My love affair with Austin

Woke up in love with Austin. It is a city of rolling hills, and smart people. Bluebonnets dot the roadsides as colorfully as the panhandlers do. It's a place where Texas traditions meet urban youth. Where sophistication is pared down, and where the packaging isn't perfect - but the magic inside is gloriously flawed perfection.

Austin is me. Educated, ethnic, complex, young-at-heart - full of contradiction. Beautiful when it doesn't try too hard. It doesn't have the glamour of New York, the pedigree of Boston or the glitz of LA - yet stands toe to toe all the same. It is cloaked in laid back unpretensiousness, and when it tries to be more than it is, we know it. Austin does not try to impress, and yet it manages to do so all the same.

Austin is mystical to me. The top of Mount Bonnell at sunrise and driving over the Mansfield Dam bridge at sunset are glimpses of the sweet, serene freedom of this town. Where tattoos and cowboy hats comingle, where Mexican food and fine dining in blue jeans aren't at odds. Where moms with bobs and capris buy groceries next to slacker cool, goat-eed writers and musicians. Austin draws the artists, the seekers, the optimists, the mavericks, the good, the bad and the ugly - and that's exactly as it should be.

Austin is home. In more ways than one.