Dean Martin god rest his soul, Talkin' to me from the cereal bowl. (Day 19)

My friend told me tonight that he wishes to go off of his Lamictal. It's a strange thing, for me, because now I have no one who's close to me thats taking the same kind of medication, and once again I'm left feeling alone. I am an island.

A few years ago, my pal Austin and I used to work at Burger King. On a rare occasion, he and I wound up getting three days off in a row, so after work one night we were at his apartment with his brother and some other friends. We wound up drinking a little bit, and watching Anchorman. Somehow during the night, we made up our minds that we must go to San Diego immediately, completely and 100% influenced by the line, "Whales Vagina".

The trip itself, when we got to San Diego was relatively uneventful. Stopped in a couple of random tea shops, for some reason a porn shop. We got lost a lot, and finally wound up in a hotel.

But getting there was a lot more fun. At one point we stopped at a Pizza Hut, and in keeping with the theme of Anchorman, I may or may not have allegedly said how much I would like to slather "Barbecue Sauce all over her behind" about a waitress, who I'm pretty sure spit in our food. Whatever, it's like we made out.

The next morning we left and headed back home. We stopped at a casino, I won 50 bucks...I don't think Austin fared as well as I did, though.

But the ability to just up and leave, and be able to come back in the short of a time revamped my perspective on how lucky I was to be able to do something like that.

Life feels so trapping sometime, and I think we all lose sight of how menial and trivial some things are. When you experience a shotgun trip like that, things get put into perspective: This worlds gonna keep turning long after your dead, rest assured. But while your still here, you might as well try to turn with it.

A few years later Austin had moved to California, and I stayed in Arizona. I'd just started what would be my most serious relationship to date, when Austin revealed he wanted to move back.

We hatched a plan: I'd take the greyhound out to Anaheim, meet him at the bus station and we'd drive back the next morning.

If you've ever taken a Greyhound bus anywhere, you know flat out that a better way to get anywhere would be to put a shotgun in your mouth and squeeze the trigger until it stops tickling. As I sat in the bus depot in Phoenix, I went to go wash my hands (because everything in the bus station is riddled with Chlamydiae, Herpes and broken dreams) when lo and behold...a toilet literally exploded. It was a festive shower of water and, well...I didn't stick around to see what else.

Walking out of the bathroom unscathed, dry, and un-fecal-ized it was time to load on the bus.

When I go on long trips like these, I usually want to sleep. I like flying in planes, and I like trains, but buses just make me hate everything.

Right around Yuma, we made a forty-five minute pitstop/dinner break. One of the very few times I've ever enjoyed Taco Bell, honestly. I wound up sharing my meal with a homeless guy from Virginia, and we talked about Vietnam. As with so many homeless males, he wound up serving his country (despite the politics of it all) and now he was only thanked with a Burrito Supreme and a crunchy taco.

Loading back on the bus was quite a hassle. The bus driver decided he didn't like me too much, and almost left me in Yuma. Somehow I smooth talked him into letting me back on (I literally did nothing to him to begin with) and away we went.

Right around San Bernardino a go-go dancer and I wound up talking. She told me how rich jerks loved to throw money around to girls in short-shorts and roller blades shaking their asses to bad R&B, but how she loved her job and was addicted to money. That even though as a little girl she wanted to be a doctor, right now all she could think about is how lucky she was to be able to "party for a living."

She wound up letting me use her cell phone. I needed to contact Austin, but I didn't have his number so my girlfriend at the time took care of that.

We had a transfer. She went left, and I went right. But I'll never forget her name, Mona. And I'm not sure if go-go dancers change their names like strippers do, if Mona is the go-go dancer equivalent of Cherry in stripper land. But then again, I didn't even know go-go dancers still existed, either.

Before she left, we sat outside of the bus station. The waiting can either kill you, or make you stronger in the cold night air in a foreign town.

She chain smoked, and chewed through a big pack of gum. Nervous habits are gonna be the death of humanity.

