tough one this one. it’s a little nippy here in Toscana. 5°C and Drizzle.

let me tell you: life is good, but there are some drawbacks. i’m enjoying it, but i’m not sure i could recommend it to anyone else. it’s good, though. it’s good.

my notes for this week start with the note “the thing to know about Zonker is she’s out of my league.” and a meditation on how it has a way of crumbling the bricks. do you like the word crumble when used as a verb. and if holy people don’t reïncarnate wont earth eventually be hell

i passed a brass band playing outside the church, and stopped and listened, and then i ate a battered sausage with chips.

though it is nice to be in a loving relationship i must admit it has been difficult to adjust to the loss of favour with the checkout girl in my local grocer. we’d developed something of a rapport. nothing much, a little back and forth and whatnot. pleasantries. but since i entered the place with someone things have been markedly frigid.

when i was a kid “frigid” was a word like virgin but for someone who had never kissed. it looks it’s mostly used to mean someone disinterested, but in northern ireland it meant someone who’d never kissed even if they wanted to.

on the train platform i eavesdropped on a group of Grade L Lads.

he’s all face no chat. all face. no chat. he’s gone to budapest, met a bird, first thing he does is he thinks “i’ll send a text to the group chat.” he’s a prick mate.

— he’s not a prick but he looks like an IT Professional

if you’ve got a chance to shag a single mum every wednesday why are you saying no? nah nah nah, she was nice mate, she was nice. show him the picture. see? she’s a dish. she comes home every wednesday and that’s all she wants. she’s a dish. BELLA!!! if i have to describe her she was 20 years on nora kensington with blonde hair. she was a good looking girl

it’s torture that nature made us love in different ways. to expect love the way we show it, and show it how we want it, and then to love people who love different.

“you tried to kiss him actually” said the little voice on the far side of the phone. and i was a ghost haunting my own body. something’s happened again, and not for the first time. it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be a lot of work.

on Saturday i left Zonker at the toy airport, then I went downstairs for a long yellow and a flat white. i made a little music. why is it so hard to get out of airports on foot? just give me a little path.

the DLR replacement bus has wide sills on the windows wide enough to prop your arm. i pop my arm up there. comfortable. i nod approvingly. small details like this can really make a day feel worth taking on. they didn’t take any payment. maybe the DLR really is supposed to be free.

i’m in tuscany now. it’s been a long couple of days. i drank tomato juice with worcestershire sauce on the plane. i a gluten free pizza. everything is going to be okay, as long as we get off the sauce.

i’m exhausted, tomorrow is the hedgehog’s birthday. you know what that means.

the laptop nearly fell on my face twice, i keep falling asleep typing. i’ll read a little (i just finished a good book that Sunbird recomended called “Whale Music”. i really enjoyed it. now i’m ta-nehisi coates’s the message). i’ll see you again. i wrote something good down in my notebook i wanted to type up, but it’ll have to be next week.

i love you, i’ll be thinking of you as i eat cheese. the night music has started playing in my mind, louder than light or anything. i’d better get out of here before the whole dream kicks in.

Oh yes, it’s nippy! There is a marked spot of the old nip to the air, wot?

We took dinner this week on board The Cheese Barge. A place of much merriment and cheese. The curried curds are marvelous, and the cheese boards are well accompanied with pickles and jams. Afterwards, exiting the Barge, we was cutting right across the canal’s walkway to the bench that lies opposite. A whiny-voiced cyclist of the newt-watching variety called out “watch where you’re going!” an inch from my ear. He had a mean turn in his tone that I didn’t like a bit, and so I told him “why don’t you watch where you’re going, mate?” He didn’t much approve of this, observing “f-f-f-uck you, you little fucking shit!!!” stuttering and huffing like he’d been hit in the belly with a brick. I should have liked to slap him into the water with a copy of The Highway Code.

The next day I found myself in Selfridge’s. It’s a difficult moment in adult life when one looks at a Christmas card in a department store and thinks to oneself “that speaks to me. i see myself in that.” On my exit I saw a beautiful blonde woman in a powerful suit raise her hand and seem to summon a black cab out of the thin air. Then she jumped right into the back as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world.

Zaina and I were having dates for breakfast. She spoke up. “I think these dates are pipless”. Having just removed a pip myself I offered “oh, they’re not”. She was assertive, “mine is!” and then proceeded in no short order to bite right down on the pip with her front teeth. “I see,” she said, with a tone as though the pip had made a new argument worthy of consideration, but not one that was immediately convincing.

On Wednesday evening Christabel and me attended Anora at the cinema. A 3/5 97 minute movie that went on for two and a half hours for some reason. Christabel had asked the staff if we could drink two large cups of boiling hot milk, but they hadn’t the facilities. On Thursday it was a delightful dinner at borough market’s mallow with becky. becky told the staff it was our birthday, and they brought us a little card and some chocolate truffles to celebrate our gigasecond. My gigasecond was a few megaminutes ago, but as our natal recurrences are so near to one another’s, and what with the pandemic had preventing my giga s’ jubilee being marked by the appropriate corroberee we felt that it could be justified. I brought Lucky home the leftovers, and they were well recieved. They do impressive things with a vegetable over there.

The birthday is coming up next week. As is the Tuscan outing. I prepared for her a practical gift, but not one without sentiment. A new backpack that she wanted badly, stuffed up with Tuscan stuff and a compact disc of Christmas songs by her favoured performer. Related: I regret to report that a £35 bottle of wine really tastes like a £35 bottle of wine.

