Dear Austin,
 
There are so many reasons not to miss you.

I'm in paradise here on the sunny side of the Alps and I think I'll stay here for a long time.

I don't need your ambling aging hipsters, your Christmas light backyard beer gardens.

I don't need your bats or your huevos rancheros.

I don't need your fatty smoked brisket, sliced thick and tender, blackened on the rims and blood-red in the middle like a bawdy raccoon's gaze through an open barn door. Nope. I've got salami di cavallo…they eat horses here, you know.

I don't need your Mothertruckers, your Bob Schneiders, your Robert Earls and Willies and Juniors just waiting there every week at the Continental or Antone's for a cut-rate cover charge. I've got the Montreaux and Salzburg and Roskilde, and some day, I plan on going.

I don't need your affable bock in its Warbler-yellow wrapping and I sure as hell don't need another margarita flavored tomorrow morning. I've got cheap Chianti and bad Swiss beer waiting for me at stores that are open until 6:00 PM every night, most every night, not Sundays, not on days when a saint died.

I don't need your English.

I don't need to bathe in your icy translucent springs. I don't miss dodging salamanders and warm patches and chatty mystics.

I don't need you anymore, Austin. You smell like migas, mediocre pot, and the inside of old an airstream converted into a mobile crepe kitchenette.

You sound like grackles and cover bands and whining nostalgic old hippies.

Austin, you're like a kid who just learned how to ride her shiny new bike but still keeps her training wheels out in the front yard, sticking out of an old toilet, dangling rusty beer can earrings.

You just don't get it, do you? Why can't you be normal? Get with the program. Blend in.Keep it profitable. Keep it reasonable.

Or just keep. Keep yourself. Keep it real. Keep me when I return.

Keep Austin.

Dear Austin,

You. You are my black and blue, red and purple, platinum blonde. You are breakfast tacos and photo shoots, fashion shows and queer parades. You are my discovery of the complex nature of human beings. You are all night parties and neighbors who care and music that seeps into my bones. You are falling in love. You are my broken heart. Eleven houses and twenty-two roommates. You are my ladies. You are a rescue dog whose face melts my heart. You are my introduction to humanitarianism. You are breaking into swimming pools at 3 am and art raffles and a Bachelor's in English. You are my first one night stand. And my second. You are always here when I come back from Africa. And Fiji. And Australia. And Mexico. And Costa Rica. And you are always missed. You are the red beach cruiser with white streamers that I love. And you are said beach cruiser stolen. You are oral history. You are 10,000 in the streets protesting the war. You are a Masters in Women's and Gender Studies. You are my foray into performance art with zombies and my 1970s green crushed velvet tuxedo couch and a merry go round in my backyard. You are envied. You are there when I kiss my first girl. And my second. You are queers and junkies and single moms and the homeless. You are poets and artists and drunks and the poor. You are mine and you are theirs. You are nine scintillating years. You are beautiful. You are home.

Yours,
Jen

Dear Austin, 

You're not my city. You're not my town. You're my summer camp. 

You wake me up each morning with a bounding energy to see what you have in store for me. You fill my days with canoeing on the lake, swimming in the springs and laughing with my friends around a backyard fire. You provide me trails to get from activity to activity, and play me music every night. You inspire me to learn, to create, to dance, to run, to play. And you put me to bed each evening with a sunburn, mosquito bites and a huge smile on my face. Ready to pop up the next day and do it all over again.  
  
But you don't just make me feel like a kid again. You constantly -- magically -- make me think like a kid again. 

You remind me what matters. The size of my house? Nah, you don't really care. (Besides, what kid stays in his cabin all day when there's a whole summer camp out there?) You don't even care about the car I drive. As long as it will carry a kayak and dog hair isn't too difficult to clean out of it, you give it your high recommendation. 

You remind me of the absolute joy of being myself. Of that impenetrable nonchalance we had as children. When we didn't care what swimsuit we were wearing, who saw us belly-flop or what they thought about it. We were having fun. And fun was paramount. 
  
You remind me to be inspired. You give me a renewed ignorance of the impossible. You tear apart the rule book that, for some reason, adults all write for themselves. And you replace it with an assurance that no matter how crazy, strange or odd your little campers want to be, you'll embrace us. 

A year ago, you even let me start my business in a trailer. Other cities would have judged me for this. Laughed at me even. But you did neither. You just smiled, waved me over and considered it one more addition to your fun, weird, inspiring little summer camp. 

Thank you, Austin. 

Chad Swisher 
Big Blue Sky Creative