On this road trip, I realized just how much of a solitary person I am. I don’t like to describe it as “alone” which implies a sadness and a longing to be around people. I like being by myself. I can keep myself occupied with things that don’t involve another person. In the six days I was on the road, not one moment did I feel sad or lonely or bored. It was actually probably the best time I spent in 2016.

One of the things that peeves me is when people think being solitary is horrible. One of the co-owners of the company I work hates seeing me eat by myself during lunch. Usually I have a book or a crossword with me, so I’m fully entertained. She always asks me why I’m sitting by all alone. I tell her that no, I have the puzzle or the book, so I’m perfectly fine.

I’m guessing this all goes back to my childhood. At New Year’s my aunt asked me about going back to my old neighborhood in Zachary, LA. She asked if I went to see my old friends. I realized that I didn’t have any friends there growing up until I was 8. Well, there was Brandon who lived several houses away, but we didn’t become friends until we ended up going to the same school in first and second grades. What I remember most was playing by myself in the backyard, imagining games, kicking off the tops of ant hills and running without getting bit, pretending I was Chi Chi Rodriguez with the putter.

So yes. The solitary life is the one for me. At least right now.

I was reading something Henry Rollins wrote in his LA Weekly column recently, and he said that with the whole Trump thing we should just drown ourselves in music. And I’m more than happy to do that especially since I have an unsatisfying desk job. As I’m listening to all this great new music from musicians like Kanga, SØLVE and Dead When I Found Her, one essential part that is missing is the album art.

Part of consuming CDs and records and cassettes was having the liner notes open in front of me while the music was playing. If there were lyrics I’d follow along with it. If it was just the art, I would sit and stare as the music enveloped me. Sure, the music is as accessible as ever, but it’s much harder to fully embrace and absorb the music.

I guess if something comes along and really knocks my socks off, I’ll buy the LP if it’s available to get the album art that way. But it’s just not the same.

I know I’ve said I will never sleep with anyone who has abdominal squares, but they sure do look pretty don’t they? Don’t worry. I’m not changing my mind on that — too many bad sexual encounters with guys with abs for me to renege. But they’re fun to look at, like little porcelain dolls or antique figurines that are just too precious to play with everyday.

Gawking at the cover art aside, I’ve been listening to SØLVE’s album The Negative a lot at work today. In the low volume, it’s this engrossing mix of beats and drones with some vocals barely audible that can make for some good background.

As I got home and actually listened to it at a proper volume, the immensity of it hit me. It opens with a soundscape which envisions walking around at night in a desolated world. “Out of the darkness into the fire,” Brant Showers sings in repetition during the opening song “The Negative (Perspective 1)” as the soundscape changes into a slow driving beat that illuminates the shadows. “What Remains” follows with a driving chase accompanying the chant “Eat you alive, I will eat you alive.” If only…

As you listen through this album, you hear these intricate sounds and beats mixed with repetitive almost-chanting vocals. On his Bandcamp, Showers writes his mission statement for SØLVE:

“SØLVE serves to express concepts of self-reflection and spiritual conflict/exploration through alchemical and hermetic ritualism. The process of breaking down to rebuild is an extremely personal and often discouraging path towards addressing faults and limitations, and digging deep within can often reveal the aspects of ourselves that we are not always prepared to discover.”

We can see where he’s trying to get to, and it’s pretty arousing to hear his journey. This is music that gets me hard and keeps me hard. I don’t know about the alchemical and hermetical, but there is something a bit magickal brewing for me in here. “Let the light divide you and breathe it into me,” Showers sings on “The Negative (Perspective 3).” See? Keeps me hard.

It’s not as subtle and esoteric as COIL, especially the later-years COIL, but sometimes you need something a bit more direct. Sometimes you need just need a good hard fuck rather than foreplay and teasing.

Bandcamp

The air tasted heavy in Louisiana. While unseasonably warm the three days I was there, it was a familiar swampy warmness. Rivulets of sweat forming on my brow while I walked the levee walls of the Mississippi River bank in the Capital District at 8 pm; as I was standing in the Second Baptist Church cemetery in Jackson where my father and older sister are buried; while walking from where I parked underneath the interstate to Parrain’s where I had dinner my final night in Baton Rouge.

