Tonight I find myself in a familiar setting that is at the same time alien to me. The present which was my past. It's a place writers should frequent.
I am now approximately four hours south of Grand Prairie, Texas. Grand Prairie, or GP, as some say, is between Dallas and Fort Worth for those unfamiliar with the area.
Hardships have pulled me south to San Marcos, Texas. This is where I was born some 49 years ago. Oh... how the landscape has changed. And... yet... some things haven't.
I'm still working on my book. I'm still driving for Uber as part of my research for that book: My satire - I hope - of these crazy times we live in. However, as a former journalist, it is hard to waste this opportunity that has allowed me to document my travels in my birthplace.
Every trip I take sends me to a place that jogs my memory about some event in my adolescent past. And it's time to take a journalist's approach to my daily travels and write about it. A journalist should have "New Eyes".
What's that mean? That means everything journalists see should be so amazingly new that they take notice of EVERYTHING (every detail others don't take notice of) as if it's the first time they've seen whatever it is they are seeing.
As a journalism professor at Syracuse University, that is exactly what I demanded of my students. I never would have become a professor at that far-off school in New York without the experiences I lived through here in San Marcos. When I was here as a child, I didn't even know Syracuse was a place.
I was a local... Then I left. I am here now... absorbing every detail...
So... with "New Eyes" I drive the streets. Here we go.
Teaser:
Tonight I drove to a place where I was almost killed. It was also the place I experienced my first New Year's kiss... and where I got drunk and puked Texas style for the first time.
More of all that later.
