There are so many things I wish to write about . . . I feel compelled to make a list:

• visiting Nicole in Poland last May
• visiting Demet and Ege and Aysu in Turkey last June
• touring the Southeast with Chalk Talk
• traveling nonstop around the United States and Canada between August 2023 and February 2024
• traveling nonstop around the United States and Canada between August 2024 and February 2025
• staying at my cousin’s cabin in rural Virginia
• cat-sitting Bilbo in Portland last Christmas
• being apprehended by US Border Patrol when reentering the United States from Vancouver days later
• the Dutch girls I met at Kuckucksei
• the Danish girls I met at Fahimi
• a radio station I found called Hearts of Space
• the strangers on the U-Bahn who eerily seemed to recognize me
• Madison huddling with me at sunset atop Grandview Park in San Francisco when I’d just moved to the Bay Area
• the much-missed Sunday ritual of Tom’s Diner in Portland and its similarities to Towson Diner from when I was a teenager
• being haunted by my friend J, the tall goth German girl who completely vanished from my life with no explanation
• the dream of the Haskell house
• the little spiders who guard my apartment
• sleeping next to M at K’s house
• the dead man I saw hanging from a tree
• the dark liquid behind my right eye which will not go away

. . . and so on. I’ll get to it. I’m about to have a lot of time to make thing for reasons I will explain in the next few days. Actually, what I’m about to do with my life is probably extremely stupid but I’m going to do it anyway. I’m going to do it because it means I will be free. Ain’t that all that really matters? Being free? That’s what I think, anyway, but then what do I know . . .

It’s 3:40 am in Berlin. Shaina is asleep in my bed and has to catch a train to Rotterdam in a few hours. I guess I will go to sleep now too.

For now . . .