While some original offerings are intact—spas in the historic buildings along Bathhouse Row—tourist trap attractions have taken hold in haunted street tours, the duck-bus-boat-things and the inevitable Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, made extra creepy with its double-whammy Bush display.

Instead we hiked Hot Springs National Park and beheld a blushing moon.

We marveled at the old Army–Navy Hospital, imagined pale faces in window panes and entire scripts of footsteps, ghosts in straight-jackets, purse-lipped Nurse Ratcheds stalking the halls.

Come dark the townies cruised the Row and shouted insults and come-ons out their cars. We drank hurricanes in a faux New Orleans bar then mischievous crashed the Arlington Hotel, a favorite retreat of Al Capone. A geezer band of three dressed to the nines played Johnny Cash, Elvis and multifarious waltzes, way old dudes who didn’t miss a beat. Young and old alike danced before the stage, but the elderly couples were the best, jangly limbed and joints well oiled, lightfooted miracles of pep and life, defying stereotype, hopelessly in love well maybe just for tonight, sashaying about the dance floor.

I was too much in the moment to capture it in pixels, too busy laughing and whooping and clapping and keeping up with Arthur’s cut rugs. (But look at this place! Look!)

In the morning grinning folk insisted taking our photo. “Just like a real Paris cafe!” running across the street with my camera snap snap okay, if you say so, lady, and really, it was a sweet thing to do.

Then we lounged in the hot springs at Quapaw Baths, where the mineral-rich water carbon-dates 4,000 years old. Medically therapeutic or not, it felt divine.

From there we drove to Oauchita National Forest. It took me three days to learn to say it (Wash-e-tah), but I did it (WASHITA!!), and we made it, after a pitstop at a rockshop where I collected a talisman of fossilized things I forgot the names of.

I didn’t think the day could get any better.

Then we met Smoky the Bear.

Camping was lovely,

ticks, eerie hatches and all.

Arthur is notorious for occasionally looking creepy. It’s the eyes, really, and even when it’s dead sexy, it’s deathly, too. He apologizes, but it’s unnecessary.

You can’t scare me.

I’m your boo.

To unpack

put in place

the words that escape—proper narrative processing of the past near-two months (two months!) since leaving Minneapolis for Austin, Texas. Pass Go! Go! Go! collect 200 names and faces, find a new rhythm and scrap the thesis, I’m gonna need a whole new map and reams of legends to unlock it.

I’m having a wonderful time. My job is fulfilling and fun, the city friendly and hot! hot! traffic atrocious and tacos delicious.

I get to play with the prettiest girl

spar with the wittiest Arthur

pick out places to set my bones

brake for roadside shrines to conspiracy

follow creeks through the center of the city

and once—get this—shoot pool and listen to Tool with the Brothers K like it’s 2002 and life never happened to any of us.

Most people tell me, “Welcome to Austin!” but one guy said, “Welcome to Texas.”

That’s when I felt fullest.

There’s a place for me in all of this.

Librarians, we’re the worst, we never rest, men in black will march to the reference desk, muzzle cries of access, freedom to read, information privacy, making inner worlds safe for democracy, enriched and courageous, one worth embracing.

My reflection smug in mirrored glasses GUILTY! they’ll cuff me, drag me kicking from the beastly, brutalist Austin Public Library.

It’s true! I’m not a terrorist! And after a six-month hiring process, I will be a librarian at Faulk Central Library in downtown Austin, Texas. I am over the moon tower, inside and out my body and mind, familiar feelings flooding of packing up my life pre-exodus for Vancouver—the wistfulness, decisiveness, excitement and stern. This gem I’m taking with. This junk I’m throwing away.

It’s strange, though. I thought Minneapolis was home, especially when away from it, learning how to become a librarian in Canada. After I returned in 2009, I mostly ached for BC but was determined to make the Cities new again, and I did. They were. But still. It’s not that something’s missing. “Home” has not failed me. I don’t want “more” in the sense that I’m lacking, and lawd I’m going to miss my family.

Nevertheless…adventure awaits. A new, fun city to poke around the edges of, bike clear across, find the beating heart and claim my favorite veins. Swimming holes to clean my sweat off in. The best damn boy with the best imagination, in his bird mask, with his map of the universe, his actor dog that rules the roost and other dog with the name of a fish that sounds like a cat and acts like maniac but still wins hearts.

I can’t wait.

Friday was my last day of old work, bittersweet for the colleagues I’ll miss and the hole I leave behind. Friends pooled money to bestow this majesty:

LOVE OVERFLOWING! I’m blessed with opportunity. I’m blessed with friends and family who want nothing but the best for me, Midwest stoic hide the bleak emotions eclipsed by wishing me well.

Thanks, everyone. I treasure you all. I can’t wait to tell you stories of tacos and dust, bats and fire ants, book clubs and my crappy Spanish, street bands, Shiner Bock, cacti blooms and shadows I swear are snake bodies and chasing down comets with my love.

BUT WHO KNOWS! Time does things. Knots your bootstraps and puts you to sleep. Gilds and Instagrams the edges of memory, then Tom Sawyer-style extols the grandeur of labor, whitewash in broad strokes it calls a clean slate.

Who the hell was I, anyway?

Competing but not competitive, unless I really have changed. My brothers trap me into playing a parlor game but I cringe out after a couple of rounds, citing psychological distress.

I’m not a cheat. I’m not a liar. I’m not a spy.

Love is me.

This cheery afternoon the crows are nowhere to be found, but I make the best of laced boots and prowl my old ‘hood.

I’ve always loved the west side of Joe’s Chicken Shack.

HOTTEA(-esque?) yarn lacing the fence.

The silly, sad, wonderful things we want before we die.

I liked the murder on facebook. Next time I’ll be ready.

Have a happy one!

We talked about skeletons.

We turned into lions.