Search Blogs
archives
Darrin Swartz-Larson - Collin County Voices columns
Latest Posts
04:52 PM CDT on Friday, October 16, 2009
About halfway through our year in California, I saw a body floating in the waves near the beach a few blocks from our house. The waves were gently carrying the man toward the shallow water and then pulling him back out beyond the rescuers' reach, over and over again. Apparently he had been dragged out to sea by a rip current.
Please wait...
Sometime last year, I must have opened a fortune cookie that read: "The next year of your life will be full of changes. Seriously, put down this little piece of paper and buckle your seat belt tightly -- you're in for quite a ride."
My first step off of my plain vanilla path began simply enough when I took an Artist's Way class, which got me in touch with my inner finger-painter and started this narrator's voice running in my head -- kind of like the one on The Wonder Years, but with a voice that sounds a lot more like mine. My narrator noticed things more than I usually did -- moments, really, like the things a camera would zoom in on in a movie: the way large yellow and brown leaves crunched under my feet and smelled a little like bay leaves as I packed them into tall compost bags, how puppy-like my dogs acted when they ran off-leash on the snowy golf course, and how fragile my daughter's bigness seemed as she dressed up and went to her last elementary school dance.
The next step off of the straight and narrow came when I responded to a Dallas Morning News announcement seeking Community Voices columnists. The pages in this newspaper became a place where my narrator got to share observations about life. It's not that I'm quiet and keep my thoughts to myself; it's just that the narrator lingers and really thinks about things. If I'm out having drinks with friends, for example, he's noticing how a friend's eyes look so nice and smiley when she talks about her dog -- while I'm trying to be funny or flag down the waiter.
06:10 AM CDT on Thursday, September 18, 2008
It's been just over two months since we closed the Lone Star chapter of our lives and headed west for another shot at California dreaming. We crossed the open spaces of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and half of California to get to here, three days and 1,000 wandering thoughts from our home in McKinney.
We're living in Half Moon Bay now, a coastal town south of San Francisco. We lived here 10 years ago, before we moved to El Paso and then Dallas. This was the place we compared all other places to -- God's Country, the hometown of our hearts. It's what other places came close to being on their very best days for just a moment or two.
And it probably would have stayed that way if we hadn't moved back.
12:00 AM CDT on Friday, August 15, 2008
I want someone to ask me if I want my iced tea sweet or unsweet. And then I want them to serve me a glass of iced tea so big I almost need both hands to lift it to my mouth. I want it to be so icy that drops of water coat the outside of the glass as I hold onto it and let the chill sink in.
I want it to taste like real iced tea. I don't want it to be tropical flavored, made from concentrate, or served in a bottle.
I want the person serving me the tea to have a Texas accent. I want them to refer to us as y'all, to call my daughter "sweetie" or "honey," and to say all the things that will make me feel like the familiar arms of the Lone Star state are holding me close.
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, July 13, 2008
I've been slow dancing with fireflies a lot lately. Walking my dogs in the early dark of night, I see their glow and glide toward them quietly so they won't disappear. It only lasts for a moment or two, and then they head off into the nighttime shadows, and I remember the leashes in my hand and pick up my pace again.
I won't be seeing fireflies anymore after next week, so I'm taking them in the way people from the prairies or mountains take in the ocean -- I can't seem to take my eyes off of them.
After nearly 10 years in Texas, we're heading back to California, a land with many wonderful things, but no fireflies. I didn't even know the little creatures actually existed until I spent a summer in North Carolina during college. Growing up in Salinas, an area where native son John Steinbeck wrote about many interesting characters, real or otherwise, I thought fireflies existed only in cartoons.
12:00 AM CDT on Friday, June 6, 2008
As a white man dressed as an Indian chief smears a greasy line of black paint on my cheek, I'm wondering how I'll explain this to my friends back home. It's not just that the chief and his similarly attired attendants are clueless about how their faux tribal get-ups would offend Native Americans, it's that almost everything they do while covered in mail-order feathers and hides is so, well, politically incorrect.
And by everything, I really do mean everything, from saying that the black face paint represents darkness and evil, to speaking "Indian English" like a character from Bonanza, to laughing while their kids clap their hands over their mouths and make "woo woo" sounds. It's 2002, and if feels as if I've stumbled upon some forgotten corner of America that missed the American Indian rights movement of the '70s and all the awareness that has supposedly followed in the decades since.
