Every time one of my nieces or nephews turn 16, they fly out to where I’m living to spend a week with me.

As soon as I whisked Jasmine from the airport, we went straight to a locally owned 24-hour diner.

As much as I wanted to impress my niece, I loved my entree as well: collard greens pasta!

Since we were already on South Congress, we walked North so she could see the sights on this historic street and get some local ice cream.

Then of course, I had her stand under the famous penis-shaped hotel sign. 

Followed by posing in front of some famous grafiti.

Later that evening, she had her first, and perhaps last, capoeira class. Everyone assured her that it’s always confusing for the first couple of months.

Unfortunately, I had to drag her to a 6-hour meeting on Tuesday, but she was a trooper, texting and reading an actual book. Since the meeting was a few blocks away from the State Capitol, we took a little mini-tour.

In the evening, we went to a Spanish conversation class, followed by poetry slam. The poets were their usual, high-energy extreme emotion selves, but the featured artist was a sword swallower.  

It was bad enough when he swallowed the sword and bowed at the waist, but then he had to do 20 pushups.

Followed by lifting several purses by the swords in his gut.

My insides were already wrenching when he did the ultimate: the snake with swords in his gut.

The next day, Jasmine tried her first bikram yoga class and we went to a dinner theatre to see a sorry movie that she picked.  At least the food and drink were good! We had to endure a 3-hour meeting Thursday. Yet on the way to put my parking permit on the dashboard, I found a $20 just lying on the asphalt. At the conclusion of the meeting, I was gifted 2 bottles of red wine, but only one was palatable. I later took the other one to a party. I figured since one had to be drunk to drink it, then a party would be the perfect place to offload it.

We attended a book signing at a local museum where a married couple had documented a brief history about the traditionally Black Rosewood neighborhood.

At the same museum, there was another event, which featured a beautiful dress made of a thousand red origamy cranes. That was a fundraising, concious-raising occasion to bring awareness to domestic violence.

After her second bikram yoga class on Friday afternoon, Jasmine enjoyed an oreo custard shake. While still sipping our shakes, we walked into an Indian-fusion restaurant.

We regrouped at home and then a few hours later, we went to an art opening where the featured artist had won a contest for his acrylic collection of “discard piles.”Although the gallery was small, the crowd was huge, full of interesting people. One of whom had attended the last Austin Writers Roulette and was promoting my show! Of course I couldn’t leave during that high moment.

We arrived late to our second stop for the evening at the natural history museum. We only heard a song and a half from the live band playing in front of the museum, but we were in time to get one of the most delicious brisket sandwiches. They were so packed with meat, I had to pick out and eat half the meat first before I could eat the rest as a sandwich.

This is as close as Jasmine got into the museum of natural history. When we finished our “sloppy joes,” we wanted to wash our hands in the bathroom, but by that time, the museum was officially closed except for the employees who were cleaning up. I thought I’d sweet talk my way in. Yet the way one of the guards asked me “What for?!” when I asked to go in, told me that my charms were not going to work. At least he agreed to take our picture and smiled when I asked him if my lipstick was OK.

We were right on time for our 3rd event for the night. We’d gone to listen to a forro band, but before the start of their 1st set, there was a 30-minute forro class. I was happy that Jasmine wasn’t at all timid about trying it out.

She even danced with the forro teacher once the band got rolling.

Toward the end of our evening, blessed rain started pouring in sheets.  We stayed an hour later just so the rain could lessen. Fortunately, I’d parked right in front of the place and had a short walk to the car. Nonetheless, we stayed up until 2.      

Saturday afternoon, Jasmine had her first tango class. Jasmine’s mother didn’t want her to dance with “older men.” So, I’ve got evidence of each one she practiced with.

Here’s partner #1.                                                                                                                                  

#2                                                                                                                                  

#3                                                                                                                               

#4 

Not counting this dance partner since she’s a woman.                                                                                                                         

#5

Then she enjoyed her first tango dance after class.

We high-tailed it to a BBQ restaurant after tango class.

I knew that she’d like the moist brisket, creamed corn and ribs, but what really surprised both of us was…a peacock just strutting around on the lawn outside of the BBQ joint.

