...And this trip just keeps on giving. I didn't realize this but apparently I booked my flight to leave tomorrow a.m. (I thought I was leaving tonight.) I'm such a space.

I used my extra time to take Hannah's class (delicious) and have dinner with friends at El Chile. I always feel like my time in Austin is too short -- like I could always spend another week and still not get to see everyone / do everything that I want to do. So, there'll have to be another time.

***

April and I were talking about SXSW and what made this one so good. Because it's grown a lot and we've both been so many times, neither of us really expected much. I think it's that for 4 days you have a single focus: to see music. You spend 96 hours in this free-spirit, vagabond existence where your biggest concern is getting into a show. You kinda give yourself over to the experience of rolling on little sleep, sporadic (and largely unhealthy) meals, in return for these transcendent moments where a band and their crowd are speaking the same, secret language. These unpredictable moments of magic can't be chased; you can only show up and see what happens. And when they do come along, they're like immortality in a bottle. When you're lucky enough to catch those waves, time stands still.

And then just as easily as it came, Sunday's here and everyone's ready for it to be over. Anthony from City Yoga talks about the ice cream effect -- that if you ate ice cream every day for every meal, it wouldn't be a treat. You'd get sick of it. But, because you have those nasty onions to contrast (really, their only purpose), ice cream is special. And that's the way this is: you can't do this forever, you don't want to do this forever -- but when you do, it's the chocolate lava cake from Roy's that takes 30 minutes to make.