gone country

for the third year in a row, I have ventured to texas for christmas to visit my maternal grandparents and various auxiliary family members. I know when you think of texas, you imagine big hair and cacti. you are misinformed. the texas I know is deep woods, deep fried, and deep(ly..dammit) conservative.

however, as "fish out of water" as the situation described may appear, I enjoy texas for many reasons.

1) the smell - living in new york and growing up in los angeles, I have been exposed to so many varying degrees of scentitude that I have become immune (meaning my brain ignores them) to most smells for fear of acridity. but there is something about texas that makes me open my button nose to the fullest experience of the sensory function. it smells wet and green like fresh rain. leather. wild. comforting. nothing like the two metropolitan locations I call home.

2) the food - as strapping, hunting men, my uncle and cousins "use" everything they kill. I have abandoned the contempt towards their choice of past time based on the following taste experiences: spicy venison sausage, chicken-fried backstrap, jalapeno-stuffed bacon-wrapped chipotle-raspberry-glazed venison. I would not go as far to say that I would buy a firearm of my own -- I won't even spend $500 on a purse, let alone a contraption that will surely make me look like an ass.

3) sense of discovery - part of the reason I like travel in general is just watching and absorbing the new culture of a new place. though the discoveries are not as high-brow as most other locations, the sights nevertheless evoke my amusement and interest. exhibit a - a sign outside a feed store "we have bibles and guns."

I enjoyed the time spent with family.

more catch-up - as I approach my final (final) semester (final) of college, the doom I expected to impend appears to be absent. I don't know if it's denial or if I'm actually ready to enter the "real world."

read "diary of a bad year" by coetzee. finishing "lolita."

go see revolutionary road, please.

it's good to be back.