Haiku Times Volume 3, issue 51 March 31-April 5, 2003 Austin, Texas pg.1 Haiku Times celebrates the haiku experience. This is part 1 of an eleven-part series covering a trip to China that began in Austin, Texas. Haiku, Photos and layout by Jonathan Machen, except where noted. heavy set boyfriends giggle with girlfriends not quite half their size overwhelming scent of her perfumed hand lotion flying to austin on empty concourse even piped-in native music brings tears to my eyes Three days before I leave for China, I try and get my house into order, a task all the more difficult because I manage two houses. I make phone calls that I do not want to make, blood and adrenalin rise, choking my throat, but I stick to my guns. I lead others through the procedures, tell them how to write the lease, plan the calendar. Through the window I watch two people negotiate the fallout of their relationship, while inside two little girls scribble underwater ocean secenes on flimsy pieces of newsprint. Prospective new renters come and nail down one Sunday a month until September. Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Austin
Kids fight with foam swords and leave the Big Room smelling like sweat.
calculating risk on my way to the airport i watch a car crash while i contemplate risk of virus in china car in front crashes after collission man dials nine one one on cell driver slumps forward sugar hackberry texas bluebonnet red bird with black mask texas savannah and german architecture converge in austin winecup and philox false aloe and nipple cactus texas persimmon what i took to be possibly a small bird's nest just an ephyphite obsessed by what i notice and don't notice
Sadie and Dee Now, in the cocoon of an airplane headed for Austin I read newspaper headlines from two seats away, and eat small crackers shaped like dolphins. I look at mountains that I have climbed, easily identifiable from 30,000 feet, their summits delineated by snow. On the way to the airport, (preoccupied with viruses I might encounter in China and whether or not I'll even go to china) the lady in the car in front of me swerves wildly, back and forth, for several long seconds, then slams into the concrete median in a flash of sparks. I pull over, dumbfounded, while a man jumps out of his car, already dialing 911. The lady slumps forward against the steering wheel.
Sadie, Jonathan and Gabriel. Photo by Dee Like a cork under pressure, not knowing what to do, I drive on in shock and disbelief. The highway resumes it's relentless pace and I will never know what happened to the woman slumped against the steering wheel, or if the ambulance came fast enough. Sadie is two now and Gabriel is eigtht months. I visit my friends in Austin for the first time since they have had children. Plants grow out of limestone rocks, families take pictures of little girls, in fields of Texas bluebonnets. Nice to see my old friend Tony with whom I used to compose music. Now, with a two-year old tugging at his guitar strings, he is distracted. His eight-month old son cries if no-one picks him up, holds on to my leg with sticky fingers while I try to draw, expresses his needs in unintelligable cries. From the internet, and with a cellphone, I try to gather information about a virus 2000 miles away, in an attempt to make the right decision. I rest uneasily in a sprawling suburb somewhere near the capital of Texas, where houses and fences and lawns look identical and the only people outside are Mexican immigrants who cut grass and lay concrete.
Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center