I am supposed to leave here soon. To be honest I don’t really want to leave anymore. In the beginning this place felt like some sort of weird jail cell . . . like being under house arrest at Bag End. That doesn’t sound so bad, really! And it isn’t I don’t reckon. I have a routine here now, as weird and dumb and disjointed as it is.

I stay up very late reading books or blowing through Akira Kurosawa flicks. I do this until 6 or 7 in the morning. If you can believe it the sun isn’t even up then. I can tell it’s coming and I don’t want to see it so I close the blinds and try to fall asleep. I wake up many times throughout the morning. I can’t sleep for more than an hour or two. Around 11 a.m. Dante sits on my chest and stares at me until I get up and feed him. Then I go back to sleep until I wake up again.

Around 1 or 2 p.m. I usually start moving. I make coffee and eat toast and eggs and cut an orange in half and eat that too. I write a little story or tweak my website. Usually I make myself walk around the neighborhood after that. The sun begins to set around 4:30–5 so I really only see it for a couple hours. I try to see the sun while it is still there. That is the only time I want to see the sun.

My mother has been out of town twice since I’ve been here and so she leaves her car with me. I can fill the tank for eight dollars. When I have the car I work at home until 10 or 11 p.m. and then I get in the car and drive around until well after midnight. I go to the same places every time, through the backroads in Nokesville making several laps around the farms and fields there. After I have passed my old house four times I go home.

On my birthday I drove in a straight line through several counties. I drove by dark houses and dark businesses. I drove by empty horse fields. I ended up driving for probably four hours. That was my birthday present to myself. I had me a good old time. Then I went home and got drunk and fell asleep. Since then, who the heck knows, man.

I’m going back to the West Coast in two weeks. If this house were a spaceship I would just fly it over there. But it ain’t so I gotta it behind. I have a plan I think. I don’t know.