a year ago, i was in california. i drove my rental car down the 405 to santa monica early in the morning, parked in an empty lot and walked along the beach. i'd never seen the pacific before. i was the only one near the water. later i walked out to the very last edge of the pier and wept. something gentle and good that i'd just discovered had been torn from me, not long after brutal mishandlings the brevity of which never resounded properly in my mind. i was as far away from everything that had happened to me as i possibly could have been without crossing an ocean; yet i had carried everything there with me, i couldn't shake it, any of it.

i'm told that i have a terrible predilection for marking time, quite the undesireable quality. a year ago i was here, two weeks ago i was in chicago. it's the atheist in me; without an afterlife, the finiteness of daily life makes me miserly with how i spend and remember it. i tuck it all away safely, i'll share it, but i refuse to waste it. but i'm determined to keep track of it, and what happens, and mark my path between who i am right now and who i turn into, after everything has happened.

i'm always looking at how things have changed between then and now; before ______________ happened and before i went _________ and a few months later i met _________. but if i focus on the past and what's transpired for too long, then paralysis sets in, fear of what's to come perhaps in the next year, how many worse things could happen, or maybe something great could happen, the randomness and the impossibility of knowing can make me sweat but there are also times when i can just sit back and wait patiently, taking it all in.

i spent the next week in ca, wandering around los angeles, driving through the canyons, musing through the getty center and plodding around griffith observatory...all the tourist spots. and i'm a masochist too, of course...i stopped at the tower records where rivers once worked and drove by cello studios, where he'd spent all that time recording the green album, where he'd sit on the front step to call me or to write me letters*. there were other moments when life would transcend sadness and i'd feel happy, able to enjoy the trip in spite of demonic memories. those moments [though perhaps induced by stoli] have left califoria a mecca in my mind; a place i must revisit and perhaps move to, there's beauty i want to explore and enjoy more fully than i did, and yet, there's something else i can't put my finger on. just a feeling, an image of a place i fell in love with and feel a sense of attachment and belonging for.

maybe it was the beaches, the mountains, the sun, the roads, the traffic...who knows. the bars were great, too; one night there i went to some bar on sunset strip that had a mechanical bull, where they handed me a liquor-filled vase when i ordered a long-island iced tea. i met an indie boy named nate, he was from atlanta. i've seen that bar in commercials and tv shows since then. nate was displeased when i laughed at his request to accompany me to my final destination for the evening...but there was no way i was letting him sleep in the rental car with me.

how else do i get this to move over?

now all i can think is: brandon needs to shave.


*part of this sentence is not true.