(back to main blog)

082422

I am at war with the ants. I came back to my home after two nights in san bruno to find that they have appropriated my kitchen, to my horror. vacuuming them for the third time, at least 500 in total, if not more, I felt a total sociopathy take over me. as I murdered these ants, one by one, much more unsettling in their writhing mass than an individual could ever be, I thought about if they felt pain, or if they sensed their impending doom, or if they could communicate to the others their danger. I decided not to google it because there were many more vacuuming sessions left, probably, and these sessions were too long for me to willingly give myself any more fodder for psychosis, like at least fifteen minutes each or something. when I looked away, everything looked like ants—dust, specks, bubbles in my water glass. everything urgently skittering away, in recoil but with antipathy, waiting to spite me by dying in my food. I feel phantom ants all over me, my skin twitches with fear. how can I cook when I am at war? I moved the compost bin and blended my gazpacho like a paranoiac.
I am not overreacting. there is a mass grave where I accidentally spilled the ant bait trying to move it with the long nozzle of the vacuum cleaner. if I were to wipe them with a paper towel it would turn black with dismembered ant residue. I chase the ants with the nozzle, feeling like an abject murderer, cold-blooded and amoral, empty. I wonder if the ants will exact their revenge in my nightmares. I wonder if there is ground-up ant in my gazpacho. "protein," I think.
***
Jason and I go only to old-school Americana diners, quaint neighborhood all-day cafés, and hole-in-the-wall ethnic food joints. somehow it all makes sense. other things that can fit in this category are laid-back breweries, dive bars, and cash-only sandwich places. what other kinds of places are there? Michelin restaurants, yuppie coffeeshops, trendy cocktail bars. crab shacks. not his vibe but could be mine, sometimes. he wears his gold satin v-neck, flowy in the wind and printed with red dragons, that he stole from some brothel he frequented in China, while loading his totally prosaic dog into the backseat of his 1995 Subaru stick shift, as the fog creeps ever closer, chasing us down the pacific coast in search of sunshine, and adventure.
I listen to shintaro sakamoto's Lets Dance Raw, my new friend chris who works at gray area turned me onto him, who also may have gotten me a gig DJing at their opening tomorrow. throwing another party at milk bar on 10/1, how time goes on and on, like #PeterCordova said at the studio today...

081822

back in sf there is a special weather alert for intense fog. last night the floodlights from the soccer field made the fog a dense, white, misty haze, eerily hanging in the air until they turned them off at 9pm. I eat over-salted blueberry chia oatmeal and only vegetables, my immune system hard-pressed for nutrients and electrolytes, after so many months on the road, in the sky. my over-steeped pu'erh sits in the Eats mug claudia stole and I drink cold water from my tall IKAL tumbler, a solemn emerald green. strange to be back, to sit in the quietude of SF—unloading the dishwasher felt foreign on tuesday night, like the dishes weren't ever mine to begin with...on the radio these days is bad books, sparklehorse, and yo la tengo, aside that one willow song I hadn't heard til last week. to slowly drift back into relevance, into people's minds and lives, the people that carried on the saga of this city while I was gone, wandering the morning streets and their kitchens at night...

"let my mind go...out of tune...out of tune..."

081422

lots of time on the road; mini donuts and kettlecorn in eureka; Jason rolled a j as we sat on a log at the ma-le'l dunes, black waves crashing ahead of us, lit only by the full moon; a headache walk to guthrie’s cove on a hot sticky morning, he dunked his head in the ice-cold lagoon and turned back, golden ringlets glistening at the tips with droplets of salty seawater, drip, drip, drip, so handsome I could swoon; Jason driving, always, with messy long hair, almost but not quite dreaded, cheap sunglasses, Zambian rock on the stereo, one hand on the clutch, sometimes drifting over to my leg. Eating breakfast at a timeless cafe in Hopland, a weathered old man came back in to talk to him about hydrogen and alternative fuel sources and the hippies, so engrossed in conversation that we forgot to order anything but coffee three times. i kept remarking that it felt so good that I didn’t have to convince him to be interested in the things I was excited about, so giddy I was feel to so seen. He told me to stop being so surprised… the fire crackled an otherworldly orange on orcas island, on calvin’s family’s property. Juxtaposed with the supreme blackness of night and the deep indigo sky it almost felt out of a dream, too hyperreal to exist truly. Jason wondered how he got here, how he ended up in a tent on the San Juans, with all these strangers and me, only four months after our strange trip began…
Laying on a friends blanket, on their pad of paper, we drew with watercolor pencils, dipping them in a small divot of water he carved out of a piece of wood. We shared a cookies and coffee waffle cone at a hokey little hotel restaurant by the dock, basking in the afternoon sun. At the north beach public access point, a laughably small little beach between two private plots, we dipped in the icy cold water, gliding blue green in front of the pink evening mountain (rainier?), Jason joked about dunking me in and then proceeded to do just that. A quiet sunset along the 1 back home, watching the ambient light fade from our makeshift cozy living room trunk, “the sun will shine in my back door someday” echoing through his lofi car speakers. Eating soft supermarket grapes under cover of darkness zooming south on the 101, in search of something like dinner, always, at 10pm, when all the little towns had already shuttered, no friendship for strangers… morning sex in a motel off the highway in woodland, ca, the bed “finally tall enough,” he said, oyo heaven… Katie says he never responds to texts or calls, and I thought, ‘funny, that doesn’t sound like my guy’—I guess I must be real lucky, or real special…but I guess that’s what everyone says about me, too…he must be real lucky, or real special…
We parked in Anacortes and jumped in the back of calvin’s Toyota Sienna, with the dog, COBOL, with a rush of adrenaline and a plethora of belongings, trying to make the ferry. he looked so exactly in the right wrong place, cramped back there with me and all the things, creating some silly comfort in the chaos by holding hands or what have you. like the conversation we had in Florence about freighthoppers, always in motion, vibing with his surroundings, if you’re out of step for a second, or out of tune, you’ll get left behind...he looks straight out of a movie, so much of the time, I told him I couldn’t believe he could be both my fantasy and reality…I thought he might be upset but he said that made him feel good.
he makes me feel like the person I want to be—and when im around him I feel like I can do anything, be anyone, the world is my oyster. the feeling is so crazy and intense that it feels like it opens up so many doors…like, love makes everything feel so weird and wonderful and high that I feel like I can really self-actualize, or something, lean in deeper, get weirder, more wonderful, more high. Reading an old worm where I wrote that I was ‘horrified by the prospect of wasting my 20s in a relationship,’ and while I understand that sentiment in the abstract, I cant help but laugh- to feel this way about someone (and to have it be reciprocated) is maybe the most amazing thing ever, how could it ever be a waste to feel so full and so whole, no choice but to reel and lurch with the tides of life? how did I even get here, anyway?

