Tijuana Exodus & Old Tricks in San Diego

13:04. I'm in my room, 1415, at the Westin San Diego. This is two hours in the room I didn't think I'd have. Because check-in isn't until three o'clock. I'm grateful.

I've looked at myself in the mirror. I look rough! My cheeks are approaching brick red, or burgundy. I stink!

First order of business is a full-on shower. Then some walkin' around, looking perhaps for a notebook store. Then I'm going to that burrito place I went to a year ago. I'm-a get two burritos, one for this afternoon, one for dinner...


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2017, Year of the Flying Squirrel

2017.  Year of the Turd.  That's pretty crude, I can do better.  OK.  2017, Year of the Flying Squirrel.  I like the idea of a flying squirrel, they have pluck.  No wings but they make do.  They fly somehow anyway, though not as well as a bumblebee.

I've heard references to 2016 being a bad year.  Because of Trump?  Please.  My dog died—or, rather, I had my dog put down.  I invited some horrible woman with a needle to come into my house and kill my dog.  If 2016 was a bad year it was because I had to make that hasty and rude introduction with death, the reaper.  Or for the people in Aleppo was 2016 a bad year.  It was a bad year for the people who lost mothers, fathers, daughters and sons, brothers and sisters, wives and husbands, friends they have known for most of their lives...


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The Bowflex

Coffee at ten has to be a large part of why I’m up right now. But I’m also up because I want to be up. I imagine someone walking in here and saying, “Is it the coffee, John?” I’d say, “The coffee and a whole lot else.”

I was lying in bed and all sorts of thoughts—memories I hadn’t come across in a while—were keeping me awake. I thought about how I sold my Bowflex workout machine—probably right around this time last year—for $500 cash. It was my parents’ money really. I had bought the Bowflex on a credit card that I wasn’t funding. And I’m just so goddamned sorry that I’ve gotten this far off track and all I can think about is how my parents are seeing this situation.

Their child with promise and potential. What is he doing with his life? Not squandering it anymore than I already have. I’m just so sorry for myself and I know that’s now way to go about it but I was recalling that Bowflex transaction. With half of the cash I bought about two ounces of freeze-dried fungi. Just pathetic, just pathetic. And, of course, to whom can I confess this? Those who already know haven’t realized that they care...

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