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The aggressive warmth of Summer is coming back, and it's only March. Houston, with it's concrete slab roads and wide, faded blue skies makes every month after February pretty brutal. Somehow, though, I find myself happier under the pressing, blinding sunshine.
I've been realizing recently that the fast-paced way I live my life is in pretty stark contrast to how Houston is meant to be lived through. Houston is a city of slow riders, for those who are most in tune with its beat. Its pulse. I try to keep my finger on it, but I get distracted by some task or project or other, and I find myself lost in my own brain, ages away from the steady thumping of the Third Coast.
Nobody writes about Houston like this. Why the hell should I even try?
(That's surely an exaggeration -- I'm sure people have tried to Didion-ize this city. But I haven't seen it, so to me it's just nothing.)
I'm starting to realize, though, how I've been (in many ways) turned away from my own city. Walled up, prickly; when you don't behave as the city does, you rip yourself even further out of it. I still don't really listen much to its music, talk to all its people. I don't chat too much with strangers; I used to more, but then I got older and more asocial. Mostly due to those social terrors I've mused upon so frequently here. Houston is not afraid, though.
It's not that Houston is so open, or so social, or so particularly friendly. It's just. I don't know. So current, somehow. So here-and-now. Not like in a pop culture, "trendy" way -- Houston makes its own practices and imagery, I think. Not like LA or Austin or something (no shade, Austinites), which follow the global curve and expect itself to do so successfully. Houston is a little removed and a little singular. I think, maybe. "Why think so big, so global anyways?" Houston seems to ask. That would mean moving faster, and from what I can tell that's something Houston is not into.
I'm not present in this way, I fear; I'm always thinking ahead or behind me. I've become more present living here, though, especially compared to the moderate-to-severely optics-based competitive suburbia of my youth. Even then, when I used to get high in the woods with my friends, we'd go home and think about the next 4-6 hour rehearsal we had, and how we'd have to work on our essays or physics homework backstage. At lunch we'd sit with intention to do our assignments, then talk in a complete frenzy about whatever gossip there was around. Things are different in the city. It's hard to put a finger on.
I think it's partly because Houston is so effortless, and I am not. I am a firm believer that nothing for me can be -- should be -- easy. This is, of course, my own mythology, but it's how I've always operated, and undoing that will take extensive effort and lots of time.
But Houston, ah. The city is so casual, so loosely focused on things of value. Not things that should matter, but what is actually intrinsically valuable. Things that are pleasing and spiritually fulfilling, to get a little philosophical. Sitting on a porch, smoking a joint, maybe. Not that I smoke anymore -- it fills me with panic. See above: Houston is so effortless, and I am not.
Some imagery, now: drives on bumpy roads listening to slow, heavy bass lines. Sun-stripped, lazy, mismatched architecture; a cramped city skyline, too. So many moderately-dilapidated gas stations and convenience stores; my favorite has incense pouring from the register, and a few cashiers with varying degrees of friendliness (although most of them are friendly if you're a regular). Fronts with lazy names like "Pizza Shop" and "Place of Laundry." Trees that look more like brush than anything; clouds that hang high in half-fluffy orbs. Like they forgot to puff up, forgot to make a shape. And then there's the people, and the music, and the food. All fucking incredible.
Kyle says Houston is a nitty-gritty city. He says people work hard, but people play harder. There are hustlers, businesspeople, contractors, oil people, drug dealers, slab riders, et cetera. Kyle says you can "find yourself in Houston" -- I thought he was joking, but he was dead fucking serious. I think I know what he means, though. There are a crazy amount of people and different social scenes. It's partly that which makes it so hard to pin down. But then, does that make it easier, too? Questions, questions.
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I like to drive to Galveston sometimes, too; not in some attempt at escape, or anything. Houston is mild enough to suffer peacefully there. I more so go for more proof than I can find in mainland Houston: look, it's sweltering and brutal outside. Life is here, sharp-edged and hot. You are alive. I am alive.
