Although I have relocated the same stresses have found me. Money, the ever pressing fight against becoming a couch potato of sorts, and wavering back and forth between social and anti-social. It’s not that I love people, though to the distant eye I might be seen as someone who does. Most people are dribble, unintelligent, drones with little to offer to the world except consumption and a well trained hand to prepare my espresso in the morning. But I’m an optimist when it comes to myself, even the lazy farmer has a story to tell, and if that means suffering through hours of false laughter and idle chatter to attain it, I’m always listening.

Unfortunately, –how many of my sentences start with the word unfortunately– Unfortunately my last month in New York was dream like. Hence my second elongated absence from my ongoing internet presence. When I moved to New York there were scenes in my mind that I dreamt of, as any naive and unknowing person has before moving to an idealized place. Always, a warm sunny bedroom with soft white sheets, opaque curtains blowing softly in the wind, a bottle of whiskey to my left, an illusion of a person to my right. Endless hours spent in bed with no purpose at all, but somehow more purpose to live than to ever before. In a city like New York these adolescent dreams seem to fade away with the passing years. Things like love and lust and adventure are just a figment of your own reality you have to actively create. Jaded, and worn from battle scars, those easy days and simple pleasantries are few and far between. How lucky I was to attain a small portion of time stamped in memory with an endlessly beautiful woman by my side.

And now the great scavenger hunt begins. Interesting people, places, stories to tell. My latest attempt at realizing my goal as a writer, not just the waning prose of another lost twenty-something, but as a traveler, an adventurer, with one hope- to bring everyone from around the world into my own, if only for a moment.

Also, I’d like to give a special thank you to Michelle Smyth for her comment on my previous post, which inspired me to get off my ass and start writing again. Also to all my twitter friends, thanks guys.

Although in reality I don’t wish for death, I often humor the thought in a metaphorical sense. There’s a sort of greatness in giving up on the life of morning waffles with almond butter and strawberries, and the friends that you can depend on in one way or another. Dying in my world today means only to leave those things for a freshness of uncertainty. And so I wish to die all the time, and I criticize myself often for this intangible need for new, as it plays itself out in the using of people and places for a thrill that is with little thought of consequence for others. Others want consistency, I want consistency in never feeling the same.

And through this strange depression that came over me in Los Angeles, I discovered a world of fantasy writing that would momentarily permit me to escape the humdrum. I even attempted to create imagery along side my writing material to allow what ever small amount of readers I have to come along with me. This, however compelling, ended in hours of my eyes glued to google images of tentacle porn and little else. And without realizing the time flying by, I came back to New York, back to poverty in Bushwick, and a lush forest of good looking people to play with. I have little to say for myself, I am a user, I am unsettled, and I’m going to use this to my advantage by traveling the world and writing about it in hopes that someday it might pay off.

Two orange life jackets sit in the back seat. I’m allowed to rest my feet on the peddles but am discouraged from pressing upon them. This results in a somewhat tense ride, with me ever so gently placing my feet on the shifting gears, while not applying enough pressure to move them. My headset is snug, gifting me with the sweet ambient hum of the engines and little else. The combination of the warm sun and white noise put me in a trance, half asleep, half awake. After take off it is just me and the ground below, my partner and I in silence, observing the world drifting further and further from us.

We hold a fairly direct route to Catalina Island, circling around the sides for show and coasting over the sparkling Pacific. As peaceful and lovely floating at five thousand feet in the sky feels, I can’t help but wish that I was rising and falling on the white crests of the waves below. The bird always wants to swim with the fish. With an easy motion of my arm I could open this side door, I think. I could open it, unbuckle my seatbelt, and jump freely without hesitation, throwing myself into the ocean. But what would become of me then? Death, though appealing on the cloudiest of days, seems all too boring. Surely unlocking this door would open a greater destiny than darkness.

And so I do it, foregoing the future I had little hope for and the friends and family who will miss me. My method is like clockwork, with Ares looking off into the sun, I silently begin to unhinge myself, emptying my pockets of the unnecessary and freeing my mind of this world and it’s inconvenient expectations. I don’t look behind me to see his expression, faces like his and hers and yours are parts of the yesterday I’m forgetting. I fight the wind and dive.

My new thing in Los Angeles is to tell everyone, “Today is the best day of my life,” when they ask how I am doing. Followed by, “Every day is better than the last.” I don’t know why, but I assume people in New York would pick up on the heavily slathered sarcasm. But here in LA, they smile politely at my very convincing eyes and express their jealousy, or as in today, ask if it’s my birthday. (After twenty-one, birthdays stop being fun, at least as a female.)

