June 24, 2024
my father can attest to the fact that i dislike change; we had a vivid conversation about this when i was in fourth grade in his vw jetta pulling into the driveway as i tried to get across the enormity of changing even a piece of my habits. this has gotten better with age. the tempo of moving back and forth across the country six times within the past two-and-a-half years has banished the worst of it. regardless, i like my routines. that which is set in stone.
there are a few thousand words on this website discussing every way in which houston sucks. it is a city designed for consumption. far from encouraging the healthy growth of people together, it is designed to divide, atomize, and spread. more of a cancer than a city. a lot of people say that it has a lot of culture! and it does if you define culture at being able to eat at different restaurants every day for the rest of your life. you see, even when i wanted to compliment it needs prefacing with that. truly, i was about to type something good about houston. the way in which it does not suck – its people.
the structure of many cities is such that human interaction is avoided as we ferry ourselves in our private cars to private cubicles where we sit and back to our usually-private homes. but even in this concrete weeds grow. it’s harder than people say to meet people through hobbies (though it is entirely possible that this is a me problem!). however, i still have! bouldering, yoga, reading, running, the houston punk scene, and even twitter have all provided me with a cast of people i at least know, others who i am burgeoningly friends with despite my brief six-month intermezzo between optimistically more upbeat sections, and a girlfriend (the circumstances of meeting her being so anachronistic and uncharacteristic of me personally that the story is such a pleasure to tell). i can see the shape of what my life would be like if i were given the opportunity to stay and it scares me that i can. glyphosate will only work for so long.
so! despite utterly despising the physical location in which i’m writing, it is increasingly difficult to criticize houston, for it happens that the social landscape of this city is inextricably tied to the physical. unfortunate, for i am moving to cleveland in five weeks. i would like to gingerly fold this bloom between a wax towel; press it in a book; carry it with me. but networks are living things and the instinct to preserve is akin to killing a bug to admire its beauty, without new blood it’ll rot.
my first night in houston my father received a call regarding my grandfather and the news of his thirty brain tumors, then subsequent hospitalization. after the bare minimum of moving i slept in his house for the first time since i was a kid, him sprinkling “moon dust” in my eyes to help me fall asleep faster. returning to houston after being at his side when he died1 i was gripped with the question of “what’s the point?”. what is the point of trying to meet people and make friends and build a life in a place that will vanish like dust in the wind? all this ephemera might as well never have been. but i think i have an answer:
this question itself is a diminutive of the larger question of “so what?” that so many have grappled with and i entirely failed to see it! yes, houston will likely be ephemeral to me (i have little interest in remaining in texas long term). what was forgotten here is the nature of life. all of it is unfortunately ephemera. nothing lasts forever; we all die. our bodies fail us, people come and go. even the permanence of nature is not that; the appalachians which i will soon be hiking over once towered over the rockies. that defeatist question should never have been asked in the first place. “what’s the point?” – the point is to live and enjoy it; to meet your responsibilities to yourself and others; to love. i don’t want a lot – just a few friends and love – and i want it to last forever, an inherently impossible ask. change is all there is.
i am doubly upset about this because the book i hold most dear to my heart is (surprisingly to some) ecclesiastes. i have considered getting two tattoos in my life, ecclesiastes 1:2 and a wisteria tree to honor my great-grandmother. vanity of vanity, all is vanity. i love you all.
sorry guys i think this is why i’ve been so weird lately. ↩