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and then i kidnapped jarett off the very-cold train home and he stayed for a while in the cavern i live in, with lots of laying around on the daybed and visits to chinatown and north beach and peering into the doors of the masonic temple in the middle of the night.

and then i went to alabama right after, because my granddaddy had died and i wanted so badly to see my family and see the south. it was incredibly surreal to be there, and fascinating, and it would be a whole other post to describe everything i saw and felt about that trip.

then i came home and WORKED so much. i clearly need to schedule myself a bit better, but regardless i am amazed and grateful for the awesome clients i have right now. but i did work for all of july, pretty much. i didn't have hardly any days off, which is probably fine given how slack i was earlier in the year, though it can be hard to have perspective about how slack you were before when you're knee deep in projects and deadlines.

despite all the work i left to visit los angeles and jarett and comic-con towards the end of july. jarett and i listened to a lot of jonathan richman and i paced in his yard having phone calls, with sun-warmed los angeles driveway under my bare feet. at some point i stood on his porch eating a nectarine and staring at power lines in the twilight sky and was quite quite quite happy. we went to malibu and ran across the freeway to get to the ocean and stood staring dead on into the tide as it came in, and the approaching waves were literally taking my breath away, in a way that seemed more biological than aesthetic, like, this is the way the ocean tells your body to be afraid of it, by completely disturbing your equilibrium when you look it in the eye.

the day after i got home, i went and got the first round of work done on my sutro tower tattoo. i am really really happy with it already. i'd been trying to get this tattoo to mark and honor the transition from my 20s to 30s and to mark how entwined my 20s was with the almost (definitely) mystical experience of living in san francisco. this plan, one of many from this time last year, FINALLY COMING TO FRUITION has sent me into a grounded and determined and calm state of mind. i feel like okay, now i can do what i intend.

it's interesting to me how, when everything went down last year, and i turned 30, i had all these plans and ideas for who i wanted to be and what i wanted to do, but haven't been able to do a lot on any of them, because i was first in shock, and then as the shock wore off i just needed to heal and think and adjust, like, more than i ever could have consciously realized. i really fought it. i felt bad for needing to sleep and be depressed and hermit and flail and all those things. i felt like i should be getting on with things in an austere and methodical manner. but i just needed to recover, to think, to spend weeks upon weeks alone in my apartment writing and thinking. it was such an intense time, really, and it was intense in a totally new way that i've never felt; and very internal, with extreme mental restructuring and recalibration. regardless of anything else that is good about jarett, and there are many things, i totally sit in amazement of his ability to talk to me about every nuance of that process as it was occurring, and about so many other things as well. we would talk the world to death and then i would go into my journal and write thousands more words. i honestly cannot believe the level of output i sustained during the past year. it seems like total madness but it was the most necessary and natural thing in the whole fucking world.

alright, enough for now.

and to think, the whole reason i came to this window was to write the following:

today, i'm thinking about how, though people remain absolutely love-able and wonderful, i am continually reminded that i'm the only one who can make myself safe or have any authority in my own life. which can be a distressing or cold thought - it's sort of like that perennial sitcom plot where the child character meets his favorite rockstar and the rockstar is a jerk and the child has to face the reality that no one is perfect, people are just people. and i'm sitting around facing the reality that nobody really has any idea what the the fuck to do for themselves, much less me. however, this is also liberating, because if no one really knows, you may as well just do what you feel like is right and do it with total authority.