Texas and Me

I've been asked the question recently, and many times before.
"Jon, is there anything that you like about Texas?"

Give me a minute. If I ponder long enough, I'll eventually think of something. Well, perhaps you'd better give me a few minutes. A few minutes short of an hour. Or two.

Is he joking, or what?

Naw, I don't joke. Not any more. I lost my sense of humor somewhere along the bumpy Texas trail.

Anyone who has read my blog long enough knows that my kind words for Texas are few and far between. It's common knowledge that I'd be the very first one to gleefully give Texas back to Mexico. That would be an impossibility, however, since Mexico is already here. I am merely a solitary gringo visitor.

In all fairness, Texas is an extremely large and diverse place. I am merely a small and narrow-minded writer. I write solely from my perspective and personal experience. Most importantly, I write only about west Texas. I'm never speaking for the entire state, only the particular part in which I live. That's why I so very often emphasize West Texas when I write about it.

Admittedly, my time (or sentence) in the Lone Star State has been an extremely difficult and unpleasant one. I've had more bad luck here, have dealt with more rotten people, and encountered more impossibly horrible situations than anywhere else that I've ever been (and I've been in a heckuva lot of other places). My thirteen years in West Texas (yes, pardners, it's been that long) have been nothing less than a stint in the deepest realms of hell.

Try to concentrate hard on the initial question, Jon. Is there anything positive that you can say about Texas??

All right, for once I'll try to ignore the endless wind storms, the ugly topography, the hoards of illegals, the dust, the dirt, the scorpions & snakes & heat & drought, the crassness & crudeness and.........

First of all, in my defense, let me say that I'm merely a faux cowboy. A Midnight Cowboy. Perhaps a Rodeo Drive cowboy. The entire concept of Texas is foreign to me and in complete contrast to my nature. I'm not inherently a rough, tough, tumble kind of guy. I'm not a redneck. I'm a sissy from Southern California. I played the piano in Hollywood. My idea of "roughing it" was spending a weekend at the Biltmore.

If nothing else, my experiences in Texas managed to extract a toughness from me that I never knew I had. It didn't completely wilt the pansy in me, but it sure as hell put a few thorns in my ass.

It's extremely ironic that Texas is the ugliest place I've ever been, yet I've taken the most beautiful photographs here. They were nice enough to compile into a book, My Private Texas. I'm not pimping the book, I'm only saying that Texas has a special beauty all its own and it can be found in the most unexpected places. A flower, a cactus, a tumbleweed, an abandoned barn, a roadrunner, a wren.

The vastness of Texas, the overwhelming endlessness, the miles & miles of unpopulated land is something that can't fully be described. It has to be seen firsthand. It gives a whole new meaning to the term wide-open spaces.

Along with the vastness of land is the incredibly humbling infinity of the sky (that is, when the dust isn't blowing....). No sky is as impressive as Texas skies. The sunsets are legendary. The universe at night is breathtaking. I've never seen such a treasurehouse of stars.

There is a remoteness and restlessness and rawness here that easily lends itself to romanticism. The ghostly wail of wind over the plains, the startlingly vivid light of the full moon drenching the rugged landscape. Branches rustling in the wind. The plaintive cry of the mourning dove and the mournful hoot of the owl.

Texas can be very inspiring in its own inimitable way. It is a special place unto itself.

The novel that I'm presently writing takes places in West Texas and Los Angeles