The time has come to drink a little bourbon and read for a few hours before making a little music. My father has kindly sent over the MRS-1608 MultiTrak recording i used to capture the music i made as a teenager. I’m going through its 105 projects to find if there is anything on there worth salvaging. Unfortunately at this period I was singing with some absurd accent. I’d always liked singers like Syd Barrett, Formby, Chas & Dave, those who sang in their own vernacular. It seems my tenderfooted homage was to copy the aesthetics of this (by aping their accent) rather than the essence of it, as i do now, singing in my own speaking voice. It’s the sort of thing that would be fascinating, perhaps even sweet, if it were to be early recordings of anyone else but quite agonizing to listen to when you are the one on the tape. So that shall be my day: pressing play and wincing.

I hope that your week is lovely, despite its mysteries and limitations. If all goes to plan, my next transmission should reach you from la provinca di Firenze. The glass is half empty when you’re drinking, half full when you’re pouring.

week #47, what a good week week 47 is.

optimism.

it was a hard week, but effective, a teacher. the end of the week wasn’t hard at all. rewarding, rewards, rewarded.

we connected the world
far away places got so much closer
but the neighbourhood got further away

i’m extremely sleepy. subi came over on frinight. met up in the street, a little bourbon, a little walk. it’s getting to be very nippy out, isn’t it? little wander around the wine shop. big long talk.

long day, good day, out to town for koshari and backpacks and mystery. making some plans, drinking bourbon on the underground. back home i cooked a bolognese with the leftover wine and red lentil spaghetti noodles. quite nice.

today picked up a second generation ipod touch for £25 at the CeX and i’ve loaded up some of my iTunes library onto it. going to a show tonight. too sleepy for the week to start again yet. it’s exhausting trying to grow and change. don’t know how or why anyone does it.

i’ve banned podcasts, television and movies when alone. can’t have that pneumatic drilling my skullbones into the plastic brain where the spaces should be.

now i know how joan of arc felt. as her 2nd generation ipod touch (£25 at CeX) started to melt.

it’s gonna be a cold night!

had a nice moroccan meal last week. then there was monday. unrelenting monday. some throat infection from brighton came to make me sick with it. it spread to my teeth and gums by wednesday. wednesday was the first day that i felt a little better than the day before, but now it was in the teeth and gums and earholes. zipper got sick too, and i made lemsip.

the new passport arrived. it’s nice. hard plastic on the photo page, easier to open to the photo page. and i’m peeking through a little hole.

what else? nice chicken. ingredients from the butcher and the village fruit and veg. there was a mouse in her house. text me telling me she was scared. next time i went over she was wearing a matching “i love mice” pyjama set. tops and tails.

a little wine today. busy trains. sometimes whatever way i’m dressed there’s dudes mean mugging me on the train all day like they want me to give them a chance to hurt me. i prefer that to the times they look at me like i’m a joke.

mood: erratic, changeable. the good things are very good, the bad things are quite dreadful. maybe i’m doing everything wrong. how hard are good things supposed to be?

more to write but no more vigor, hardihood nor spunk. no get up and go. this’ll have to do. hope you have a good week.

the world is over but it's a-ok!
because i kissed a pretty girl yesterday

monday. again my fucking guts. feels like i’m being reupholstered. it’s cold as fuck in this house. can’t find the thermostat. had a dream, i’d finally found a useful organization app, but i’d signed up in such a way it kept dead-naming me when i logged in. Hello Shadows! had to break into a government facility through the gym locker room. a little hazy.

feeling ill, throwing up, a stomach bug? the day off, can’t get too far from the bathroom, can’t focus. ring ring, ring ring. back in london. okay, okay. well, i’ll forget about it. it’ll be okay. better this way. better this way.

okay. shower, breakfast, make-up, clothes.

leave early, arrive early, green valley, around the block. a handsome young arab gentleman stops me outside the restaurant and gestures for me to take off my headphones. i take off my headphones. he fingerguns, points me up and down with bost index fingers, “i love your outfit. very cool”. i say thank-you and i love your outfit too. okay. so i have the arab vote. that’s all i need. 4 mins. maybe this is goodbye. but it’s dinner? is dinner goodbye?

i give her some gifts, she has some for me too, we eat lentil soup, we hold hands and we cry and i say everything i wanted to say, it’s so easy, it’s fun to talk, we lean over table and we kiss, we split the bill, the bill is £44.44 (so that’s £22.22 each), we barely touched our dinner, we’ve never left so much food uneaten before, we walk around and talk about music and politics and laugh and laugh and she is smart and pretty, and we leaned against a little post and stare into each others eyes a long time. someone wolf whistles from a passing bicycle. someone rolling past in a chair shouts “kiss her, kiss her!” and she kisses me and we go home

you know when you’re smiling and you can feel it strange and foreign in your face like you haven’t used your smile muscles in a minute?

oh, i found the thermostat. goodnight.

choo-choo. and zoo-zoo. and choo-choo. and conf. and belgian fries. and choo-choo.

met a nice lady on the train. she’s from small country. she reads tarot. never for herself. she’s from small country. very sweet, very gentle. i enjoyed her company in the 1g network area between there and here.

bourbon, curry, justified. timothy olyphant is so pretty. beautiful day. beautiful night. beautiful day. vashti bunyan, train song.

seem to have caught a throat bug at the ffconf. i’m like a super-getter. i’ll catch anything everywhere.

just so you know, guys. we’re closing in five minutes.

