Glitter and grit.
The two words encompassing my evolving love affair with Austin.
The two words tumbling into colorful and wildly loud being at my feet.
A playground of concrete ruins booms and whirls into a vibrant universe of graffiti. The exposed walls and foundation for a half-birthed house create an outdoor dream for artists to finally find a home for their quirky, endearing, and eerie imaginings.
I peer below from the top tier, balancing in glittery pink tennis shoes on a chipped cement edge carpeted by layers of paint-sprayed names. A coat of dirt is a gritty gloss stretching over the blood red initials and gold tinted hearts. Morning visitors, families and couples and a crew of teens, climb to the very top story in the quest to add their shaky signatures to this splattered kaleidoscope of names.
The graffiti garden is a canvas of impermanence, and yet, though the momentary masterpieces that adorn the walls are inevitably destined to be replaced, there’s always the soul-comforting familiar and fantastically enticing feeling that arises as I walk into its commanding and deprecated domain.
The same response of liberated joy and spontaneous inspiration surges throughout my awe-struck heart. This expansive presence and celebrated allowing of creativity ignites my flame. This reverence for untamed artistic creation propels me to live here, to deeply befriend and experiment and finally and confidently embody my own unique creativity.
And now, I share this royal graffiti palace with my Jules, my dazzling and talented and exceptionally courageous and kind sister. She plays in angling, directing and snapping cleverly captured shots of pieces and spots (a cat gazing at the moon, abandoned paint cans form an altar), revealing her innate artistic ability to tease out and capture beauty.
She pulls me into a selfie. The wind whips, the sun bursts, and the cityscape beams.
Click.
There’s the click of having all the pieces instantly and unexpectedly align – the wondrous wind, the deliciously warm appearance of a winter sun, the laughter-infused visit with my darling and daring sister – all merging, like a fantastical graffiti collage, into the rekindling of a love affair with my city, my Austin.
Click.
There’s the click of realizing that my first visit to Austin was in a February.
I pack notes from my international law class with a cream dress covered in butterflies. I thrift shop, venture down streets still grungy with the respected Austin weird vibe, belly laugh with a true soul-mate friend, and I am held and kissed by a boy.
I shimmer in attentive aliveness because the environment with gossipy grackles, cooing doves, winking cacti and easy going palms stimulate my senses, and the hipsters and the hippies intrigue with their curated styles of living fully and authentically. The city exudes this radical sense of acceptance that sees and meets a core need.
Click.
I walk with a little one down a bright spring sun illuminated school hall. She takes such mindful steps, so I slow my pace to meet hers, and she softly narrates our stroll with a language of the very young. I lead her from her pre-k class to meet her mother, and I believe she’s leading me to relax into being present, to enjoy each step, to receive the joy of all the efforts and bravery it took to uproot and move. And I think this is enough. This moment right here of walking with this little one, of sharing this brief moment in time. It’s worth the entire move if all I was destined to do was walk her back to her mother, to be a witness, to help in a small way. This is enough.
Click.
I listen in fervent enthusiasm to my teacher as she explains the universal rules governing the world of improv.
Lean into yes. Listen. Support. Act on the initial reaction. Commit. Go with feeling.
We gather into a circle and strengthen our creative muscles with a name-game, and I give silent thanks for finding a stage where all my innate wirings are welcomed and encouraged to be expressed. This creative discovery channels such happiness in my life that I wake up now at 6am and I dance around the house, and I feel like my insides could explode with joy.
Click.
Julie slyly documents my hiking around the springs. I know I am a curious city slicker sight for the few and iron-steel winter swimmers below. My outfit choice of Valentine tights, corduroy skirt, and ankle boots hadn’t anticipated an impromptu visit to the springs, but the weather is too spring like to resist a chance to show off the healing waters that are the heartbeat of the city.
“I forget,” Julie says as she navigates the rocky terrain surrounding the springs with ease, “you don’t hike.”
“More like city stroll,” I quip as I direct the next step.
I point to my designated summer spot for reading and sun bathing, and I catch a memory of my past self.
I am shy a few months of living here officially for a year, and still there’s a tired heaviness reminiscent to lifetimes lived and lessons learned and loves deeply experienced.
There’s a grit I hadn’t anticipated to living here. A call for courage. A tested determination to always and only choose what and who champions my deepening, and vivacious evolution.
I need grit in order to choose to protect and purposefully provide nurturance for my glittery shine.
Glitter and grit.
The past ten months in Austin softened me into my gritty aptitude to be strong, because it’s becoming a learned and far more comfortable and accessible part of my being now, and the glitter is fiercer and ecstatic for expansion.
I declare my one-year anniversary of living here in February, because I am in love with Austin again, and I choose to write a love letter to Austin here in a place of reconnect, reunite, a clicking of experiences informing a glitterified understanding of the gritty challenges.
And the challenges lead me here to playing tour guide, and in my role of city hostess, I revisit all the places that light me up, reuniting me back to my original Austin love.
From the graffiti park to the springs, I pass former selves and I understand who I was then, and this understanding provides the healing, the peace opening me to delight in the February glory of wind, sun, my sister offering her hand to help me finish the gritty first and grand lap around the springs in my ankle boots and pink tights.
Here’s to the journey of deepening and becoming in a gritty and glittery love affair with my Austin.