Since the BBQ place was near the mall, I took Jasmine there for some last-minute souvenir shopping. Out of all the things, this was my favorite–she didn’t buy it for anyone though.

Later that evening we drove over an hour to go north of Austin to attend an outdoor historical musical.  We were almost on time too, given the wild goose chase GPS took us on when we were about 15 minutes away from the destination.  I knew something was up when no other cars were around.  We came across a group of about 10 men. All with hunting rifles, but we didn’t stop to ask them for directions.

This musical has run yearly for 21 years.  I loved it when the only black actress in the entire cast said one line and her family applauded as if she recited a soliloquy. The costuming and props were very rich-looking although I found the firecracker gunfire far too loud and frequent.

I was pleased to see that Texan women were portrayed as having spunk, which motivated one male character to declare, “There are only two ways to handle women, but no one knows what they are!” During another scene, the proud townswomen chased away the harlots who’d come to set up business. As one townswoman chased them away, she said, “Hit the trail, Jezebel!”

After two nights in a row of going to bed at 2 am, I finally got Jasmine out of bed on Sunday morning so she could pack up her things, get dressed and have the fastest brunch ever at one of my favorite Sunday brunch places before whisking her off to the airport. I was relieved when I got her text 25 minutes later that she was boarding her plane. I hope Jasmine enjoyed her week with her coolest aunt as much as I did!

I recently went on a beach camping trip with three other capoeira friends of mine.

We all met up at one friend’s house who’d recently bought a truck and saw how much we could safely load up the bed.

She even got all dressed up for our all-female, Texas road trip.

So after loading up the truck bed, we loaded up the car. I sat beside a young woman who wore spiky shorts. That’s a good future strategy for getting enough room on crowded transportation. After securing the tarp, we gassed up and hit the road.

About 4 hours later, we reached North Padre Island.

We arrived at the campsite very excited to get one of these spots.

This is the site we got instead.

I was baffled about how to pitch a tent on asphalt. My friends seemed to think it could work.

One tent was successfully pitched…of course that wasn’t the tent that I was going to sleep in!

I was still trying to figure out my tent, which could sleep 5 people once we got it together.

We staked our tent on the sides and the back to stabilize it.

Of course once the tents were pitched, it was time for a glass of boxed red wine.

Although some people in this world actually prefer white.

As the sun began to set, I started cooking Italian turkey sausage burgers with our nifty propane grill, which I didn’t trust myself to light. I just kept envisioning fire balls.

I “woke up” around 6:20 the next morning, which was a minor miracle since I didn’t think I’d slept at all with the active winds making noise with the tent and car alarms going off. We dutifully reported to the visitors’ center before breakfast.

The last time I witnessed baby turtles being released was in 2004 in Tampico, Mexico.

These turtles reminded me of my students: a few way ahead of the pack, the mediocre masses and a few going the wrong way.

Here’s a close up of one of the stars of the show.

The little turtle star works the crowd before joining the mass exodus.The mass exodus takes an amazingly slow amount of time, but I was pleased to learn that seagulls only pick at the turtles, not eat them.

We watched the turtles trek into the ocean for about 35 minutes.

When we returned from turtle-watching, we put up the canopy and started making breakfast, which for me was 3 types of tamales.

We  frolicked down at the beach for a few hours until mother nature convinced us to return to the campsite to put up the rain guards on our tents, chill in the shade and have a drink until the rain stopped.

Five minutes later, we were back in the sun.

I was impressed that at least one of us liked wheat bun sandwiches–with nothing between the buns!

I chose this time to teach one of my friends how to play go. She hadn’t played in 30 years, but through drinking wine, cursing and discussing, I helped jogged her memory. We took a bathroom break and when we returned, our magnetic board had been tidied. The coverstory was that cleaner thought we’d finished our game.

As if we were following a schedule, we returned to the visitors’ center for an afternoon sand-sculpting demo.

Just like the turtle-watching event, we arrived just when things were about to get rolling. The guy showed us how to scoop wet sand into a big pile as high as the base will support.Then he used a set of plastic utensils to sculpt the tower.

With the plastic fork that was missing the middle tines, he added some details to the roof.

Then he started the precursor of the staircase.

He told us when making the windows, we should scoop out the sand instead of jabbing or poking.

Then he cut right angles to make the stairs.