I don't know how this is possible, because if you somehow missed the Wounded Knee events in '73 and the non-acceptance speech made on Marlon Brando's behalf that same year at the Academy Awards, you would have had to have seen at least one Billy Jack movie at some point in your life.
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, May 4, 2008
Somewhere in the grainy memories of my early childhood, Glen Campbell is singing "Wichita Lineman" and I'm sitting on a beach towel slowly devouring a drumstick that I've pulled out of a giant Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket.
My little towhead self doesn't mind the specks of sand on the piece of chicken, the rim of my soda can or the fingers I'm licking between bites. I'm just a few yards from one of the best playgrounds in the world, the Pacific Ocean, and in a minute I'll race back in and jump over the waves with my brothers and sister.
I don't know how often we went to that beach in Santa Cruz, Calif., but it's one of the early clips in my internal You Tube. With the right song playing in my head and a bit of warm sunlight falling on my face, I'm swept back to this time and the easy kind of happiness I felt when a handful of life's goodies lined up on the same day and made it feel perfect.
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, March 30, 2008
One of the best things about the school calendar is that it includes a spring break, the ultimate vacation pass for parents. We have to take off work -- it's in the schedule, after all.
When we first moved to North Texas a few years back, we looked forward to exploring some of the nearby areas over the spring break. Like many parents, we were looking for someplace to slip away from the rush of daily life in the No Child Left Behind, No Saturday Left Leisurely era.
We decided to go to Caddo Lake to see the bald cypress trees and swampy marshes. The drive would give us a chance to see East Texas and stop in some of the small towns along the way for homestyle cooking -- fried chicken or the special of the day, a slice of a pie baked that morning, and plenty of just-brewed iced tea.
We packed up our wagon and headed east. We traveled through wide-open farmland and grassy plains, drove over a manmade lake with dead trees poking out, and passed through several one-stop-light towns. It was an adventure as we moved along at 70 miles per hour and imagined the people there living a slower, less crazy life.
They knew their neighbors well; they weren't rushing around taking their kids to soccer games and hip-hop classes; they ate good homemade food; and they had time to appreciate life and each other.
And then we stopped and actually got out of our car. Our drive-by image of rural life quickly turned into an eye-opening glimpse of poverty on the prairie.
A final scene in my daughter's childhood has played out, says DARRIN SWARTZ-LARSON
12:00 AM CST on Friday, February 29, 2008
Sometimes I feel like I'm walking around like one of the zombies from Night of the Living Dead, only instead of marching around dead-eyed in search of human flesh, I'm moving through life with a passionless, zombie-like drive to get somewhere or do something. I'm there, but I'm so busy thinking about the next thing I have to do that I'm not really taking in the breathing, pulsing life happening around me in that moment.
Sometimes, however, I step out of the zombie trance and live life in HD. I look up and really see what's in front of me. I listen and actually hear the sounds around me. I take a bite and enjoy the taste.
In high-definition life, I kiss my 10-year-old goodnight and notice how much she still looks like a sweet, vulnerable toddler when she's asleep. I sit across the dinner table from my wife and look up and catch her eyes, and in a breath feel the most ordinary but intimate connection with her. I notice how good bread smells when it's toasting, how soft a brand-new T-shirt feels, and how much fun my dog has catching an old soccer ball over and over again. I'm more like George Bailey in the final scenes of It's a Wonderful Life than one of the living dead in a George Romero flick.
Recently, I had an HD life moment at the Valentine's Day Dance at my daughter's school.
In Texas, you can eat at the State Fair every day. You can walk right past the food pyramid and onto the dietary midway on a daily basis, if you choose, and join the Lone Star legion that doesn't let portion size and nutritional content get in the way of a good meal.
I like the State Fair a lot, and I like eating my way from the entrance to the Midway and back, but the next day, I'm back somewhere in the vicinity of the food pyramid, hoping the law of averages applies to arteries and mid-sections.
I should probably disclose that I was a vegetarian when we moved here from California several years ago. I often studied the eating habits of my omnivorous neighbors, friends and co-workers every time we sat down to eat together. Eating overcooked vegetables while others are enjoying well-seasoned meat-based meals gives you a chance to observe things that you might not otherwise see if you're distracted by the pleasure of eating.
Most Recent Comments
Bloggers
Most Recent Comments