Goodbye.

I am in the beautiful virgin atlantic airport lounge at Heathrow, possibly for the last time in my life. But maybe not. This time a week ago, I was learning to scuba dive in Zanzibar while trying to shake off the fever and the full moon party. This time yesterday, I was looking for Grenson or Tricker's brogues with one eye on the Nottinghill Carnival. Now I'm leaving it all.

As I've mentioned, leaving everywhere else - Philly, Tokyo, Sendai, Chicago - I had complex and strong emotions. I cried every time. But this time, I'm almost unemotional. Seeing Ying, Rich, and the gang last night brought some sadness to the surface, but over all - this just feels like another flight to another place on another day of my life. And it's either because that's what London is to me, or that's what moving has become to me.

I'm sure at some point the sadness will hit me. And I'm also sure the memories of this time in my life will stick out as uniquely special in the grand scheme of my life, if not for it's consistent excellence at least for its unique and specific character.

London, I didn't always love you, but I will miss you. Thanks for the memories.

I just spilled a pesto chicken lasagna on my foot.

Requiem for a non-dream

What is it to leave a place?

In the last decade of my life, I have lived in a half-dozen cities. In the first five I lived in, I cried upon leaving. In the Windstar driving down Cymbal Lane away from Julie en route to Philadelphia. Watching Brian roll around in agony in his bed on the first floor of Butcher our senior year. At LAX hugging my mom before boarding my flight to Tokyo. In my apartment across the street from Tohoku University after my friends took me out for one last drink. Alone on a plane at Narita reading Kaori's letter to me. In an empty apartment 2304, holding Jen and rifling through all of our memories together after we had thrown out the last of my belongings before I flew back to London for good in March 2009.

Why won't I cry when I leave London? Is it because I wasn't here long enough to develop the devastating emotional connection I had with other towns? But I lived here longer than Sendai and Tokyo. Is it because I was doing long distance and don't have the emotional memories I had in Chicago? But I scrambled aggressively to build my own life here. Is it because there is no finality about my leaving? But I have all but decided in my mind that I will leave. Then is it because I never felt a connection to London from the first day I lived here?

Perhaps.

London is the first city I've lived in which never felt natural to me. In which I was truly polarized about being here. My frustrations are myriad and well-voiced. Even when I arrived and loved every inch of everything I laid eyes on, I knew if I were to stay here longer than a few years, I'd be disappointed. Twenty months has been too short, but I thirty-seven months would have been too long.

It's strange to not feel more upset about what is transpiring; after all, more than anywhere else I've lived, this town is leaving me with feelings of what if; what would my friendships have developed into if I had stayed? What would have become of me professionally? What effect would that have on my family?

Would moving to New York after Africa and not coming back here or testing the waters in Asia amount to a cop out? I don't know the answer to that either, but I'm going to try to find out.

Our Stupid World

I was listening to the Slate Culture Gabfest for this week in which they debate the merits and demerits of the Jezebel / Daily Show row over (the lack of) women staffers on the show. Regardless of the fairly obvious correct argument here - you can't expect a show to just hire women writers for the sake of diversity considering they are trying to create a highly specific product, BUT there is almost certainly a structural impediment in our American culture which creates more male comedy writers and then rewards them more readily than female writers (and as is brought up, a lot of this structural impediment is called the "Harvard Lampoon") that will be overcome with a little effort and just the passage of time - we need to focus on one thing - the ENTIRE conversation is a completely ludicrous waste of time, and at the very root of it shows JUST how few problems we have in America.

Think about what we're doing here. We're heatedly debating why there aren't more female comedy writers in our society!

I am often one of the first ones to jump all over any argument about race, and maybe it's just because I'm going to Africa in a few weeks, but when we have an oil leak in the ocean, bombs going off in Kampala, and fucking continents of people dying from disease, starvation, brutal physical conflicts, corruption, and general backwards living, why the FUCK are we heatedly debating why there aren't more sarcastic female comedy writers?

America needs some bigger problems and it needs them fast.

BEST BIRTHDAY PRESENT EVAAAARRRR

Thank you Lakers for giving me something to cheer about, knock drinks over about, run around hugging dudes I've never met before about, trash talk and throw LA gang signs on Haymarket and Piccadilly about, and go to sleep smiling about on my birthday.