She told me about her Dad and Mom. Her mom was a flight attendant (she'd become one after her parents divorced) and her dad was probably a drifter. It struck me then thats why she had a need to not set down roots.

See, I guess her go-go troupe, I guess they actually don't have a place to live because they are constantly on the move. Living out of those apartments with low rates that rent by the week, etc.

Mona could draw though. She showed me all these sketches of skylines of cities she'd been too. I've always loved skylines. My favorite was of Toronto, and Portland.

In the Portland skyline, there were bumps where you could tell that someone had obviously shed tears over.

"His name was Arnold. We lived together for about a year. We had a cat, and lived down in the Pearl District. I'm pretty sure he's the only person I've ever really loved. We broke up. Not because of anything overtly dramatic, nothing like that. We broke up because for the first time in our lives, I wanted to stay...he wanted to go. I heard he lives in Tennessee now. He still has the cat."

She went left, and I went right.

I sat there on that bench for about an hour. It felt like it was going to rain, and I really didn't care enough to get to any shelter.

I'll never forget how blisteringly quiet it was, and for a second I really thought I might be the last sentient being on the planet.

"Final call..." came blaring over the PA like the Sounding of the Seventh Trumpet.

I got back on the bus, and part of me felt defeated, but another part of me felt accomplished and I'm not quite sure why. I hope one day I do, because I think about it often.

When I finally arrived at the final bus station, I really had had my fill of that whole scene. Luckily, fate had saved me the seediest station for last. O rapture!

It wasn't very well lit, to say the least, and I'm pretty sure some guys were planning on mugging me by the way they kept eying me.

Then boom. Boom, Boom, Boom.

See, apparently this bus station was right next to Disney. I'd never been before, and for some reason they love shooting fireworks every night. Whodda thunk it?

About 45 minutes later Austin and his friend were there.

When we got to our motel (which was right across the street from Knottsberry Farm) we wound up getting really drunk really, really fast.

The rest of the night is kind of a blur. There was a guy who wound up trying to sell us some coke which we declined. There were other events and...really, its just a haze of inebriation. I remember he and I walking through some dark parking lot in desperate search of a Denny's and some girls tried to buy meth off of us, and...neither one of us do anything remotely close to meth (nor do we deal in dealing it). Right around then I think we settled for chips and salsa, and passing out in the hotel room.

The next morning Austin went to go get the remainder of his stuff, and his car.

Around eleven am, most hotels want you to either pay for another day or get your shit and get out of their room. It takes a while for the maids to clean the rooms, etc.

Unfortunately, after a quick assessment of the damage done to the room, Austin and I decided it'd probably be better to just...not check out at all, but book it back to Arizona.

There were beer bottles everywhere, several questionable...remnants if you will, turned over chairs...basically, it looked like Fallujah post-Ramadan.

As we were pulling out of the drive way, there came the dilemma of if we should return the remote control or not, as discreetly as possible and then flee the scene post-haste. It was about then I glanced up to see the owner knocking on the room that was ours.

He knocked a few times, and eventually started talking very loudly. At which point he opened the door, and let out a sound I can only describe as...guttural. That solved the remote control issue right-quick.

Somewhere down I-10 in Arizona I chucked the remote out the window and watched it bounce down the road a bit. I kinda wish I would have kept it. Something tangible to remember.

Still trying to shake away the haze of the night prior, and realizing the car radio didn't work worth dick we sand Alkaline Trio songs, and caught up. He asked about my girl, I asked about how life had been outside of the confines of Casa Grande.

Theres an area, as you leave (or enter, depends on which way you're heading) thats a vast stretch of nothingness for miles, upon miles. Racing to beat the sun from falling from the sky, we began to notice his car was running hot. Now, when I say hot, I don't mean it was a little bit above the middle area it needs to be, but actually tripping past the little 'H' on the meter. Now, I'm no mechanic but I was fairly certain that this...this wasn't good.

We pulled over at the nearest Flying J/Hotel and filled his radiator with water.

