*its (how embarrassing)

Got stoned to the bone and watched MCCABE & MRS. MILLER, which I love but had not seen in years. It reminded me of around this time in November 2018 when Matt and I watched it probably four or five times in two weeks, or else we’d have it on in the background while doing other things. We missed McCabe when he wasn’t bumbling around on our TV. I can’t help help it: even now, many years later, I am still endeared by McCabe and identify with him . . . he is of course a sort of fool, just like me. I see myself in his foolishness. I am the same kind of fool.

That November was pretty rough for me for reasons that don’t matter anymore, and which were almost certainly all my fault anyway, but it does not bring me any despair to think about that time now, though for some years it did. The only pain I feel from its remembrance now is the pain of knowing that whole era is long gone. It was a good era . . . maybe it was the best one, if you really want to know. I tried to hold on to it as long as I could. I bent it till it broke off . . . bled it till it ran dry! And yet still one day it slipped away. I turned around and it was gone from me. Maybe sometimes that’s just how the thing goes. Hey man, I tried . . .

I am thinking of all the strange little stretches of my life I have experienced since that November in Oakland . . . there have been so many of them. Back then I would not have seen any of them coming, one after the other, and not letting up even until the present moment. I’ve been all over the world a dozen times since then, and yet lately I have had the uncanny feeling that I am currently in one of the strangest epochs yet. Wow! It does not feel like I wandered into it so much as woke up inside of it, that sort of dream-within-a-dream feeling . . . but I can never shake myself out of the original dream, so everything that is happening to me feels like it is still one or two layers removed from reality. A dream that does not end continues to build upon itself. At any rate, I think I have decided I like it.

I am in Seattle with Felix and his sister Jupiter . . .

. . . who are so cute I want to jump out of the window, and mostly I have been watching movies with them, or else reading or writing or doing pull-ups . . . and sleeping as much as possible. I am trying to put on five pounds before I return to New York on the 20th. Since August when I left Berlin, I have been to over a dozen states and three times as many cities . . . have walked and flown and driven and bussed and train’d every which way across this godforsaken continent. I have wondered if my hunger and fatigue have contributed to this dreamlike feeling. Yet even full and rested here in Seattle (perhaps for the first time since I left Europe), I still feel that surreal feeling . . . sometimes stronger than I think I ever did before.

At least the flow of linear time has been more or less consistent. The seasons are the same in my dream. I still need to figure out where I’m going to spend Thanksgiving. I will either go with Caroline and her family in Northern Virginia, or else go off someplace alone, maybe up to Vermont, and do whatever it is I do. Of course, I would prefer to be with other people if I can swing it. After Thanksgiving, I got a few days to kill before I head back to New York for the third time, so I think I will go up to Detroit and Chicago to see Kelsey and Gayle and Sarah and Hali. I feel like I’ve got to keep moving around to stay out of trouble. And anyway, Kelsey has a new cat named Trish I need to meet . . .

All I’ve done today is sit on my ass and watch movies with the cats, and yet I am exhausted. This gummy absolutely sledgehammered me and I have no idea why . . . normally with this stuff I got the constitution of a god damn mountain! Well, what the hell, I really think I ought to go to sleep. I feel like a real fool tonight, and nothing good can come from me carrying on like this for another hour, never mind two or three. The dream I will have tonight will be a dream within a dream within a dream. Not unlike the man himself, it will be heavy, and weird, and seem to go on forever.

in a lonely place (1950)

I came all the way to Seattle to watch over these precious angels and immediately they love me and want to hang out with me all the time . . . the feeling is mutual, friends. Truthfully I think I am getting more out of their company than either of them could ever possibly comprehend, and bless them for it. Their mere existence restores me. It is enough to bring a tear to my eye.

Tomorrow my brother Jackson wants me to meet him way the hell north of wherever I even am to do God only knows what . . . some sort of outdoor market. I trust this man with my life, so I reckon I ought to go. It will be painful to leave my little friends here for a little while on account of my happiness is currently wedded to my physical proximity to them . . . but we’ll all be OK for a few hours. Still, I will miss them . . .

Well, what can I say: I’m in a missing mood. The night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. Mine started about six hours ago . . . time to punch out and close the blinds. There’s a permanent 175 cm indentation next to me wherever I sleep and I feel every centimeter of its absence. Sigh. At least little Jupiter is with me tonight . . . she wants to be everywhere I am and I want her to be there with me too. It is such a blessing to know a little angel . . . and I can think of about a hundred I know. Still, one must never take it for granted . . .

yeah. how about that??

. . . i defer once again to the late rowdy roddy piper (RIP):

can’t believe i forgot to post this . . . thanks katrijn

I was thinking today about the tour I accompanied Chalk Talk on back in winter 2023 into 2024 . . . I can’t believe it has already been two years. I was their driver and roadie and we visited something like nine cities in as many days. And then I left Savannh after the final show and drove through the night back to Virginia, a long long drive.

And today I remembered also this interview they did before the tour started:

Aw :,)

For a while now I have been writing a novella-length piece called

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING
TO ST. STARSAILOR

. . . which is about those two unmoored periods of nonstop travel between August 2023 to February 2024 (which includes the Chalk Talk tour) and May 2024 to February 2025 . . . now I am on track to rack up another chunk of my life doing the same sort of thing. It has taken so long because there is so much to say. Like everything else I ever publish here, it’s OK if no one else ever reads it. I just need to write it down is all.

There are certainly worse ways to get on with the business of living as I have chosen to live if you can endure the near-constant exhaustion and occasional bouts of aimlessness. Sometimes it can be a little lonely. Still, my solo tour of the world has been my way of cooling down my brain and warding off the Darkness . . . of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Once I start thinking, I’m doomed . . . it’s better for me now if I carry on in this way until I find some other means of saving myself . . . otherwise I’m just staying up till sunrise in my vampire tower in Berlin, all the while recalling disasters despite all my efforts not to. Truthfully, I think I know what that future thing will be, the thing that will yank me out of the same Swamp of Sadness that swallows up Artax the horse in THE NEVERENDING STORY . . .

. . . but then I guess we’ll all find out together. Believe it or not, I am optimistic about getting out from under the shadow of this thing. There is some use in me yet. When I was going through a particularly rough period a few years ago, my good friend Tombo in Spain reached out and said something very nice to me, though I am not sure if he was fully aware of its life-saving potency and the effect it had and continues to have on me. I very nearly cried when I read it. He said: “You are definitely more valuable to other people alive than dead. Your sensitivity is a virtue. Everything that you have done and has happened to you, and your awareness of it, makes you more of a wonderful, unique, and precious human being, not less.” I think about that every day, specifically the first part. It really does keep me from going down to Skeleton Town, so to speak. Thanks brother.

Artax is eventually rescued from the swamp, by the way, once he is released from the prison of his own despair. And afterwards he and his best friend Arteyu ride freely and happily once again upon the plains of Fantasia. So perhaps there is hope for me still after all. It will be more difficult for me to get out from the swamp on account of my best friend has died. He has gone someplace that, at least for now, I cannot follow. So saying, I will continue to go it alone, but I will do my best all the same. Perhaps I won’t always be alone. I have to find out . . . What else is there?

unfolding enveloping missiles of soul
recall senses sadly

mirage like soft blue, like lanterns below
to light the way gladly