(AUSTIN, Texas) — I don’t know what I want.
I can write that and know I’m in no way embellishing my feelings or being overly simplistic. Up until this point, all my choices have felt fairly straight-forward to me, even if they didn’t look that way to the outside world. Go to college, graduate. Move to Portland, move away. Live in New Mexico, live in Colorado. Move to Utah and love it. Travel across the country alone in a trailer. And now, and now…Austin? I just don’t know. I kind of hate it here, and I kind of love it, and I’m far too intrigued to leave. Right now, I’m sitting in a hip, dimly-lit café/bar/cool kid hangout somewhere in the city, and 25-ish folks are laughing and drinking and sitting in front of their laptops all around me. The music in here continually shifts from obscure indie rock to old school country and more, and the menu ranges from vegan cake to meaty Frito pie. I am intrigued, and I am repelled, and I can’t help but want more. This town is like a cut on my gums — it kind of hurts, and it kind of feels good, and no matter what, I can’t stop touching it.
A million things have changed since I last wrote, and I am now gainfully employed, thank God. I’m a hostess at Magnolia Café South, a hip Austin institution on South Congress Avenue. I feel luckier than I can say, though the work is hard and fast and definitely not my strong suit. A little Austin existence is shaping up around me, and I even have a couple of friends, I think. I’m shocked and pleased. The world feels wide open.
In honor of all this and of my trip (which I do not consider over yet), I’m beginning a series of photo essays of places I’ve been to recently but for some reason didn’t get around to posting about. I don’t know where I’m going right now, but I know where I have been, and hopefully showing some of these images will bring some clarity about all of this. Even if it doesn’t, the photographer part of me is still itching to show off some of my stuff.
This first set is of Apalachicola, Florida, a little town I visited not so long ago. The reason I wanted to start with it is that I seriously considered moving there. I envisioned doing there exactly what I’m doing here (getting a job and a place to stay, etc.), though I understand now how dramatically impractical that would have been. Sure, it was a nice town, a fine town, with wide streets and old buildings and a river and a bay nearby. But there was no way to make a living there, not for me. I would have been out of my element so completely that disaster would have pretty much been my only option. It scares me now how willing I was to overlook that.
But I was romanced by the town, and I have little barrier against this specific kind of seduction. I am so susceptible to quirky, friendly, scrappy communities that it’s not even funny. I’m always looking for the next cute, strange place to take me in. This town had those qualities in spades. Within a matter of hours of my arrival, I had met a large handful of friendly, cool people, from my host, Emily, to Tamara, the boisterous and welcoming Latin lady of a certain age who owns a coffee shop in town. It all felt right in some strange way. My second day, I went out to look for a potential job and met more folks — store owners, mostly, all of whom seemed open and happy to help however they could. Yet no one had a job for me. It didn’t matter, though, because for some reason I was determined, locked-in on the idea that this was going to work, as though the shear power of me arbitrarily deciding to move somewhere would spin the universe in my favor.
I guess, in a way it did, but not in the fashion I wanted at the time.
I’m not sure when the shift happened exactly, but when it did, it was dramatic. It could have been that drunken party I attended on someone’s boat that did it, but I don’t know. Apalachicola, a water-surrounded town of a 3,000 and change, seemed so sweet and warm for two or so days, and then, suddenly, it was stifling. It’s not that anyone in it had changed. Emily, a waitress and artist about my age, was still low-key and friendly and casual in that specific way that people in the restaurant culture can be. Tamara was still fiery and motherly and happy to have me park my trailer outside her home. But I just couldn’t anymore. A veil had been lifted, and I suddenly found myself relieved to be moving on into the unknown. Before I left, I stopped by a yarn/book shop downtown and chatted with its owner, an earthy and soft-spoken woman a couple of decades older than I. I bought some variegated, pink yarn and told Dale my thought process and conclusion. She smiled and sighed and nodded in a way that let me know she understood. So many people, she told me, come to this town and have a great first weekend. They meet cool residents and have cool experiences and then up and buy a home here. It’s only after they move in that they realize what they had experienced during that first visit was as good as it gets.
Now, I know that’s not always the case, and as does Dale. I’m not knocking this Florida hamlet, and neither was she. I just think, in that moment, we both understood that this was not the place for me. It was so lovely to have someone echo that feeling. As I drove off from Apalach, there was a cinematic amount of rain pouring down, and perhaps it would have been safer to wait it out. But I couldn’t. I had to get out of there. I don’t know when it has ever felt so good to hit the road. I don’t even remember the specifics of the scenery, just that it was very green and very wet, and I was one of the only vehicles around. I took Highway 98 an hour west to military-infused Panama City and while that town wasn’t much to write home about, it was a great relief. I knew I wasn’t going to move there, and that was enough to make my stay a joy.
I can’t believe that was less than two months ago. As I look back on this recent history, I’ll admit I’m a little jealous. What a joy it would be to still be mobile, to drive away whenever anything got rough. But that’s not how it is these days. Staying in one spot is all about accountability. Holding down jobs, keeping friends, knowing neighbors. When my Austin world is good, all of these weighty responsibilities seem appropriate and enjoyable. When my life here feels a little dark, those needs and relationships seem surprisingly difficult, and I yearn for the simplicity of the road.
No matter my mood, however, I try not to lose sight of something: I am damn lucky to be here. Austin may be easy to mock and congested as can be. It may be big and impersonal at times. Its idea of itself occasionally drives me crazy. But it is alive here. Events and art and opportunity are everywhere, and it still shocks me that I get to be so close to all this live music, good cinema and plentiful improv. No, this is not what I’m used to. It doesn’t have the comfort and warmth of the small towns I have loved, but it has other qualities are perhaps just as important. This is not a place to write off. Anyway, I feel I have to be malleable and able to exist in cities that are fast and competitive. I have to be able to be in a spot where I’m not considered special and important just for choosing it. Here, I am anonymous. And I kind of like that.
The hope is that if I do return to the small town thing that I do so with a degree of power. I can’t simply retreat to the small-town world because I couldn’t hack it in the city. I want to move back because small towns feel right to me, and I think I understand them. I want to move back because I like the idea of an intimate, rural place being my destination. My future family, my possible chickens and my theoretical piece of land somewhere in the desert float through my mind just often enough to remind me of that.
Ah, I feel I’m just escaping into my head now, coming up with cerebral ideas of the future. I don’t really know what I want or where I’m going, and that isn’t going to be changed by a bunch of statements. So enough.
How about some pictures instead? Here are some more images of Apalachicola, the town that nearly had me. I wish everyone I met there the best, from afar.
Stina:
Great writing as always. It must be hard to lay your feelings out for all to read, but it must be cathartic at some level. I enjoyed your analogy of the “cut on your gums.” Very true. Some of your writing reminds me of the Thomas Wolfe quote “you can never go home again.” After traveling for the last 30 years or so, there was a quote that I have always remembered, “there are only two good places to live, the town you just left and the town that you are going to.” Good luck with your job, and after this year long journey you should consider a European backpacking blog tour. Just a thought.
Chris