This was actually one of my favorite parts of the trip. See, I love basketball, and I love playing it. For some strange reason there was a rogue hoop in the parking lot, and we just happened to have a ball. So we shot baskets for a few, and really it was just nice. Thats the best way to describe it.

And all I could think about was her. Her sitting at home, and how much I missed her.

After a while, we got back in the car. Hours and hours of driving, getting darker and darker. Road fatigue for me setting in, pulling this trip in such a whirlwind type of a way. Yet as tired as I was, I don't know if prior to that I'd ever felt more alive. I had a reason to come back, and I had a reason to leave and altogether it felt overwhelming that for once I could feel that sense of well-being; that sense of a need for adventure, and a hint of longing.

I may never find a real home. I always feel drawn somewhere else, and I want to be in a million places at the same time.

The car kept over heating, and neither of us had a cell phone so really...we were dancing on with Lady Luck, and we kept stepping on her toes. Fortunately she let it slide this one time.

I bring up Austin because he's really my closest friend, and I'm lucky to've been able to travel with him a bit. Throughout high school, he's been the one constant and I truly love him like a brother. It's been an amazing friendship, one I'm truly thankful for every single day.

Coming down I-10 after a million miles of headlights followed by darkness, followed by wayfaring truck drivers with too heavy of loads, it loomed in the distance: the Phoenix Skyline.



Skylines are powerful, powerful things. While mankind can never achieve what Nature does so seemingly effortlessly, Skylines are our temples, our beacons, our achievements. Our way of showing, if God is there and in case he's forgotten about us come nightfall that we still exist, in some shape or form, in the way of neon headlights and skyscrapers fighting to scratch the surface of the sky.

Phoenix is by far one of my favorite cities ever. I feel like it's mine. Not that I own it, per se, but that its mine for inspiration. Mine for retribution and salvation if I so choose to scurry its depths and breathe in what it has to offer. It's the oasis to the seemingly vast and endless deserts of Arizona. While every other major city in America seems to be out of its ass insane, I can turn to Phoenix and be thankful that it's just not that way. Plus, we have the Suns.

But what the name Phoenix resembles is something beautiful to me. A bird rising from the ashes. LA is the City of Angels, Chicago is the Windy City, Seattle is the Emerald City, and New York City is the windy city...us? We have the plausibility to rise from the ashes if we so find the strength.

And there it was, the skyline of Phoenix looming in the distance. This trip nearly over.

It's been three years and some change since that trip took place, December 8th, 2005. A lots happened since then.

I don't want to forget that.

A few months before I met her, before the trip I had a breakdown which I've touched on in an earlier blog. I still tried my damnedest to try and shake that numb feeling after that, but in the end it took taking me out of my element to shake away the cobwebs I couldn't reach.

I still think about Mona a lot. If she's still go-go dancing. I wonder if those guys outside of the bus station in Anaheim were going to mug me, and if so if they still pursue that line of work. I wonder why the bus driver hated me, and I wonder if the homeless guy at Taco Bell even remembers I existed for a fraction of a second in his life. I wonder if the hotel owner still remember the room we trashed and if he trusts 20 year old kids anymore. I wonder if those girls still look for meth. I wonder if any of them are still alive. I wonder if any of them remember me the way I remember them.

I have this half-brained theory that even I don't totally buy, but I'm gonna share it anyway.

Deja Vu. We've all had it. My theory is this:

We've all lived a hundred times before. Along the way we run into our Doppelgänger, and for a second everything seems to have happened before. If this is true, I think we all live and die in the same day, and are reborn when we wake up and re-live the next chapter. That maybe there is no beginning and end to time, but rather life on a loop. Maybe in that sense, we never really die outside of our realm of existence, who knows? It's probably poppycock, but it's no less harebrained than a virgin conception.

Thats all for tonight. Remember to go check out Josh Sullivans' 52 Friends project here, and help him if possible. After all it's his journey thats inspired these recent arc of updates.

Until tomorrow!