The End?

Exactly one year ago today, I posted as my facebook status the following quote:

"As we pass through childhood, each of us, a storehouse of alternative ways of becoming a person, imagines many different courses of action and of life he may later take. However, we cannot be everything in the world. We must choose a path, reject other paths. This rejection, indispensable to our self-development, is also a mutilation. In choosing, as we must, we cast aside many aspects of our humanity."

I can’t for the life of me remember where I read this. I believe I remember why, however. I was in the process of choosing law schools to apply to. I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to go to law school, but I had chickened out from doing a PhD program, hated my then-current job, and hadn’t made any other plans. I needed to do something, but was afraid to make a bad choice. I didn't want to get stuck.

At the present moment, I just got home from the University of Miami School of Law, where I spent 12 hours studying today. And 12 hours yesterday. And I like it.

I put up this site as a place to post travel pictures and travel stories, but I am no longer mobile. I have a place I go home to every night, and I have a place I go to classes every day. I take the same route there and back, and see the same group of people.

When I started out, I gave away almost all of my stuff. When Hunter and I broke up, I pared my belongings down even further. When I got robbed, I was divested of pretty much everything. But not long after, the trend reversed. I got new clothes, a new toothbrush. I got my bike out of storage in LA and bought a car in Portland. Now I can leave my toiletries in the bathroom, and my computer in my room. The people I’ve met in the last week will hopefully still be my friends in a month, and we will still live in the same city, all of us. It’s novel.

I made a choice, and by that choice rejected many other possibilities. By that choice, my freewheeling, responsibility-free vagabond ways are behind me, at least for now. But it doesn’t feel like a mutilation.  

"You are no one. You are everyone."

A brief remark.

After seeing the study floating around online about how Internet Explorer users are dumb, I checked the stats from this blog, and found that the majority of you are Firefox users. Congrats, smartypantses! I am also highly amused that people are ending up on my site after Googling things like "American brothels". Sorry boys. (I also just had to look up whether or not "googling" should be capitalized. Chicago Manual of Style says yes, but I lean towards not capitalizing. Learning things is fun! And on that note, I also learned that Apple has more money than the U.S. government at the moment.)

Here is a picture of a voodoo queen's tomb in New Orleans. I will get around to putting up some pretty pictures of Memphis and N.O. soonish.

Le Bon Temps.

As I write this, I am sitting on a balcony with a wrought iron fence, overlooking St. Anne’s St. in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Bourbon Street is a block and a half away and mule-drawn carriage tours are passing below me. Life is good again after having a strange 36 hour episode of one of the blackest depressions I have ever experienced.

Driving through Mississippi last week, I was caught on the highway in the heaviest downpour I’ve ever seen. You mid-westerners may be familiar with this, but as a west-coaster, the onslaught was frightening. The heavens opened up, and the apocalypse of rain obscured even the hood of my car. I couldn’t drive faster than a crawl, despite the supposed 70 mph speed limit. Just as I was about to pull off before I died of either a horrendous car wreck or by drowning, I could see blue sky ahead of me, and in a few minutes, it was sunny and dry again. Weather is weird.

I had a parallel experience after I left St. Louis.  Staying with Roland and Tricia, old friends from back in the Eugene days (circa 2003-4?)  was great fun. We saw the arch, heard some great blues, talked and drank and I made friends and got to experience some St. Louis kickball. 

On my last night there however, as I lay on the floor in my sleeping bag, the whole dark world seemed to stretch before me and I felt so lost, so untethered, so afraid of everything, and so so so tired.  In retrospect, I can say that probably the stress of moving and starting school, the fact that I have been travelling almost non-stop for nine months, and the worry that I had no where to go or stay after Missouri had finally caught up with me in that moment. But as I experienced it, there was no possible way to go on. I had exhausted every last reserve of joviality and endurance, and I could not possibly face the prospect of continued life. Dramatic and ridiculous, yes, I know. But still.