• ⬜ The Getty Villa
• ⬜ Erewhon
• ✅ in-n-out
• ✅ Venice beach (boardwalk)
• ⬜ Laugh Factory
• ✅ Brother’s Cousin (westwood/ucla)
• ✅ Barney’s beanery (popular with friends)
• ✅ taco truck
• ✅ ask everyone if they work in pictures
• ✅ crush on a girl in the record store
• ✅ sawtelle (little osaka)
• ⬜ the bungalo (90401)
• ⬜ jump off the H of the Hollywood sign

monday october 28th✔

every muscle in my body is sore, i have moved too much. i am going to need a holiday to recover from this holiday. it’s 7am. i’ve had another night of broken sleep and strange, strange dreams. my guts are burning because i keep eating wheat. my whole bed is soaking wet from sweat. i draft an email, but do not send it. i have a quick shower, take my medication, head to denny’s to get a little 1400 calorie breakfast. coffee and eggs. maybe the santa fe grill. maybe the all american slam with pancakes. back to the hotel, check out and head to Santa Monica.

ok, ok. b to union, change at 7th, southbound E to SM, switch at westwood for Shelby and little osaka. the right stem of my glasses snapped off during the move so i can barely see a thing. i’m wearing sunglasses now. i can see about 5 inches. i have a little pocket bottle of tequila i picked up on hollywood boulevard. at 7th i stop by a restaurant that opened that week and have a shot of clase azul añejo, $70 a shot, it’s the first they’ve served since they opened, he cuts the plastic off the bottle with a pocket knife. i didn’t know tequila could taste like bourbon. very smooth, sweet too. thanks danny.

book it. back down the stairs. girl in a mickey mouse hoody. two guys have disengaged the alarmed gate and i catch it on two fingers as it’s closing and slip back through. folks are coming from the santa monica platform over to the long beach platform. ah, westbound platforms is closed but santa monica trains are still leaving just from long beach. okay. the next train says santa monica. okay. we roll along. the voice says “exit here for walt disney concert hall” and the man next to me nearly jumps up out of his own skin to get off the train. must be late to meet the mouse. a few stops later and it says “east los angeles”. now, that doesn’t seem right. so i take a look at the map. yeah, this train is going to long beach. a poster on the train tells me men 18-25 must register with Selective Service to qualify for student loans or citizenship. we’re doing pandemic and we’re doing global warfare. centurys seem to live their twenties like i did.

slip out and catch one going the other way. i meet a couple guys in east l.a. and they tell me theyre from east l.a., which is no mystery because they tell me in that east l.a. accent. my favourite english accent in the world, i think, so pretty with all those buzzy spanish vowels and ice skating smooth esses. they tell me to bring some irish women next time, i tell them okay. and we talk about the legality of street drinking in los angeles. it’s on the level of “it’s illegal but just don’t take the piss and you’ll be fine” which is a good level. different than mexico city where it’s legal for a fee. bribes are okay though, right? they’re just a less alienated, more direct version of a universal truth that nothing’s illegal if you can afford it.

this new train, also labeled santa monica, changes its mind at 7th street and starts going back the other way. we all get off and i get outside and smoke a cigarette. can’t seem to get west of 7th street. the coffee roulette bot on future of coding slack has paired me up with someone who also happens to be in l.a. this week. so we meet up in person. i get an uber to the first stop west of 7th, then take the metro a few more stops west, then hop off and get picked up in a rented car and we head to westwood.

we park in any little round corner with two tiers of restaurants and a parking lot. head to a hong kong eatery where the gentleman proceeds to order a series of things i’ve never heard of and a bowl of birds feet and i get two beers and some fried rice. we eat well and then head back to the car and head to my hotel where i check in, step out on the balcony, it’s beautiful. the sky is cobalt blue and the beach is dirty snow.

we go for a walk to venice beach boardwalk. it’s a long walk going through the sand. just kilometer or so, but it’s through the sand. i sit down on a bench to rest my feet. there’s was an old italian american lady from new york on the bench next to me, name’s lucy. she’s the second person to tell me where she’s from with an accent that means she doesn’t need to tell me. we talked about life and ireland and the sunset and everything beautiful and children and the sea and the election and abortion and mexico and long beach and i wished her luck. he was only listening and afterwards he said “i see how it is for you”. the boardwalk’s pretty, it’s like brighton. we get right out to the end. some piers you feel like you’re standing alone right at the end of the world but here you feel like you feel you’ve got the world around you. land curves around in both directions, you can see the lights twinkling humanity on each corner. “embraced” he said, he was right. i said that’s what i meant when i was talking to lucy about the sunsets, about how they feel true to where they are. the sunsets in london are navy and orange. sometimes a stripe of teal, or a stripe of purple. legacy, regal. but here, like promise, all the colours you’d use to set a scene here. a place where we expanded outwards, towards infinity, before reaching the material reality of the water. no coincidence that nasa and silicon valley are both here, trying to find new frontiers. out to space or inside our souls. i mean that both ways, it is beautiful and it is depraved. humanity will always strive for more and capital will always need more real estate. i feel like jumping into the water and washing away. we walk home. half the way. then i book a lyft.

i sit on the balcony drinking Patrón and wondering about tomorrow.

tuesday, wednesday october 29th, 30th

same hotel today but a different room, i need to dip out for a few hours so i stow my bags and head to the pier. there’s a guy practicing lip slide to ollie impossible in the parking lot, i stop a while to watch. he tells me he’s practicing until he’s ready to do it at… “you see that pearl hotel over there? they have the best spot for it but here’s it’s like a practice ground,” same shape. “i’ll tell you, skaters? we the most… i unplugged from the matrix when i was like twelve” and i wonder what age he is now. maybe three years older than me. i’m wearing my daffodils jumpsuit that’s short sleeved on both ends, i’m not wearing underpants and there’s way too much wind. i wonder if he has a red hot chili peppers tatoo. i liked him, he seemed nice and true.

