by Justin Davis

Austin: you're too hot and congested. You're a nasty little polluted college town turned down a one-way dead-end alley named after a deceased poet. The California Gold Rush Fever has set in and beautiful things are disappearing all in the name of little slips of green that people with big pockets can use to control their microscopic piece of the universe. I wish I were a computer chip; everybody wants one. You're like a three-bit whore computer chip: everybody can use you and can afford you. You're an addiction along with money, caffeine and bad blues. Austin has fallen from the ranks and is being trampled in the mad rush to grab that postage stamp size lot on top of that hill 20 minutes from a view of Lake Travis. All the cool people have left. Any one who looks cool isn't. They are trying to fill the gap before anyone notices. Fuck you, Austin...You're making me depressed. No it's not me, it's your fault; I'm a victim of circumstance. Feel sorry for me like you want to feel sorry for yourself. I am sorry I can only dwell on your faults. Show me something besides friendliness; give me a real reason to leave.

I didn't have a real reason to leave but I left anyway. I had a fake reason. Any magazine, book or folklore of the west coast is filled to the brim with all the great things out there. Stunning dramatic scenery, modern cities and progressive people. The green pastures of California and northward were calling my name louder than they have at any point in my lifetime, so I finally listened. I left and by the second day I felt like I should return home. I felt like I had turned a huge page in the book of life. On the third day my clutch went out two hours east of the interstate in New Mexico. I limped into a town that evening and had pangs of homesickness. But the desire to see the unknown out west kept me wanting to progress onward. But I was stuck in Socorro, New Mexico, the suckling of interstate 25.

Walking around 98 degree Socorro, I began to wish I were a ten-minute bike ride from Barton Springs. Nothing like that here. Why did people stay here? What was the draw to Socorro?

The dude fixing my truck told me. I honestly expected him to say that he wanted to leave as soon as he got caught up on his child support payments or something irresponsible like that. I had zero faith or trust in the human race at this point. This person wasn't familiar and neither was the scenery. I had left Austin to perhaps go out on my own and that's how I felt there. On my own, my own being, nothing to base myself on. I was friendly to people but not revealing my feelings at all. I was afraid of the unknown. This dude was my first step toward viewing everything in the world in the same eyes as I view everything at home. Familiar but not comforting. His answer was full of pride, but not boasting; full of happiness, but not overbearing. He reasoned, "There's fishing down at the nature preserve, hunting, traffic's good, the mountains are right there, I know a lot of people." I explored after that and found Socorro had a nice little square, a few odd shops and a killer library. Not a gem, but not the interstate suckling I had first perceived.

I met a lady in Springerville, Arizona who looked, talked and acted like a native. She was a tour guide. I mentioned to her the immediate change from the massive barren flat valleys of Western New Mexico, mountains fifty miles away, roads straighter than Abe Lincoln, to the red sandy toughness of the womanly water shaped boulders of eastern Arizona. I told her it was like the people of Arizona had chosen their state borders with that in mind. "I'm kind of particular to Arizona myself," she said with all the swagger of John Wayne. She liked it here. The lakes, the river, the mountains, the people. There was something peaceful here. Yet I either wanted to stay for a while and get to know the town or go and keep going. Alas, the green pastures of California that a lifetime of books, television, and magazines has planted in my head pushed me onward. I didn't stay to swim. I didn't stay to hang out. I didn't engage the town. I just drove across the desert towards the relief from sitting and myself.

The desert is like a mirror on your soul. Your deepest fears about your inner self are put on full display.

I saw myself searching for something to take away my responsibility. I searched for something to change my life. I searched for a more certain humanity as well as self. I was looking for support from something I couldn't see or hear but which I knew existed. I could feel it. It was the reason for my trip.

San Francisco, I went halfway across the United States for you, and for rather vague reasons. The reasons didn't really matter as much as the motivation. I had to go San Francisco. What did it hold? Opportunity? Why not? Every other generation that has endured the torture of the great desert that keeps our nation's fruits safe has found opportunity out there. Perhaps because they had to. They couldn't go back. They made something from what they had. I couldn't go back though. To the something I already had. But did I want to? That would be the easiest path, or would it? San Francisco was a different, intriguing city. It had maintained its small-town feel somehow. I thought that the hills helped. And the lack of highways piercing the gentle heart of the cold city kept people walking and biking, kept people together. What was I looking for here? I wandered the first day and found myself exhausted at the pace of the new unfamiliar scenery. There was no rest for my mind here, no familiar park where I could lay my head up against a giant live oak. Hey, there were live oaks in Austin. Austin was a long way, but I couldn't go back yet. I was searching for something. What it was I didn't not know yet. I would know it when I saw it.

San Francisco, city of hills, city of the cold breath of the Pacific breathing down my Texas tanned neck, you chilled me to my Austin bones. Elusive, shifting San Francisco, quilt of many patterns. Your surrounding hills were tan, sharply curvaceous, speckled with dark green large oak trees with solid wind from the omnipresent Pacific.

You romanced me with your people, your hills and your water. The same familiar thing I found everywhere. The same thing was everywhere. There were interesting people everywhere.

Eugene, Oregon was a magician just as Austin. In a little sociological experiment of a magazine called Comet Bus, I read: (speaking of people who have left their share in the collective coffee shop) "If they're not engaged in those other things the way they were engaged here, they miss it." The events, people, objects to be engaged with were everywhere. I didn't engage them for various reasons, so I missed Austin.

In the cold wet blanket of the Northwest, I could not engage any real heat. I was not engaged in any friends. I was not engaged in riding my bike. I was not engaged in swimming. I did not find anything comforting out in the West. I could have but I didn't. I was longing for Texas and the opportunity and life I already had there, specifically Austin.

One could find what Austin, Texas has but they would have to search pretty damn hard. Perhaps in my frustration with myself and my rush to be somewhere that appeared to be better, I exaggerated the faults of Austin. I went to eight states over thirty days. Upon viewing the West with eyes longing for familiarity, friendliness and craziness, I found Austin to be the prime destination.

So here I am, Thor's day (Thursday), July 12, seven-thirty-something in the evening on a tall hill in Rhome, Texas. This is the end of my journey. This is the edge of my intimate familiarity with the world. From this point on I will feel comfortable with my surroundings: they are familiar and known. Fourteen years familiar. I have been to this hill twice before in my lifetime. One can see for miles to the Northwest all the way to the South. This is truly one of the most beautiful spots in my journey. Sure, there's a bank to my right, a convenience store behind me, and a small new development of houses down the hill, but the beauty, the essence of the place, still shines through. Is it true beauty or just familiarity that romances me here on this hill? Well, to tell you the truth Texas is the most beautiful state of any I've seen on my journey. As soon as I crossed the state line, I received more waves, smiles and nods than on my entire trip. Seriously, no typical Texas exaggeration here. For no apparent reason people were glad to see me.

Texas is old, solid. These hills were mountains at one time. They have seen it all and are probably indifferent to it all by now. That's Texas. Indifferent, on it's own, lawless, crazy. People are crazy here. But it's a good crazy, doing things your own way. People are possessive about their land, their guys, their girls, their trucks, tractors, sunsets, boots, beer and state. It could also be called pride, crazy insane pride. I love it. Why did I come back? Is this truly the most beautiful place in the universe? Or is it just familiarity? Call it insane pride, but I think it would be just as beautiful if I had never been here before.

I find that really I could feel this way about any place if I had stayed. The same things attract people to their places. There is a distinct charm about the familiarity, the comfort and the friendliness of home. There is a magnet towards familiarity, comfort and friendliness in all of us. We are drawn to what we know. The nest. The cave. Our home. My magnet draws me to Austin.

Fuck you, Austin...for being so good.

You're warmer than California. You might be more polluted than some other places that don't have your indescribable charm. Gold Rush Fever is just a phase. Computer chips would be good with salsa. Austin has fallen from the ranks to create it's own language. It is itself. Anyone who looks cool probably is. The people who fill the gaps soon are hypnotized by the spell of Austin. You made me depressed but so can a million things. You made me very happy last week as I cruised into your city limits, my Dark Side of The Moon tape unreeling itself, dying, playing it's last words. If you feel sorry for yourself you're stupid. You haven't lost anything. You're maturing. You're changing but so do I. You are the lighthouse on my shore, the oasis in the desert, the Austin in my Texas.

So don't go anywhere, Austin. You're my kind of town.