Back in the ‘Cliff

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Blogging from various wifi locations in my hometown neighborhood of Oak Cliff, Dallas, Texas this week. Today’s perch – the lobby lounge of the Belmont.  Good to be home, but as always being home brings forth a rush of overwhelming, conflicting emotions.

Before I left for Texas, I was asked by a loved one (a Northeast born and bred loved one, of course) a typically direct question: “what’s up with you and this Texas thing?” It startled me, because like most Texans, I never felt that I left the “Texas thing” behind when I left home for school, work, travel, life lessons beyond the Lone Star State. It has always been there.   But of late the “Texas thing” seems to be seeping out of my pores and into my writing – fiction, nonfiction, essaying, blogging – like the residue of some debauch. The hangover from the first (more than) half of an average lifespan?  The hallmark of the time of life when memories invade and mesh with day-to-day life to the point where one doesn’t know where one begins and the other ends?  These are the questions that margaritas inspire.  More to come …