In Galveston, the roads are worn, the houses are quaint and beat-to-shit. Living a 45-minute drive from the ocean is a trip, especially for somewhere that, for me, often evokes a desert (when it's not humid, at least). Maybe because I read about California and shit sometimes. But on that note, there's something I have to address.
The rain. Hurricane season and, even outside of that, fairly regular flash flooding in the poorly designed infrastructure. For somewhere so fucking sunny and hot you'd expect it to be more like a desert, more like Arizona or something. It's not. It's wet, humid, and fucking swampy. I struggle to reconcile that part of the third coast climate, honestly. The people are mellow like surfers, but hardened like sailors, sometimes. Everything always comes back to the water and the sun. Warm, claustrophobic, overbearing water and sun.
Hurricanes, to me, are a lot more of a real threat than, say, earthquakes. Again, I'm talking about California. Houston is so fucking close to the coast, the literal coast of the Southern U.S. The water is always there, danger from across the literal planet waiting patiently to come sweep over the ocean and drown us out. Cleanse the grimy city. Diego described it as somewhat "lived-in," or at least I think he was referring in part to Houston when he talked to me about how some cities are. You'd think a hurricane would reset us, purify us, but it doesn't. It just hardens and detaches us from ourselves.
It's maybe not as treacherous as I make it sound, but I remember Harvey. Nobody talks about it, but it's in my mind sometimes. Not often, but sometimes. I lived in The Bubble at that time, but I remember seeing the news. Highways underwater, so many feet deep in the brown, murky, temporary-sea. It was psuedo-apocalyptic, like a little test run of how Houston will finally go. If the world ended, we'd go by the water.
Another thing I thought of after finishing this writing is the mythology of the Wild West. Cowboys and their duels in particular comes to mind. I think about guns, and trucks, and road rage incidents -- the sound of pistols firing into the air on New Year's Eve -- and I wonder, what really became of the Wild West?
I think there's a little bit of cowboy spirit still in Texas. Houston is further East, of course, out of the desert and the hills and the brush land of West and Central Texas. But it's still Texas. There's still the rodeo, there are farms close by. You drive an hour out from the city, West or North, and you see cows and horses bordering the highway. The makeshift alliance between country lifestyles and Americana globalization is a wild one, and very prevalent in Texas.
And how does this legend (of the cowboy, of the West) affect Houston? I think Houston is a bit of a bleak landscape, in some ways. Like I've said, the infrastructure is fucking shit. The crime is questionable in many areas; there was actually a guy smashing the windshields of cars with a pry bar a block from my apartment just a few weeks ago. There's oil, too. A shit ton of it apparently: a quick Google reveals Houston as the "Energy Capital of the World." That means ... Opportunity! Money! In old days, they'd scream, "Gold!" And god knows oil extraction is a brutal task, akin in my mind to the brutal treks across Texas of olden cowboy times.
We could say, then, that Houston is in many ways a land of resources -- and defined by brutal conquests for them. There are the uber-rich who own the resources (or at least the means to get them) and there's everyone else (who works to acquire them, manage the processes, extract them, et cetera). It is a little wild and Western, even still. After all, some of the police ride horses to get around Downtown. And it's fucking 2024.
Still, everyone takes their time getting around, getting to things. There are scenes which hustle, sure -- nightlife (faux-Vegas that it is), corporate, drug-dealing worlds are part of this. But overall, it seems that people are content to take their time under the oppressive sunshine. Ride the highways bumping Southern hip-hop; drink slow and strong at the bars. Tough, nitty-gritty, hot and heavy Houston.
I don't know what the point of this essay was, really. I just wanted to talk about this city. Feels like nobody ever does, not really. The whole fucking place is hidden. Too casual to investigate itself, too mellow to ask: who the hell am I? A city too real to reflect. Too busy living, moving slow and deliberate. I guess I'll just have to insert myself, although this was never asked of me. Houston, I will sing for you.