every now and then i get a little bit restless, and i haven't gone anywhere for months, so a few weeks ago on a whim i decided to go see the eclipse"WAHHHH the eclipse was WEEKS ago, why are you only posting this now--" shhh, i don't want to hear it. maybe there was some fear of missing out mixed in as well, because it’s not as if there’s a total eclipse every day. it also helped that the path of totality went right over one of the few places in the nation where i can crash for free: austin, texas, where one of my dear friends moved after college, the only one so far to betray the squad and move to dryer pastures (literally). permission to stay was granted, so a few days in advance of the eclipse, i flew south after packing a selection of fine local cheeses as a gift and five books i didn't end up reading.
my friend’s apartment was conveniently located on the exact opposite side of town from the airport, in a distant outlying area i was surprised to find out is still somehow part of the city of austin proper, since usually those suburban ring regions are ceded to dozens of small municipal entities nobody from outside of town has ever heard of. the interior of the apartment was tastefully decorated and my hosts were more generous than i deserve. unfortunately, the apartment was directly adjacent to one of those dangerous 4-lane “stroads” that new urbanists are always railing against. traffic zoomed down day and night and yet as far as i could tell the stroad didn’t even really go anywhere, a connection between nowhere and nothing. it wouldn’t have been anything of note except that the apartment was so close to it and so poorly insulated that the sound of the traffic sitting in the living room was about equivalent to how it sounded walking on the sidewalk beside the road.
the apartment’s other downside was that it was home to the world’s most poorly-behaved dog, which immediately attempted to maul me the first time i stepped inside. i swear it’s not because i have bad vibes or some kind of evil hidden within me, apparently the dog tries to do that to everyone. when my mom asked about it, i described it as a “hell hound”, and she apparently looked it up on google before realizing that’s not a real breed of dog. i couldn't tell you what breed it actually is because i didn't see the dog again for the duration of my stay, as for my safety it was kept carefully sequestered in the master bedroom. sometimes if i moved around a bit too quickly it would start barking, and i couldn’t help but feel a little bit guilty for robbing it of approximately 70% of its territory for the time i was there.
i arrived a couple days early in order to score a cheaper flight hang out with my friend longer, so we had some time to kill before the Main Event. one day, we went out to a state park for a hike, which required approximately 2 hours of driving to reach a piece of land that due to some historical accident seems to have miraculously fallen into government hands and remained relatively undeveloped. i say “relatively” because the recreational facilities were quite extensive, including a “historic golf shelter” by the entrance. i wondered idly if the modern trend of commemorating old things as “historic” would continue indefinitely into the end of history and begin stacking upon itself, with the historical markers themselves eventually declared historic: “this historical marker has been declared a historic mark for being the oldest one in this region of texas”. after getting out of the car, we started the hike, walking alongside the road for the first part because that was the only way to make it a loop. before long, we reached the highlight, the historic shelter on the historic overlook, an approximately four-story hill that might’ve been the highest point for hundreds of miles around, from which you could see and slightly hear both of the highways the park was wedged between.
the park’s unofficial mascot was the humble houston toad, which appeared in a nearly-life-size illustration on the park map and had many info signs throughout the park dedicated to spreading word of its history and glory. i want to see the historic toad, i declared aloud, and i proceeded to spend the entire hike peering into every damp corner hunting for the elusive toad. as the hike lengthened and the search grew increasingly hopeless, i distracted myself by concocting a legend in my head about an old hermit who lived near the park and took a walk in it every day for 35 years looking for the toad, never once seeing it. one day, park rangers stumble upon his body by the creek bed, a faint smile on his frozen lips. had he finally seen the toad? the ending was tastefully ambiguous. i think i had too much coffee that morning.
in the end, we emerged from the tangle of trails (they had milked large mileage out of a small area by making them both needlessly twisty and poorly-labelled, so that you’d get lost and have to backtrack) without a toad sighting. we were not on the path of toadality, i remarked.
five minute buc-ee's tribute collage (2024)on the way back, we stopped at buc-ee’s, one of those consumer experiences that has attained religious status in america. it’s awash in distinct iconography (the beaver mascot, who appears in the logo, statues, loads of merch, and walking around the store) and ritual (on the altar at the center of the store where they cut up barbequed meats for serving, whenever a new piece of meat comes down the staff yell “NEW [MEAT NAME] ON THE TABLE”), they’re always there for you (open 24/7), and each location is far from urban centers, requiring a pilgrimage to reach. “there are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see.”
