houston

Houston is first to me a feeling on the skin, the thick gulf air which in all seasons is heavier than air elsewhere. It challenges you to rethink what comfort means. It is addicting, you miss it when you move to drier places. It is also the plants and animals that go with that thick air, palm

trees, live oaks, loblolly pines 50 feet tall in a parking lot. Giant squawking crows, egrets, pea fowl muttering along a drainage ditch in the heights. Insects that sound like car alarms. Car alarms that sound like robot overlords. The light is different--there is a pastel quality to the light in Houston. The clouds are a hundred thousand feet tall and they roll in all morning and then explode in the afternoon each day with thunder and monsoon.

There's also its preposterous built environment. Both gravity pulling you in and replusing your eyes. "Where is it?" New Yorkers ask when they arrive. "This is it!" Low slung strip malls in a forest; a bajillion signs for strip clubs and Pakistani food and Christmas trees and discount pharmacies and shoe stores and Lagos night clubs and Tolkien-themed burger joints.

And then there in its center, its beating heart but also the eye of Houston's hurrican is the Menil/Rothko chapel/St. Thomas complex. Buzzing becomes dull, muted. People walk instead of drive, lounge instead of walk. Jugglers and acrobats and joints being passed. The first time I went to this place I saw all this and I was also falling in love with a person and also with a place that reminded me of a Los Angeles I'd never been to. I clambered up on the wall of a church and nobody cared because nobody cares in Houston in a good way. There is the broken MLK obelisk. His promise was shattered, Houston tells us that the American dream will shatter a thousand times but we foolish optimists will keep safety pinning the pieces back together.

This is a little bit about why I love Houston.