2004-05-23 - 11:56 PM
It didn't feel like travel, most of it. I got up early in the morning, sleepy eyes and cold rumbled nauseous-like in my stomach. Happens only when I travel, it's the only time I get up at that hour. But it didn't feel like it yet. Hitched a ride with Coral to the airport, hugged her, took off my watch and keychain and smiled nice for security. Didn't feel like travel yet.
2 airplanes and a shuttle later, I was sitting outside Pantea's dorm wishing I still smoked so I could have a cigarette handy. A couple long-ass graduation ceremonies later, Thanh and Pantea were both UC Berkeley Graduates. Good for them. Part of me despised Berkeley, Tucson drivers in San Francisco hills. I laughed when I saw a horde of protesters, hundreds, marching down the turn lane on College Ave. Wouldn't be Berkeley without the Cause-heads. How I longed for meat to throw at them.
I think Jerome was caught between stretching his social skills with Pantea's cute friends, and introverted mania at being stuck in a hotel room with 2 friends and 4 semi-strangers. I tried to nap, it didn't work. I tried to drink, and succeeded. In 48 hours I had travelled 800 miles on planes and shuttles, found long-lost (5 months or so) friends, seen a new city, experienced a hippy protest, farted on yet another college campus, and yet it didn't feel like travel.
Not until we left. We talked off and on, sang off and on. Billy counted not just the blue cars, but every single fucking car that passed us. "Eleven hundred and ninety seven" he'd said, hours north of Santa Barbara. He stopped around 1400. I would have stopped at 14. Props.
It felt like travel, though, somewhere in Bohemian Rhapsody. That bizarre classic ballad of pain and rock that was already cool, but Wayne's World made popular. 3 exhausted, listless 20-somethings in a car screaming down the 101 belting out "noooo we will not let you go" is a certain kind of wonderful, and invigorating, and made me feel like I'd come back to something.
Then we played Video games, and I got womped but it was fun, 'cause I brought those blue sparks, and it was like I never left.
I'm in Santa Barbara now. Haven't been in this house in 5 months, feels like I just walked out the door yesterday. I'm all alone, parents in Colorado. My chinchilla is staring at me. I'm going to watch Digital Cable and fall asleep. Tomorrow, I'm going to see Heather, and I think I'm going to hug her as many times as she'll let me.
Good to be back. Disorienting, familier, good.
-Alex
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