With a clump of wet sand between the two towers, he leveled out a bridge.

As I watched and took lots of pictures, I fantasized of doing some small-scale experiment with my Physics students to do this sand castle building experiment.

Afterwards, it was back to the beach for some capoeira tricks…wave-jumping, boogie boarding and ukelele playing. We passed another boardgame-filled and nearly sleepless night. We packed up camp to head back to Austin on Sunday morning.

We briefly stopped at a tourist shop.  Posing in the shark’s mouth was worth the photo op. Of course, I didn’t buy anything.

The tarp suffered a minor rip, but our resourceful former girl scout driver found yet another good use for duc tape and we returned to Austin with dry things and no property loss!

        You know I’m on vacation when I have enough energy to go to a morning capoeira class, two afternoon tango classes and then take a firedancing class in the evening.  That’s exactly what I did this past Saturday and much to my surprise, getting eight hours of sleep and having virtually no stress means that I’m well rested enough not to need a nap in between activities, which is good since I scarcely had time to eat and sip a glass of wine.

I, like some other capoeirista participants, was initially confused as to whether the “fire” aspect of the dance was interpretative or literal. To be on the safe side, I brought my five-finger shoes since I knew we wouldn’t have real fire inside the capoeira studio. What I had not anticipated was the handicraft portion of class. Coupled with the fact that the workshop started thirty minutes later (Brazilian time!)  than it should have, we were still finishing up on making four torches each when the workshop had been scheduled to end.

Using clothing that capoeira and crossfit students had left behind and placed in the lost-and-found box, we cut strips out of the clothing and tightly wrapped them around the wooden sticks that we used during our maculele choreography. To secure the cloth strip in place, the mestre told us to bound it with nylon string or yarn. As anyone familiar with my handicraft skills could have predicted, I made the “nonexample” torch as we politely call “incorrect” in the educational world. Of course with my luck, I sat beside a capoeirista who’s known for her creative handicrafts.

Although the mestre only spoke a pocketful of English and I spoke even less Portuguese, I asked him questions about my torch in Spanish. At least we both understood enough of that language to communicate. He undid my first torch since the cloth and string were too loose, which he assured me would fly off the stick and create a fire hazard.

Throughout the workshop, the mestre would periodically give us safety tips. At one point, I just laughed to myself about all the safety concerns that the two graduado (high-ranking) capoeiristas were translating for the rest of the group. As straightforward as the fire considerations were, I wondered if anything was being lost in translation.

At the time when the workshop had been scheduled to end, we all stood up, put away one pair of our torches and practiced some basic firedancing moves. After ten minutes, the mestre told the two graduado capoeiristas to divide up the group and work with a small group. Instead of doing a 1-2 count off and having all the 1’s work with one graduado and the 2’s work with the other, the graduados selected groups using the ol’ kickball method of picking group members by name. Never in childhood had I ever been the last one called since I’ve always been a fast runner. So at least that minor humilation didn’t tap into any bad childhood memories. Fortunately, I really liked the choreography that my group came up with; so I was well placed.

After working on the routine for twenty minutes, my favorite part of the entire workshop occurred. We formed a semi-circle, the mestre distributed small bottles of water and we practiced spewing water into the air. I cannot remember during my happy childhood ever being allowed, much less asked to spew water into the air that would wind up on the floor. Even though we were simulating how to spew fuel into the air, pure joy shot out of my mouth.

Once we cleaned up the floor, we took our torches and some safety support such as damp towels, a couple of buckets of water, and  out to a nearby courtyard. The mestre confessed that he had never used the tiki fuel that we were about to use. The fuel came in two varieties–purple and yellow.  I’m not sure if the color designated any significant difference, but both contained citronella.

The mestre thoughtfully tested out a couple of the torches. We discovered that the ones that had been made from a green sweat shirt were fire-resistant. Also, the nylon string was fire-resistant, but if the cloth was flammable, then the torch still lit. The  yellow yarn burned pretty well.

Once that experimentation part was over, the mestre asked capoeiristas to dance and spit fire individually.  Another capoeirista and I were the only two who refused to put the fuel in our mouths. We both stated that next time, we’d bring something like 151 rum to use for fire spitting. I figure that I’ve got enough problems without adding accidental poisoning to the list. Besides, I didn’t want to have any throat/voice problems the day before I was to host the Austin Writers Roulette.

