November 2019 – ☆ STARSAILOR ☆

Uh . . . oops! I went and sliced my hand open while cleaning one of Dante’s cat food cans, AND THUS, I have been unable to write the long thing I have been thinking about writing for some time now . . . the thing about moving to Berlin, and all that, as a permanent home instead of a temporary one, and on and on. It’s coming! I just need to give this thing a day or so to heal. I am able to write a little, though hell, I reckon the thing I got to say calls for something more than that.

The gist is that I’m finally out of here. And listen: I’m not happy about it necessarily. Thing is, I love Oakland a whole lot, and I’m going to miss the hell out of it. I have been going on nine or ten mile walks every night for probably two weeks now. I feel like I need to see all of it again before I leave it. Something I do before I leave any place I have lived in is to take pictures of my room as it was just before I packed everything up. I have tried to do the same on my walks, which is to say I have been visiting and photographing all the places where I spent my life here for the last seven years. And during these walks I have tried to go to all of my favorite restaurants one last time: Koryo, Wally’s, La Mission, Tuk Tuk, Sliver, et cetera. (Quince Cafe is being renovated because a fucking car crashed into the kitchen, and Smokehouse on Telegraph literally caught on fire and has yet to reopen, so I gotta skip those for now~) Ugh!! It’s so sad though.

Next week, Dante and I are moving into Laura’s apartment in San Francisco for the last few days we’re here. We’re gonna have a big Thanksgiving thing and then watch a bunch of movies. By that time, I suppose I will have finished my final tour of Oakland. I plan to see as much of it as I can, right up until the last minute, which is at some point Wednesday night. A few days later, on Monday, being the second day of December, I’m getting on an airplane out of SFO and flying to Amsterdam for an hour layover, and then on to Berlin, where I have rented an apartment for the first few weeks of my being there.

WHAT IT BOILS DOWN TO is that all I really want is a higher standard of living. If you’re not rich in the Bay Area, or really most anywhere in the United States anymore, it’s difficult for it to get much better than you already got it. I have seen the full spectrum of my life here, and what it could possibly be, and so on. In Berlin I can have cheap rent and cheap public transportation and socialized healthcare and ancient Soviet structures and falafel at 3 a.m. and snow. It just makes sense is all! I will flee this place and become an ex-pat weirdo for the rest of my life, because even when I’m feeling rotten as hell, I can fly to London or Prague or Stockholm in an hour or so for something like €40. What do I got here? I have astronomical rent and pissed-filled BART and stagnant wages. There are a lot of good things in orbit of these bad things, but it’s getting more and more difficult to justify hanging around in the face of it all.

I don’t know! I can’t think about this anymore tonight or I’ll throw up. Really, it makes me sick to think about leaving Oakland and the people I know here. I’m terrified, though what can you do. For some reason I know like a dozen people in Berlin so I’ll probably be OK. Somehow I always end up figuring it out, so at least there’s that.

Yeah, well . . . I’ll write more when my hand has healed, and when The Fear has subsided some, hopefully twelve or so hours from now.

!!!

☆彡

ACHTUNG!!

I AM PERMANENTLY
MOVING TO BERLIN
IN TWO WEEKS

ACHTUNG!!

I AM PERMANENTLY MOVING TO BERLIN IN TWO WEEKS

I AM PERMANENTLY
MOVING TO BERLIN
IN TWO WEEKS