"this is some straight up thoreau shit"

Picture an urban oasis, a meandering creek crawling cautiously through the heart of the beast, an organic pulse deep in the center of concrete and steel. Add in the usual accoutrements: graffiti, trash, beer cans, scraps of paper and the like, and you've found 'the nature spot'. Such a place was a saving grace for my compatriots and me last week at SXSW. The mind needs an escape from the barrage of people, music, corporate imagery and endless fliers from time to time, and the nature spot was our last frontier, beautiful and mystical in all the right ways. To sit at sunset with a Lonestar in one hand and a spliff in the other and reflect on the day's events, to calmly to prepare oneself for the impending shitshow of the night, to simply sit in one place for a few minutes... this luxury was something I came to appreciate more than the free food, free beer and free music that was diligently sawing away at our sanities throughout the week. And if you listened hard enough, you could almost hear the roar of cannons and the pitterpatter of gunfire, the subtle but tangible war between the elements that lay at our feet. Nature struggling to exist in a place where it was ultimately unwanted, only laid there for some sick sense of self-assuring aesthetic, as if merely a mockery of itself. The urban tentacles of the city had succeeded far into our oasis, unfolding into some awkward fringe space, but the green grass and murky water hadn't given up yet. Who was winning the battle? It was hard to tell, but it's the fight itself that gives us hope. We'll always be presented with a dialectic of this kind; be forced to comprehend a synthesis which seems more like an uncomfortable reality than a resolution. Still, as I sat cross-legged in the company of friends, the savory taste of Lonestar sliding down my throat, try as I might I couldn't suppress a smile. We might not have had found something pure, but at least we had escaped pavement for a few minutes. In a time when dirt is a precious commodity, I think we were honored to even witness a halfassed attempt to take back what once was.

-ds