here there everywhere

Austin is making it really easy for me to leave, I tell you what. But don't let my Austin friends hear me sayin that cuz they'll be hurt. I'm not tryina dog anyone for liking what they like; I'm just expressin myself.

Talking with a friend today about our Austin experiences - finding similar tales of weird inter-politics, as she put it, "They're so defensive and need so much reassurance!" I wonder if cuz Austin bucks the Texas trend of "Don't Mess With Texas!" they've got a sortof cultural malaise, an inferiority complex, and have to just talk a whole lot to get validation? And consider the whole "Keep Austin Weird" campaign. Any contrived effort to keep something uncontrived is sorely misguided. Sadly, sweetly naive. Anyhow -

what do I know? My experience here has been utterly influenced by having been heartbroken and traumatized and also from having lived in and having been loved by New Orleans for over a decade (and Prague, and before that Detroit, before that Philly, New York City, and Chicago). Austin just can't compare. Not that it's without charm it's just ... it's not New Orleans. Which may very well be why so many people love it and have good lives here. I know amazing beauties here, with inspired lives. And I am grateful grateful grateful for everything I have received from this place - I will always have a very soft spot in my heart for this city. I am not initiating some debate here or wanting to hold anyone's hand but this is how I feel:

Austin is a young city. The "personality" of this place has been grafted upon it by bodies, by decisions, versus seeping out of the environment and into the bodies that decide to live here. It's just a matter of history - there's not enough of it yet. And that might make for a very charming and easy place to live, for sure. I just need deeper veins, pungent waters, mineral-rich air. And then of course I need to live where men aren't walking around on stilts or wearing thongs to the coffee shop, hell-bent on being "characters".

(duh, I know: the Bywater, right? Whatever. A guy on stilts in the Bywater is IN THE BYWATER, not on South Congress at Jo's, in a neighborhood no real freaks could afford to live in. Context is everything. At least for me.)

Comments

[MIV]

I seem to remember you becoming wonderfully ... acerbic shall we say? when a boy in a tutu rode up Chartres on a bike! But I get your drift ... I know why it irked you there then and I know why Austin irks you now, longterm.

So is that a guy or a girl in that dapper red thong? And did s/he talk to you with his ass all hanging out like that while you were drinking iced earl grey tea?

[D Shite]

KEEP IT WEIRD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ellie]

wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

[PetalsAndRice]

I'm here & I'm not offended at all. But I do know what you mean about the fragile egos here. The men are esp. limp. I like those NYC men myself.

[E.C.]

Proud to call it, crawl, swim home...

prepropriative, liminal, luminous, foreshadowed, haunted, haunting, rising, sinking, stinking or perfumed, fertile and fecund, flooded and drained, rescuscitating, ours...

you can take the woman out of New Orleans, but...