I left St. Louis and drove without a goal for several hundred miles, until I finally had to stop. I took a motel room off the interstate, lay in bed. Watched TV. I was too tired to sleep. Too tired to even move my eyeballs. I didn’t think I would ever make it out of Springfield Missouri. I wondered if it were possible to die of world-weariness. I wished I would.

I didn’t, of course.  The next day I drove to a hostel in Memphis and fell asleep again, still exhausted. When I woke up, I found I was sharing a room with a German guy, a French guy, and a Swiss girl. It was the first time in the States for all of them, and they were happy and excited.  So I pulled myself together enough to go out with them.

 We drank big ass beers, and listened to music, and danced. The German and I got up on stage and sang “Sweet Home Alabama”.  The night was goofy and fun. And just like that, the storm had passed. 

I still feel that profound tiredness sloshing around in my head in my downtime, when there is nothing on the surface to distract me. But after Memphis, we spent five or six days in New Orleans, so there was precious little of that time. 

 As I finish writing this, I am sitting in a café in Pensacola Florida. There is supposed to be a punk house I can stay in around here somewhere that some kids I met busking in N.O. told me about. I also have a possible couch to crash on in Panama City. And so the Epic Cross Country Road Trip rolls on.

Laissez le bons temps rouler.

1500 miles later...

Before I left the Northwest, I had registered my car in Washington for less expensive insurance reasons. I was a little sad about this, because I liked my Oregon plates:

OMGWTFBBQ!

But then I got my Washington plates and thought, well, it's appropriate at least.

Ooo.. is that something shiny over there?!

I am currently in Wisconsin and will be heading on to Chicago tomorrow.  But on my way here...

Yellowstone was crazy gorgeous

Buffaloes are surprisingly massive animals. And they don't really look like anything that belongs in nature; they seem more like Jim Henson creatures.

Missoula Montana was a great town and a random that I was hanging out with gave me a Thor comic book (also random!). I went to Deadwood, South Dakota, which is a little mountain town entirely devoted to drinking and gambling, as is appropriate. It's where Wild Bill was killed over a poker game. I saw his grave, and the chair he was killed in at Saloon No. 10.

Sioux Falls, of all places, was a crazy party night. I started out at a cigar lounge, listening to a bluegrass band, and ended up climbing fences in an industrial area at 3 AM.

I spent the next morning, hungover, drinking mimosas and watching Top Gear with an ex-race car driver.

Then there was Minneapolis, where I got to see some of the old Eugene crew!

 

 

St. Paul Saints game with Jef and EJ

BBQing with Mo and Taro

There are many more stories and pictures, of course. The specter of law school keeps getting bigger and closer as well. I applied for a grad PLUS loan and signed all my promissory notes the other day. Funny how I feel like I should be signing in blood.

And yet, somehow I keep having dreams that I'm back in Tamarindo.

On the road again!

After getting back to the states, spending a week in LA and a month in Portland, I am finally off and traveling again. This time in the form of an Epic Cross Country Road Trip. 

Some pictures from ECCRT day one:

Starting out at my mother's beautiful new house in Bellingham WA

Goodbye, Pacific Northwest! Also: this is my new car. Her name is Hester.

Heading east, and I am soon out in the desert again. Oh, how I missed it!

This was my campsite the first night. Beautiful and creepy abandoned farm.

Wildflowers

 

 

The entire second floor had been claimed by nesting birds.

Whoever used to live here had fantastic taste in wallpaper!

Where will I end up tonight? You never know.

People.

And now it has come down to it: my last day in Costa Rica. Which has had me thinking about all the people I have met since I took off on my own that have made my travels so enjoyable. And I´m thinking about people back home that I will see soon.

I would like to propose a toast, and I hope you will forgive me if it a bit of a long one.

Cheers!:

To Simon, whose couch I will be on tomorrow night, who likes cool music and is so sincere.

To Greg, whose couch I will be on in a few days, who is taking care of business for me, and who is a fantastic human being.

To Brennan, who has been taking care of business for me for a long time, and whose grumpiness I miss.

To Chris, my stepfather, who always has my back and who is always awkward and sincere.

To my mother, whose birthday I forgot, and whose birthday I forget every year until sometime around mother´s day, when I remember that I forgot.

