a Texan friend joked that we’re practically in Oklahoma up here in gentrified la-la land cranes building more beautiful buildings to cast shadows on cobblestones of the main street and its chic eateries pretty women walking their miniature dogs while lines of cars disrupt traffic as they wait in the Starbuck’s drive-thru we looked for barbecue but got goat’s cheese flatbread from girls in painted faces not a cowboy or rustic outlaw in sight a myriad of European couples with English translation dictionaries asking me questions I am too foreign myself to answer I watch the ice from the sky slam the parking lot of the condominium we are watching leaving us to our minds and stir crazy schemes to negotiate the DART and find the Texas that took our breath away in George Stevens epics and on those crackling records with Blind Lemon Jefferson singing of that older, weirder America I’m still searching for