A Pause At Beck's

Well, it’s a rather strange feeling as I print off the schedule and try to plan a visit or two back to Chicago for Cubs games. There’s that Friday game at the end of June when I’ll be flying back for a wedding, but that day the White Sox are across town, rendering that ticket hard to come by. And if I take a last-fling trip to Reykjavik this summer I could parlay that with a stopover in Chicago, but all that is contingent on so much else that I can’t really plan it. In fact, I can’t really plan much more than a few months out these days, and it’s hitting home.

I used to have the love / hate relationship with ticket sales day. Before 2004 it was always fun to try to get those premium games like the St. Louis Series, and a few early April games, knowing that the rest of the season would be easy to get later on. And the last two years it was fun poring over the entire schedule, ranking my top 12 choices for tickets in descending order and then hoping to get through on the internet before all of them sold out during a Friday at work. Then we would all call each other and see who got which tickets, working out the early trades.

Not this year. This year I live in Austin and I may or may not be here all season. And it was only this weekend that I’m getting my head around this situation.

(Editor’s note: this will probably be the last Austin Dispatch, since there will soon be Cubs items to talk about, besides clearing off my list of intended writing.)

It was a long weekend, and quite frankly I’m still fuzzy and a little bit off. 5 friends from college descended upon Austin with a vengeance, as people say, and we attacked the downtown scene like we would have if we were still in college. The weather was as brutal as it’s been since I’ve lived here – of all the weekends for Midwestern visitors – but what can you do.

Consensus was that we’re all anxious for baseball to start. An old roommate of mine lives a few blocks from Camden Yards, and besides his annoyance at having to watch Corey Patterson tread center field he’s ready to go. One friend from Chicago said he’s not buying tickets this year because he’s mad at the team, a general displeasure, I gather, towards disappointing seasons and corporate shouldering. Another friend from Chicago is excited because he lives near Wrigley and baseball season is like Carnival season, and there are a lot of night games he’ll be able to attend. And so on.

The night my first friend arrived, I went before he landed to a restaurant called Beck’s because they have a back garden with live music, and a group called Kat’s Meow was playing. They’re a jazz trio, a middle-aged woman with eyeglasses that one can only call groovy and a new hair color each week (fuchsia this time) playing the up-right bass; Slim Richey on guitar, who has been called the most dangerous guitar player in Texas; and Kat Edmonson singing, a little waif of a girl whose voice envelops you in such a way that you can’t believe it’s coming from such a petite little thing. I’d seen them a few times earlier, and so I knew that they’re fantastic, which they were again. Kat sang, “Fever all through the night... Fever!” and there was not a person outside in side conversation.

Beck’s was between liquor licenses while transferring to new ownership, but instead of no booze they went for free booze. “Shiner Bock, please,” I said, to which he answered, “I can’t give you a Shiner but I can give you a Lone Star for free.” (“Deal!”) A keg of Lone Star and a couple of bottles of cheap wine to complement the music had everyone out back in great shape. We tipped well.

I took my notebook, which I hadn’t done in a few weeks, and I sat down to write. I meant to outline an essay about the narrative structure of baseball, but that only lasted about 5 minutes before I found myself writing about the moment in which I mired myself that evening. For the first time I admitted – albeit in one of my notebooks, but now here – that I have been going out so much lately because I don’t want to think about making any decisions. Not only do I want to put them off until the last second but I want to distract myself as much as I can in the meantime. Subconsciously, but now consciously.

It’s just that I like this kind of moment, when the world is alive with nothing but possibility and potential, before I have to choose a route that will narrow it again. And the distractions are fun. It’s great people and great music and warm weather and a vibrant city, in February no less. But it can’t last, not like it’s been, and I know that. Or at least I always knew it, and now I know it, which is sometimes not the same thing.

So now I admit at least that what I’m doing is forcing decisions out of my mind with distractions. Worthwhile distractions, no doubt about it, but distractions nonetheless. I wonder now if that’s been the mental hurdle to my writing the last few weeks too, knowing without knowing that as soon as I sat down to write this realization would force itself to the surface about how I’m in such a lucky position right now that I don’t want it to end. I like the moments between chapters, the moments you try to slow down because you know that the speed of what happens next will more than compensate.

But the story goes on. Baseball will start, and I will commit to a law school. I will plan the rest of my summer, making sure to soak as much in as I can. And then by the end of the 2006 season my life will be different. It doesn’t always happen like that, when you know for certain that life will change so much. When you acknowledge that given what is, how can time not leap? It must. For someone like me who marks the time by baseball seasons, then, it’s a whole new feeling of anticipation for this one.

Here goes nothing.