To Diana, who was my first friend in Central America, and who made the way for all the others.

To the Italian, Miguel, who drank red wine with me in the middle of the night.

To the Swiss guy, Nikolai, who stumbled down the very steep hill in the pitch black night with me.

To Marcus, the Australian, who drank and talked with me; who got robbed and fled with me. Who had pretty, calculating eyes and a businessman´s body. I wish you well on the rest of your travels.

To Oliver, the Englishman, who had blue eyes and a golden body and a white ass. Who was a terrible surf instructor and who had a curious British sense of humor (I hate you). May your passport get you into Honduras and-or may your bribes go over well. 

To Mike Gross, who was good fun and an amusing dancer. Grosscoast.

To Peter, the other Australian, who took an interest in my interest in baseball, and loved to play poker.

To AP Steve, who does not like the outdoors and who is as awkward as ever. You are an inspiration and I want your car.

To Webb, who almost made me a pirate. I´m sorry I didn´t go with you. It´s my only regret.

To The Milkman, Cheesecoast, Brent, Rachael, and Kai, who were my posse from Santa Teresa to Bocas del Toro.

To Elizabeth, also known as Frenchie, who was beautiful and kind and who I was always jealous of.

To Zach, who always has a funny comment, and who has done his best to warn me off law school.

To Hunter, who took me surfing for the first time.

To Robyn, the Canadian nurse, who made the second time in Tamarindo as fun as the first.

To the Israeli guys, who nearly died crossing the river with us and who did not laugh at my surfing abilities.

To all those I met so briefly: the New York Greek in Boquete; the English DJ in Panama City; Dan who owned the hostels who I met at Aqualounge; Dan´s pretty, pretty friend; Brian in San Jose, who was so nice to me it made me cry; Brooks, who looks so much like Scott; David in LA, who just got a new apartment; and all the others I admired momentarily and then forgot.

To Fernando, my cab driver; to the old security guard at the David bus station; to the bartender at Iguana; to the guy I took my very first bus ride with; to all the locals who had patience with my Spanish and were good to me.

To all the people back in Portland: I have missed you, I have missed your antics, and I hope to see you soon.

To you all: It was swell. Cheers!

The City and The City.

I arrived in Panama City last night, and I eventually found myself in a seedy part of town at a place called Club Miami in the company of four very drunk and coked out guys I had met at a previous bar. Club Miami is a strip club, of sorts. The doorman looked at me rather oddly as I made my way inside. The dancing itself had nothing on the clubs in Portland: the girls half-heartedly strutted across the stage at random intervals, and there was almost no pole work to speak of. The men were not tipping. At one point, I followed the signs that said ¨banos¨, only to find a men´s room at the end of the hall, but no women´s. A bouncer took pity on my confusion and led me to the stripper´s dressing room, where I peed in a stall-less toilet next to a naked woman talking on a cell phone. It was obvious that women were not expected as customers.

The reason for all this, of course, was that this was not an establishment where one goes to watch naked ladies dance, except to examine the goods before paying $100, picking the girl you like, and taking her to one of the rooms in back. I was in a whorehouse.

Now, I wasn´t surprised to be there as the guys had been pretty explicit about what sort of place we were going to. If anything, I was a little surprised at how ordinary it seemed. Some of the women were good looking; most were average, a little on the chubby side. I didn´t look at their faces very closely- I was shy about making eye contact. I watched a parade of butts and stomachs and tits. They all wore white, an ironic touch. The guys I was with greeted the doorman and DJ with familiarity as the bouncer informed us that the cocaine would be arriving in half an hour. One of the guys said he was writing a guide called ¨The Not So Lonely Planet¨.

I had a few drinks and then took a cab home and went to bed. Not a very exciting story in the end. I was simply curious to see what a Central American brothel was like, and I was a bit disappointed.

