I am staying in Nora’s massive brownstone in Bed-Stuy . . .

. . . having bounced around Brooklyn between here and Monty’s place in Ridgewood. So far no one seems to have grown tired of my dumb ass, what with my sleep circuit and all, which entails never staying longer than a night or two at any given time. See, you don’t wanna overstay your welcome. I make my bed and do the dishes and refill the ice tray and pad around at night as quiet as a church mouse. And so far I have not had to repeat a cursed habit of mine, which is to end up outside at three in the morning, having left someone’s house when there was no room in the inn, and walking the earth until sunrise. I hope I never have to do that again . . . last time it nearly killed me, and it weren’t just because the sunlight would have torn me asunder . . .

Tomorrow Nora and I are driving south to Baltimore / DC on account of she is dropping off her dog Sweet Potato with her mother in Maryland before she leaves for Algeria and France. I have to get back down to my satellite office to restock supplies (clean socks, weed, et cetera) and drive an hour west to my cousin’s bachelor party. It is in this enormous house in the woods. I have never been to a bachelor party, but knowing my cousin, I don’t anticipate it being the kind where a stripper bursts out of a huge cake. I reckon it will just be some Dudes in a House, which is all right with me.

Listen: I am sadder than hell to leave New York. Had I not forgotten my passport in Virginia, I would have spent the last few days in Montreal, and today I would have been on a bus in the Quebec countryside headed across the border to Burlington to rent a car to drive eight hours south to that bachelor party. And yet it was not so. Instead, something really strange happened to me on Sunday . . . I am not a fatalistic person, but maybe there is some childish part of me that wishes I were. And so saying, I am willing to give some credence to the alternate timeline where I now find myself if for no reason other than it’s harmless to do so, and maybe a little exciting. I wonder at it. All this is to say that the time I thought I had lost was not lost at all, but rather has transmuted into something else entirely. And though it was a major bummer not to see Laura and her sisters in Montreal, I cannot think of any better way the last six days of my life could have transpired next to scoring a winning Powerball ticket or dying heroically saving a bus full of school children.

I will return here in November, probably for another two or three weeks. I think I will spend Thanksgiving with Monty. But first I have to go south to my dad in Tennessee, south to New Orleans to see Leila (and her pool . . .), west to Austin to see Colette, west to Albuquerque to see Mikaylah, west to LA to see Amissa and Cera, and north to the Bay Area to go on a week-long road trip with McCune through Nevada and Utah and Idaho to get to Montana, which is one of the last states I need to visit. When we return, I’ll stay a few weeks in Oakland to see everyone there, and then head north to Portland to see Molly, and finally to Seattle to cat-sit Felix and his new little sister Jupiter. Felix is the tuxedo cat I rescued from my backyard back in 2018:

His mother Jen summoned me to watch him through this very website, and so of course I said yes. I visited her and the cats last December when I was in Seattle staying with young Jackson. Felix remembered my voice. I was the first human who ever spoke to him and fed him and held him. I brought him into my house and kept him warm and slept with him in my bed every night until Jen adopted him. And so I suppose that in the back of his mind, back to his earliest kittenhood, he remembered me. I have thousands of miles of rough road to cross before I get to him and his sister, with Seattle being that endpoint. It is good to have an ultimate destination in this way because then you have a sort of north star to follow. Between now and then I have a lot of people to see. I hope they want to see me too. Having no alternative, I have decided this is my life now. For as long as I can sustain it, and before the world kills me now that it has broken me, I am going to putz around the world and watch it grow older. Otherwise it is, like the fella said, the toothbrush waiting at home for you in its glass, a bus ticket, a paycheck, and the grave.

It is five in the morning now and I am writing from this little guest room on the fourth floor . . .

I saw a cute little spider in the corner of the room, way the hell up there, and I was hoping she would help me with these mosquitoes, but I’ve had to take all of them out myself. Mosquitoes are one of the few insects I will kill . . . otherwise I capture and release them. I just can’t abide mosquitoes is all. If they left me alone I would leave them alone too. But I want my blood. I need my blood!

Well: I have felt a lightness all day that I hope will carry on into tomorrow. I do my best between the high spots, knowing there’s a good chance I can get my hands on a little peace and happiness every once in a while. And when I do, I make sure I don’t take it for granted, so I won’t take it for granted. Still, I’ve pulled the pin on a hand grenade and I know it. Why? I defer to my hero Orson Welles:

I think the sun is coming up soon . . . I only have a half hour before it pierces these linen curtains. I’ve got to sleep because I’ve got to dream. I dream every night. Last night I dreamt of a person who was lying next to me. Tonight I am alone up here instead of in the red room. I will miss the red room and the person who lives inside it. I have to circle this whole continent to get back there again, which begins with me going to sleep for next the six hours I have left in this city. And then . . .