i’ve mentioned this before, but every time i go walking at night, i’ll find at least one house that looks really cozy and nicely laid out. and i’ll think “man i’ll bet those people are cool. i wish i knew them so that i could hang out with them in their cool house” lol

(alternatively, i also see houses lit with hot fluorescent overhead lightbulbs and i’ll think “damn how are y’all living like this”)

uh, wow! i felt a warm cosmic current wash over my soul when i imagined this being a real thing. i would watch this every day of my life lol

every time i think about nights of cabiria i get really emotional. it is so good that i can’t believe something like it exists. i wept when it ended. and i’m not alone!

sweet cabiria 🥺

ok i’m going to sleep now

i want to be somewhere warm and beautiful at night with my friends instead of feeling like these are the final days of my life

one of the first few times i hung out with madeleine, she asked me to come get her from this really bad party she was at. it was somewhere in manassas, right off sudley road and down the street from the hospital where i was born. and i remember i picked her up in my red jeep cherokee and we drove to the woods and parked and got out and walked all night. that was a good night. we were always doing stuff like that.

come to think of it, i have a lot of stories where someone called me at night and asked me to come get them from a bad party, and we ended up going somewhere to walk around instead. man, i love it when that happens. i guess i’m just the kind of person who is always awake at night and down to drive. that’s the kind of person you would call if you caught a ride to a bad party and wanted to leave early.

i miss it!!

man, the secret tragedy of my life is that i just can’t get past asking myself why i exist and why i’m ever doing anything at all. you know? i’ll just be walking around and i’ll think, “why do i have to be here? can i just go home now?” we all know the question doesn’t matter since the answer cannot be known. it could be anything, and many people are able come up with an answer for themselves, or at least ignore it. i guess i’m just no good at answering the question to myself. listen: i get my kicks. there’s a lot of stuff i love and would miss if it were gone. it hurts me all the time to think about that. i reckon i just wish i felt more of an attachment to being alive. even on good days, it’s just not enough for me that the thing is good in and of itself without any further explanation. why can’t i just enjoy it as a series of events? i almost get to that point of accepting the thing for what it is: a temporary dream that can sometimes be made better or worse. but then i spiral away from the simplicity of that thought, and i almost feel nauseous. it just IS. and it could all just as well be otherwise. that anything in my life exists feels like a total fluke. i don’t know where most of it came from. in a way it’s a sort of circus to me and i’m lost in it. i am glad to have met so many good people and to have had a strange life. that right there is the head and tail of it. and then what? that’s what i can’t get past and probably never will. i wonder is all, i really do, and it only seems to make it worse. like the fella said:

Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of the demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.

i’m obsessed with that great mystery. i so want to see behind the veil. but i have a dark suspicion that maybe this is it.

what can i do? i suppose i will mind my own business, and contribute as little pain and suffering to the world as humanly possible—and, as often as possible, ease the pain and suffering of others. otherwise all you can really do is endure it and make terms with it. i wish there were some other way, because i love so much of it, and still it just feels like shadows in the fog to me.

Everybody is looking for someone who can stand up in the wind. It is lonely standing up and crowded lying down. I refuse to be an anchor for other people’s dreams—but then I refuse to anchor mine to anyone else. So I have no choice but to stand up and piss into the wind.

i love oakland. i miss my friends

just another freak, in the freak kingdom (etc)

i’m at this house in salt lake city, and earlier tonight i went out back because it was so nice and warm outside. and blowing through the yard from where i don’t know was a perfume i had not smelled in many years. it reminded me of my older sister tara. and i felt like crying