my friend was at a loss for other things to do in the city (“locals” are often terrible tourists, i've noticed), but luckily i remembered at the last minute that the LBJ presidential library was in town, which i wanted to visit because they were supposed to have a full-size replica of the oval office. the library is a monolithic white building like the tomb of a mighty ruler, on the edge of the UT austin campus. apparently lbj’s coffin was in there for a few days, but they actually put him in the ground in the family cemetery out by the lbj ranch. inside the library, i noticed the average age of the visitors was quite advanced, easily old enough to have met the man himself. maybe they had come to relive the glory days of their youth, and i briefly wondered if i’d be doing the same thing in 50 years at the obama library they’re building in chicago, or at a forthcoming trump one (which i imagine as less of a library/museum and more of a theme park. the lbj library got a little close to the latter itself, they had an animatronic lbj). most of the interior volume was accounted for by a solemn central atrium, which had windows through which the shelves filled with the sacred texts were visible. ostensibly they were the library’s raison d’etre, though they were completely inaccessible to the general public. like in many modern libraries, the role of books is now merely symbolic or decorative. for more on this theme, please consult my future post “the los angeles notebooks: an urban odyssey” (i can't promise any specific release date and i probably won't remember to go back and link it here).
like the proverbial cherry, the oval office replica was at the top of the building. i was under the impression that it was full-size and it certainly felt like that inside it, but then i heard somebody ask a docent about the scale, who replied that it was a 7/8ths scale replica. what the h*ck? i felt ripped off, why didn’t they go all the way, what reason could they possibly have had for shaving off that final eighth? i mean it’s TEXAS, they should have PLENTY of space, if anything they should have made it BIGGER than it actually was, just because they CAN. consequently, i must rate the lbj library 4.375 out of 5 stars.
what else is there to say about austin? i feel like i should say something because in the past couple years i've heard so much about austin. it's supposed to be one of the hippest cities in the country now, a unique stronghold of art, taste, refinement, etc. in the cultural wasteland that is texas. for the past decade, it feels like everyone (californians) has been talking it up incessantly as the “new” san francisco or portland now that both have been “ruined” (by californians). some things i’ve heard: “it’s the new silicon valley, every tech company is moving there now”, “it’s the only city in america where it’s legal to build housing”, “don’t worry, even though it’s in the middle of texas they miraculously vote democrat, it’s an outpost of sanity”, etc.
also, one of austin's biggest claims to fame is that it's where the “keep [city name] weird” (does that count as reactionary?) slogan originated. i thought portland was the og after seeing "keep portland weird" stuff for years, but no, they ripped it off from "keep austin weird". now it's spread even as far as oakland, where i recall seeing at least one "keep oakland weird" sticker when i was there for a day last year. somebody should make a "keep neocities weird" button if it doesn't already exist.
the real question is, though, does austin live up to its reputation? is austin weird? i spent a lot of my time in the city staring out the window of the car as we drove down the highway trying to distill the austin vibe to answer that question. based on the quantity of vehicles on the highway i argue that this is fair way to assess the city, at least if you want to do so from the standpoint of the average austin resident. my final verdict: it’s still texas y’all. huge highways, strip malls, big box stores, fast food, suburban subdivisions, the works. at the highway level, austin’s only distinguishing feature is that it’s hillier and more forested near the city center than texas’ other major cities. maybe there’s a vault at the heart of the city where they are hiding the unique austin vibe, but i'm not the one to tell you about it. in my opinion the weirdest thing about austin is that despite its reputation, according to my friend it's still somehow home to alex jones, who used to drive around the city twenty years ago in a classic car ranting into an attached PA system (as seen in linklater's waking life). oh right, i guess austin has elon musk now too? and joe rogan??? also there's supposed to be this big live music tradition, which my friend complained that most of the time just means restaurants and other date spots will pay some guy to sit in a corner mumbling over some guitar strumming, as opposed to playing any of the sort of cutting-edge music he listens to (the genre where the artists go by names that could also be used by hackers).
what else did i see from the highways? first, the highways themselves: they were beautiful. almost all of them looked brand new, probably because they were. rather than the rough strictly-functional design you see in many places, they are ornamented with all sorts of decorative flourishes like masonry patterns, engravings, or the ever-popular lone stars and texas-shaped insets. major interchanges were breathtaking, the tallest structures for miles, concrete thickets, blossoming out to grotesque sizes from the lack of spatial constraints. i suppose they make them easy on the eyes because people will be seeing so much of them.
i’m sure absolutely no one is surprised to hear this, but i saw a lot of texas flags flying beside the highway. texans love to put their state flag everywhere, the only other state i’ve seen that's even close to as enthusiastic about flying its own flag was hawaii (i guess it must be a “former independent country” thing). to be fair, if my flag looked as good as the texas flag, i wouldn’t be shy about flying it either. texas has a long tradition of banger flags, i discovered at the texas state history museum (where we got in for free because it was texas day or something). the museum had a striking reproduction of the texas' first revolutionary flag, the black outline of a cannon with the text “COME AND TAKE IT” below. to describe it, i’ll allow myself just this once to dust off the long-discredited adjective “badass”. the flag was inaugurated at the battle that instigated the texas revolution, where mexican forces came to repossess a cannon that a settlement had been provided for protection. in an exhibit there was a replica of the cannon, which amused me greatly because the cannon that started a war in a state famous for being big was this dinky little thing, barely coming up to the waist, with a barrel comparable to the arm of a burly man. the other highlight i recall from the museum is that they had a side room dedicated to “meat science” and a tribute to texas tech’s championship “competitive meat judging” team, which dominates the circuit. i swear i’m not making that up.