only, only, only, only…

seems like there’s a coast line every direction some how. i’m dry heaving on a corner. maybe a little cheesecake factory meatball will come up. i get excorted down an alley by two cops from the weed store. they tell me, you can’t be doing that here. i say, i’m sorry i’m not from around here. they say, that’s okay no liquor no marijuana no tobacco right here and they point at a sign and “enjoy your stay”.

i walk up to santa monica pier. down under the pier and around the i meet a guy called greg and he is fishing. we chat a long time about cities and why we do what we do. he shows me a fish he caught today and tells me there is better catching up on redondo, there you can even take away a crab most days.

at the bar on santa monica pier the bar man tells me “i hope you miss your flight and come back tomorrow”. he tells me i should go watch sunset at point dume. i ride the west coast coaster. maybe everything’s beautiful. there’s still something missing. i go to a little bar while i’m waiting for the bus and i drink a beer and a tequila. the girl behind me is from back home. she keeps trying to work out if i’m catholic or protestant and i hate every second of it. must be forty-something and you’re in Los Angeles with this sun bearing down on you and you can’t leave that alone? let it go, please. this is why i fucking left. part of it. afterwards when she’s leaving she asks if she can pray for me. i tell her yes you can in the comfort of your hotel room, i’ll pray for you too. she goes into some conversation with the lord and i get another tequila.

kayleigh said go to the promenade, shelby said hit up barney’s beanery. barney’s beanery is on the promenade so i do both at once and i get a bowl of chili like colombo.

christabel sends me a message asking if she could use my sperm to have a baby. i’m not sure if i actually have any sperm due to the hormones, but i tell her okay.

at the bus stop for the bus point dume i meet a nice fella named Zach who tells me he’s going somwhere to buy drugs and asks if i can cover his bus fare. on the bus we get talking to this other guy who looks like hollahan who asks me if i want to try a drug he has. he hands me a brown piece of paper and tells me to pop it under my tongue. this other guy from the other end of the bus pulls up and tells me i do not want to take it, it’s basically fentanyl. and the guy who looks like hollohan says “nah it’s not, this guy’s just a christian” he says “i’m not a christian” i slip it under my tongue and thank them both sincerely and step backwards off the bus and then i turn around trip on something and go flying across the ground and catch myself on my face and get a massive scrape on my eyebrow and left cheek and my sunglasses. a mexican guy sitting on a wooden barrel offers me a cigarette and we watch the sunset and talk about palestine and he gives me the rest of his pack and heads back into the kitchen.

i slip over rocks and lose my footing and catch it and down by the water i send a video to a friend. i leave 3 missed calls for 15 people. i’m not enjoying the drug. when i get to the restaurant they give me a menu and i order the corn. the night manager comes over and tells me i have to leave because i’m bleeding. he walks me out and i say something dark to him and go on about my way. i tell him i hope one day he experiences 1% of the kind of pain i’ve experienced so that he’ll have some empathy when somebody just wants corn. a crazy thing to say, and one of the four things i’ve done that make me feel shame on this trip. that being said, what the hell man? i just needed some corn.

taco bell, traffic, busy roads, sand, water, sand, water, roads and hills and beeeeep bweerrrp the doppler effect and i’ve walked 3km from malibu now and i look at my phone and i don’t know if the time is a.m. or p.m. talked to an early morning runner and he was cordial but i think i might have freaked him out which is fair because i have blood all down the left side of my face and i’ve walked 4km now. i get back to the hotel. 4.1km from point dume to here.

and i have to switch rooms again. and some of the stuff that happened today might have happened tomorrow. and i draft a few more emails and do not send them. i can’t remember too good. i spend a lot of the second day sleeping and eating hot dogs and being sad. defintitely an opiate, i wake up feeling like i left my soul somewhere.

thursday october 31st

to the airport hotel. i introduce my taxi driver to snow tha product and that’s a good time where we roll down the streets of L.A. with snow blasting out over speakers. hell yeah. i order a tequila and they give me an orange liqueur. i can’t have that much sugar. i go make myself throw up and camp out in the hotel room listening to podcasts and crying a little. i’m not ready to go home, but i can’t stay here, i miss my best friend, this fucking sucks.

friday november 1st

first plane drops me in seattle. in the aiport a guy tries converting me to christ and i tell him to fuck off. his daughter tells me she likes my outfit and i say thank you. i liked hers too but i was annoyed at her father for not leaving me alone when i asked him to nor when i told him to and not leaving until i tell him to fuck off. it feels horrible. i eat more than i’m interested in eating. i don’t drink anything. i’m sober on the plane to london. i finally draft an email that i actually send. i immediatel wish i’d sent one of the better ones but this one is okay. it’s a follow up to a letter i sent before i left.

