i’ve struggled to start this post several times now, perhaps because i am still struggling to understand the experience itself. what is it that i want to convey? i want to convey how much i truly love austin: the city, the people (the ones i know, and the strangers, too), the buildings, the roads, the buses, the weather — i love this city. i love it for (and not in spite of) its flaws. i think of this city, and i think of a few lines from e.e. cummings’s poem “i carry your heart with me:”
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
…
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky …
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
i carry this town(do i carry its heart?) with me, not in a pocket as perhaps i carry the other towns i cannot bear to leave – towns like london and bath, anaheim and both cambridges now. i carry austin in my heart.
and then the struggle is to convey the truths above and the truths below:
that last night i was ready to leave, to go back to boston. how can i be ready to leave if austin is so much a part of me?
perhaps i am ready to leave the chaos — we are helping a friend move house and its physically exhausting, emotionally exhausting, too. i am trying to see as many people as possible — cramming them into the corners of afternoons because i truly want to see them, and i cannot figure out how to stretch 24 hours into being any more than that — which is exhausting as well.
and, to be fair, i have done the things i came to do. there are other things i want to do, too, of course, other people to see (of course! of course!) … anyway i don’t know.
can you love something — have it be a part of you — and still be ready to leave it?
p.s. its the middle of the night. my perspective might change after some sleep.
I think Austin is just that way. It’s part of you forever.
I may understand some of that feeling. Sometimes, you just KNOW that you love a place and that it will always, always be important to you – whether for the associations and friendships you made, the family that is there, or the freshness of new ideas or knowledge or revelation that occurred there. Places have a way of getting into people’s hearts by their association with memories. Some people are sentimental about their birthplace, some about the place of their ancestors, some about where they went on a first date, some about where they got engaged, some about their first home, etc etc. I guess it can be like that with other things – not just places – too, depending on the person. But, what I want to say is that while a place may be precious for the memories that took place there and the recollections that are brought back upon each visit, it is a part of the past now that you have moved somewhere else. If the Austin chapter isn’t closed, it’s just been relocated, perhaps. What do you think?
It was great to have you here. Glad I got you for 5 minutes tonight.
dillers: hey guys! so sorry i couldnt make it over to yalls place — i would have loved that! but this trip was a whirlwind as it was and you know how that goes. glad we got quick helloes and smiles in anyway though :)
sanae: thanks for your insightful comment — yes you are right — the austin chapter is a part of the past… in a sense. in another sense, though, i think its always a part of my present because austin has shaped me in so many ways. perhaps that is the difference btween towns i carry in pockets, and those carried in my heart. but i did not know that until i considered your comment — so thanks for helping me reach that realization. (p.s. i am going to miss seeing your face this semester. be sure to keep in touch. email me your address when you know it and i will send you love!)
What? You were here and didn’t even give me a ring? I’m hurt, even if it was a whirlwind for you. Come one now, after all we’ve been through together. . .your freshman year of college, your senior year of college, the hospital visit when you decided to play capture the flag in the library, and the h.m. Man, I feel shafted!
I met the Lord on W 6th St in Austin back in 1974…Oct 6th, to be exact. I can relate to the feeling…for different reasons, I guess.