My friend BEX came to visit me before I left the East Coast. We got Thai food and drove around drinking coffee at night. In the morning, she drove me to DC where I hopped on a bus to New York City just days before the hurricane hit.

She says she will come stay with me in California in October. Seeya then, punk!!

katie and monty and me on monty’s bookshelf

i love my friends~

I was lying in the dark just now and I suddenly remembered how my friend Harmony once told me her grandparents were in what was essentially a cult, and how every week she would go with them to their “church” to help set up chairs and tables or something. The way she described it, she said it wasn’t nefarious or altogether deranged, but that it certainly fell under the definition of a cult. According to her, these people were brainwashed in a way that was different from other organized religions . . . almost in a sort of otherworldly way, like how Jehovah’s Witnesses come off. (If you’ve never had one come to your door, they speak robotically.) I asked her why she kept going, and she said it made her grandparents happy, and that she somehow got something out of it even though she know it was all horseshit. Harmony lived about twenty miles south of Oakland back then, so I imagine it’s got to be around there. Knowing that, I wonder if I’d be able to figure out where the church is . . . but maybe I don’t want to know.

Last time I saw Harmony, she had me drop her off several houses down from her grandparents’ place because, she said, if her grandfather saw her with a boy, it would be disorienting to him. Apparently it had something to do with his esoteric religion, and I reckon that means such a thing was forbidden. Men and women couldn’t be friends, is how I took it. This was a couple of years ago, and Harmony was probably 25 at the time, so I mean . . . I don’t know. That’s pretty weird!

Harmony had to flee the Bay Area because she got doxxed and I think Some Guy From The Internet showed up at her house. She was pretty shaken and went into hiding for a while. I wonder where she ended up. Well, I reckon that’s one way to escape the Grandpa Cult. . . .

mmhm

prescient

My friend Emma in Tennessee is so sweet! Look at this little package she sent me. Inside was a letter that put a warmth in my heart, and a pin of Cabiria from NIGHTS OF CABIRIA, which is one of my favorite movies. And the pin is from a scene in the movie that, if I thought about it for a minute or two, would make me cry all over again.

TO WIT:

Emma had asked me some time ago for a good movie to watch, and so I told her Cabiria. She said she cried at the end and I told her I had too. So now we got that in common, along with a lot of other things.

And see! She even included a stamp of Dante, FOR WHOM my cat is named. And the stanza on the envelope is from PURGATORIO. Here’s a translation!

do you not know that we are worms and born to form the angelic butterfly that soars without defenses, to confront His judgment?

Damn!!

I am lucky to know someone like Emma. She’s top-shelf, for sure. We met through unusual circumstances. I’m glad we did. My life would be worse without her.

Also: She informed me that her Co – Star account is “bullying” me because it keeps pumping out strangely accurate assessments of me:

A week? Uhhh . . . more like eight years! And I gotta say . . . I love it.

Thanks Emma!!

Good-night!!! ☆彡