saturday second november

when i get to london i call her, she doesn’t pick up. i should probably take that as a message. i don’t. heathrow express. yeah, i sent an email on the plane. yeah, a follow up to the letter i sent in the post before i left. the twenty fifth version of an email i drafted over and over again, some sweeter and some deeper. i’d managed to prevent myself sending any of them in the past by drinking until i stopped feeling anything. but now ive been sober for two full days and i am live right here inside my feelings thoughts and memories. i get off the plane, i switch to a train, and i get off the train at paddington and i exit by the canal. and im listening to john dolan read from celine. and i feel compelled to walk to her apartment and ring the buzzer. and i hear from Hawthorne via dolan “be true ✅, be true ✅, be true ✅, show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be discerned” and i think you know that’s what i mean when i say i’m trying to do total honesty on the blog and it’s nice to hear that from someone from a couple hundred years ago. and i walk and i walk, and i feel so stupid that im living this life right now when i know i will have to write it and to “be true, show freely” this trait of my very worst. and so i walk to her apartment and i ring the buzzer and there is no answer and i should take that as a sign and i do not. i go and sit down on a bench at the entrance to the park and i call her for the nineteenth time. it gives that european beep this time instead of the trusty british ring ring. i try again. a french voice tells me the call could not be completed. so she’s in france? maybe she’s happy

home, home. i don’t want to go home. but where else is there? my hands are tearing apart carrying this bag everywhere and my shoulder is still and dull and stinging. i drink a little beer, and walk to charing cross (accidentally passing that comedy club… and that bar with the pulley system… i didn’t even know where these places were i was just following back then), and i get on the train. and i think about how nice it would be just to hear her voice tell me she doesn’t want to talk to me. and the train pulls into blackheath. and on the walk home i pass a window display of sausage dog socks. this is the place i bought the warthog socks three months ago when i got home to find a taxi in the street and she was furious and crying and carrying boxes and i helped her with the boxes and we held each other and we cried and we said we would see each other soon.

so i go in to the little shop and i buy the sausage dog socks. hearing this story, the girl behind the counter says “this is why i live in a bright orange camper van” and she tells me about her art and her music, and i buy some of her art (she’s undercharging) and i ask about her music. she pulls a row of dresses aside and reveals a piano and she starts to play a beautiful arrangement of Sound of Silence, but is interrupted when a lady comes in to return a garment, but when the transaction is done she jumps up and clicks her heels together and plays a beautiful arrangement of Sound of Silence and then she improvises for a while around some chords. i tell her it is very wonderful (it is very wonderful) and i leave and i go home to think about the little arab.

after clanking up the stairs so tired that if i lose focus for a moment i’ll become a roack by the ocean, i enter my apartment and i hate it bitterly. i don’t want to be here, i don’t want to be any place but least of all here. this couch is where she sat on my lap and we cried and i told her she is so beautiful and i told her this is not what i want and she asked “what DO you want” and i didn’t feel like i could tell her and i told her “it doesn’t matter what i want” and i told her “Goodbye, Lucky.” and we held eachother tightly and we cried and her taxi came and she went downstairs and the car vroomed off and i thought i heard her coming back up the stairs and i wondered what she’d say when she rang the doorbell and the doorbell rang and it was not for me, and the pizzas weren’t for me, and i pressed #5 and said don’t worry about it mate have a good night mate and went back in to sit on my own on my couch in my exceedingly empty apartment and i felt like a piece of crumpled paper balled up and thrown away and it DID matter what i wanted and i should have said and maybe she just wanted to hear that i still need her… but i won’t realize any of that until it’s too late and she’s in france a month from then.

i go back out to see the girl in the shop again and ask her about commissions and we write our details down on pieces of paper and it’s very cute and very sweet. i’d like to commission a drawing of a sunbird for an album i’m working on. i’d like to use the piano in the store for part of it. and she says that’s okay as long as she’s working (she used to own the store but sold it recently so she could be more free, but she still works there) and out i pop to the bar for a tequila and a beer from Freckles, and then i take the train to city. i get a tequila and a beer at various old haunts. meet someone with a pretty icelandic name. walk through a tunnel. shiver with cold because i’ve dressed for LA. i’m so cold. i don’t want to go home. i go back to Freckles and i watch a band and i tell Freckles we’re going to get matching tattoos and i ask the guitarist if he is okay and he sighs deeply and he says “damn thanks for asking, i’m going through some stuff, but i’m okay.”. and i call an old friend to come over and make out but when we start to make out i feel wrong like im cheating and i apologize and we talk for a while and then eat chicken and they go home. i lay down on my bed and it’s bitterly cold and i look at my messages and there is a Read notification now but no reply and i call one last time and it rings in france and i feel like a fool and it’s bitterly cold and i hate this place and i fall asleep

sunday the third of november

so that brings us to today. it has not been possible to connect your call. please try again later. it has not been possible to connect your call. please try again later. it has not been possible to connect your call. please try again later. do you ever feel these days when you catch a bit of news that it’s like the start of shaun of the dead? like we’re already living in this world war but we haven’t noticed yet. it was like reading cory’s tweets about the outbreak in wuhan in january he’s like “this is serious, it’s actually happening” and you’re like “huh”. maybe i should have stayed in the states so i could go to the border to give my life protecting mexico.

there’s some fine writing in this entry, i think, but it needs some editing. way too many sentences start with “i”. sometimes that’s one purpose, for a rhythm. but other times it’s just lazy.

so is that my life? winding up in strange rooms with strange people, none of us really liking each other everything kind of sordid and disgusting, until somebody falls in love with the character i play outside and that love makes a place for me where i can be safe and comfortable and happy… but then in not so long the both of us end up missing the character so much, the character that got killed because in love it’s like sugar in warm water, that we tear each other apart and then i’m like this again? that doesn’t seem like a life. and how long can it last? it does mean for some good writing and some okay music. nothing’s ever enough.

well here’s something i made in a hotel room in los angeles. it’s only a demo, but it’s a hit:

yeah, it’ll be a hit. it’ll be on the one before #2.

