When I worked at the donut shop in Oakland, we had to pack donuts to be shipped out to coffee shops / grocery stores all over the Bay Area. Usually new people were stuck with this position because it sucked. You had to pack 30 or so boxes and it was really monotonous and if you fucked up it meant you fucked up someone’s order. Eventually you “graduated” out of this position. By the time I left I hadn’t packed a single donut box in a year.

Anyway we delivered to Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco. Usually donuts were packed in thick bakery boxes, but Rainbow was having a rat problem and the boxes kept getting eaten because of the crumbs that would collect in the boxes. They requested flimsy disposable boxes instead. I used to draw little pictures on them to make the Rainbow people laugh. I stopped doing this after one of the delivery drivers told me the woman in the bakery said I needed psychiatric help.

Here are a few of them:

My mother was going to Best Buy. I asked to tag along. This must have been 1996. I was 8 years old. I remember at the register there was like a big discount crate filled with game boxes. The boxes were all the same. They all contained a Super Nintendo game called ‘EarthBound.’ The sign said ‘EarthBound’ cost $5. I remember the boxes were four times the size of normal Super Nintendo boxes because they contained a player’s guide. That’s why I picked one up.

It had been released in Japan two years prior and was called ‘Mother 2’ over there. It was a huge sensation. It failed miserably in the United States. That’s why it was $5. I was holding it in my hands reading the back of the box and my mother said I could get it if I wanted to.

If you can’t tell, this game was designed and written by an actual famous Japanese writer and not “a guy who makes videogames.” His name is Shigesato Itoi. He is an incredible dude. He and Haruki Murakami put out a collection of stories in the 1980s called ‘Let’s Meet in a Dream.’ That’s great.

Man, this may sound dumb to many of you, but along with a lot of books and movies I absorbed when I was a kid, this is absolutely one of the most important things I was ever exposed to. I still replay it once a year. It takes about twelve hours.

Anyway, long post:

‘Breath of Fire’ has a really bland english translation but sometimes it accidentally says some cool stuff.

My brother and i got it when i was in fourth grade . . . I would come home from school and we would play it together. This was around the time when my mother kept threatening to sell our house. Our house was amazing. It was on two acres of land and surrounded by woods. It really bummed me out to think that we would give that up. I guess my brother and I distracted ourselves from this by playing a poorly-translated Japanese role-playing game that sometimes accidentally said some cool stuff.

 

yeah tell me about it, super mario bros. 3

I signed a lease for an apartment in Austin that I have never seen. I won’t see it until I collect the keys from the leasing office on the day I get in. I have seen many pictures. It has hardwood floors and a counter where I can write stupid crap all the livelong day. It has a bedroom. I assume it has a bathroom too. It is four blocks from my old house. I have walked past the complex many times. It is a nice place.

Dante and I are going to be living in an empty apartment probably for a few months. The lease ends in August. Hell I’ll make this bullshit work. I gotta.

My apartment in Baltimore ruled so hard. It was 800 sq. ft. and cost me $650 a month. My utilities were never more than $15. It smelled really good. I was the first person to ever live there. It was stupid of me to paint the walls but I did anyway. It had a bedroom and a huge closet. The bathroom had a linen closet. I remember being so freaked out by that: What do I put in this thing? I don’t own any linens! et cetera. There was also a slop sink. I don’t think I ever used it.

After a month or two I stopped going into my bedroom. I just hung out in the living room on that rug. Or I sat at my dining room table, which I had turned into a desk and stacked mile-high with my books. I didn’t want any more furniture than what you see in the picture. In fact every day I stared at that black coffee table and wondered if I should just toss it out the window.

Man it was real cool there. Sometimes I would go grocery shopping and then not leave my apartment for two weeks. I would watch movies in the bathtub and write for eight or nine hours till the sun came up. If I did leave I would explore the abandoned buildings I could see from my living room. Or I would climb the rainbow bridge nearby and hope the wind wasn’t strong enough to blow me into the train tracks a hundred feet below. If I got hungry I went to this little sub shop on Charles and talked to these two girls who worked there. They were so cool. I used to hang out with them for hours. They would recognize my voice when I called in. I almost worked there just for the hell of it. (When I was boxing up my room in Oakland I found the filled-out application that I never turned in!)

I only lived there seven months . . . after I was gutted and heartbroken I had to get the hell out. I went to Austin in September and stayed with my friends for the remainder of my lease. I was still paying rent in Baltimore. I didn’t return until January. My friend Perri came over and we painted the walls. It took all night. Then I moved to Austin for good.

God, dude. That apartment though. I read so many books on that rug. I wrote so much stupid crap. In the summer I opened the windows and you could smell the rain. My only regret is I never got laid there (just kidding (maybe)).

2016 self-portrait

i will be 28 years old next week

(this is what a month of not sleeping looks like)

“Ryan. You have given me good advice tonight. Don’t tell me you actually believe the world is run by reptiles.”

real quote

nice

out of words

no more words

said all the words yesterday

words will come tomorrow

sitting here with my friend ayesha

got a bottle of andre

listening to george harrison’s “what is life”

wondering the same thing myself

miss a bunch of people

haven’t talked to many people

wish my life was different

wish someone would wrap their arms around me

say, “you’re the one i wanted all along”

i say, “i was just thinking the same damn thing about you”