Things are changing there, even from when I was there last time in 2013. In my “hometown” of Zachary, they are building an Americana. Actual sit-down restaurants have sprouted up on the east end of town out by where the Wal-Mart is. In the Capital District, they are trying to transform it into an actual city center with nice restaurants, shopping and open spaces.

But it also feels familiar. Maybe it’s all the romanticism and nostalgia I feel for the place, but I actually do think I could live here again. As I was telling Tyson the other day, I know visiting for 72 hours is a completely different thing than actually living in a place. But that’s the thing about these little vacations, you get to ignore reality and just get to bask in the romance of it all. Although, to be honest, I don’t get this feeling from any other city I have visited, not New Orleans, Austin, Vancouver, Seattle, Oklahoma City or San Francisco. Just Baton Rouge.

One thing I realized on this road trip was that I need to create more. Whether good or bad, it’s time to create create create. Whether it’s words, music, pictures, smut, what not, I have to create things. Must must must.

After my epic 4,100-mile road trip in six days, I woke up this morning at a sort of normal time: 8 am. I’ve been waking up very early lately, that’s it’s just obscene. My younger self would be completely disappointed with my current self.

Today was spent just lazing around watching some football and doing nothing. The thought of having to go back to work on Tuesday is depressing. It makes me wonder if there are some drugs I can procure to make me forget about things for a bit.

And speaking of things I want to forget for a bit, at around 10 pm last night I got this text message from a family member:

“First of all ur X-mas card is 7 days late. And u have a job and making money and it’s just a card? No gift card anything like that! U cheap “blank”!”

I guess this is one less family member I need to care for anymore. Happy 2017.

Here I am in Baton Rouge again! As freaky as it sounds, there is something familiar about the place each time I come back. I got in at around 5:30, so when I go back up to Zachary and Jackson tomorrow we’ll see how things really are.

One thing on my drive from Abilene, TX got me so worked up that I had to call Catherine lest I forget about it. (And I damn near almost did.) Take a look at the photograph below:

This was taken just around Tyler, TX on the I-20, just about 60 miles from the Texas-Louisiana border. We had hit a very brief but very hard downpour a few miles before this. And I should note that most people in my vicinity did not turn on their headlights making it very difficult to see their cars.

Anyhow after we drove past that, we soon got stuck in this traffic. Multiple times! In this first one, a truck had driven off the side of the road and needed to be pulled back onto the interstate. On another, two cars collided sending one to go head first into a speed limit sign upside down.

The more I was stuck in this traffic, the more I stewed and stewed. Sure, Los Angeles gets a bit clogged when it rains. And we native Angelenos have to hear it from the cocksucking out-of-towners about how great they fucking drive in the rain.

Now here I am in a part of the country where they get a lot of rain, certainly more than in Los Angeles. Yet I don’t see any of these drivers any better than my fellow Angelenos.

So to all you smug assholes who bitch about LA drivers in the rain: FUCK YOU. YOU SILLY PUTAS ARE JUST AS BAD IN YOUR OWN FUCKING HOMETOWNS.

Anyways, here are some more pictures. One of the things I was looking forward to was stopping at a Buc-ee’s while in Texas. Imagine part truck stop, part megastore, part fast food joint.

Here is more of Baton Rouge. Here’s the old State Capitol building which was set on fire during the Civil War:

While the planning of this particular road trip was a bit complicated since it’s winter and things like snow and ice become a factor, so far everything has been very smooth. Despite the image you see above. Yes, that’s snow. This was taken at the Texas Canyon rest area about 60 miles outside of Tucson, Arizona.

Yes. South Arizona. Snow. I-10.

Actually it wasn’t all that bad. Since the air temp was hovering around freezing, there was no ice on the road. And when I stepped outside to take the picture, it wasn’t terribly cold since I was only wearing a hoodie over my t-shirt and jeans. And a little bit down the way I was caught up in some light snow flurries.

When I planned this trip, I made my first stop in Tucson since I knew a storm was going to blow through. Ideally I would have made my first stop to be in Las Cruces, NM or something further, but there was no way I wanted to drive through a snow storm especially at night. By the looks of it, it was a good thing I did that.

Besides the snow, the one thing that worried me about driving on Christmas Day was how many things would be open. Fortunately the truck stops like Love’s and Flying J’s were all open, so that was much ado about nothing. They are also nice to break up the monotony of the Texas flatlands.

