Trying to see you / I’d knock off your doors / Dying to see you / I’m down on the floor . . .

ALAS!

I am in a coffeeshop in East Hollywood, having woken up in Cera’s monstrous bed, and having flown from Albuquerque to Las Vegas to Long Beach last night . . . I was supposed to land at Burbank Airport, but was shuffled around like cattle by the airline on account of the lack of air traffic controllers there, what with the ongoing government shutdown. They are not being paid so they all stayed home. And so saying, I am so exhausted and haunted by a sort of unplaceable sadness which has manifested into tears. If you want to know the truth, I am I have tears rolling down my cheek from behind my black sunglasses at aforementioned Perhaps I should feel embarrassed but I don’t. Lord knows I have tried to comfort people when I saw them crying in public . . . but I think my crying is concealed enough that no one will notice.

Well, what can you do other than carry on, having no alternative, into that collapsing tunnel of time towards the ultimate moment. I just try to do my best between the high spots. Today I have, for instance, diligently swallowed three of the little white pills that sustain my precarious instinct of self-preservation whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet. And yet they were ineffective in this necessary thing. Every now and then, despite all my efforts to keep from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off, I go kicking and screaming into The Dark Place. I wake up with a major serotonin brain drain, such is the case today. I’m deep inside myself but I’ll get out somehow . . .

As I have said, I cannot quite pinpoint the source of this unique cocktail of Ryan Sadness, but I think I have an idea. In the last week I have driven from Tennessee to Leila’s house New Orleans, flown from there to Colette’s apartment in Austin, and driven 700 miles through northwest Texas into New Mexico to stay in a cute little pink house with my friend Mikaylah in Albuquerque, which is 3.5k above sea level. I was not getting enough oxygen in my blood and brain on account of the elevation of the high desert. There is also the full moon and the autumn equinox . . . that has got to be twisting me around. And of course yesterday my body was jolted by the crash landing into the valley of the dark paradise which is called Los Angeles, yet another timezone, the third in a week, here at the edge of Western civilization. There is another reason I feel this way, and in the tradition of being perhaps embarrassingly honest, here it is: I like someone in That Way, a feeling I have not felt in such a long time. It is almost alien to me now, and so I am surprised at it. I must not fear though. Even still, I miss this person so much I feel a tightness in my chest. A real physical sensation! for God’s sake . . .

Finally, and there is no escaping it, I struggle every day with the eternal emptiness and melancholy I feel now that Dante and my brother Jeb are gone forever. For two years I have roamed the world like the cursed Ancient Mariner, but I have mostly kept this sadness a secret on account of I don’t want to be a bummer. As soon as you tell someone your cat and sibling have died (in my case, both my brother and sister), you drop on a nuke on a conversation. The other person feels a reasonable paralyzation. What can they say, really, when someone admits they carry with them the most devastating sadness of all? It is a sadness that never goes away. And though it has transmuted since that final day of Dante’s life when I saw him unconscious on an operating table, never to wake up again, and me telling the doctor to end his life now that we could not save him . . . and exactly a year later receiving that awful phone call from my dad at three in the morning while I was cat-sitting for friends in Belgium, him saying Jeb had died suddenly on the other side of the planet, and me suffering alone in that house in a foreign country for a whole week . . . it will drill you into oblivion.

And now I am now crying again. In half an hour they will kick me out of this coffeeshop and I’ll be back on the street with my tears which scald like molten lead. King Lear said that, more or less.

I’m listening to Big Star’s second album and he just said . . .

I loved you, well, never mind / I’ve been crying all the time . . .

. . . and earlier:

I feel like I’m dying / I’m never gonna live again / You just ain’t been trying / It’s getting very near the end . . .

Let us not get anymore dramatic than I have been already, though yeah . . .

Last night Colette texted me and asked if I had survived the long journey from Texas to New Mexico. I told her that as far as I knew, I had. And she said something very nice: “It was great to hang out with you, Ryan! Truly no one else is like you.” I don’t know if that’s true, but I badly needed the encouragement just then. I suppose it is true that an upright man is never a downright failure, or anyway this is the lie I have told myself, but I sure have felt beaten down lately. I’ll take any kind word I can get, especially from someone I love.

On Friday I will drive through the night up I-5 from LA to the Bay Area to get to Vallejo by six in the morning. I’ll bet I skid into town a half hour before then, exhausted as hell, to get into the Hesh Van and travel to Salt Lake City with my brothers McCune and Harrison on our long excursion to Montana. I am told there are hot springs all over the place there, and I am hoping I will benefit from their restorative powers. Listen: I lost my chemicals. I need my chemicals back or else I am doomed forever, and maybe even longer than that . . .