In the daylight, however, I find the city utterly charming. I´m staying in the Casco Viejo district- an old neighborhood filled with crumbling colonial buildings. Walking north from here through the market (filled with the requisite vegetables, junk, piles of trash, stray dogs, half-naked children, and delicious delicious bags of sliced mango) you emerge on a main street closed to cars and lined with cheap shops. I bought a new outfit today for $10. Looking across the bay you can see downtown and the financial district, a forest of modern skyscrapers reminiscent, as many have said, of Miami. Fernando, my cabbie from the bus station yesterday, was probably the nicest person I´ve met on this trip. There are $0.50 beers in the bar below my hostel. So all in all, I adore this city. Although I do think I might try to find some classier nightlife tonight.

Islands.

If I had a camera, this is where I would post some photos of Bocas del Toro. Imagine: Caribbean islands covered in dense jungle. Brightly painted huts with thatched or zinc roofs on stilts over the water. Coconut palms and wooden boats that you take between islands. I would also probably put up a picture of my feet with their pebbled texture from so many mosquito bites. The problem with tropical paradises is that all the fauna wants to eat you.

The main town of Bocas is on Isla Colon and is based entirely on partying. After a few days of that, I ran away to Isla Bastimentos which is much quieter. There are no roads or cars and I adore it. I could gush about this place all day long.

The problem now is where do I go after this? I've been traveling on and off with a group of about 8 kids I met a few weeks ago. But the Canadians and Americans are leaving soon and the English guy is traveling north to Honduras, stopping back in Tamarindo to sell a surfboard. I'm not particularly excited about heading back to Costa Rica right now, and especially not Tamagringo. But here's the admission: I'm scared to travel alone right now. (Gah, how embarrassing! This feeling goes against everything I stand for!)

The idea of taking a boat back to the dirty port town on the mainland and getting in some half broken-down taxi and going to a bus station, and taking that bus to some new city where I will arrive with no idea where I am and will then have to get into another dodgy taxi and then.... blah, blah, you get the point. Point being, it scares the shit out of me. But that's the thing about traveling here: you are always arriving in strange cities looking just as lost as you feel and you have to trust strangers to get you around, to give you directions and to not rob and kill you.

So do I follow the kids back to Costa? Do I find a new group that is planning on staying in Panama? Or do I suck it up, take a deep breath and get in that taxi by myself?

A shitty day.

I was robbed in Managua, Nicaragua. This is a difficult story to tell. Although the fear I felt for days afterwards has dissapated, the hot, sick humiliation of helplessness remains.

After a lazy week in Granada, I had deceided to head to the Corn Islands on the carribean coast. It was going to be an arduous 2 1/2 day journey on a combination of buses and boats. My friend Marcus and I were supposed to leave from Managua on Monday night, but  I wanted to get to the city earlier to check it out. I knew it was supposed to be a poor, dirty, potentially dangerous, centerless sprawl of a city, but I figured, hey, I grew up in LA. I´m used to that sort of thing.

We arrived on Saturday afternoon. There was some sort of demonstration going on that day and our bus had to take side streets in an attempt to avoid the traffic and blocked off streets. We got to the bus station across from the university and hailed a cab. On the way down the street, several more people piled into the car. A couple in maybe their early 40´s and another young guy. This was more obnoxious than particularly alarming, as taxi colectivos are common here and one of the guys explained that the busses weren´t running regularly because of the demonstrations.

Then the cabbie started turning off onto side streets, supposedly taking short cuts. Again, it didn´t seem overly odd, as our bus had done the same thing earlier. We were in an area with dirt streets. The houses were no more than shacks, and there were piles of burning trash around. I joked that we were getting the scenic tour.

Suddenly the car stopped and all four of them fell on us. It was a moment of shocking violence and confusion. I was pinned down by the man on my right, who was punching and choking Marcus. The younger guy in front had pulled a knife. We struggled for a moment, but we were outnumbered, unarmed, surprised and scared. I remember saying ¨Stop it, stop it. We will give you what you want. What do you want? What do you want?¨ in a voice that sounded strangely calm to my own ears.

It´s hard to say exactly what happened next or for how long it went on, but then they had us both pinned down and it seemed like they were all yelling at once. The car started moving again at some point and after some more struggling, they had bound Marcus´ hands with plastic ties. They made us close our eyes. The man on my right kept yelling and punching Marcus. He told me later it was because the other guy had the knife right in front of his face, and he kept reflexively opening his eyes to keep track of it.