Some random thoughts:

There is obviously something wrong with me since not only was I looking forward to taking a train out to Riverside this past Saturday, I actually enjoyed myself in Riverside.

A few weeks ago, I saw that Metrolink was having a $7 roundtrip special from Union Station to Downtown Riverside for the city’s Festival of Lights. Madd and I decided to head out there especially since we wanted to see Christmas lights. And who doesn’t love a festival?

When we got to Union Station, it seems that a lot of people also had the same idea we had because the platform was packed. A couple of stops in it became standing-room only. So we made a note of getting back to the station a little early to make sure we had seats coming home.

The Festival of Lights was actually better than I had anticipated. As a city boy, I always pictured Riverside as a little po-dunk town filled with tumbleweeds and meth labs ready to explode on command. Hell it could be that because we were in the heart of Downtown, the sun had gone down and the Christmas lights were very enchanting. It was all very pretty.

We had dinner at a speakeasy-themed restaurant called ProAbition (get it? MWA!) and rode a horse-drawn carriage through the streets to see the light display the Mission Inn had created.

My one real complaint was how crowded things were. After the carriage ride, Madd and I wanted to walk through and see the lights a little more up close. Maybe get a churro, a funnel cake, whatever. But it was so packed that there were points where we were stuck. It didn’t help that a couple wanted to show off their heterosexual unnatural love to the world right in the middle of a sidewalk.

We tired of it all and headed back to the station. I made it home by around midnight. Actually a little past that since there was police activity that shut down the freeway right at my exit to the Manse. But it was a pretty enjoyable day.

And that is the problem. It’s fucking Riverside. I’m not supposed to enjoy it. One does not go to Riverside and say things like, “Oh, that’s enthralling,” or, “I could see living here.” NO! Like I said, I was in a low-light situation and was a little over-stimulated from being around human beings.

I guess it could be worse. We could have been in Fresno and saying the same things. Oh, heaven forbid!

Fuck! Goddamnit. I had a dream about The Grandmother last night. I really thought after almost five months since her death and three months since my last dream about her I wouldn’t have to deal with them anymore.

This dream takes place during that week after her initial emergency room visit and before the final emergency room visit when we placed her in a nursing home. She’s sleeping on her “bed” in the living room and tries to get up to use the bathroom. Unlike real life, she could actually turn over without assistance and get into a crawling position. Like real life, however, she wasn’t able to stand up or walk unassisted. Also, most importantly, she wasn’t wearing a diaper for whatever reason.

I’m in the dining area talking with a lady — a neighbor, a case worker, I don’t know — and I see The Grandmother struggling. I sense her urgency, so I go to try and help her get up quickly. But she’s struggling and flailing and stumbling about. It’s a really sad scene, and I’m there trying to help her, crouching down to try and make it easier for her to stand up. In the process of this struggle, she’s crying and screaming out that she’s going to piss. I’m mentally screaming out wondering why we gave in to The Grandmother’s request to keep her out of diapers all the while struggling to maintain control of the situation. The lady is just watching all of this happen without even trying to help.

And scene.

What I remember from that week The Grandmother was immobile at home was how exhausting it was physically and emotionally. I had no control, and I really wanted to crumble. I couldn’t, and I knew I couldn’t. So there I was until the final day when I looked at her face frozen in death’s grimace and started bawling.

I don’t know what brought on this dream. Perhaps it was from talking to a neighbor the other night. She helped me bring The Grandmother upstairs into the apartment before the first emergency room visit. I guess talking with her brought up some of these emotions. Or maybe it was seeing the president of Korea being impeached.

I just hope this isn’t a regular occurrence.

I never thought I would ever purchase SPAM. I never believed I would ever EVER willingly purchase this meat-ish I-have-no-idea-what-to-categorize-it.

But there I was out on Saturday with Catherine and company at the Pasadena Souplantation and then walking around Lake Ave. Then it hit me: I WANT KIMCHI FRIED RICE!!! WITH SPAM!!!!!! I went grocery shopping after leaving Pasadena, and in the canned meats section there I picked up a can of SPAM. I still can’t believe it.

On Sunday, I did make the kimchi fried rice with SPAM. And I made it again last night. I think SPAM just might become a semi-regular ingredient for me.

How did this happen? Is it because of I’m around Koreans all the time? Well, at least I’m not drinking instant coffee. Yet. Or going to church.