080222

When I tried to cut the adderall in half in the kitchen of our Lisbon hostel, it disintegrated into blue powder. Fuck, I thought. I tried to wipe it off the marble countertop with my hand but it stained. I attempted to rub it off with a wet paper towel just as the short king who worked there came into the kitchen. I hid my hand, stained an unnatural blue, and shuffled out of his way, gumming the powdery residue like it was candy. as the other hostel worker entered the kitchen I clasped my hand full of drugs and walked suspiciously to the bathroom, where I gave claudia her portion of the dust. In the lounge, we got sugar mojitos and talked to an arty guy from Naples. Claudia went to sleep and I went outside to kill some time. A social worker and comic book artist from Geneva had beautiful green eyes and a majestic black mane so I struck up a conversation with him. He said he was an introvert but he was down to come with me. A college student on indefinite sabbatical from Melbourne came with us too. The club was underneath a bridge and on a famous street called the pink line - grungy brick archways formed the ceiling. After a few gin and tonics we went outside and he rolled us a couple cigarettes, I squinted to get a good look. he had a guy fieri type mullet and a hipster graphic t-shirt, and youthful eyes. We ambled about outside the club, and the Bangladeshi samosa vendors preyed on me because they knew I was an easy target. We heard the sound of nitrous so we went around to the alley where the African immigrants were lined up, selling balloons and generally having a good time. We zonked out on our balloons then went back in and danced. A man spilled a full drink on my right arm. At around 4am we got so tired and ubered back to our hostel—I realized in the morning I didn't even know his name...

the next night I met my Aussie friend outside the pastel de nata place downstairs, he was wearing sunglasses and wired earphones. I told him I was trying to bring those back earlier this year. we ubered to some park for a daytime rave, to see paula temple. we walked in the summer heat to the venue, he scored some leftover molly from some rolling Portuguese boys coated in glitter. we waited in line for drinks for basically the whole time, he got some owl-shaped E from the guy in front of us. I chatted with some extremely hot gays, one from Portugal and one from Brazil, who told me the craziest origin story where they gave each other incognito hand jobs on a plane and then happened to actually meet a year later at a mutual friend's birthday. we took the E and danced, then ran into some party girl he knew from going out on friday. she was beautiful and young for 32, she put us on the guest list for some afterparty she was promoting and we ubered with her and some middle-aged Finnish artist guy who was definitely somewhat rogue. we got there and I was tweaking a little, I went outside for some air and for a melancholy gaze out onto the water, the club was on the dock. I whatsapped Jason and he sent me all these GIFs, it warmed my heart and I really felt that feeling lonely sucks and having someone like him around, even thousands of miles away, was worth a lot. we went back inside and gab and I agreed the scene was dead, he was unsuccessfully trying to nab some coke. we walked by the pink street where we scored some expensive blow from some jovial young African men, one guy quiet with glasses and dreads and the other guy a homie, with a kind face. we did some on the street waiting for an hour for an uber that wouldn't cancel on us, at 4am on a sunday, and back at the hostel we watched a little bit of money heist then headed to bed.

080122

serotonin-deprived, writing from a lisbon rooftop with a "bairro alto twist"—a chartreuse drink with egg white foam and a fuchsia flower that tastes more like syrup than gin. perhaps I should have chosen a cheaper, ground-level establishment, but the preppy men and women in their cream-core dress in some ways feel even more depraved than the everyday Portuguese clientele that might frequent a local dive, eating their roast octopus and oxtail croquettes alongside glasses of red wine. the mist machines cover everyone in an ethereal fog, the sound like a dull but urgent foghorn, on loop every 10 seconds.
I sit here feeling at the end of something, strung-out and sad. in the reflection of my sunglasses I see my own greasy hair, sunken eyes, and empty face; my shit manicure from an old lady earlier today cost 8 euros and is already ruined. I sat in her parlor listening to a cacophony of birds screeching from cages, her strange interior design choice doubling as a source of company. when she finished my nails she hobbled back to her chair, elevated her bum leg, and lit a cigarette.

(next)