The Apprentice is a good movie. a movie about rape, richness and the importance of sponsorship. it’s a horrible watch.

i’m going to Belfast at the end of the week for the first time in 8 years. anyone wanna come with?

does anyone wanna go to that tequila bar that’s hidden as a speakeasy through the kitchen of the breakfast club outside borough market?

long week, lock in. sorry for the long post, didn’t have the energy to make it shorter.

chee’s list

• [x] taco truck
• [x] ask everyone if they work in pictures
• [x] crush on a girl in the record store
• [ ] jump off the H of the Hollywood sign

A ver.

The start of the week was a little under a century ago. There was a lackadaisy. It was low vroomph. I was. The week carried on, I watched the LIVEstream of LIVE as I packed my bags. Great talks in that. It’s strange watching a conference on-line that’s 8000km away while you pack your bags to get ready to be in that very room with those very people tomorrow. Someone asked LU about emotional unblockers for writing and i quickly threw together typewriter as a digital replica of the unblocking from the clonky typewriter i got as a teenager.

The closest we’ve ever gotten to an ideal model of computing is Microsoft Excel.

5pm is no time for a flight. No staying up all night for that, no going to stay at the airport hotel the night pre. It’s no time for a flight, makes a whole day wrong the way shaped. I was pretty plastered already by the time I arrived. Met a girl called Shelby at the security line, I’d found a couple of white claws in my pocket and offered her a lime. But she was in a panic & a pickle, didn’t know she only got to have one translucent bag and had brought enough make up to put on a minstrel show. I rented her space in my trancluent pouch ‘cause i had plenty of space having brought only 1 liquid and 3 pastes. On the other side we caught up for a quick pint while she repacked her contraband. Turns out she’s a finance girly who goes to UCLA, in London for a year at LSE, and today was on her way to Sofia, Bulgaria. A basic white girl from SoCal with the most beautiful green eyes, essentially my idol, everything i’ve ever wished i were. “What are your must-dos for a week in Los Angeles?“

shelby’s list

• [ ] The Getty Villa
• [ ] Erewhon
• [ ] in-n-out
• [ ] Venice beach (boardwalk)
• [ ] Laugh Factory
• [ ] Brother’s Cousin (westwood/ucla)
• [ ] Barney’s beanery (popular with friends)

i’ve not done any of this yet, this is why i’ll never be a moneyed up socal white girl with the most beautiful green eyes i’ve ever seen. I did really try to hit up In-n-Out one time but apparently 10.m. is their busy period as well as all other periods. The other people I met in the airport… that info’s a little hazy. I remember buying lipstick from someone, being followed into a cigarette store, and meeting a guy called Kurt who told me to rent a convertable and drive around. well i haven’t done that neither.

So let’s get on the plane, okay, easy money. Virgin Atlantic tell me that because i’m so drunk they won’t be able to serve me on the flight. i watch half a show, remember i’d meant to pack a dazzy for this part, oh well and sleep for a few hours. an okay lunch and dinner. plane’s the only time i ever eat a dessert.

Border control, easy money. Smoothest experience i ever had at US entry. We were laughing and joking and talking tequila. I asked him how’s your shift and he said nearly over and i guess that’s why it was so nice and easy breezy lime juice.

How do i get out of the airport? Airports are all a big circle when you get out, i just wanna walk but i keep ending up where i came from. i find the area where i can book a Lyft and Daniel picks me up and we have a good chat about Mexico (he’s from CDMX) and Sofia (so why didn’t you marry her?) and this and that and hip-hop and tequila.

Hotel, check-in at the night side window. Upstairs, 320, suite, refrigerator, bathtub, bed, thin blankets and soft pillows. Wrap up, curl up and disappear.

In the morning:

the pacific might be a bitch ass little pussy of ocean that never learnt how to fight but the sunsets and sunrise are so beautiful. you wouldn’t believe how pale the blue or how bright the yellow how burnt orange the lower ombré. and it smells like lizards here. back in the USA baby. ate a salty as sin gas station hot dog, picked up a pack of Marlboro Rojo 72s and watched the sun rise over the ramada on a bench outside the hotel. i’m in pasadena which is where which rich wives kill their husbands and get away with it until there’s just one thing that bothers leftenant colombo or philip marlowe.

the sun gets up on top of itself and we have a day ahead of us. folks in the chat are heading to some coffee place and i feel like an outsider. while i’m unpacking a gram of ketamine and two 2cbs fall out of my bag. lmao. had no idea they were in there.

i walk to the hilton. the sky above the hills is crazy pretty. ray bradbury says ‘you can live your whole life in LA and never see the part they put in pictures’ but i guess if you go to pasadena then you just see the part they put in pictures.

the things i’ve missed in the USA aren’t the good parts. you can get good coffee anywhere, you can only get shitty california coffee in california. you gotta be able to taste the water. like what toby used to say about chicago pizza, it’s in the dough, it’s in the water, you gotta make it with the water from that rancid river or it just don’t cook right. and you can’t get that in santa barbara. marlboro red 72s, gas station hot dogs, diner coffee with a tiny plastic creamer. good to be back.

Met L&F in the hotel lobby. very fond of that pair. later, being introduced to somebody else L pronounced “have you met chee” with a tone like “has this happened to you yet”.

