I have to get back to Washington state at some point . . . I promised I would, so I’m looking into it now . . .

Fortunately, the Stardust Diner is still open. It’s in Vancouver, Washington . . . I drove there one day from Camas, after visiting the high school from TWILIGHT. Hey, it was on the way!

From this high vantage point, gazing back into and through the distant past as though it were a window, I know now that those handful of days I spent up there in Washington, having driven all the way from Oakland, were some of the best of my life. I knew it then, too. They were so pure and good . . . I think of them often. I tried to hold on to that original feeling as long as I could. Now I feel a small pain in its absence. I have the curse of remembering.

So what do I do with these days I live out now? The ones that, TRY THOUGH I MAY, just don’t compare to the ones which I am wounded by their remembrance???

To quote the good Doctor:

In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there’s a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots.

Perhaps the peaks of those dreamy HALCYON DAYS are lost forever in the abyss of time, but maybe not . . . and so for now I will do the best I can between high spots, however few there are these days.

I was once happy in that place . . . as long as tickets aren’t $500, I think I will return to it soon, even if it hurts me to remember that time in my life from long ago which is gone now . . .