Houston

when i was leaving austin, quite a few people said to me oooh youre not going to like houston. well its a good thing i dont listen to people because houston is a surprisingly pleasant place, i think people in austin just like to think their better than the rest of texas but theres just as big a scene in houston really. it is the 4th biggest city in the us after all. its very green and all the museums are conviniently together in one district. i went on a bar hop aswell, im really starting to get to grips with american beer, and found some cool places including a place with a 4 page whisky menu and a gypsy bluegrass band. my only beef is i have 42 angry mosquito bites on my legs from sitting on the porch one evening, its all about sitting on the porch in the south. (was this place built on a swamp or something? lets check - yes it was hence they made austin capital instead) anyway they were so bad a pharmicist in new orleans thought i shld see a doctor, and given my lack of knowledge of my insurence she recommended i went to the homeless shelter to get it checked out. luckily i didnt have to stoop quite that low. anyway the contemporary art scene in houston is surprisingly vibrant and cutting edge. the MCA had a show on of artists who work in and with the city and they were politically engaged and outward looking in their approach, willing to take the city on, on its own terms. it must be noted that while the rest of the states pretty much sat back and did nothing, it was houston that galvanised the new orleans aid effort after hurricane katrina. my main reason for coming though was to see the rothko chapel, art pilgramage style, a short description follows.

the chapel is a surprisingly modest and unassuming building situated in a residential street in houston, built of slightly weathered flesh tone brick that somewhat softens its stark form. the octagonal chamber inside is relatively small and the rothko paintings fill the walls and loom over the space. comprised of three tryptics and three singular canvases, the group of paintings evoke traditional religious architecture and have a grandeur and solumnity of their own. the lighting is soft and natural, daylight seeps in indirectly and the shifting clouds the day i was there created a gently undulating light akin to breathing, illuminating the depths of the paintings which themselves seem to shift and undulate. the chapel itself is a multi-faith space for contemplation, in the lobby there is a line of various religious texts should you wish to take one in. the modest wooden pews inside further give the chapel a sense of the organic rather than the purely minimal. at the front two black circular prayer cushions sit on the floor like pebbles.

San Antonio and Austin, TX

i was in san antonio and it was really hot, 100f during the day and 80f at night. this is a bit freaky for this time of year i think but im beginning to understand where the american love of air conditioning comes from. although someone did try to tell me in needed to be 40f cooler indoors for hygiene reasons. what. i'm also beginning to see why texans are so fat. its impossible to work off any calories as you have to walk everywhere very slowly to avoid over heating. something esle distinctively american is the alamo which i visited. basically the story of the alamo is a bunch of texan republicans where laid seige by the mexicans back in the day and although overwhelmingly outnumbered they decided to persue a policy of 'victory or death' or in reality, certain death. it has come to symbolise texan bloody mindedness. the alamo itself is a former mission turned fort but now is revered as a shrine to the 'martyrs' of the alamo. i use inverted commas here because the space is no longer a church in any way but a shrine to the religion of federalacy that the americans persue. inside theres loads of flags everywhere and weaths and a glass case with davy crockets waistcoat in it. i cant think of anything like it in britain where we worship the spirit of the nation in an idolatry fashion.

they have the state capital in austin. its huge and modelled on the capital in dc, although its actually a bit bigger and completely dominates the small downtoan area. i think texas is trying to make a statement there. you'd think it would be antagonistic to austin which is in some ways very un-texan but i think the city is just too cool to care. all anyone does here is hang out anyway i think. everywhere you go its vintage shops and food places and music venues. 6th street is a bit touristy but at the same time just how you imagine it from sxsw reports on the radio. you walk along there at night and its all lit up with signs and music blasts from the bars onto the street. i went to a gig at emo's, kinda unfortunate name but its actually a pretty revered venue with cool silk screen style posters everywhere. now admittedly instead of going to a night with the austin sound (kinda american) i chose a post punk funk line up of bands because hey i know hat i like. i was all austin bands thou including the arm's reunion gig. they were very good actually but here i was at a gig on my own where everyone knew each other so i made friends with the opening act who was this crazy guy called neiliyo (google it). i actually thought he was quite good so he gets a plug here for being nice to me. he also loved my sunglasses so definately scoring extra points there. he introduced me to the most popular beer in texas "its great it tastes like water!", 'lone star' (legend: 'victory or death'). it really does, not only is it a bland lager but its quite flat. to be honest i think austenians could do with drinking a bit more. music audiences are famously static and everyone is too cool or perhaps too reverent to dance or look excited. i might go and see the bats over lake austin tonight, apparently they swarm at dusk, im right on the lake here in my hostel and its very luch and green and beautiful.

