VIRGINIA

I am at Dulles Airport outside of Washington, DC, and about 30 miles from the town where I spent the first 18 years of my strange sad life. Lord, am I exhausted! This flight was booked for me for reasons I don’t wanna get into, and I’m here or was here for reasons other I don’t wanna get into— but anyway it’s way to early, about 4:40 a.m. now, and never in a trillion years would I have chosen a flight this early for myself . . . and in fact I cannot recall the last time I even had to be at an airport before 10 a.m. or so. Maybe 10 years ago or more.

Well: I will be back in Oakland before noon, which is something, and a benefit of flying west . . . but I first have to stop in Denver, because Southwest always sends me to Denver.

For the last 30 minutes I have been sitting here at my gate listening to Boris’s FLOOD real low and mellow-like, and have noticed a middle-aged woman in a black cape-like outfit staring at me near the windows, and she’s partially hidden behind a column with a dire expression on her face, which makes the whole thing that much more ominous.

Listen: I’m not even kidding when I say that I am so tired and so ready to believe any waking dream-image that dips into my plane of being . . . that I went on believing for way too long that she was Death Herself here to put me in handcuffs and take me to the other world. My fever broke when her teenage son approached her and said “GOT IT MOM” and handed her a bottle of water. Thought I: Can Death breed?? Do mother and child work in tandem?? or is this actually just a creepy flesh-and-blood middle-aged human woman who has nothing better to do than to haunt some witless chump with her dark gaze?? It was then I noticed she was charging her phone using an outlet on the column she had been skulking behind. Ah, well . . . another mystery solved I reckon, and high time I phoned a good doctor— one who accepts Big Huge Piles Of Cash in exchange for a back alley lobotomy and a one-way ticket to a permanent vacation from this godawful nightmare!

We’re about to board. California! and Oakland! Hey, I like that place.

i just found this on my phone and

1) i’d never seen it before and

2) i have no idea why i’m wearing eyeliner

(i assume laura rokas took it, as she is my most frequent bedfellow!!)

my little sister took this picture of me and all my friends

my favorite part about being back in virginia this weekend is how everyone tailgates you with their high-beams on

also everywhere you go, people are just staring vacantly at walls and shit

also it’s true: people really do just sit in their cars in parking lots with the engine on looking at their phones or staring at brick walls . . . a phenomenon i committed to the collective memory of the world two years ago when i was trapped here for reasons i have now forgotten!

this sucks lol

well: it’s back to good ol california on sundee mornin provided the ghost of christmas past that is this place and the people in it don’t conspire to kill me first . . . conspire to stare vacantly into my horrified eyes until i explode!!

stayed tuned y’all

next up: your local weather forecast

bad news: it’s acid rain and nuclear fallout from here on out!!!!

nah lol

Just before I left California to spend a disastrous year in Portland, I was at home in my house in Oakland eating PITA BREAD. I was tearing off little pieces and dipping it in hummus. At some point I tore off a piece that resembled the state of California. I noted its significance at the time even though I did not yet understand what exactly it signified. Anyway it looked like this:

Months later—after I had spent all my money moving to Portland, and thus had sealed my fate, making escape impossible—I was walking through Belmont when I saw a gum wrapper on the sidewalk. It was shaped liked California. It looked like this:

Right then and there, in the aftermath of days of rain and no place to go, I regarded the gum wrapper and remembered the pita bread. I groaned. I thought: California! Why did I leave you???

Does the universe talk to us? Were I fatalistic, I guess I might think that the pita bread meant “don’t leave California”, while the gum wrapper meant “go back to California.” I don’t really think that. Though I have for many years publicly (and embarrassingly) shared my paranoid delusions, hallucinations, waking nightmares, and beliefs that someone or something is watching and / or dreaming us, I don’t actually think an unseen cosmic hand was communicating anything to me, or guiding me, or whatever. I mean . . . it is kinda weird! And I did end up back in California anyway . . . so, hell, mission accomplished, California-shaped inanimate objects!!!!

drinkin a fuckin beer and kickin the fuckin pacific ocean on some beach in oregon the name of which i have forgotten

oh no

i found myself in breath of the wild