Fort Worth, TX

I wish, I so wish, I was more obsessed with writing in this blog. So obsessed that it makes my insides feel like Julie Andrews on a hill in the Bavaria. (By the way, how awesome was Lady Gaga's tribute*?) Instead, I obsess over dumb shit like boots. For two days I research boots online like it's my j.o.b. I'll allow the first day's tomfoolery: is this cute? is that the real colour? can I walk an hour in those?? The second day, however, that was a pure obsession. I had traversed the land of That Might Be Cute and back. I had scoured sites across the pond and back. I had even ventured into the no man's land that is Bergdorf Goodman and hastily back. Now, it just boiled down to price and availability -- to no avail. Today is the third day, I wake up still slightly obsessed, note the post I'm working on and think, "I bet it would be cheaper to fly to Fort Worth, get a custom boot made there, then fly back." Tempted, very tempted.

San Antonio, TX

San Antonio suffers from extreme parallax. (Don't worry, it's not a plague. It's actually a cool scientific phenomenon.) My cousin thinks "It's a great city!" My friend, "A small, boring town". And a gent I met recently, "It's nice..." See? Extreme. What do I think of it? Well, to his "nice" with three ellipses I concurred without a contraction and an exclamation* "It is nice! Come on, isn't the River Walk beautiful? I haven't seen anything like it in the states."

Marfa, TX

Marfa, Marfa, Marfa!

Oh, I tried. I really did, but I couldn't resist the predictable play on words because I felt exactly like Jan after my two days in Marfa. Which is crazy since I was once considering a blind move here. See the space between these two brackets < > ? That's how close I was. So to begin this post with an overused lament years later just doesn't seem right. Sadly, though, it is. I mean, this picture says it all. The woman in pink was not shielding her eyes from the setting sun, she was shielding her profile from my dinky camera.

As someone who prefers to keep their soul, I get it. In my early teens, I would ruin nearly every family portrait by sticking my hand in front of my face on "cheese". I of all people cannot be critical of her gesture, but couldn't she have turned around or stepped aside? I don't know, maybe she's a celebrity and is fed up with the paparazzi. But you're wearing hot pink at an artist's reception in a gallery that premises photography...