Buck Foston.

Go LA.

And I'm a pumpkin.

I knew this ride was too good to be true. A little bit of an abrupt ending though - they should work on that.

I'm going to go get a hot dog now. Good bye.

Beach House

This week I hadn't listened to almost any music. For the first time in my recallable memory, I just had no desire. It went so far that I listened to a podcast hosted by Adam Carolla's wife about parenthood (with Adam as a guest) while jogging the other night. A podcast aimed at young mothers! While working out! A new low.

I think there are two reasons why I wasn't listening to music this week (or playing any guitar for that matter). First, over the last week I've felt a tremendous emotional detachment from my surroundings. I think it all relates to an existential mini-crisis I've been feeling about choices I've made, which choices I should make, where I am, where I should go, what I should be doing, and how old I am. Music is usually the fuel for my comically emotional reactions and reflections on life, but given complete, self-inflicted uncertainty about life, even I apparently had a hard time feeling definite emotions. No fire, no fuel needed.

The second reason is because, seemingly triggered by this confusion, I've felt kind of homesick. I don't know if California is a place I will ever fit in ever again, but it is somewhat paradoxically the place I still feel the most home and at ease. Without even realizing it, I was listening to nothing but podcasts from home - mainly Adam Carolla and Kevin & Bean. Listening to K&B on my way to work in the morning almost created the illusion that I was commuting to school or to Nordstrom back when I was in my late teens. It was refreshing and familiar.

Something broke last night though. A Japanese friend's cover band was playing a gig at a little bar near Farringdon. It was heavy on the Japanese pop and Japanese kids, and during the last song, the young salarymen in the front were dancing around wildly pumping their fists and singing. I felt completely old and disconnected, and I twinged with sadness. A few years ago, I would have been there with them. The bubblegum sound of the song they were playing took me back to Japan and to everything I left when I came back to earth as a 23 year-old 社会人. I could feel the memories of all the places I've left behind - the OC, Philly, Tokyo, Sendai, Chicago - reverbate through my heart, but only as memories. As dead leaves on the ground, not as living things. And all this while this little band was playing a japanese cover song and dudes were dancing around with their ties tied around their heads. So one thing's for sure - I got back my ability to over-emote!

So after a few beers, I walked out the door into the fresh night air listening to "World Sick" by Broken Social Scene, which is one of my favorite tracks of the year and I think will end up being one of those "soundtrack of my life when..." songs. But right now I'm listening to Beach House, and this, I believe, will be THE soundtrack of now. It breathes with a sadly assured relegation to fate crossed with the faintest hope that something is still hiding in the mysterious unknown. It unfolds with a smoky, cinematic mystery. It makes me a twisting, blooming emotional kaleidoscope. Basically it just makes shit feel real dramatic and pivotal. Thing is called "Teen Dream" for chrissakes!

It feels right to listen to today.

Fuck you, Eyjafjallajökull

(meant to publish this 18 April)

I wasn't able to do any of that crazy trip i was supposed to do because of volcanic ash from iceland, a volcano whose name appropriately makes use of a northern european umlaut. for me, meetings in amsterdam, barcelona, and la coruna cancelled. And i missed renee's wedding in new orleans.

and the weather was gorgeous for the weekend, which was simultaneously a nice consolation and a stinging slap in the face. I know the silica particles are not visible in the air - but you'd hope that if volcanic ash is preventing flights, there would at least be a sympathetic cloud in the sky. it was instead the clearest 72 hours of london sky i've ever seen.

I spent it in the park with lucy's friends drinking and playing "rounders" (british version of baseball) to celebrate Rifl's birthday. we went to this really terrible/awesome jamaican restaurant called the globe with a club underneath it that is basically an unlit basement with no ventilation. we had jamaican chow mein (!??!) at 4 AM. we drank horrrrible shots of tequila.

one of the guys that was there, Quinn, had a 10 day trip to Chicago and San Francisco for his brother's 30th birthday cancelled. quinn and a lot of pimms made my situation feel a lot less tragic.