Between Houston and San Antonio

Trying to share a little more of my writing so I can jump back into it full-time over the next months. There's a drawer in my desk with all kinds of things I've been writing over the last 10 years or so and I'd like to type some of them up for this audience to help spring me back into this. Here's a small thing I wrote while on a trip to see my Uncle Steve in San Antonio before he passed from cancer some years ago. 

"The ride between Houston and San Antonio or to Austin reminds me of what I imagined real Texas to be. Cows spotted roadside about 30 miles outside Houston proper: chewing their cud, unconcerned about the massive move of people and metal a few feet from their grassy posts. Stretches and stretches of green laced with yellows and blues and pinks. The sky as big as I'd imagined and then stretched along the edges in pale grays and whites. We're on the concrete way that's dotted with billboards of streaking color. Between two big cities, but longing all the way for a small town spot, good barbecue and some talking on one of those broken-down porches. I can imagine myself there forever between cities, them just out of reach to be convenient. A porch swing. A different page in my book. Maybe one day between San Antonio and Houston." 

I loved the car ride between Houston and San Antonio and Houston and Austin. Inside what some consider the "nothingness" of this drive, I was often captivated by the scenery and the things I was drawn to photograph if we stopped. But we didn't stop. We didn't make time and that was the problem. We were rushing between cities and just generally rushing through life. My uncle's stay in San Antonio gave me so much to think about on the way back to Houston. Why were we going so fast? Why were we always rushing? Why did things have to constantly be on warp speed? That notion stuck and stuck and stuck with me. Especially after our kids were born. Time is precious and the best things are accomplished in simple things. Maybe it was finally time for a change of mindset and a look inward. I've tried pinpointing when the seeds of all the big changes of the past few years set in. This scrap of paper might just be an origin story.