Keep Austin Weird

It is, and always has been, one of my favorite places in the world, with so much of something you can't put your finger on that you just can't quite find anywhere else, something you feel when entering the country BBQ restaurants and live music venues and localized businesses and when walking in front of the state capitol and when entering a new bar that didn't used to exist but is now the most popular place in town. You feel it when university kids blend with lawyers and technology entreprenuers who then mix with Whole Foods aficionados and coffee shop hipsters and cowboys. You feel it when passing the rich estates out by Lake Travis where you used to ride your bike, and around the Hyde Park condos you used to call home. You feel it in the buzz, most accurately defined by the age old city mantra: keep Austin weird.

So my old life met my new life, in the best of ways, during a few days back in Texas when December turned into January. As these things go, if you tune in just right, you step back and can clearly see all the good things that once happened alongside all the good things that happened once you were gone. These things are both true together, one not cheapening the other, and you find a balance with it, not longing for something different or nostalgia for what once was, but recognition that there is a peace and a rightness when one situation no longer exists and a new one now does.

Because I ultimatley believe life happens in phases, and I have always found my rhythm when I let myself float, without struggle or fear or a need for direction, but a trust in what life has in store when you ask the right questions. Like this, my life has gone, stage by stage, year on year, this time my right hand held by a left hand cloaked in lovely knit mittens, while my own left hand turned a wheel, driving in delightful silence down Lamar, up Congress, on 6th, 5th, and 4th streets, passing the intersection of Rainey and Driskill, up 620 by Lakeway, slowly along the drag via Guadalupe, all before taking Interstate 35, like so many times before, up away from it all in another big triumphant goodbye. These are the old routines probably best kept old routines while a new city booms in the background.

Whenever there is a setback and things seem unclear, whenever I get unsettled amidst uncertainty, I take comfort in the historical unwavering path of growth and progress which tells us: there are many wonderful things that can happen; many of them will happen; most of them are invisible to us now, but yes indeed, there is a way for them to happen.