Welcome To Texas, Drive Friendly - The Texas Way!

which begs the question, what exactly is the unfriendly way? the mexican way? (slightly off topic an american told me that in new york they drive scary because they are mean, in new mexico they drive scary because they are dumb). i have been to el paso. everyone is mexican, i mean everyone. i think i saw about two people in the city the whole time i was there who maybe werent. despite that fact there nothing of note in el paso, downtown is surprisingly interesting architecturally though, and you can still imagine it as a frontier town 100 years ago. i guess because it is still a frontier town. according to the rough guide sights are few but its dramatic location beneath mountains gives it a bold, wild west charm, but frankly the rough guide seems to say that about every place i pass through. my hotel/hostel does not seem to have been modernised in the past 100 years and still has a wooden telephone switchboard, lift with grill etc. so that was enough to keep me amused for a good while. apparently el paso is like old mexico. i went across the border to cuidad juarez to check out actual mexico, partly from lack of anything else to do, but i was to scared to do anything except from go to the mission and back. i seem to have developed the american condition of being petrified of mexico. the border patrols have been going nuts lately as well. they checked my bus to marfa twice. i think is must be something to do with that massive cannibis bust the other day. also i need to learn spainish. everyone talks to me in spainish and im not sure what theyre saying. i already ascertained that i dont look american but im pretty sure i dont look mexican either. i think the mexicans are convinced that one day the whole of the americas will speak spainish so people better wake up to the fact sooner rather than later. this is typically what happens when i get on a bus,
mexican chorus (in spainish, im guessing what theyre saying here as its al over one another) - this is the bus to presido! do you know this is the bus to presido?
me - er, yes, i think this bus goes to presido
mexicans - you! presido? why are you going to presido?
me - i'm going to marfa
mexicans - ah marfa, ah yes marfa, yes!
we then got to watch a western in spainish. i think it featured some mexicans trying to overthrow the spainish/british/whatever. i couldnt follow what they were saying but it had some good music to soundtrack the texas mountains to.

nb regards marfa and the chinati foundation, as requested i have written a special report which is a bit long to post here. ill probably type it up and then distribute it with photos school teacher style to those of you interested

Taos (it rhymes with mouse)

im sat here writing this in an artsy coffee shop in taos, its like a hippy version of central perk. the weather has taken on an altogether welsh quality and im stranded here until my bus leaves at 8. luckily, this is american so i am able to purchase a 20oz cup of coffe to nurse while i am here. toas is tiny but famous as an artists colony, dh lawrence and georgia o keefe both stayed here at some point. i like it because it has a ramshackle quality thats missing in santa fe. i saw a tumbledown adobe dwelling that tom sawyer wouldve probably referred to as a 'haunted house' and there is a small stretch of street that still has a boardwalk. i dont think anywhere really feels like the wild west without a boardwalk. i also passed a bit of wasteland that had been prepositioned into a 'holy garden' with each tree turned into a tatty shrine of hand drawn signs and wind chimes. it was very odd. i just spent ages in tiny ramshackle museum to kill time. among the exhibits were vintage barbed wire - they all have different names such as 'crannoks twisted oval' - and a stuffed eight legged lamb. this is one of the most bizarre things i have ever seen. it had a pair at the front and two backends each with a pair and the remaining two were on its back. oh and it had an extra ear in the centre of its head. apparently it lived for 5 days and even more surprisingly it predates the atomic bomb testing in new mexico.

