On My Own

Ok so I don’t know when I’ll have a chance to actually post this, but I guess I’ll at least keep writing daily blogs until I get my phone line and will put them up when I have access again… Today was my mom’s last day here in LA. She had some meetings to go to in Thousand Oaks this morning so I dropped her off and then just bummed around TO for a couple of hours. Got the oil changed in the Pony. Drank some coffee. Hung out at Borders. That kinda stuff. (On a side note, all along the 101 freeway are these copper bells that denote historical sites in the area. They look just like the Mariner’s Bells in EQ2. I’m soooo missing my Norathian friends. I need to get back online and soon!) After her meetings we went to the Getty Museum and spent several hours browsing though the galleries there. It’s a pretty amazing place. It’s actually very tranquil and calming. It’s also free, which is mind-boggling to me. I can see myself going there on a regular basis. They have an impressive collection of art. A lot of it is artists that I’m not into (particularly Renaissance Italian and French painters), but it’s a great collection nonetheless. They do have some beautiful Monets (my favorite of the Impressionists) and Van Gogh’s “Irises.” It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re ever in LA. After the Getty I took Mom to the airport and then spent over an hour practicing my new hobby (i.e. sitting in LA traffic)... I finally made it home and am now camped out in my temporary apartment. I’m ready for it to be June 1 so I can get moved into my real apartment and can really start to get settled. It was weird taking my mom to the airport and thinking that she was going home to ATL and I was staying here in California. I’ve never lived this far away from my family before. When I move out of my comfort zone, I move WAY the fuck out of my comfort zone, don’t I? I’ve always been sort of a loner, but not having anyone out here at all is a little disconcerting. I think I really fucked things up with my friend Michael out here, I miss having Jason to talk to, and it’s bizarre not to see Lindy every day, especially since I left on sort of a bad note. There are bridges that I need to mend and I’m discovering that’s hard to do from 3000 miles away. Let’s not go down that road tonight though. I’m over-tired and tend to get too morose and cynical when I’m in that state. Things will be better tomorrow. I just need to sleep… Tomorrow I need to go in to Santa Clarita and buy a lamp and some other necessities like that. I’m also going to try and find a Kinko’s so I can at least check my email and surf some job sites. Maybe I can also burn my blog posts to a disk and post them that way. We’ll see… I’m really living out in the middle of nowhere. You’d never know that just over the mountain outside my window is a city of like 9 million people… and it’s great. I like being within driving distance of the real world but not actually having to live there. It’ll be even better once I get my horse out here. I’ll be able to ride for miles without seeing anyone else. Of course there are coyotes and mountain lions and rattlesnakes to contend with, but that’s the price I pay for living in this “Fortress of Solitude” that is Canyon Country. I may get sick of the commute eventually and move into the city, but for now at least, this is where I need to be. I need the peace and serenity that this place offers me. Right now I can hear crickets and see stars and I heard a coyote howling a little while ago. I can feel the stress just slipping away. I’m sure it will all come back once I get a job and have to go back to working like a normal human being, but still it will be good to come home to this place where it’s quiet and I have dogs to play with and don’t have to listen to sirens in the streets or the neighbors above me arguing in the middle of the night. I can write or read or do whatever the fuck I want and that’s a good thing… Alright. Enough for tonight. I really do need to get some sleep. I bought the first season of “Scrubs” on DVD so I think I’m going to watch an ep of that and then call it a night.

"I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind" -- Albert Einstein