There’s that earth pine smell in the air and the mist carries on for miles in a phantasmal blur that sticks to the hairs on my arms and face. A mixed pallet of golds browns and reds form swatches in tree lines. Some of those bystander trees caught in between their summer memories and their red fall future. Onward into a strange future, bygone land of questions unasked and answers undiscovered, to where so many feet have fallen and many have yet to fall, like my own and your own, and the snow that’s already fallen, you’ve missed it all, caught in a past that now seems invalidated and nullified and vilified.

The foreign profiles of firs and pines and maples jut out. Like so many hands waving in that bright blue. The trees stretch forever into the hills and rivers that I’ll never see and the temperature is never past seventy and all is well in the world.

My travel back to Houston is tedious and draining. Manchester to Baltimore. Then a two hour layover.  Finally back to Hobby at around 9pm. Sitting becomes just as hard on the body as standing and my back’s killing me. Houston doesn’t mean much because I’m off to Austin in the morning. Things move fast enough to break necks.

And DC is done and New Hampshire is done and Houston is just a few hour blur and then there’s a drive to Austin and hills and the flammable Texas country side passing by in its washed out Technicolor hue. The complex is old siding and flecks of brown paint. My dad and I wait for Liz and she arrives before long. The apartment inside is brand new and the smell of new paint is a testament to that. New floors and countertops still yet to dull. She’s furnished it like a saint and my new home is near effortless. My room isn’t much more than a bed a few guitars and a few bikes.

And here I am. Living in Austin and I’m not sure what that means. I’m trying to take it in but it doesn’t feel much different than any other place I’ve been and at the same time it feels like nothing I’ve ever felt at all. But its four walls and a bed and it’s new and it feel like any other set of four walls and any other bed. But it’s no hotel room. It’s my bed and my four walls.