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The missus and I and the pea-in-the-pod have been in Austin for about three and a half months now, and even today we have fully divested ourselves of California by getting our Texas driver’s licenses.

Until…I got an AT&T bill for our old Los Angeles phone service.

Even though I paid the final bill two months ago, and squared up the closing balance, AT&T felt it was necessary to kill trees, waste printer ink, and pay the postage to send me a bill for a whopping….are you ready? SEVENTEEN CENTS.

Here’s the proof with the important information redacted:

I’m not a business man. Nor do I have a single entrepreneurial bone in my body. However, I do know that it will cost AT&T more to bill me for $0.17 than any gain in revenue they get from the bit and a half I owe them. Best part is, they didn’t even include a return billing envelope to send it back to them.  I guess this is just to put me on notice.

Tomorrow, I will place a dime, a nickel, and two pennies in an envelope and mail it.

From the depth of
an urbane urban
twisted turning place,
it calls to me like
that single clear note
raising high above an
aria laying waste to
the melody below.

The VOICE speaks.
Heed it? Or drift,
as I often do,
away from it?

Disregard it.

I align with the
rumble-tumble rag-tag
rough-weathered faces
of boredom and monotony.
But we stand together!
Crowded down,
bunkered in
too tight.
And I long to breathe
a patch of fresh air
or swim in clear and cold waters.
A glimpse of God gently seen
in the eyes of a stag
or the crest of a hawk.

But instead I wait.
Filling time with everything, and doing nothing.
Scurrying ratlike in my vain intensities,
like the prey far down below.

I never bother a glance up.
The hawk dives, and
devours me in a single,
smooth movement.

And before I know
I’m in trouble,
I’m dead.

Sacrificed at an unholy altar
of ambition and apathy.
Knowing my potential
but doing nothing to attain it.

The great thing about moving to Austin is the people I’ve met so far. I’ve done more creative editing work here in three months than I ever did in the four years I was in Los Angeles. Plus, a lot of my new friends are creative types who actually care about making quality films and not just dreary workaday LA film people who are just going to another job. This mixture of passion and talent excites me here, and I hope I can parlay this into some sort of actual work. Since arriving in February I’ve been able to work on cutting down a short film and help a woman cut a show reel for a documentary she’s working on. She’s trying to secure some finishing funding, so there might be some extended work there. While I still haven’t found a steady job yet, I’ve had some great opportunities I’ve been a part of that I hope are training me for some good things. (more…)

A sacredness in water

over rocks.

Motionless until

the current lifts

or bears down wearing.

A creek a lake a river

constant shaping,

slow renewal,

refining all to smoothness

below the churning force above.

Lost in the swirling,

change comes measured in

eons not years.

Standing over pebbles,

I am small.