They went through our pockets, through our bags. They kept pushing my head down and my neck is still sore from it. But at this point I had gone entirely still and silent. Some retarded survival instinct told me to make myself as small as possible, and maybe I would escape notice. They had our wallets and all our cash and cards. They were demanding our PIN numbers and became violent again when Marcus kept giving them the same numbers for all the cards. They spoke no English, and his Spanish is limited to a few weeks of classes. They couldn´t understand that all the cards had the same PIN, and suspected he was lying to them. I whispered, ¨Son los mismos, son los mismos,¨ the only words I spoke besides when I gave them my own PIN.

I think this is when they pulled out the gun, although I can´t be sure. The man on my right, who seemed to be running the show, made it very clear that if the cards didn´t work with the number Marcus gave them, then they would shoot me. It was such classic bad guy dialogue: ¨If we find out you are lying to us, the girl gets it! You wouldn´t want anything to happen to her, would you?¨ But in Spanish, and real, and utterly terrifying. I fervently hoped he hadn´t been lyimg.

The car started and stopped, people got in and out. I had no idea where we were or what was happening, but at some point I figured they had got their money, because they seemed in a better mood, and I started to catch some conversation about where to take us.

I felt like I had been in the car for an eternity. Sweat was dripping down my face, but I didn´t want to draw their ire by moving my hands to try and wipe it away. I thought strange thoughts, alternating between mundane and morbid. I hoped that they would at least leave us our bags of clothes, as there was nothing of value in them, but I was thinking of the emergency cash I had hidden in my toiletry bag. I wondered if they would take us somewhere and kill us. I wondered if I would beg for my life or stay silent. My flipflops had fallen off, and I hoped I would be able to grab them before we were dumped because I didn´t want to walk around Managua barefoot. I thought, ¨I am getting really bored with this whole getting robbed thing.¨   I wondered if they would rape me.

The car kept going and I could tell we were getting out of town. It got quieter and I felt that we turned onto dirt roads. I think I was the most afraid at this point, because I knew the car would stop soon and I didn´t know what would happen then. There was a gun pressed against my thigh.

They dumped us and drove away, still pointing the gun at us. What would we have done? Marcus eventually got his hands free and I found that they had left my dinobag, complete with passport and wallet, in the dirt a ways fown the road.

A man approached us eventually, saying ¨What are you looking for? This is a very dangerous place for you guys to be walking around¨. I could have laughed. He gave us a ride in the back of his pickup to the highway.

And so I made it out safe, although without my backpack, clothes, no computer or camera and ipod, etc., and with a bank account that is about $550 lighter. But hey, it makes for a good story, right? And I still got my sense of humor.

The unexamined life.

When I was at Reed College, there was a girl in my year named Eira. Eira was a very bright girl who finished her thesis on Nabokov weeks before the deadline and had already been accepted into her PhD program by graduation. For unknown reasons (I never knew her well) we are facebook friends.

I mention this becuase last week her status read: "Took one of my Reed profs to lunch. Geeked out about Lolita, Neuromancer, narratology. I feel sorry for people who don't know what they want to do in life."

After perusing facebook and reading my emails, it was time to go to the beach. I loaded my surfboard and got into the back of a pickup truck for the bumpy ride down to Playa Hermosa. It is still almost entirely undeveloped and was apparently where they filmed a season of Survivor. A mind-bendingly gorgeous spot.

After arriving at the beach we had an hour or so to kill while waiting for the tide to come in, so I hopped in a hammock and settled in with a book. But after a few minutes I could feel a physical surge of anxiety in my gut. I couldn't concentrate on my book, couldn't relax, couldn't sit still.
I don't know what I want to do in life. 

It probably didn't help that the characters in the Saul Bellow novel I'm reading are all impossibly intelligent, intense, quirky and far more interesting than I will ever be. And they all know what they want to do in life. So I was sitting in a hammock on a remote beach in Nicaragua, supposedly relaxing before an afternoon of surfing, but all I was doing was experiencing a kind of existential terror. What was I doing there? I wasn't accomplishing anything, I needed to go do something, something important and interesting to ward off the possibility that I will never know what I want to be when I grow up. 

