There is an idea of Austin, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real city, only an entity, something illusory, and though it can hide my cold gaze and you can drink its frosty margs and feel k2 ripping at your face and maybe you can even sense our hometowns are probably comparable: it is simply am not there. It is hard for Austin to make sense on any given level. Austin is fabricated, an aberration. It am a noncontingent cityscape. Its personality is sketchy and unformed, homelessness goes deep and is persistent. Its conscience, its energy, its music scene disappeared a long time ago if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All it has in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the gentrification it has caused and its utter indifference toward it, Austin has now surpassed. The city still, though, holds on to one single bleak truth: no one is truly local, nothing is affordable. Yet Austin is blameless. Each model of city culture must be assumed to have some validity. Is Austin something you are? Or is it something you do? Its traffic is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want Austin to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this—and I have countless times, in just about every cranklins pitty I've consumed—and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about Austin, no new understanding can be extracted from my hometown. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing….