So, no raincoat. Oh well. Towed car. Oh well. It’s snowing here, cold, wet and white, but in 12 hours I’ll be sipping a yellow beer in San Jose, and in the following days swim in both the Caribbean and the Pacific … what’ve I got to complain about? Right. So I take it slow today … I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow, I learn by going where to go. Fine. I shower slowly, and shave meticulously, a close shave that I seem to think will last longer .… it’s so quiet when you’re doing this, looking at yourself in the mirror for so long, quite a personal and often reflective time … steam obfuscating the edges of clarity … I started wondering if terrorists, if practicing shavers, did this before a big event … then I started thinking about 9/11, if Atta shaved or not, and if he did, what was he thinking about in a hazy hotel bathroom looking at himself in the mirror, and then I figured I should stop thinking like this because it’ll wind up freaking me out.

So instead I came up here to write a quick entry, drink a cup’o, and listen to Miles and company. I hope April treats you right, intrepid reader.

Better yet, I hope no one else has the gaudy pompousness to call you “intrepid reader” for a long time after this moment.

And be careful when you feed the pigeons. Bohumil Hrabal fell out of his window and died upon the cobblestones of Prague when attempting to do the very same thing.

Today I thought about one of the low points of my life…February 1996.  I was living in this cruddy apt. with an old friend of mine.  There was only one heater in the place and it was so far away from my bedroom that I had to sleep in the living room.  We had these violent redneck kids living upstairs that sometimes would just stomp on the floor for hours.  After a month of this we moved out.  I slept there the last night on the floor, my coat as a blanket, next to the heater.  When I woke up the next morning I was homeless.  All of my stuff was in a basement somewhere.  I went to get some coffee and read about my then-band The Fags in the local paper.  The Fags were Eugene’s band.  Now he’s in a great band called Gogol Bordello…check ‘em out.  www.gogolbordello.com