I spend a lot of the day avoiding the conference. Stifling energy. It’s always like this. Like everybody else was issued a list of rules before life started that I wasn’t made privy to, and they all know them and i don’t and they sure let me know that i don’t. and i know i don’t belong, but it’s okay. everybody doesn’t have to belong everywhere.

i tell myself it’s okay just relax and be yourself but it’s unnatural for me to be here… how can i relax and be myself? myself wouldn’t be anywhere near. myself’d go south and eat tacos. i don’t know why i am here. when i explained it to Shelby she said “angel numbers”. she’s right.

stopped by Onward! to catch a truly fantastic talk on a paper by the author called A Case For Feminism in Programing Language Design. learned some about feminist epistemology and about how hard things are valued more than easy things regardless of the result. and about how if you do something that’s outside of that (valuable to actual material people but not a “hard” problem) you have to spend so much time walking to where they are and talking them to your foundation that you never get a chance to talk up on that higher level. ruminated a little about noam chomsky’s observation that “concision is inherently conservative”, that being concise is a luxury afforded to people who are saying what you already think. if you’re summing up received wisdom you can use 5 words but if you’re trying to change minds, change the world, you’re gonna need five thousand pages. ruminated on how we need to kill all quants, it’s humanity’s only hope for survival. the first question afterwards in the Q&A was a gentleman asking “you’re wrong” and i just booked it, dipped out through the side door and drank several glasses of water where i couldn’t hear a thing. when i got back he appeared to have experienced an existential crisis. a shell of a man sweating and typing several thousand wpm and i think that whatever happened in the span i missed was a time of great growth for the fellow and i wish him luck in all his future endeavors.

LU’s talk afterwards was fab as always. Dave Ackley is not crazy. ruminated a little on the word “mere”. If you’ve never watched every video Dave Ackley has ever uploaded i’d like to recommend that you do so for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe. here on his main youtube, and on the t2tile project channel.

you can change yourself or change others, changing others needs waking up with boundless energy every single day while changing yourself only requires giving up.

went back to the hotel because i was supposed to switch rooms, i’d only paid one night for the suite and in another the rest of the days. but turns out the girl who booked the suite next said she’s rather have the cheaper kinda room so i kept living on where i lived. hopped in brian’s lyft on the way back. quite an experience of a fella. tells me his first therapy session is next up after this trip. his girlfriend’s making him. “‘you cant suck a dick three times in one night and then complain that your boyfriend is hypersexual’ what do you think of that, doc?” he’s walking in with that one already in the chamber. “and if you disagree we’re gonna fucking bomb you. can you pick out yemen on a map? i fucking can’t, but bomb the hell out of them anyway” and “this city is a fucking cesspool.” and he dropped me off and shouted “ GOD  BLESS  AMERICA ” and zipped away.

there was a group lunch but i don’t think i was invited so i ate jimmy johns on the cigarette smoking bench out front. good amount of mustard. hard to get a good cheap basic reliable deli sandwich like that back home. it’s the little things. while im in the hotel where the event is being held im filled with these extreme feelings of self-hate and despair. then i leave and i’m okay again. but i keep going back for some reason.

on my way home i had the visceral experience of being reminded that USA is actually real and not just something they talk about on podcasts, looking out the window of my taxi there’s a run of houses with HARRIS/WALZ signs in their lawns. oh damn.

got home, drew the curtains, flicked on the television and found a sabrina the teenage witch marathon. love u salem. it’s funny that one of the main themes of this show is that melissa joan hart is not popular at school. ok lol.

sleepy, crazy commercials. multiple adverts for the constitution. one for “heart powder”. a veteran-thanking advert. they are coming for our rights. i am about to die of a “heart event” and wet bladder disease. the only hope for my skin is crepe cream, and post-biotics, and pre-biotics and several products made of beetroot. an evangelical preacher tells me israel needs my money more than ever and if i donate now i get a bracelet. it’s a wonder everyone in this country isn’t fuckin insane.

another sunrise. these beautiful impossibly pale pinks giving way to the warmest yellows and the deepest ocean blue, so blue it’s wet and you can feel it on your skin.

i pop to the conference hall and meet taylor.town going the opposite way. i shout “taylor dot town!” and we have a quick chat and i’m very fond of him and we go our separate ways.

so i head to El Cholo for tacos and tequila and micheladas (though they’re turn out only to be cheladas) but that’s okay. maybe that’s a regional thing. i text jimena to tell her that los angeles is one of my favourite cities in mexico. estoy en el cielo.

bring the leftover pibil back to the hotel. spot an old black man in a wide-brimmed black hat, a full loose-fitting one piece black cloth outfit with a silver belt, fingerless leather gloves that covered the wrist and half the forearm. beautiful. have a nap.

there are so many cybertrucks. drink some modelo negra cheladas (which appear to actually be micheladas? i guess it’s a regional thing) and a hot dog. spot a girl at the crossing with pink leopard print tattooed on her right cheek. beautiful. hop on the bus.

oh i just remembered i meant to ask you to sign my copy of the halting problem.

had a nice chat with JM, taylor.town and a peter (who, after i’d said “https://github.com/chee/automerge-repo-solid-primitives”, said “you just became interesting” but in a way that was charming actually and wrote my name on a piece of paper). taylor.town (a socal native) hits me with an LA todo list:

taylor’s version

• [ ] sawtelle (little osaka)
• [ ] the bungalo (90401)

everyone went out for dinner but i bounced. ate a gas station corn dog and headed home to listen to the new gaga and the nixon tapes.

one my favourite thing when abroad is clocking tiny inconsequential pieces of human behaviour that are normal here but would be strange at home and then trying them on for size. like paying for a pack of cigarettes and then saying “oh gimmie a book of matches” and they say sure thing and toss one of those little folding paper hotel lobby lieutenant colombo matchbooks over the counter at you and you slide it off while you’re turning away and say thanks buddy. saw a guy do that and then did it myself at the next station. it’s fun to holiday in other people’s lives. to holiday in other people’s lives.

ok so saturday was an EXTREMELY LONG DAY.

the ink and switch unconf was great. it was well disorganized, there were some really good chats. the venue was incredibly nice. i really wanted to write more about it but i am falling asleep as i type. in the middle of the day i split to check into my hotel. there’s a super weird smell in the hallway on the second floor like somebody tried to clean up shit with vomit and then sprayed axe body spray on the smell.

