10 December 2002 ---JOURNAL ENTRY TWO---
Guten Tag, meine Freunde. I'm about 15 minutes from going for a jog before work but wanted to update you on a couple of things. First, I spent the last two nights on a mini-roadtrip following a band from Washington DC called Canyon. They have many influences but most basic and foundational would be that of Neil Young, Pink Floyd and Tom Petty. They're a five-piece band and are patient musicians.
I made it to LA around 4pm and got to my friend John's downtown loft. I like to joke how it's in a sketchy, desolate area of the city of Angels and it is. He's told me stories of things being stolen from his car and then sold back to him by the very homeless people who stole his stuff! Anyway, after a nice dinner and some homebrew, we ventured up to Spaceland, a black-walled, bare-bones affair. The band sounded great, but didn't go on until after 11:30. Brandon, the singer noted softly that they were thinking of changing their name to "Thanks for staying", in reference to how much later they end up playing each night than they thought they would. It was a good set, about an hour long but I really felt like they were just warming up when they finished, sometime before 1am. I talked to them for a bit after the show and told them I'd see them in San Diego the next night.
I awoke in the morning a bit rough, but drove back home to Orange County where I had lunch with my mom and then after a workout, drove down to San Diego. I made it to Pacific Beach around 3:30pm, did some vintage shopping to no avail and then hung out with my buddy Mooney. He had some funny plumbing problems going on at his house and we watched some Simpsons, played some music and watched Monday Night Football while I ate a carnitas burrito which was scrumptious as always. We made it to the Casbah in San Diego around 9pm where we found out that they weren't going on until 11:30ish again! So, we ended up having more than one beer each as we had earlier alloted and tried to enjoy the first two bands who were good. I definitely liked the second band, or at least parts of it, and their name is The Roots of Orchis. Then came Canyon and they picked it up quite a bit over the first night in LA. Their show included a Rolling Stones' cover "Play with Fire" which they played the previous night but then also a Neil Young tune called "Cortez the Killer". They jammed and we definitely enjoyed it. Woke up early, had a smoothie and now here I am.
So onto the dismantling. I have to sell my car. I leave in 35 days and there isn't even an ad in the paper or autotrader yet. I need to get on this so, while doing some journaling today I thought that the first step would be to clean my car out which I did. The mardi gras beads came down from the rearviewmirro, the strange chochkey which has built up and accumulated over the past 4.5 years and it was all put into a shoebox. It felt weird taking all these things out of my car, yet another of the subtle reminders of what I'm in the later stages of trying to accomplish: to move to another country with as little ties to home as possible. It's not that I don't want ties to home, it's just the opposite: I don't my home (aka stuff) to have ties to me. I've driven my car past Portland, Maine on two different occasions, even getting it all the way to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Trust me, it's a hell of a long way. And now, in the next couple of weeks, with the normal holiday craziness going on, I'm selling the one thing in the world that I worked hard and paid off that cost a "serious" amount of money. Hell, I just paid the thing off two weeks ago and now I'm selling. Oh, the ironies of life when you're ready to throw your chips into the game. The game immediately requests all chips thrown in during the first hand!
But, life is good, just a few moments closer to my dream. More chapters of my books and short stories will get added tomorrow night most likely, but I hope you're enjoying this, no matter how rudimentary it is. I'm making this major change in life and you can live it, without ever having to get off your ass. Anyway, peace and smiles...oh yeah, I wanted to have a German phrase in each journal entry, so when/if you come and visit me, you'll already know a bit of German. So, without further ado, here's this journal's phrase:
ich liebe dich = eeH LEEbah deeH = I love you.