Perhaps a more appealing alternate to describe my writing would be like taking a massive shit I’ve been carrying around all day. Purging myself of the stress, the fiery diarrhea that is waking up every morning and forcing these legs to walk and this voice to talk, along with the ever satisfying search for meaningful interactive human relationships. Without that daily release it all piles up, gives me gas, makes me squirmy and uncomfortable. That’s where the pleasant thoughts of throwing myself out of a plane into the flowing leafy terrain of a mountain come from. Did you know I don’t even reread my blog entries after I post them? Down the toilet they go. Who wants to examine their own feces?

My first LA hike, after a cool breezy drive up the winding hills of California, began at a path described as dog shit lane– or something to that effect. It’s a place to take your mutts for a run, your kids for a stroll, or to spy on the typical LA girl in bronzed buxom glory marching steadily with ipod in hand and oversized sunglasses. She’s not going to lose a pound at that pace, but she doesn’t need to, her leathery stomach is already flat and questionably vacuumed of any undesirable fats.

We steered clear of the people watching, and instead chose the empty more challenging paths that my boots were not prepared for. My wispy light cotton shirt attached itself to every twig and branch as my feet slid down unsteady ground, covering my very voluptuous denim clad bottom with powdery brown dirt. My face maintained an unattractive red hue accented by the misty droplets of sweat curling my hair in all the wrong places. Our rise to the top proved worthy a few photographs, though the ones of myself in a smiling pant will never see the light of day.

Day two brought more than I had asked for, in the form of gushing pain and a slap in the face from my underworked body. Sitting hurt, standing hurt, walking hurt, my legs were failing me. It wasn’t until later that day that my shoulder blade began it’s aching. Without my looking, someone snuck behind me and planted a saw in the crescent of my back. No sort of stretching or bathing in hot liquid would put it to ease. Is twenty-five the age? The age we grow our wings? Surely this sort of pain can’t be from a mere hike. This is the pain of the beginning of flight. Tomorrow I will wake with the sprout of a new bone, a nub pressing between the empty hole of left and right, and over the course of thirty days it will rapidly stretch and tear at my skin until it bursts.

This is getting lame, better stop with that.

A bird flew into the window.

My shoes got very dirty.

First LA tacos. They were OK.

Everyone has a pool.

Visiting Milk in LA

The LA Vampires band at “Little Temple”, pretty cool performance.

I’m too loopy to finish this post. I’ll have to do it later. Now it’s time for hiking!

By the time I came back to my house my boots were chilled and damp and uncomfortable. I was under the very false assumption that I might have looked cool with my hair half up with the other half hanging in my face, but the mirror told a different reality, one of a girl who didn’t have an umbrella and probably should have put some rosy color on her cheeks.

I changed my socks into clean dry ones and placed my boots by the heater. My sweatpants had never felt so inviting. I crawled into bed for my fairly regular evening nap, the one I take before venturing out in the wild for social interaction. My best friend has left for Paris and I won’t see her before I go to LA. That’s another month this year that we will spend apart. (Enter morose sigh here) In replacement I fill my time with lonesome meandering and with the men who appreciate me. One of my favorites just came back into town, and our friendly meet up later turned into an all too public make-out with the memory of his very hard boner pressed up against my linen pants. Leaving town is always the best and worst timing.

These are pictures taken in Tokyo 2010 by my friend Gui Martinez for his new online magazine JAGR, finally published.

I haven’t felt much since last summer. To an extent I shut off. I’m living life but the same whimsy that used to follow has diminished. I’m worried that this is part of getting older, that all of the excitement becomes forced, an act, a rouse in attempt to feel the things we used to. Deep inside I know this isn’t true, I am young and there are experiences that await that aren’t comprised of static smiles and fading movements.

My world has been the same for a little too long, this might be the route of the problem and the rut I have burrowed myself in. I don’t miss Tokyo, and if you know me that’s a heavy statement. I have spent every day of six years missing Tokyo. If I wasn’t in Japan I spoke of going back every day, if I was in Japan I’d already be missing it knowing that some day I’d be leaving again. Now I’ve just gotten back and I’m almost glad to have left. Jennifer said that I’m growing up, but I’d have to disagree. As much as I am a creature of habit, the habit I enjoy the most is to be forever changing. I don’t miss Tokyo because I’ve done it before, the promises of new are no longer waiting for me. And so a few days ago I booked a one way ticket to LA, I don’t really know what I’m doing there but that might be the best part.

These are just some old pictures from Tokyo.

What is everyone else in the world up to? I am not well enough to leave the house yet.