I really enjoyed talking with Alex Good, who i’ve always known i’d like. I’ve been in his house. He wasn’t there. I told him that, the first thing i said, “I’ve been in your house. you weren’t there.” Seeing Cole was lovely too. And learning from Lu that all ideas collapse down to time. There were so many conversations that i struck up before realizing how tired i was. I am so used to starting a sentence without knowing where it’s going and just trusting myself to find the words and directions by the time i get to blank spaces, but i always forget that tired or on drugs means the words aren’t there when i get there. that’s what i fear most about aging, that will get harder. and it’s really one of the only valuable qualities i have as a human being.

My driver tells me how he’d been hit a month or two ago by another car. The other car didn’t have insurance. His insurance won’t pay out because he was driving for Lyft. Lyft won’t pay out because he’d just dropped off a customer and wasn’t on his way to a new one yet so he wasn’t driving for Lyft. That’s the squeeze.

Reminded me that guy i met in London who lost a day when a girl threw up in his back seat and he brought the car to be cleaned. He asked uber if they could pay for the cleaning fee and they asked to see a picture from before it got cleaned. he lost half a day’s work to getting it cleaned, and then the bill on top. If i remember right he posted about it on social media and uber paid him to take it down.

in the last hour of the unconf i roll back in. me and a nice person called Maya hop out to Home Depo to see if they have a 9V DC power supply for Alex Warth’s new Alesis Micron because i’ve always wanted to know what bret victor hid behind “secret hint: while turning it on, hold (octave+) and (programs)”. they said they could order it in, but there was no way to get one today. so i continue to live in occlusion from the secrets of bret victor.

i’d like to thank that person who gave me a sticky drawing of a jellyfishbox, it fell off me somewhere and i couldn’t find it again and i miss the jellyfishbox to this day.

i’d like to thank Todd🌹 for the photo of me really giving the business to Alex Good (automerge) about whatever it is i’m talking too much about here: ( i truly will cherish this artifact.)

after the conf everyone heads out for dinner but i bounce to get ready for the Snow event. cole and i walk down the hollywood walk of fame looking at the stars and i stick my unconf name badge down in one of the empty ones where i think we can all agree my name has always belonged.

so i eat half a 2cb, head to Snow. when i hop in the cab he’s blasting Dom Kennedy - Still Grindn’ like he’s trying to set the scene in this movie the two of us are in. it’s sick! man rapping “when i’m on Sunset” i’m literally on Sunset right now!!! i got picked up on Sunset!!!! the time i get to the venue i’m so tired i’m ready to keel over, i have a modelo and a patrón. it costs $30. for two drinks. i realize where i am now, an event “hosted” by somebody who is gonna come out once and hour and say something on mic so that everyone keeps buying drinks and nobody leaves for fear of missing out. it was nice seeing Snow though. my second favourite five foot mexican. i stop being able to communicate pretty soon… the 2cb hits me unexpectedly strong. i spend the evening in the smoking area puffing on luckies with joey and kacey, professional scarers at six flags. joey yells me how about horny men in their thirties regularly grope him while he’s working and how this is common in six flags. i told him he needs a union and gave him a 2cb.

the night is over, i’m a night’s hotel room stay price deep in modelo y patrón. i wander home for an hour chatting with becostumed hollywood strangers about how i’m not scared to die. it’s a weird city. give a guy a cigarette he acts like you gave him a job. say hello how are you doing he’s acting like it’s the set up for a scam.

yeah, weird city. wonderful city. feels like london. like peckham. it’s got the right level of anything-can-happen kinda danger for me to be able to relax.

i get home and i sleep.

the next day i head up the boulevard to see W.C. Fields’s stars, and then head to Amoeba record shop to buy some cassette tapes. I’ve been bumping this one Phantom Orchid tape all week, which is superb, but there’s nothing quite like having a few albums to rotate for a few days in a foreign land.

Guy in the record store says “you know this one, right?” and shows me Konono N°1’s congotronics series record. I don’t know it. We had a quick chat about bourbon, tequila, new orleans and african rhythms, i bought Konono N°1 on his recomendation and i’d like to pass recomendation that onto you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Los0qjV9Ecg

these fuckers are playing these little resonating thumb pianos and amplifying themselves with microphones they made themselves out of trash. magnets from car parts. and the sound is fuckin sick, some rhythms go somewhere in your belly that’s deeper than the earth and older than time. You can see how we ended up on the subject of New Orleans.

The person who served me at Amoeba was super sweet. Next time you’re in souf east london hit me up, Tristan.

so now i’m lying in a bed full of tape cassettes, staring at an empty water bottle, reminiscing over a time when i once was hydrated and wondering should that ever happen to me again.

it’s 9pm. i should really pack before bed so it isn’t a rush at breakfast but i’m conked. i’ve had my eyes closed typing most of the time.

stay humble