However, I practiced dancing with fire, mainly for the photo op. Then I practiced the choreography with my group, using unlit torches. My refusal to voluntarily put poison in my mouth worked to another advantage: I was able to give the verbal cues to my partners.

Miraculously, none of us got burned although I nearly slipped with all that spewed tiki fuel on the tile. One woman in the other group had problems controlling the fire on one of her torches because the stick had been wrapped with a flammable, decorative tape.

After both firedancing choreographies had been completed, all sense of safety brokedown as more people grabbed lit torches, danced and spit fire. Those few of us who remained spectators, grabbed a blanket, got near the fire extinguisher and/or yelled out “You’re dripping fire!” to the firedancers. I took this as my cue to leave. I’d pressed my luck enough for one workshop.

All in all, I’m still interested in practicing firedancing–I’ll just have to bring the rum.

Although I was not planning to go listen to Walter Mosley, I’m glad a friend encouraged me to do so. He’s a prolific writer and of course a fantastic speaker–very down-to-earth and entertaining just like his books. I arrived at the bookstore early enough to get a good seat and briefly talk with a woman who had been on the Austin Writers Roulette once, back when it when it took place in the capoeira studio.  My friend and her family came just before he started speaking and I teased her about being “Black,” that is, coming to an open event just before it began and expecting to get 5 seats altogether. She and her husband sat with me, their daughters sat together in the row in front of us and I never found out who the 5th person was. I learned to my grief that my friends were making plans to return to South Africa, both because of the public educational system here in Austin and the financial offer they’ve received to finish their latest production back in South Africa.

I showed them the latest picture of the painting that I’ve been working on and my newest brainchild of having the paintings represent the work of the main character in the book rather than making the story part graphic novel. I even told them of my upcoming photoshoot on Sunday to compose the second painting in the series.

After a rather long and rambling introduction by one of the bookstore employees, Walter Mosley finally took his place behind the lecturn. Here are the notes that I took during his wonderfully inspiring and humorous talk:

1. He initially killed off one of his most popular characters, Easy Rawlings, because writing those stories began to get stale for him.

2. Out of all of the struggles in the writing process, he finds PUBLISHING the most challenging–mainly because every publisher wants to lock him into writing just one genre.

3. He has been criticized by many black women about not having a black female lead detective, but he defends himself by stating that he’s one of the few black men writing about a black male detective; so he wants to write as many as possible to make up for that.

4. He believes in the saying, “If you’re not happy today, then you’ll never be.” Meaning that if you cannot find something to be happy about now, why should you expect tomorrow to be any different.

5. He set out to write six sci-fi novellas where black men destroyed the world in six different ways.

6. He feels that for a writer, social media is like working in a rice paddy. He doesn’t bother with it since that’s one of the reasons why he has a publisher.

7. One of his favorite characters is a sociopath because Mosley believes in order to function in this world, one has to be a sociopath, but one still has to have understanding.

8. Initially, Mosley had a hard time getting his first novel published because the publishers told him that white people don’t read about black people, black women don’t like black men and black men don’t read.

9. Once during an interview, Mosley was asked what does every black man need. His flippant response was “a white man in his basement.” Soon after, he wrote “Man in My Basement.” (Which I checked out of the library this past Saturday!)

10. He claims not to research anything because he’s a fiction writer; so he feels at liberty just to make everything up.

11. When participating in a critique, Mosley advises not to listen to other’s opinion about your own work, but rather to  listen to how you critique others and what other people say about another writer’s work.

12. He doesn’t bother to teach writing because teaching uses the same energy as writing and he doesn’t have enough energy to do both.

13. Mosley stated that by the time he started writing in his mid 30s, he was already a failure in life; so he figured whatever became of his books would be extra.

 14. He expressed an interesting theory on racism: Before people came to “the new world,” “white” people did not exist. Mosley said that if someone went up to a Viking and said he was the same as a Greek, he’d cut his head off. If someone said to the Greek that he was like the Viking, he’d cut off his d*ck. Yet, when they came to America, in order to steal the land and enslave Africans, they all had to agree to be “white” to make the arrangement successful.