Year. He’d never been to Oklahoma, but he has to hear me talk about it all the time, and I guess I piqued his curiosity. Also, the last time we’d seen each other was when we went to the Wake Forest Lovefeast in December 2007, and that was just entirely too long.

Woody said he wanted to see cool spots in Oklahoma, but more than that he wanted to see places that were important to me. "I want to see your high school," he said. "Take me on a tour of your life."

Can do, friend.

Woody’s first introduction to Oklahoma was at the UCO Jazz Lab, where we took him directly from the airport to watch our buddy K.C. Clifford and her husband David make some beautiful music, along with K.C.’s dad’s band, Mountain Smoke, who play bluegrass. Being from Kentucky, Woody was right at home. We enjoyed some of Oklahoma’s best pizza (Hideaway) and heard some of the state’s best musicians, and Woody got to meet my awesome friends Laurie and Jaye and Cheryl.

The next morning I thought I’d start Woody off by showing him some of the local sights. We had breakfast at the Red Cup, and then visited the State Capitol:

Woody’s heard me bitch about how I hate our state Capitol dome. It’s magnificent and beautiful but we were the only state without one and I liked that about us, and anyway, if we had $2 million to spend on a dome why couldn’t we give teachers more money? Anyhow; we nosed around the state Senate and House chambers for awhile, me telling him cool stories about Oklahoma history and politics.

After that we wandered downtown for a bit. I showed Woody the building where Brian and I lived when we first got together, and since it overlooks the Oklahoma City National Memorial, we walked around that for awhile. It’s really a must-see for people coming to Oklahoma City for the first time, but as a resident I have to say it never gets easier talking about the bombing or explaining the symbolism of the whole thing. After that I thought we needed a little bit of fun, and so we strolled through the Skirvin Hilton and then got lost in the downtown tunnels (which is where I took that photo of Woody up at the top, there), Myriad Gardens and Bricktown. We got lost down there for quite awhile, finally emerging at Leadership Square. It was the first time since my senior prom that I’d been there.

We met up with Laurie and enjoyed lunch at Cafe Antigua, our favorite little Guatemalan restaurant near Mesta Park, then went home to prepare a fantastic meal, as we’d invited some dear friends over to hang with Woody and generally sit around and be cool. We had a cooler of beer, grilled skewers, and K.C. brought dessert of cookies & cream ice cream, which was perfect. I’d had a pretty rough few days leading up to this, and a gathering of dear friends was exactly what I needed. So - Thank You.

The next morning I’d promised Woody to drive him to see my hometown and the prairies I love so dearly. My hometown of Weatherford is now home to one of Oklahoma’s largest wind farms, and Woody was about as excited about seeing this as I’d ever seen anyone get:

That photo doesn’t really give you a sense of how humongous this wind farm is; it’s basically circles the entire outside half of the town. We stood there for quite awhile taking photos (which I’ll be sharing in the coming days).

The only thing that sucked was that we both realized afterward that we’d been shooting in a 1600 ISO, so a lot of the photos, when blown up, look pretty grainy. It’s OK, though, because I still think they’re great. I took him into town after that to show him around the college campus where I spent most of my childhood. My dad’s old building was unlocked, so we went and looked around:

Also it bears mentioning here that Woody is the single most photogenic person I know. I have yet to see a bad photo of him. I mentioned this to him in college once, and he said, "Okay, I’ll make a face, and you’ll take a picture, and then we’ll have a bad picture of me!" Except that it turned out to be the best photo of him yet.

Anyhow, we poked around Weatherford for quite awhile, including the dorms where I lived during science and math camp, which is where I met our mutual friend Summer. One of those dorms is Thomas Jefferson Hall, so Woody decided to do his Thomas Jefferson Pose in front of the sign:

I drove him past my old school, my old house, and that’s all part of another story about how You Can’t Go Home Again, but suffice it to say we had a wonderful time. On the way back to the city Woody slept and I listened to Patty Griffin and longed for my childhood, which is pretty typical when I go out there.

That night we took Woody to his final Oklahoma Initiation: Eischens in Okarche. He and I had driven through Okarche on our way out west (interstates? What are those?), and I rounded up as many people as I could and Laurie’s brother-in-law Rob landed us a table at the legendary Oklahoma joint, which, for the uninitiated, serves the following: fried chicken, fried okra, pitchers of beer, and white bread with pickles and onions on the side. It’s INCREDIBLE. If you ever come here, I’m totally taking you there. We stuffed ourselves, and Woody and I played songs on the jukebox (me: "Mustang Sally" by the Commitments; him: "The Taliban Song" by Toby Keith. Discuss).

The next day was my grandfather’s funeral, and Brian and I dropped Woody off at the train station on our way out of town. He was headed to Austin to spend New Year’s Eve with three of the coolest people we know and I was totally jealous, and also a little disappointed that we’d had only a couple days and that he wasn’t going to experience his first Flaming Lips concert that night.

I’d say the most important thing about all this, about my good friend coming to see me, is that we got more time to talk than we’ve had since college, at least in person. It was healing and restorative and hilarious at times, and I am so glad our friendship has grown and deepened despite the constant physical distance between us.