along with the flag, the shape of texas is obviously iconic as well, for very good reasons. it’s not just some vague blob or simple geometric shape, it’s instantly recognizable, it's got CHARACTER. at the same time, it doesn't have any weird ragged coastlines, squirrely panhandles, or other such nonsense, it’s solid and dependable, coming off somehow as BIG from the outline alone. there’s a pleasant asymmetry, the curves at bottom right balanced out by straight lines and right angles at the top left. overall it feels shapely, like a proper SHAPE, texases taking their place alongside the canonical geometric shapes like triangles and circles and squares.
looking at billboards beside the highways, it seems to me that the primary function of the texan identity is as a marketing demographic for exploitation by advertisers. every other billboard is like “drink TEXAS BEER, the original TEXAS beer brewed in TEXAS by TEXANS for TEXAS TEXANS who live in TEXAS”. it might seem like it’s too shameless to possibly work, but i’m told car companies do big business slapping a little thing saying “TEXAS EDITION” on their trucks and then selling them in texas for $10k more.
also, along the sides of the roads local authorities did their best to hype up the eclipse, putting up electronic road signs everywhere saying “ECLIPSE APRIL 8th / EXPECT HEAVY TRAFFIC / LEAVE EARLY, STAY LATE” or “DO NOT PARK ON SHOULDER”. it may have all been for naught, because the day of the eclipse it was possibly the cloudiest day in texas history. my friend said that he couldn’t remember it ever being that cloudy since he’d moved to texas. it looked grim outside, not just for eclipse visibility but in general. driving around to get lunch at local burger chain p. terry’s (distinguished by sixties-inspired angular architecture) and to tour an H·E·B plus! , nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. you couldn’t tell at all that the astronomical event of the decade was about to occur, it was just another Texas Monday. the traffic we had been promised failed to materialize later too, as we drove out into the country to get deeper in the path of totality and squeeze out a few extra seconds of eclipse. if anything, the roads felt quieter than usual. i speculated that people had given up trying to bag better viewing locations because it was going to be too cloudy to see anything, but we kept on driving regardless.
as the eclipse grew imminent, we drove down a remote country road, desperately looking for some place to pull off. public parks were unwelcoming, requiring advance paid reservations, or straight up roped off and barricaded by police (what’s even the point of a park then?). in every inhabited area, patrol cars from local sheriffs lurked by the roadside, perhaps hoping to bolster the coffers by ticketing speeding out-of-towners who unfortunately declined to appear. eventually, we found a nice wide grassy shoulder filled with beautiful blue bonnet blossoms and pulled off, after verifying the coast was clear (recalling the warnings from earlier). miraculously, the cloud cover levelled off a bit, and occasionally the sun would come out strong enough that the eclipse glasses were required. other times, the clouds were thick enough that they served as natural eclipse glasses, allowing the growing darkness over the sun to be glimpsed with naked eyes. even as a mere sliver, the sun was still so strong that it was difficult to notice any difference in the daylight, although the light was already pretty weak that day due to the cloud cover.
then, the last little bit was covered up, and in under a minute night fell at 1 pm in the afternoon. i don’t know if the clouds relented at that point, but the eclipse was easily visible throughout the entire duration.
i spent a long time trying to write about the eclipse but instead i'm going to have to cop out and leave this blank space here, which is to imply it was "indescribable" (along with unphotographable, from a phone camera at least). during totality, eclipse glasses are no longer neccessary, and i turn them over in my hand, observing how it's covered in science aesthetics, as if science is responsible for the eclipse. it is self-evident why the ruling ontology always lays claim to the heavens and by extension the eclipse. according to science, space, the heavens, is mostly empty...
for some inscrutable reason, i failed to book a return flight (do not do this at home kids!). finding a last-minute way to escape texas after the eclipse without breaking the bank proved to be one of my greatest travel challenges yet. i checked the southwest airlines site and there was not a single seat available from austin going anywhere for days after the eclipse , i’ve never seen anything like it, the whole price grid greyed out. to make matters worse, my friend couldn’t host me for more than an extra day because of concerns that the demon dog would not fare well being imprisoned for much longer. after hours of searching, i found a miraculous alaska airlines miles redemption deal on a direct flight, the only catch: it was several days later (on friday), and departed from dallas. since the flight was free, i didn’t mind paying for a hotel for a few days, and luckily dallas hotel prices were surprisingly reasonable.
then, i had to figure out how to get to dallas. a flight was out of the question (prices were nauseating despite the fact the flight time is under an hour), so i fell back to good old reliable amtrak, which runs one train per day between austin and dallas. even the train hadn't escaped the eclipse rush because there was barely one seat available at triple the usual price ($60). i felt positively ill paying that much for such a short amtrak ticket, but unfortunately my amtrak guest rewards balance fell a hundred points short of being able to cover it for free. but with that, my escape plans were solidified, and the next day i was dropped off bright and early at austin’s amtrak station, hidden down a skinny road in a secluded corner at the edge of downtown. "i didn't even know we had passenger train service, i've lived here for 20 years and i've never seen one come through," i heard someone comment in line to board.