It’s been over 6 months at this place and I love it. I keep trying to figure out how I’m going to travel within the end of this year and into the next without giving up this apartment. There’s so many places I want to go but I’m happy I’ve made my home in San Antonio. I’ve definitely come to the conclusion that I want to live in SA all my life. But I want something like Denver was to me. An extended vacation; a place I can call home for a 6 months to a year. I really loved Denver and I keep contemplating if I want to move back, but it’s time I try something new without giving up the place that’s made me who I am. I love Texas. I love being a Southern Belle, hot weather included. I just want to reach out and see what else is out there rather than being stuck.

I’m pretty excited about all the ways I can get creative in my apartment and all the ways I can move beyond it.

(Source: testamentsbetrayed)

Often I sit around San Antonio and ask myself why did I leave Denver. After this short weekend’s trip up there I finally understood though. And I understood it in the most positive way.

My two days at Titwrench were phenomenal to say the least. I was terribly ill the entire time (thanks endometriosis!) but it felt like the most important experience to have. Here was this festival set up by this amazing woman who is the ultimate organizer. And the wonderful thing is that she’s a fan like anyone else who just wanted to see more. And so she did something about it! Then of course, there were all the amazing women who played and were apart of the festival. I was seriously in awe, and sometimes even intimidated, by these female artists. It was almost as though I couldn’t even wrap my head around it. Before I always understood female empowerment but maybe seeing it in this specific form made it more real than ever before. That sounds dumb because it’s not like I don’t have strong women in my life. And all these marches with UniteHere, I see more women than I do men. And of course there are heroes like Angela Davis and et cetera that you hear about so often. But being a witness to it at this festival with such diversity in music and so much effort being put in to make it happen felt like the best example of how things are changing in the feminist community. It makes the movement so multifaceted and you don’t get to see that often. It’s always the same old arguments. But here was a chance to do something. The festival was about action more than talk and I loved that.

Can I also say I found out about a lot of awesome bands that really blew my mind! My favorites that came out of it were Tine who just brought the funk. Sin Desires Marie who apparently played their last show. BUMMER! It was the same drummer for both of those bands and she was definitely one of the biggest reasons I liked either of them. Married in Berdichev was an unexpected enjoyment. And I rarely go to shows where you can just sit or lay on the floor while listening to live music. Her performance was both intense and serenely beautiful. Christina the Hun, in contrast, was both hilarious and simply interesting for using just her voice and drums. I couldn’t understand how she did it but she did! Here’s a link to her performance a year ago. I only got to attend the first two days so to be able to round up my short stint there with Tulip Wars was the best. They were incredibly fun! When I got back to San Antonio, my immediate reaction was to look up all these bands and find a way to make them apart of my playlist. I’m so thankful for all the new music I experienced. Denver, wow, y’all really have something special up there.

And that brings me back to why I left. Honestly, I was really lazy in Denver and when I go back, I realize all the things I should have done. But I also find Denver to be a really odd place where I don’t want to do anything but watch its craziness unfold. I find the city to be haunting. Haunted by the living. Denver is in the smack dab middle of nowhere and despite it’s growth and despite it actually being a real city, it’s almost a ghost town. The absolute perfect place to have an awesome counterculture. You have booming California on one side of them and, I don’t know, maybe Chicago on the other side and they’re not being influenced by any of that. At least not in some major way. And for whatever reason, that scared me. Granted there are a ton of other reasons Denver is scary, but I felt both lost and confined in such a city. It was both a blessing and a curse. It was almost a compounded feeling to already being a young person so far from home. I was saying, thanks Denver, for making me feel that way even more with your oddness. Could I have felt that way if I moved or went to school in Austin, NYC, Chicago, Atlanta? Maybe. But Denver is definitely bizarro world and I was both ready for it and not. I’m extremely grateful for such an experience but I’m happy to not live there anymore. I’m happy to experience that city on a lesser level now.

I hope I can continually go places and be apart of events like this. I hope I can temporarily stay in a lot of cities and understand their scenes and culture a little better. I always speak of these “extended vacations” because I’d honestly want to go somewhere and spend 3-6 months so that I could see it more for what it is. I would have never heard of this festival had I not done this nor would I have met an amazing person (Sara Century!). I got more than the tourist perspective. I want to meet all these amazing people doing amazing things for their community. People being proud of where they come from while also criticizing it and making steps to change it. Being able to watch a city change while being an outsider but also being apart of it. That’s what I got to do in Denver a few years back and I would love to continue to do that in other places across the country. It makes me love San Antonio more. And I have to say, humanity doesn’t look so bad either when you put yourself out there to new things.

Thank you Denver. You’re an amazing place. Thanks Titwrench. Keep growing, keep going. Keep inspiring.

First trip planned so far. Off to Denver for Titwrench for three days. Got a good deal on flights too. So excited to go back to my 2nd home!

New York City so far in the distance though. I’ll try to make it work.

OYE MIRA!

Two amazing things came in the mail today. One: a lovely NYC postcard from the even lovelier Nastia! Her write-up of that adventure is here en español & sounds like a pretty awesome spring break. The thing I love most is that she seems to always travel with her mom and I love vacationing with my momma too. It makes me happy to get her postcards!

Second: A crazy good zine sent to me by my friend Sara Century in Denver! She plays music, she draws comics, and she’s on tour. Metropopopalyptico! is in its 3rd stage. It even came with a CD that I have yet to listen to but I’m sure it will be great.

Life seems to be going a little too right right now but instead of focusing on my inevitable downfall, I shall bask in being very happy with all the goodness around me!

The weirdest thing happened the other day. While taking money out of the ATM, during the transaction screen Wells Fargo told me happy anniversary. That’s I’ve been with Wells Fargo for three years! Yay!!…I guess. But then I thought about it and remembered I got a Wells Fargo account because they had no Bank of America up in Denver and I needed a bank to cash my checks from the recent job I had just gotten after two weeks of living there. So three years ago I up and moved to Denver, Colorado out of nowhere, not knowing that much about the city except that I wanted to leave Texas and go to school for a while somewhere else.

It was a very exciting time in my life and although I was mostly broke, I met some wonderful characters, saw beautiful scenery, and got to live on my own for the first time. I also learned the art of enjoying being alone. It was amazing! So here’s a photo of my first fall in the Midwest or just West (debate amongst yourselves). I love San Antonio but I think after a year, I will be very excited to leave again and experience another city or town. SA will always be home and I find the beauty in how lame we can be. And it will be interesting what will happen over this next year back in my hometown. I hope to do lots of things. I just hope some of those things will launch me into other places.

I think about Denver a lot and wonder if it would’ve worked out better if I had a plan. But I wonder if I would’ve met as many interesting characters with that same plan. I miss the snow and cute little shops. I miss living in a city where people were quite outdoorsy. I miss the parks and the insane amount of homeless people. I miss Leya. I miss learning how to breathe in such a high altitude. I don’t miss the food. Food is better in San Antonio. I do miss the lightrail. And the museums. Denver was special and I’m thinking about doing summer there. I’d like to relive it again.