i visited the indian pueblo up the road. i had wanted to visit an ancient native american site but they are a bit off the beaten track. toas pueblo has been continuously inhabited for 1000 years so it kind of counts and it has those tiered adobe houses that are the same as the ancient dwellings. its built on the most beautiful spot, at the base of a sacred mountain with a stream running through the village. the smell of wood burning ovens also wafts around adding to the atmosphere. there is a fanous church (as painted by o keefe), inside they dress the icons according to the seasons. when i visited they were in clothes of a sickly pink colour. there is a ghostly cemetery as well where the old church can be seen tumbled down. i bought an indian pie, it was pretty tasty but it had an apricot filling so im not sure how authentic it was. the unleavened bread, a bit like pizza dough had been baked in the traditional oven though. i must admit, i am less interested in native north american art and more into early spainish colonial religious art. there is a 300 year old chapel in ranchos de taos still decked out in the original fashion. the brightly painted wood carvings of icons and cruxifixes are so naive they seem byzantine or early english medeaval, but thay have such a lot of character, i find them mesmerising. the artists who made them, the santeros, were considered holy men in their own right. interesting thought. the real feeling you get is that people who came to live here in the c18th and c19th were really coming to live a lifestyle out of the middle ages.

i feel i should also say a bit more about santa fe, because once you get beneath the cliched tourist experience, its actually quite a cool place with a lot going on especially as it has the same population size as shrewsbury. there is a really world class cutting edge contemporary art space called site and even some private galleries showing some decent stuff. i went to an audio-visual performance evening at the art schoolm - it was students graduating off the interactive fine art course and most of them were pretty good. it included someone who had made a cello out of flat touchscreen moniters and he played it with a bow. im not describing it very well but it was impressive. i enjoyed people watching all the students too.

New Mexico

i was writing this on top of martyrs hill in santa fe. to the south you can see the luch green valley of the rio grande (santa fe river runs into the grande but its the poorest excuse for a river i have ever seen, sort of more a dried up stream) and to the north is the scrub like desert that characterises much of the southwest and that extends on a plain to the mountains. below me is the city itself which with a strong spainish colonial feel and native american influence doesnt seem very american. now all the houses in new mexico, even standard homes are built to look like adobe (theyre actually just painted concrete). adobe are earthenware bricks covered in mud but youre lucky to find a house built authentically like this. i saw apparently the oldest house in the us. i think there was some 800 year old mud embedded in it. the thing is about santa fe, and the old town in albuquerque which is even more cutesy, is they have been restored to the extent they dooont look old, even though they ressemble c17th new mexico perhaps more than they did 100years ago. my other issue with santa fe is all the new age spiritualism that abounds along with naff psuedo folksey art. there are hippy wind sculptures everywhere, i even saw a hippy wind sculpture farm. i dont really see the point of these things unless you want to pretend youve dropped acid. they do like to dance in santa fe though which is something i approve of. i finally went to a gig last night where a bluegrass/americana band were playing (called the santa fe allstars, bit of irony there, they were good though. i loved the singers voice) and there were lots of people dancing old style. good mix of people too, oldtiemrs, cowboys, hippies, hipsters etc. oh and i tried an american ale. it was very hoppy.

Layover (its what they call a pitstop on the greyhound) - some statistics to date

miles travelled: approx 1200
hours on the road: 30
stops: 7
timezones crossed: 1
postcards sent: 19
bagels eaten: 16
7"s purchased: 42

Food Post

for those of you keeping up with my adventures in fast food, i visited a wendys. it has a kind of old school wimpy vibe to it and the burgers are square (!!) so you get more meat for your money. the burgers are huge in fact. you know you go to macdonalds you order a burger that looks huge in the photo and then in real life its tiny ie big mac, its not that big. well my wendys burger was actually huge. it was a double 1/4lb with cheese if you want to know. the fries are a bit fatter too which i like. i was also pressganged by my american companions into getting a 'frosty' which is apparently wendys signature order. i thought it was a milkshake but it actually turned out to be a cup of ice cream. it was ok.

i have eaten in a diner finally. oddly they seemed few and faw between in cali but now im a bit further east they are 10 a penny. naturally given my love of greasy spoons i love diners. the food is actually good too. i had 2 egg 2 toast and hash browns. the hash browns were amazing, they were re-fried julienne potato strips. the things that pass as hash browns in england are just the macdonalds intereptation. i also ate more mexican food the other day, enchalidas. basically all mexican food is the same, every dish is made up of beans, salad, rice, tortiallas and some sort of spicy filling but they have different names depending on how it is arranged on a plate. still tasty though. i also had a mystery food which i think i have now identified as navajo fry bread. its a sort of hollow pastry that in new mexico you eat with honey. its really good.