growth

as my plane coasted into texas over the barren november landscape i thought to myself, to live in texas is to know a land that lives and dies. i'm not quite sure what that thought meant. in new england the world always seemed to go to sleep under a gentle blanket of snow that unfailingly yawned awake; in california the world never sleeps, encased as it is in a perpetually lit greenhouse. nothing dies but here. here the grass is always in some state of growth and retreat, sinking its roots into the dusty ground from which everything was born. pressing your body into the brambles it scratches you, threatening you with death and forcing you to breathe life all at the same time.