Now that I live in Texas, where pedestrians are as hard to find as a decent bagel, I have to force a certain whimsicality whenever I cross the street. I place one hand on my hat and the other hand waves in the air and I feel unbelievably and obnoxiously like Anna Karina. So walk around and feel French is exactly what we did today. And since we all know that the French love a good deconstructionist view of narrative, we’ll start with introducing the main characters, following up with giving away the meaning of this post and then move nonchronologically (through thematic chapter titles) detailing our day and the last few weeks.

The characters (besides Doubles & Hats): Jean Luc Godard, Joan Didion (and therefore Robert Graves), and a Dave Eggers cameo.

Today is our last Sunday in the tiny house. We woke up to an unbefitting coastal chill that burned off by noon and left a blue cloudless atmosphere. We headed North to Thunderbird Coffee and got two Thai iced coffees and two Tacodeli breakfast tacos and doodled and wrote for a couple of hours. We walked the Eastside, popping into some local stores that unifyingly featured books, music, and artisan drygoods.

We tromped and bopped around Austin until 2:00pm where we went to a flea market that sat next to the theatre where we had bought tickets to Goodbye to Language at 3:30pm. This was Jean Luc Godard’s latest film Adieu au Language. I won’t go in to too much detail other than saying that the film was full of all that one would expect—rhetorical provocations, pastiche references, literary quotations, and painfully loud classical music. What I didn’t expect was for the true protagonist of the film to be a dog*.

…

It's funny that it was only a few months ago I stood in Washington Square Park in front of Colin Huggins who played his piano on wheels underneath the arch and cried (my only time in public to date) the loss of my beloved New York. I couldn’t leave. I loved New York. I was in love with it. I couldn’t quit it. But I did.

“It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends. I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when New York began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was.”

–Joan Didion

To say that the tiny house has been something significant for us would be an understatement. It’s the opposite of New York. It’s the first place we have lived as adults. It’s aesthetic is both pleasing and strange, cozy and crowded, but it will forever mark a certain disposition for our first few weeks saying goodbye to New York, goodbye to childhood, and goodbye to drinking anything but coffee, hard cider, and red wine. It was not conventional—walking through the rain to the bathroom, sharing our kitchen with Indians, Australians, Israelis, and Frenchmen.

We have loved it. But it is time to leave.

So it was time to leave and the Craigslist search began. Most of the affordable ones in prime locations consisted of stained carpets and sad walls or complexes that just felt strange after growing up in homes, then living in New York, and then a tiny house. It was discouraging and we felt bad about being discouraged. We felt guilty to feel sad about living in an apartment complex that was just so “easy and there.”

Then we went to Houston on a Saturday. We went museum hopping and coffee bopping and popped into bookstores and the like.

We drove around the park and headed home just as it got dark. In the passenger seat I scrolled through Craiglist, feeling dumb searching for “tree house” or “cabin” when suddenly I saw a listing that was familiar to me because my mother, helping me on my search, mentioned it a few days before.

Remodeled Airplane Hangar Loft.

I sent the email of interest and two days later we got the call saying “There were others with better credit, but we knew you all would appreciate it. We want whoever to live in there to create.”

So we signed the lease. Sent the deposit. And made the trip to IKEA.

And so here we are enjoying our last Sunday night in the tiny. It’s been such a representation of cozy—of easing into adulthood. It’s not really a house. It’s not really a room. It’s a small thing—a small this or that—that means so much. It’s record player and Woody Allen films and frustration (but the good kind). It’s injustice and calm. It’s popcorn and house slippers that you have to take on and off every time you need to use the restroom. And so words, like they often do, become inadequate for describing what the “Tiny That” is. So, we just call it Tiny.

The vibe of the Hangar is great. It’s a space to create—clean and minimal. We’ve bought the stuff for a darkroom, books on hold for typography, some fresh journals and a typewriter from home on their way down South. We can’t wait for next weekend.

