Tonight I found myself sitting in the outdoor yard of a coffee house called the Irie Bean, listening to a singer-songwriter open mic and reflecting how life seemed completely transfigured from a few weeks ago. I had decided to demand more out of my life and to just make the things I wanted to happen happen. Breaking camp and moving to some foreign locale is not a trivial matter. For a long time I had been anchored by the perceived weight of all my possessions and responsibilities. And I did feel the weight of all my worldy possessions, now stripped of function, cargo that took up space. In Gibson’s “Pattern Recognition”, the protagonist Casey travels the world unfettered, needing only a laptop, a credit card plugged into some deep corporate account, and a leather jacket. Somewhere, offstage, is an apartment that perhaps contains a couch. That lifestyle has a great attraction to me. Sometimes I just want to Go and everything not attached to me seems like a net.

I have ready answers for people who ask why I up and moved to Austin. They are of course true answers, but they are not the real answer. I shouldn’t need an answer at all. I am free and I am flowing. I moved because I wanted to and because I had already left. I moved because I loved someone so much that it eclipsed everything else and I couldn’t tell what love was anymore, like staring into the sun and seeing a sun everywhere I looked.

And I needed to remind myself about what I could do. This is what is possible when I don’t take “no” for an answer.