This is what an existential crisis looks like.

But I think that perhaps, at least for right now, it is no sin to lead an unexamined life. To have no ambitions or plans or goals. I'm not here to learn anything. I'm certainly not here to "find myself" or anything so cliche as that. And if I'm going to figure anything out, it's not going to be while relaxing at the beach. Beach time is not Big Question time. Beaches are for playing and drinking beers and hedonism and tans. If I wanted an angsty soul-searching journey to discover my passion, I would have gone to Paris. It seems like the type of place that would be good for that. 


In conclusion, fuck you, Eira. And go find yourself a beach.

Enferma.

Good gods, but I've been sick! It started the day I traveled to Nicaragua. Up at 5AM, two buses, a ferry, a third bus, two border crossings and a gypsy cab and I finally arrived in San Juan del Sur exhausted, racked with fever and at the end of my endurance. The first hostel I went to was all booked up. I then came to the Hospedaje Elizabeth, where a friendly, bustling woman told me to go on upstairs and pick a room. I left my stuff in the one that had a real mattress instead of just a thin pad and went back down to pay. The woman had quoted me C$150 Córdobas, or about $7.50. But she wasn't there when I got back down, and I was left with two young women who I think were her daughters. They told me no, it was C$220. I tried to argue, but to no avail. I was so tired and sick I would have paid anything just to be able to go to sleep.

I had already been sore from surfing, but now it felt as though someone had taken a baseball bat to my body. I paid and headed back up. I started to cry as I walked up the stairs. I got to my room, sat down on the bed with the stained sheets. I tried to turn on the fan, but found out there was no electricity and cried some more. Presently the landlady knocked. She said that yes, I had been overcharged, she was so sorry, and gave me correct change. She was obviously puzzled about why I was so upset, but I didn't have then energy to try and explain.

This is pretty much all I've seen of Nicaragua so far.

After she left, I fell facedown on the bed and passed out. All that afternoon and night I had strange, hallucinatory half-waking dreams. It's quite windy here and there was what sounded like a major wind storm going on outside. At first I thought I was at the bottom of the ocean and there were huge waves breaking above me. I eventually, and with some effort, figured out that I was in fact on land, and I was hearing wind, not waves. The roof is simply sheets of corrugated metal nailed onto wood frames, and the hospedaje is actually three or four smaller buildings lashed together with this roofing and a mishmash of homemade stairs and flooring into one(ish) larger structure. When the wind blows, everything shifts and creaks and groans, and the trees rub and thump. It sounded like large creatures roughhousing and tumbling about, trying to pry up the sheets of metal to find a way in.

I don't remember much of the next 24 hours, except lying in bed, sweating and moaning and drooling. My throat was (is) so painful I couldn't swallow. It had swollen up as though I had swallowed a bee's nest and is still now covered in spots of white goo (I know you wanted to know that). While I shook like a leaf from the chills all the first night, I found myself slumped under the trickle of cold water that passes for a shower at 3AM the next night, heat coming in waves off my skin.

I still feel pretty shitty, but I'm lucid now at least. My fever broke on the third day and the pharmacy gave me a grab bag of pills which I take by the handful: some ibuprofen, some antibiotics, some Guatemalan version of NyQuil. One thing to say about the Nicaraguan pharmacists: they aren't afraid to throw drugs at a problem! I got the feeling they would give just about anything I asked for.

I wonder if this illness would have felt so traumatic if I had gotten sick at home (wherever that may be) with a bowl of soup and a blanket and some Netflix. Probably not. But hey, everything is more exciting in a strange town in a strange country in a place with barely functioning running water and electricity! And damn, if I'm going to sick like that while traveling, it better goddamned well be malaria.

I'm staying about three blocks from the ocean. Maybe soon I'll actually get to see it.

La Pura Vida

Aaaah. Well. Costa Rica? Me gusta.

