11. Write about the streets of your city.
There's a sort of grid in Austin. I live on 15th Street between Waller and Navasota. Beyond Navasota is a cemetery. Two blocks south of Waller is the interstate. Big street. Always traffic. I can see the traffic moving past, always slow, always flowing. Literally like an artery. Eighteen wheelers are most obvious. The other cars are just drops of blood, the eighteen wheelers are like clogs, clots, some sort of protein. They shouldn't be there.This is a quiet neighborhood, even though the whooshing of traffic can always be heard. The sound on the interstate is so constant. The cemetery is so quiet, deathly silent. It's a real contrast. And here I am halfway between the two on a quiet street three blocks long. Funky houses and new builds. Lots of students, lots of older, established black families. Rich white folks in stucco and corrugated steel, glass and doors.
A new house is going up on the corner. It must be thirty feet tall or more. It's higher than any house around here, looks over the house next to it down into our yard. Black tar paper and some exposed windows and a roof. A few windows and a lot of holes for more windows. It's modern. Moe-dern, as my Uncle David would say, the same way he would call me James Dern.
People walk their dogs and the resident homeless dog -- which has been named Tits by the neighbor who feeds her because of the six black knobs on her underside -- barks a hollow, chesty bark. People with their dogs on leashes seem afraid. I've said, "She won't bite." But I don't know why I say that. She won't let me or any human get near her, but I don't know for a fact that she wouldn't attack someone. It doesn't seem likely. She seems too old, past her attacking days. But I don't know anything about her. She hangs out in the neighbor's yard who feeds her. She sleeps in a little pup tent they built for her when the weather was cold. But she doesn't even let that woman touch her. She likes animals. She barks and her tail wags. She looks menacing. She'll follow after a dog walker, walk down the middle of the street.
Cats flit about, run across the street. My cat runs across the street to the house where the college kids live. Or he used to until they got two dogs. He doesn't like animals, but he loves people. That's how I came to acquire him. The neighbors had three cats and he was one of them, but the other two cats picked on him and I let him into my half of the house and he came to prefer it. No other animals, just people. He doesn't have claws but he likes to run the streets. He's an indoor/outdoor cat. What can I do? If I tried to keep him inside he would drive me crazy.