Farewell for now! I have only consumed three hundred calories today, and so now I will walk with Cera to this Vietnamese place down Virgil Ave. to get banh mi. Later, Amissa (and her dogs) are coming over to watch ROSEMARY’S BABY with us. I don’t doubt we will eat little gummies and maybe I will feel a little better. If not, I hope that feeling will come to me soon. I can’t carry on much longer in this way or else I risk permanent damage, and Lord knows I’ve got enough of that to haunt me for the rest of my life. How’s that for being dramatic!

Won’t you tell me what you’re thinkin of? / Would you be an outlaw for my love? / If it’s so, well let me know / If it’s no, well I can go / I won’t make you . . .

There was a man whom Sorrow named his friend,
And he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming,
Went walking with slow steps along the gleaming
And humming sands, where windy surges wend:
And he called loudly to the stars to bend
From their pale thrones and comfort him, but they
Among themselves laugh on and sing alway:
And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend
Cried out, Dim sea, hear my most piteous story!
The sea swept on and cried her old cry still,
Rolling along in dreams from hill to hill. . . .

the full moon over albuquerque and los angeles

the love that you’ve been stealing

has given me a feeling

i drove 700 miles from austin to albuquerque in one sitting . . . then promptly died upon getting here!

I spent a few days in New Orleans with Leila at her new house . . . I had not been back since September 2023, and before that since December 2015. Last time I was here, it was a sort of struggle to have a good time on account of things that are not worth mentioning, and which were outside Leila’s control. But this time it was just the three of us (including her cat Susu), and so we had a very good time indeed.

As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. So don’t get me wrong . . . I love going to new places and seeing what it’s all about. But there is a comfort to visiting a place you know well, as there is no special hurry to cram in as much adventure and sightseeing in a small amount of time. New Orleans is a city I know. And so saying, it was nice to just Hang Out and watch movies and smoke in the backyard and have a bonfire and eat at the same breakfast place every morning. The point was simply to be with Leila and Susu . . . anything else was a little bonus. I was sad to leave New Orleans yesterday . . . I’m hip about time but I just had to go. I got places to be and a hard deadline to be in the Bay Area by October 10th. However: I will return again soon, if for no other reason than to soothe Susu’s broken little heart:

Now I am in Austin where I lived many years ago now. I haven’t seen much of Austin since I left in 2013 . . . only a handful of times, and the last time being September 2023 when I left for New Orleans. Or had I come from New Orleans? It filled me with sorrow to see it then as so much of it had been literally razed to the ground and replaced with total bullshit. I feel the same way now as I did two years ago: that I recognize the city just enough to feel sentimental, and to remember my life here, which may as well have been 100 years and ten Ryans ago, only to feel the dark wave come crashing down on it all when I realize that’s all long gone in the forever sense. It leaves a bad dream feeling in my mind . . . a ghostly sort of déjà vu I only ever experience in nightmares.

I only came to Texas for one reason, and it’s a good reason: to see my old friend Colette, whom I had not seen since 2018, and 2013 before that. In that sense it was completely worth it. Colette is such a good person, and was always such a good friend to me. A long time ago I did her wrong, and she was merciful enough to forgive me. Being with her again feels exactly the same as it did when I knew her all those years ago when I would visit Texas, and when I eventually moved here . . . we even briefly lived together. Colette is the lone holdout in Austin, as everyone else I ever knew here has been gone for years. Just like in New Orleans, I don’t particularly need to see Austin. It is enough to be here to spend time with Colette. All we’ve done is talk and go on walks and earlier we saw that new PTA movie . . . I’ve had a real good time!

Tomorrow morning Colette is driving me to the rental place downtown to pick up what I hope will be a small inconspicuous fuel-efficient Japanese sedan made in the last two years. I want something that gets 45–50 miles per gallon on the highway and has a USB-C input. Is that really asking so much? Once I have procured The Car, I will drive 700 miles through the wasteland between here and Albuquerque to get to my friend Mikaylah’s house, which I am told is cute and pink and close to the airport. Perfect.

I end many of my late-night posts here saying “I really ought to sleep”—and so too shall I end this one THUSLY, as it is true. I have a long-ass day ahead of me but I am excited about it. Listen: I love rolling around. Next to people it’s the most fun I have here upon this cursed planet. I’ll write more from The Road . . . perhaps I will take a break in Lubbock before I white-knuckle it straight across the border into New Mexico. I got a few postcards to mail so I reckon I’ll take a piss there and find a postbox. Hey baby, why not . . .

big in new orleans

still exhausted

foto by leila wylie