I'm staying in a little town on the southern end of the Nicoya Peninsula. Well, "town" might be too strong a word. There is a dirt road that runs along the coast with a string of surf shops, hostels, restaurants, and surf shops. There is really not much to do here but go to the beach during the day. Everything tends to shut down quite early, and if I get back to the hostel past 10PM, everything is locked up and dark. But there are parties that go into the wee hours as well, if you know where to look. Basically, it's perfect. I can see how people come here and never leave.

This is the little commercial strip outside of the cafe I'm sitting in.  It is hot and humid here, although not unbearably so. It feels perfect when you are sitting in the shade sipping a cafe frio (sin leche, sin azucar) but it is sweaty and dusty to walk in the sun, especially at midday. But, finally, I am not cold anymore. I can't tell you what a relief that is. I think my aversion to cold has been growing stronger over the years.

This is the balcony outside my room, overlooking the garden. There are all sorts of birds, and huge iguanas, and geckos, and various other critters everywhere.

What else can I say? There's not much to report, really. Besides, thinking is hard here. And it's time to go the the beach.

The City of Angeles

There was a mishap with my debit card which has necessitated a change in plans. So while I should be in Costa Rica already, I am instead still in Los Angeles and am flying out tomorrow. I won't begin to go into the stress and misery that accompanied the destruction of my card and the canceling of the original flight, but now I think it was actually a good thing. I had only given myself two days after returning from DC to get all my affairs in order and go. It felt like a panicked flight away from everything and towards much that was unknown. But I have now had a week in LA to leisurely prepare and I feel much more calm now.

I have discovered that there are many things about Los Angeles that I really enjoy. It is well into spring here, and record rainfall this winter has made the Hollywood hills look green and wild. I spent today walking around, doing errands in shorts and a tank top. There are butterflies in people's gardens and flowers growing out of the sidewalk cracks. It is so bright here and I have to put on sunglasses every time I go outside- a shock to my Oregon acclimatized eyes. I could hear the flocks of feral parrots screeching in the palm trees just off of Wilshire Blvd.

I went biking around Hollywood the other day, and I enjoyed the architecture of the neighborhoods: the more modest houses look bright and cheery with their red-tiled roofs and bougainvillea growing up their sides (just ignore the bars on the windows). The big old LA style manses look stately and dignified. I had lunch at a taco stand on Santa Monica and Vine and found a dive bar just off of Hollywood Blvd with dollar PBRs. I spent a few hours hanging out and talking with the regulars; geeks and tattoo artists.

Later that night some kids from the hostel and I went clubbing. We made a very international group: a girl from Japan, one from Philly, the French girl, the guy from Tunisia who speaks five languages and works as a dancer when he's not working at the hostel, an Italian guy, etc, etc.  We tried to get into Bruce Willis' birthday party at Las Palmas, but were unsuccessful, even though I put on my big dark sunglasses and tried to convince the door guy in my best "Do you know who I am??" tone of voice that we were on the list. We ended up in a huge crowded rooftop nightclub, overlooking the strip and with a view of all the LA lights across the city. On our way back, even though my grandmother lived a few blocks away before she died, and this part of the city is as old and familiar to me as my childhood, I found myself pointing things out along with everyone else. "Oh, look at whose star!" we said to each other, and "Look, it's Jack Nicholson's hand prints!".

The hostel itself is on Crenshaw (the nicer, northern part) on the edge of Korea town. There are few signs in English, but many restaurants. Many kids live here for months at a time and so people get to know each other well.

It might not be much, but it feels quite homey to me right now, and I think I really needed this time here.

Also: I found this poem the other day and liked it very very much.

"One Art"
By Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Holy shit, here we go!

I am currently sitting in a hostel in Los Angeles after having flown in from DC last night, and I will be leaving the country on Thursday.

As if I hadn't dismantled my life enough, I will be paring down my stuff even further and selling my bike (by tomorrow!) and then I will fly to San Jose, Costa Rica. And then... well, I will wander about and adventure for two and half months. And apparently I will need a white linen suit. Being an expat sounds terribly romantic.

