I have been talking about doing this for at least two years and, hey presto, I finally got around to creating a page for my RENT-A-STARSAILOR SERVICE. Essentially: you can request me to do something for you, and I will materialize in front of you like a genie and do the thing for free. I like going places for the sake of it, and I like helping people, so I figure that’s as good a reason as any to do this. Last year alone I cat-sat for four of my friends, three of whom were far away in Belgium and and Oregon and Northern California, and so gladly I went to those places. It is always a privilege to me when someone trusts me with their cat. Being able to hang out with that cat is reward enough for me.

One of the other things you can ask me to do is be your wedding date . . . I love going to weddings. For god’s sake, let me know if you need me for that. I will book a plane ticket in seconds. I’ve got a black suit and everything. You can pretend I’m your boyfriend so your grandma will stop asking when you’re going to get a boyfriend. And later when she inquires why she has has not seen me since the wedding, you can just tell her I died or something. Well, maybe don’t say that . . .

Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, my friend Leila asked me if I would drive a sixteen-foot moving truck filled with all her earthly possessions from Baltimore to New Orleans. I was living alone in an industrial wasteland in Mount Vernon, paying my bills with money I’d got from doing medical experiments for the US government, and I supposed my life was over. Leila didn’t have a driver’s license and I’d always wanted to go to New Orleans, so of course I agreed. Her cat was in the cab with us. We drove through small towns in Mississippi that made that place in Deliverance look like Disneyland. Against all odds, I safely delivered Leila in New Orleans, and then went home and dealt with the wreckage of my life. Later I asked her why she had chosen me of all people, and she said, “Because I knew you’d say yes.” She wasn’t wrong!

Though yeah: I am well aware this whole enterprise is kind of goofy. But then so what? Kafka said the meaning of life is that it ends. Sure. But if you’ll forgive my sentimentality for a moment, the meaning of my life is to help people. My biggest problem is that I find it difficult to justify my existence. So as long as my guardian angel still watches over me, I have to fill the hours. I may as well make myself useful.

And when my task is complete, I will vanish into the darkness of the wasteland like Mad Max at the end of ROAD WARRIOR. When I find out what comes after that, you’ll be first to know.

Everyone’s talking about World War III . . . but I’m over here planning Starsailor World Tour III! Because what else am I supposed to do with my life, now that I live in the shadow of it? I made this cute little image last year before I left Berlin to see the world once again. I suppose I will make a new cute little image in the next few days . . . I just gotta figure out where I’m going. Certainly I’ll be up and down the East Coast, and I’ll spend time in New York and California, and on and on. I’m definitely going back to Vermont. And as long as the Canadians let me in, I’ll go back to Canada on a journey through the past. I love Canada. I go there like three times a year. Actually, last time I was in Canada, which was Christmas Eve, returning to Seattle from Vancouver, I was detained and held by US Border Patrol (and not the Canadians) for reasons that were never really explained to me. The Canadian border guards I spoke to in Quebec and BC were just fine with me. They were friendly and said, “Come on in!” and waved me through just like they always do. Yet my own country distrusted me. On the Washington-British Columbia border I was questioned by these dudes who had bad haircuts and guns and bulletproof vests and who treated me like a criminal simply for traveling and visiting my friends. And this was before that guy took office! Next time they’ll probably throw me into a fucking dungeon in Château d’If.

Anyway . . . I have been writing a long entry about how Nobody Knows How To Hang Out Anymore . . . it keeps getting long and longer, and perhaps I ought to just finish it and post it here. And so saying, I don’t want to repeat myself when my grander rumination on this emptiness I feel is imminent, though here’s this: I am pretty lonely anymore. Though you know me as a worldwide celebrity adored by millions, for some reason I cannot make friends in this city. Trying to hang out with people in Berlin feels like catching a ghost with a fishing net—which is to say, you can’t do it. The people here are intangible. You meet them and then they’re gone like the morning mist, like it never happened. You wonder if you dreamed them up out of desperation and then were betrayed by that dream. And so I am alone here in my high tower in Schöneberg, muttering to myself beneath the glow of my galaxy light. Outside the westerly gale rattles my flower boxes. Often days pass without my uttering a single word to another human being. I’m serious as a heart attack. Even the friendly cellar spiders who usually guard the corners of my apartment have vanished. No one invites me to do anything nor do they reply when I ask them to do anything. It’s becoming increasingly difficult not to take this sort of thing personally. Being this isolated makes you feel like you’re dead. Meanwhile, whenever I’m traveling around the world with just a backpack and a duffel bag, as I am wont to do, people treat me as though Santa Claus has come to town. That’s a great feeling! I sure could go for that feeling right about now.

My intention was to try to establish a life for myself here, but what am I supposed to do? Just rot up here? That’s what I’m doing, by the way. Heaven help me, I got needs.

I’m waiting to hear back from this company in the Bay Area who wants to hire me to do freelance writing for them. Apparently they’re finalizing my contract. And once I sign on the line which is dotted, my income will double, and then I’m gonna take the money and run. I’m going to walk the earth again for the third time in as many years on account of my life has been an empty hell for reasons that you maybe already know, and if not, I am not going to write about them here nor anywhere ever again if I can help it because I’ll feel compelled to jump off my balcony. I’m sitting at my desk across from my balcony and the temptation to jump is already too great as it is. It would not take much more. And I have to finish my book first!

I feel like I’m nagging. And here I am once again talking about my own premature death. Forgive me. I have no hate in my heart. I’m not angry at anyone. When I really get down to it, I just wish I could watch a movie or go on a walk with a girl. Seriously, that alone would light the lanterns in my eyes again if such a thing happened tomorrow night. But sure as you’re born, it won’t happen this week nor the next. I’d bet a wad of cash on it. Is that asking so much though? To spend time with a friendly stranger? I don’t know, it seems like it . . .

Well! Time to visit The Other World for a little while!!

A gone shipmate, like any other man, is gone for ever; and I never met one of them again. But at times the spring-flood of memory sets with force up the dark River of the Nine Bends. Then on the waters of the forlorn stream drifts a ship—a shadowy ship manned by a crew of Shades. They pass and make a sign, in a shadowy hail. Haven’t we, together and upon the immortal sea, wrung out a meaning from our sinful lives? Good-bye, brothers! You were a good crowd. As good a crowd as ever fisted with wild cries the beating canvas of a heavy foresail; or tossing aloft, invisible in the night, gave back yell for yell to a westerly gale.

joseph conrad (from a book whose title i ought not write out here)

It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.

You paid some way for everything that was any good. I paid my way into enough things that I liked, so that I had a good time. Either you paid by learning about them, or by experience, or by taking chances, or by money. Enjoying living was learning to get your money’s worth and knowing when you had it. You could get your money’s worth. The world was a good place to buy in. It seemed like a fine philosophy. In five years, I thought, it will seem just as silly as all the other fine philosophies I’ve had.

Perhaps that wasn’t true, though. Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.

the sun also rises