The next day I flew back to Los Angeles.

My niece had toured me around her college campus and seemed eager to get rid of me.  She dropped me off at the train station.  There was little conversation and little nostalgia.   I stared out the train window, I watched my story pass by, and in it I had no place.  I was going back to LA where I also had no place. I flew back here hating here, this tomb of a life.  All the garbage I'd hoped to supplant was waiting here for me and now there was no hope of 'other.'

I flew back to Los Angeles on a Tuesday.  Wednesday begins my work week.  I had no down time to reflect, recover, do laundry.  I flew home, got in late, went to bed, got up and went to work.  I was depressed as shit.

My first week back I went to someone's house.  Someone else was there. I walked her home after.  We struggled for conversation.  We settled on books.  We got to her apartment.  She said, "Oh, you should read this book..."  I thought, I don't want to read any of your books.  Now I am standing in her apartment.  I am uncomfortable.  Why was I there?  We were looking at her books.  She finally pulled one.  It was a book of short stories called Yolk by Josip Novkovich.  I took one look at it and thought: I'm going to hate this fucking thing.  I acted very grateful.

I discovered reading in the mornings. I was still on east coast time and I was waking up way too early for anyone of moral character, but I'd get up anyway, make a cup of tea and read.  It's a fantastic thing to do, it's luxurious.  DO IT!  I read the book. I liked he book.  Everyone dies, everyone drinks.  And then one morning, I read in the story The Address this line:

"Travel is a form of vanishing, of non-existence.  It is the best substitute for suicide."

http://www.flickr.com/photos/39391920@N06

 And then this happened. *CLICK*






And then the heavens opened, the angels descended, the harps and the chorus sang, the doves brought light and love and peace, and all was well with the world.  Also, I GOT IT.

I'd left California expecting to find my refuge in no-place-like-home, that I would matter there, be absorbed into the fold, embraced, and in so doing I could then FUCK THIS PLACE, MOTHERFUCKERS!  The Tour would define my transition from here to back home.

Au contraire, this exactly didn't happen. It turns out my family doesn't actually like me too much. My father was angry at my food, angry at lentils, they were suspicious, I was suspicious, he derided me nonstop for eating healthy while the fat-fuck insulin-supported donut eaters were allowed empathetic concern.

My brother-the-fucking-train-wreck actually helped me in a big way.  Watching him, knowing all to well what he was doing and why; his day-to-day is so densely stuck, spinning, feeding it in the worst way, needing so desperately to feed the hole versus any capacity to find a way out. I see in him how this voracious eddy becomes its own life force and he's almost coincidental to his own processes.  Intense to witness, in reality it was only denser than what I was doing, acting like, pre-Tour.  I was merely watching an exaggerated version of myself.  With him, I don't think he can stop.  With me, I'm only afraid I don't know how to stop.

After reading that line ... I saw how I was desperately seeking vanish.  I already knew my family was not an option, but I never GOT how all these years in my family, in the world, because of the way I look, the way I eat, my stature in the world, my net worth,  all these things are regarded by shallow judges who have thus defined me by that edict. 

It's never been ME that wanted to die, it's been their notion of me.

This changes everything.