Washington DC was lovely. I really like it there and I would love to live there one day. Sadly, I simply can't afford it. So I will be going to Miami for law school in the fall. Which is certainly not the worst thing that could happen.


But before Miami, I'm looking forward to finding some smallish beach town where I can live for cheap (probably not Costa Rica though, I may need to find a cheaper country) and I will surf, and sip drinks in a hammock, and befriend the locals, and read lots of books. 

And this is how the DINOFACE is currently looking.  Yeah man, yeah.

I do miss you all sometimes though. But the show must go on!

Chapter 2.

There is very little in the world that will make a person feel more untethered in life than showering in a truck stop in Barstow and having no idea where you are going or how.

There are places in the Mojave where the vastness of everything begins to wear out your eyeballs.

I fly to Washington DC tomorrow for four days, then back to LA. Hunter will be going back to Oregon and I think I will head East. Or perhaps it's time to go to Mexico? New York? Time to throw one's fate to the wind in any case.

This is a kangaroo rat. I named him Mr. Tubbins. He hung out with me all night. I think he may be my spirit animal.

Hang ten, brah!

I went surfing for a few days while in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California. I feel that this statement is misleading, however, as it conjures up images of competence and a kind of laid back athleticism, neither of which I have ever claimed to possess. I had tried surfing exactly once before in Oregon. I splashed around a good deal, got smacked upside the head by a few waves, rode in a few times on my knees, and finished the whole day rather exhausted and pleased with myself on the whole. But that was Oregon. Nobody surfs in Oregon. I had been vaguely aware that people do that sort of thing in that climate, wearing wetsuits and whatnot, the same way I was aware that people jumped out of helicopters and snowboarded down mountains. It's something so far out of the realm of my experience that it may very well be fantasy. The point is, I was satisfied by my attempt at surfing in Oregon simply because of its novelty.

California is an entirely different creature, however. Even in January, there were so many surfers jostling for position on the waves it was a singular feat in itself that they were not running each other over. There are also always a fair number of people at the railings on top of the bluffs overlooking the water, just watching. Surfing is definitely a spectator sport down there. Finally, imagine all of the California surfer-guy stereotypes. They are all true. These muscular, sun-bleached, affable men are everywhere. They have special racks on their bicycles to carry their boards. And they are good.

Hunter and I were the only ones I saw with long boards. Everyone else had very short, sporty-looking models that they whipped back and forth down the waves. I was certainly the only one with a beat up, foam topped long board and a wetsuit that said "rental" across the chest in large letters. Hunter stayed with me for my first few attempts, giving me pointers before setting out past the breaks. Here is the thing about surfing: catching a wave is easy. Getting up on your knees is easy. Getting up on one knee and one foot, steering down the wave, and not hurting yourself is far from impossible. Actually standing up and surfing is hard. This is not far from the truth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59nrQPo53xo&feature=related        No, really. Go watch it. I'll wait.

So, when I say, "I went surfing", what I really mean is: "I spent 15 minutes struggling with a heavy and unwieldy rental board that is too wide to carry in any vaguely comfortable way, trying to get it down to the beach. I then spent a few minutes surveying the waves, strapping the leash to my ankle, and thinking about what a tool I look like compared to all these actual surfer types. After I got in the water, I spent 90% of my time flailing about, trying not to have my board crash into my teeth as I get battered by waves, and 10% of the times frantically paddling, catching waves, and then wiping out in ridiculous and creative ways the moment I try to stand up." After an hour of this, I drag my board back out to the sand, sit down with my head on my knees, and literally cry with frustration.

But. However. On the second day, after a few rounds of the process described above, I was nearly too tired to care. I flung myself on the board and the next thing I knew, I was standing up, cruising fast over the water, carried effortlessly by the wave all the way until I hit the sand. It was exhilarating and amazing and hilarious. I whooped and hollered and hammed it up for the few veteran surfers who were just getting in. They gave me wan thumbs-up. Oddly enough, the whole thing struck me as incredibly funny.

We are headed back to California tomorrow. I think I may have recovered enough to try it again.