Here's a sneak peak:

So as T.S. Eliot wrote, “To make an end is to make a beginning,” and so in bidding “adieu,” Godard and young Joan Didion and Doubles and Hats have only made another in his long series of reinventions and renewals.

So here is a big montage of Tiny moments:

*To wrap this all up, here’s a story by Dave Eggers. It encapsulates a lot of what’s going on and it makes Godard’s dog, Roxy make sense. You should read it. It is nice.

Fall Town is a place where the temperature never climbs above 70. The old couple who owns the cheese shop on the corner beckon you to come inside for a tasting as you stroll by, and the dreamy light of the wine shop makes it impossible not to venture in for a bottle of Petit Chapeau. Everyone in Fall Town is content, but not exuberant, and the leaves are dancing and the twinkle lights brighten the trees that line the sidewalk.

See, New York in the fall - particularly Brooklyn in the fall - is fantastical and enchanting. Park Slope, Brooklyn on a crisp autumn day rejuvenates the soul quicker than just about anything - especially while wandering down Berkeley Pl. with a steaming cup o' joe. Out of any other place on our planet Earth, it most resembles this place called Fall Town.

Fall Town has always been a figment of my imagination, but a place that I finally found when I moved to New York. Hats and I got to experience the closest thing to this fantastical utopia simply by trompin' around the streets of Brooklyn on October afternoons. There was a fear that we would lose this magic when we moved from New York to Texas.

So we both got to Texas right when New York cooled down and Texas was at its hottest.

"The only thing that could make me happier is if it were fall right now." Hats said right after she quit her job in favor of a better one. The next morning, we awoke to temperatures below 55 and rain bouncing off our tin roof. After weeks of heat and sweat and turning down the AC as low as possible, we had our coveted "fall."

But fall didn't last long, and temperatures spiked back up again much to our dismay. The trees remained green and the leaves stayed stubbornly attached to their branches. Our taste of fall was fleeting and we started to miss New York, spending our spare time scouring plane tickets.

But instead of flying 1600 miles, we drove 160 and headed to Lost Maples State Park (the name making us think that someone must have had the same sentiments at some point).

It did not disappoint.

The day began with a familiar Saturday visit to Summermoon to pick up a latte for the road.

Along the way we made an unplanned stop at Hye Market whose mantra: "The more things change, the more they stay the same" was found to be true and refreshing and reflective of the small town we dream of.

The Hye Market (which is a diner + post office + tasting room + soon to be brewery) offered us a place to slow down and enjoy what might have been left in the past. We tasted wine and bought a bottle. We tasted hard cider and bought a cup mulled. We saw a checker board and sat down to play--only after taking in the day a little on the rocking chars that sat on the porch overlooking Highway 290.

We arrived at the park after a foggy drive through hills and cattle ranches and were overwhelmed with the colors that painted our Fall Town. The orange leaves and crisp air brought back that sense of enchantment and wonder and all of the goodness that floats around when the world's turned gold and the sky's been muted.

Golden fields.

Quiet creeks.

And lost maples.

We went in search of fall and we found it - and when we got back to Austin, it seemed that all the leaves were a little more red and a little more orange. It's true that much like hygge, little pieces of Fall Town can be found everywhere if you look hard enough.

We went went to Easy Tiger on 6th street the next morning for 2 lattes, 1 danish & 1 baguette and a slow and reflective Sunday.

It did not disappoint.

And just one more thing-- many moons ago, while walking in Park Slope, we popped into the Community Bookstore and found a coffee table book entitled, Schottenfreude: German Words for the Human Condition. We flipped through and found our favorite: herbstlaubtrittvergnugen--which means:

the enjoyable sensation of kicking the autumn leaves.

We clearly love words that can encapsulate a human condition and an entire country's psyche. But more than that we love that these words can be found everywhere and in every place.

“No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face."

Goodbye to Small "That"

Herbstlaubtrittvergnugen: The Enjoyable Sensation of Kicking Through Piles of Autumn Leaves.