Austin II

So I spent a whole day lounging, talking about, finishing, and then giving away my book (not my book; the book i was reading, silly). I also fell asleep on the picnic table outside under an awning amidst the pittering rain. I went to bed with, for the first time, I realised, a room-mate snoring. Impressive run so far, but all good things.

Today I committed aforementioned first-day-in-city routine: walked downtown; found a bookshop; bought a book; put book on coffee shop table; went to buy coffee; came back to find someone waiting at my table; listened to his explanation that the book I'd just bought was his favourite, had inspired him to go travelling, and had taken it everywhere with him for twelve years; had conversation with said person - Will; enjoyed conversation greatly; accepted gratefully invitation to play cards in a different coffee shop that evening; then left into the rain; took shelter in innocuous-looking 'whole food shop', which turned out to be enormous and amazing, which fresh chocolatiers, salad bars, coffee grinding, bread-baking and a variety of amazing looking and smelling foods, all organic and that kind of thing people like us vaguely approve of; totally forgot all laws of syntax and grammar.

Anyway, the rain finished and I checked out Texas capitol builing, which as far as I could make out was identical to the Washington DC one but 15ft taller. There was a man in an army uniform holding a sign reading "freedom is not free" outside, and, seperately, some rainbow coloured umberellas laid on the steps, which in my imagination were a statement about the hail of homophobic legislature coming from the texan local government.

I walked then foolishly back to the hostel, ate, and then walked back downtown (mistiming enough to entirely miss Will's card game) to see the bats coming out to feed from under The World's Largest Urban Bat Colony (tm) below an ordinary, dirty-looking bridge. Neither me nor the hundreds of other people had cottoned on to the fact that bats come out after nightfall, and, being black, aren't easy to see in the dark. Although there was something poetic or profound in the result - that the bats could only been seen by the flashes of the tourist's camaras.

I had been watching from under the bridge (dum dum dum de Dah dah, dadadada dum dum dum de Dahh dah) but wandered to the top to see if the bats were clearer from above. They were slightly, and there were lots of those mothers (not colloquially: they'd all just got pregnant, according to a sign), but more importantly I had unintentionally placed myself perfectly to observe, five minutes later, the Yanks expressing joy, or patriotism or something, at their independence which a typically Yankish (although admittedly amazing) firework display in Red, White, and Blue. The ascent of every firework illuminated the Sideshow Bob smoke trails left by the descent of the fragments of the one before.

Suddenly the bats decided to contribute lovelily, by exodussing enmassishly through the bit of sky illuminated cromulently by the fireworks. It was most wondertasticaltronic, and I was left embiggened. I walked home through the smell of gun-powder. Whoopee for independance day.