diary 13 (july 13)

I'm going to try to write down most things from this month for my own sake. I started off back in LA- stayed at the end of a sprawling suburb in a culdesac, had little party in the pool and around the bonfire and ate family dinners and stayed in a beautiful home with the kids' elementary school projects hung up all over the garage, got lost in antique stores. I went to Las Vegas where it was 117 degrees on the 4th of July, ended up in multiple strangers' hotel rooms, stayed out until it was dawn running back to the hotel. Snuck into the fancy hotel pools in a daze and my whole group fell asleep all afternoon in the pool chairs. Drove through the desert at night and stopped to see the stars in the middle of nowhere. Took a 27 hour 'scenic' train ride up the West Coast. In Oregon there was a meet up with over 50 photographers that met through flickr, we all camped on a farm together. We swam in the rivers and creeks, caught newts and jumped off cliffs, went in every wooded area. Everyone would break off and start shooting each other or explore or sit around and talk. Went to dunes and beaches and old towns I felt like I wasn't on earth hiking through them. Every third parking lot our group stopped at everyone would start singing and dancing and climbing onto cars, skateboarding and talking in huge groups while cars where trying to get through. We went to an abandoned ghost town and in one of the destroyed houses there was a room completely full of letters all over the floor- talking about love and travels and poetry and drawings- all to the same person, they kept every one of them and then they died but the letters written to them were still there, scattered everywhere. We played a game where we ran around the town in small groups or solo and tried to get from point A to point B without getting picked up by designated people in cars hunting for them. I kept injuring myself the whole trip and every night I would collapse way too late into my sleeping bag in my clothes. The last night we lit off the floating lanterns together and talked until too late. When I had to leave the next morning saying goodbye to everyone I actually started bawling which is the only time I remember ever doing that. I road tripped with 6 people I had just met at the meet up in a big minivan to the East Coast. We stopped for lazing around at rest areas and gas station parking lots. I love the road and the idea of small towns and the country and being in the middle of nowhere, I'm not used to feeling that. We drove all night to the Bad Lands to watch the sunrise there, I passed out from dehydration. We stayed one night with a photographer friend all in his little studio apartment, all seven of us. I stayed in a frat house in Ohio for two days with couches and hookahs everywhere and did frat things and felt like I had absolutely no responsibilities or direction. I took a long bus home to New York City, the top floor of a double decker with a front wrap-around window and stared out of it the entire time thinking of nothing. Coming back to the city I had a wonderful period of 48 hours where I was absolutely enamored again, before I settled back in. Slowly walking around my neighborhood. I adjusted to my apartment again, saw my friends who I had missed, went to too many events that are nothing like any other place I've been could have in the same way. Poetry readings in a tiny loft in the middle of a factory town, a huge music and photography and performance party with 5 bouncers in a huge church lit up all red, block parties and roof parties and backyard parties, having coffee with clients until closing time, running frantically through a thunder storm at dusk through a huge park with all of your camera equipment, having someone fall asleep next to you on the subway, sitting in a circle with a huge group of strangers having beers and pizza on a roof because they saw you and asked to join. I've found that I live my life in the past (missing things that were and won't come back) and the future (hoping and daydreaming about things that aren't anything yet) and not in the present still.