It was warm all day in the fourteen-karat gilded light, so warm it eventually immobilized you, and laid you out on the couch feeling your vitality draining.

I promised myself that if I got lonely, depressed, blase, or any kind of blue during this trip, I would simply write it into the story.

She's standing outside the New Seasons market on Alberta Street--penguin-shaped, tented in a polyurethane poncho, holding a cardboard sign that said "Hungry." Shit, I think. Shit shit shit.

They counsel, cajole and comfort you in the weeks before turning 30. They don't tell you about how it feels to spend a decade *in* your 30s, just turning older.

It's the kind of place that would be utterly miserable in the rain and cold and nothing but dreary for most of any other kind of day.

Last time I crossed the Blue Mountains, it was with fists clenched in fear of the November dark. Today, it's in broad October sunlight, with a different kind of terror.

Love, I think, is being grounded on a vertiginous height. A rest found while hanging by your ankles. 

it’s cold in here. it’s warm outside—that is a surprising yes, in that rain and snow was predicted all weekend.

Adventures in synesthesia.

She looks to the side as she beckons me forward, softening the authority of the gesture with impersonal deference.

"In my dreams I am always saying goodbye and riding away,"

It made a little more sense, after that.

Morning on my back and steam on my face.

By the time I discovered my error, the sun was nothing but a thin, red line lying on the foothills.

She thinks, “Grab it, you idiot. It’s not going to get any better than it is now.” But he doesn’t. They keep walking.

"As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow... So am I made to possess months of vanity, and wearisome nights are appointed to me.”

I suddenly feel as if I love these people more than anybody and that we should all fall asleep around a bonfire together.

For some reason, just before my senior year began, I threw the greater part of my caution to the wind, and began to spend.

The shadow of St. Sulpice bends over the river, and the street hurts my eyes with its brilliance under the two o’clock sun.

It hurt to remember; it was worse to forget. The singular moment of solace was that surrounded by voices, held by nothing but harmony.

What, I thought, if forgiveness is like brushing my teeth? Like a diabetic shooting insulin? Something I must wake up and do, every day, in order to do other things?

I promise them it won't be much longer--three weeks more, and then hills, cold, quickened pulse, thickened blood. They punish me anyway, for keeping them in one place so long.

The thing, Laurie reminded me, is that Drew is your friend and you're excited to see him play music...then you go and you realize oh wait--Drew's a rock star.

It thrills me with the reminder of why I do what I do--and infuriates me with the reminder that I'll never be able to do it completely.

Not since the Cambria beach had my insides thus shattered. In the desert, though, it came differently. I heard myself say, in his wistful words, "It's been a while."

"The thirst is quenched, the hunger gone, And my heart is cracked across; My face is haggard in the glass, My lips are withered with a kiss."

"How can you say such terrible things about me...you don't even know me...but when your son is caught doing the same things, you say it's nobody's business?"

May all my days, both singly and in their final totality, end thus. 

Midnight motorcycle ride through the north side? Sure--I've got nothing going on.

I feel like I'm walking in tall cotton.

Oh the places you'll go, indeed.

Empire State of mind, est. 2008

Vive la revolution.

...and then one day you realize, walking in, that you have in fact just arrived.

Remember how frantic you were for something significant to happen, that your youth and that summer not be a cliche? Little realizing that that franticness itself was the cliche.

"This"--she gestures from her head to her knees--"is the new 'homeless.' It's really empowering. It's uncharted territory."

"I didn't know what I was doing...I just let it be what it was going to be. I think that's why it ended up being special."

"I don't think there's anything you can say to make it easier, because you can't even help them understand why it's hard."

Fine gentlemen of the road: Cameron, Beau and Columbus.

...and every damned thing smelled like roses.

A little piece of me I'm not proud of wonders if it isn't right. But I love them enough to be wrong about it.