꩜ On Becoming Recognizable Again

Okay. So. My last dispatch. Easily the hardest one to write, and not because I ran out of things to say — if you've read the first two (or if you know me personally), you know that's never been my problem. It's that none of these entries were written with a clear thesis. A little all over the place, a little unfiltered, just a highlight reel of the most memorable things that happened to me in Houston. Which, in hindsight, might be the most honest way to write about a city anyway.

Quick recap for anyone just tuning in: I landed in Houston a month ago knowing absolutely nobody. No built-in friend group, no family down the street, nothing. Just me, a lease, and a very optimistic idea that I'd "find myself" — cliché, I know, but stay with me. I spent more nights than I'll admit questioning that decision. And yet. I think I learned more about myself in this one month than in the twenty-three years before it. Statistically inconvenient, but true.

Even with my internship this summer, I walked in a little differently than the rest of my cohort. Yes, I was running the summer education program at the Museum of Fine Arts — admin tasks, wasting absolutely way too much paper. A seven-year-old who once asked me why the paintings got to hang up and she didn't. (I still don't have a good answer for her. If you do, my inbox is open.) But honestly? The programming was never the interesting part. The interesting part was investigating whether these institutions actually believe the mission statements they publish, or just like the way they read.

Most people fall into one of two camps with museums and cultural institutions — either they fall in love with all of them, or they get cynical about all of them. I decided to do the annoying third thing: hold a genuine standard, and see who actually clears it. Spoiler — almost nobody does. In Houston, exactly two places did.

A Menil trustee named Allison Leland told me the Menil was different — free every single day, genuinely integrated into the neighborhood around it, and she herself advocates honorably for that community. Naturally, I had to see for myself. I ended up on the tree swing outside for an embarrassing amount of time. Sketched in the branches. Wandered the collection for hours with no phone in my hand, because they don't allow them — which meant, for once, I wasn't documenting the art. I was just in it, with great company, and I was in awe. Genuinely, annoyingly, in awe.

The other place was Project Row Houses, out in the Third Ward — a string of shotgun houses turned into galleries, artist residencies, and a program for young mothers, founded back in '93 by a handful of Black artists who decided the neighborhood didn't need saving, it needed investing in. Nobody there was performing community. It just was the community, in the most literal sense there is — houses, on a block, doing exactly what houses are supposed to do for the people who live near them. I walked in expecting to look at art. I left thinking about infrastructure instead. Which, if Dispatch 01 taught me anything, might actually be the whole point.

Accessible isn't the same as integrated.

A lot of places are technically open to the public and still not of the public. There's a difference, and once you see it you can't unsee it. So the real question I'm bringing home: what does art programming look like when it's community-centric for real, not just on a grant application? Because if we can't all benefit from it, I don't really see the point.

Because underneath all of it, especially the "community-centric" buzzwords we've seen on every event flyer, it was never really about programming. It's about whether we build anything, anywhere, on the assumption that people deserve access to what's good, or whether we keep dressing exclusion up as curation and calling it taste. A door only means something if it's actually attached to a house somebody can live in. That's true of institutions. It's true of cities, and it's true of people. Honestly, how many of us keep the good stuff behind a velvet rope, saved for whoever's already proven they've earned it? I'd like to stop doing that. To myself, and to whoever's standing outside.

Which, if I'm honest, is a lesson I know intimately. For some real vulnerability — my sister, one of my favorite humans on this earth, has basically been raising me since I was fourteen. Life has a funny way of assigning you roles before you're old enough to question them, and mine was to become someone who could always figure it out. It left me seeing the world a little differently than a lot of my peers. More nuance. Less patience for pretending things are simple when they're not. I made my peace with that a long time ago. What I never quite made peace with was what it turned me into: self-sufficient to a fault, borderline allergic to needing anyone.

Funny enough, that's exactly what Dispatch 01 me was already answering. What remains when you strip away every role you've ever held? It turns out the answer isn't nothing. It's just you. Finally forced to find out whether or not you actually enjoy your own company — which, if you couldn't tell, I do. Maybe a little too much.

You can be the hero of your own story and still need someone to hold the door. Those aren't opposites — I just used to think they were. Maybe that's why I have such a craving for permanence and stability, projecting it onto everyone and everything in my life — giving some things more meaning than they've earned, just wanting them to live up to it somehow. I used to mistake that for independence: never letting people matter too much. Houston was the first place that made me sit with the bill for it. ₊‧₊˚⊹

Here's what's coming home in my suitcase — metaphorically speaking, besides all the woo-woo introspective learning I'm blaming entirely on the retrograde:

The people who make you feel most at home are rarely the ones asking you to become someone else first. Community isn't a word, it's a practice, and most of us (myself included, at times) want the benefits of community without doing any of the actual villaging. Tacos should never cost more than $2.50 (even that's a stretch), arts programming and cultural institutions should be free, or at the very least benefit the communities in which they reside, & public transportation needs to be top-tier if your city isn't built safely for pedestrians.

I genuinely cannot rank Texas. Or Houston, specifically. Back to the nuance thing — there's simply too much to hold at once. But something tells me this summer wasn't my last time in H-Town. ₊‧₊˚⊹

It was the little things for me, really. Sparking up a conversation with whoever's next to you at the bus stop that's always running fifteen minutes behind. The family running the corner store who started charging me the regular price without me ever asking for it. The security guard at the club who told me to text him when I got home safe — unprompted, like it cost him nothing, which I guess is the whole point. The bartender at my local dive (shout-out Jethro's) who had my order ready before I even sat down by visit three. Even the landlords — yuck, obviously, always yuck — taught me something about who this city decides to protect, and who it makes prove themselves first.

My sister has been holding a door open for me since I was fourteen, long before I understood what a door was even for. I think that might be the real inheritance. Not independence. The door.

Maybe that's what I was looking for in museums all along — not perfect programming or perfect institutions, but places, and people, that leave the door open a little wider than they found it.

Now that we're here, I still don't know if I went to Houston to find myself. Looking back, I think I went to become recognizable to myself again. Cities have a funny way of doing that. Sometimes you're handed a map, other times you're handed a mirror, and every once in a while, if you're really paying attention, they hand you another person — or people — who change the way you read both.

And now there's a new door open, and it happens to lead somewhere else. Cities change, seasons change, people come and go — but the ones you love stay with you no matter how far the door leads. That's the one I'm walking through next.

The (paraphrased, because I'm not actually sure how copyright works :p) wise words of one of my favorite comfort characters, Carrie Bradshaw & a little nod to where I'm heading next ;)

⭑꩜｡ until next time

Thank you Houston.

Field Notes from Texas · Dispatch 03 · Houston, TX