2.

Seems like the ghosts are still close. I wake up in a Bear House and make my way outside to the back balcony, and there is a call in my head and I don't know why. I'm distant from that in so many ways, but here it is cobwebbed in the corner and dancing ethereal when the first light hits me. I take a slug of warm Coke and try to wait it out. There are smoke signals as I light my first one. Seductive silver plumes rise from my fingers. My face is still numb from the cocaine. I want to wince at what I'm thinking, but I'm frozen stiff and stuffed so I walk to the edge and lean out. 

I'm on the side of a valley. Below me I can see the houses of the rich, barely visible beneath the thick verdant canopy of the forest. This is the richest county in California, and I'm here with ghosts and I don't know why. Last night's mess contains over sized pizza slices. I take a cold one in the mouth for luck. It helps. It seems like I've been here forever. This city of ten cities, each so different, black world, blue world, rich world, tourist world. None of them are my world. I need to sit down. This is just a week catching up, this startled maudlin, out of place in an adventurer's kit. I realise how lucky I am to have a brother in the city. He's waiting for me now, I'm supposed to play to his class, a song of ghosts and monkeys, but I won't make it back. He'll understand. I forgot how much we understand. That's a good man, right there. Strange in the all the right ways. Right in all the strange ones too.

For a moment I'd forgotten why I was here. At the bar of the Utah Saloon, with the Giants running 9-0 in the second game, and free Tequila shots for everyone when they won, and two girls I couldn't escape, yelling at me how it was fine that I talked to the other one, "cause she's obviously prettier than me..." - What the Hell are you on about? I need to find a corner while I wait for my friends to get here. I didn't come here to chase. I want the real thing now, I want an out to this forever fleeting fancy.  I want my girl. The one that's waiting for me. The one that's going to understand. Not the one in the bar who doesn't even know who the Hell she's talking to. I've got three more days here. I want to remember them. I need my guitar. I need my guitar like I've needed it all year. The tequila keeps coming. I don't know what I say, or why, or how I look. Like I care anymore. Like I've cared ever since I was first not worth caring about.

Yeah, that coke sure was strong.

Later we drive across the GBB. And we're all laughing again, talking baseball, and I turn to the left and see the hungry fog edging toward the city, descending upon its prey. I lean back in the seat and close my eyes and the bone tired in me just says, bring it on, swallow it, swallow me, for this one night, let's all sink together and see where we turn up. Then I turn to the right, and there's the Pacific, clawing desperately at the cliffs and crashing in sickened revolt up, up, up, impatient to be done with these eons of erosion. Starving to just finally come on in and drown us all.

And far out to see, a sprig of lightning, to garnish the whole scene.
A storm slowly approaching.
One dark Halloween.

1.

I ain't running no more. I think that as we land. I look out the window and I see the South Bay, I see a Land of Strangers, and I know I'm not escaping something. I'm arriving. That's important fact number one. Important fact number two is that I've travelled light. I haven't brought baggage this time, like I took to Paris. My heart does not feel heavy. My heart feels clean. My heart feels nothing at all, if I had to tell the truth. That's that. My heart feels nothing at all, though my eyes are wide open.

I play my first show then I stand at a crossroads. Dusted signs which point to differing nights. I choose a glass of red in a home, with my shoes off, no jungle, no animal, no exploring, no wanting, needing, hoping. Those people who died, they killed that lifestyle for me. They used to tell me things, what they knew about everything, what they were going to become. They'd talk, all people fucking do is talk - then they'd fall apart on a cocaine hurdle, throw misguided missiles of fuck, suck, and shit out of luck.

I used to to do the same.

I drink a wine, and keep it close, keep it internal, and that's when the year's work really kicks in. That I've travelled all this way in a huge metal fish, over an ocean infested with sharks that shoot spiders out of their mouth - and I didn't change. I didn't blend. I just smiled and stayed safe. And waited for the right thing, not the Old Thing. The Old Thing is dead. I know that now. It's dead and it's getting deader.

Similar things happen to last time. I walk a lot. I don't make friends with strangers like I could. I keep my head down and I try to use the streets as currency, to buy another piece with which to build a greater understanding. Everything looks like it should. The painted ladies, 2 story, 3 story, a static pirate station where no one knows any longer, just what they're tuned in to. Like anywhere. Like home. It's all shirts and shops and safety zones.

I can sense the death of this place. This once great pioneer flailing into the New Age.
I think about Space.
I think about China.
I think,

America will tumble, slowly. It won't die. Instead it will remain a place of ideas, of invention, of wild theories and outsider glory. America will become the wild, grey haired loon, and it will remain valuable for that. But China will be the one to take us out into space. China has the numbers, the discipline, the ability to dispose of whoever or whatever does not serve the greater good. America failed there. It placed too much value on the individual. Saving three astronauts, saving democracy, saving face, all of these things are holding us back. We need to cut things loose. Keep our eyes on the furthest galaxy. If we are to conquer Space, if we are to shift focus, we need to value the Ant Kingdom over the Me. I don't think America can do that.

That's what I think.
I light another cigarette. I'll always do that.
I don't order a whiskey.
I don't chase a girl or a guy who can help me be more than I already am.

I am dying. So I die with dignity. I pour a wine, and remove my shoes, and think about the show I played, and look forward to the next one. I live each day in this dying world as though it were my last, and I frighten myself with the knowledge that right now, if I had a choice, my last day would be spent alone, in comfort, rather than burning in a gutter beneath the stars which we as a race are forever pretending we have already reached.

I don't need to see the stars.

Though there is one, ahead, that may just be an angel.