It’s sunny here today, and warmer again. My phone tells me it’s almost seventy degrees. It was closer to sixty when I walked in here, an hour or two ago, and tried to get to writing this.
There’s a sleepiness to Austin in January which betrays something of the nature of this city. The new year, in the more city kinds of cities, brings with it a surge of activity—a springing back to life after the alternating reveling and relaxing the holidays hold. The singular of resolutions is resolution, after all, which implies some sort of resolve, a resolve Austin does not possess. Whether because of the population weight of the college or because it’s a particularly social sort of tourist town, Austin is not its thought-of self in January. It isn’t its scorching summer self. It isn’t its celebratory springtime self. It isn’t its coasting autumnal self, or its riotous December self. What bachelorette parties are here are the more eager sort. What students are here are of the working-student and grad student classes. What bargoers are bargoing are of the subdued genre, cozier than they’ll be in six weeks. And this year, in particular, everyone’s working from home or has gotten the hell out of town.
It’s a relief, of sorts, this city-wide hangover. There’s a sense of having time, a sense of the year spreading out, vast like Texas to our west. But it’s hard to get going some days. Some days, you walk in to work, and it takes an hour or two to spit out three hundred words.
But this will be. Soon, the students will return. Soon after them will come the more pleasant partiers. Soon after them will, Covid-willing, come the chaos, and after it, the ecstasy, and after it, that long summer heat while we wait for the students again.
The East can get the year going. Dallas can get the year going. Houston can get the year going.
Austin will sleep in.
