June 2008 - to wed and to write

June technically started while I was in Berlin.  I know this because I had my birthday there.  But the new month didn't really feel new until I got back home and joined in the preparations for Lara and Sam's wedding.

I got home on the 5th and went right to work for them.  We rented the sound system and helped organize the outdoor space at their friend's house where they were having the ceremony and reception.  I must have driven over a hundred miles in my first three days back in town, which, for LA, isn't actually saying too much.  The wedding was great.  I played emcee, everybody danced, and the inner circle ended up at Denny's afterward, as happens with any great party, wedding or otherwise.

Then I had three weeks of detoxification, of re-acclimation, of speaking and hearing nothing but English and knowing that nothing would change that fact any time soon.  But now, comfortably collecting unemployment, it was time to enact part B of my post-hospital-job plan: move somewhere cheap and write write write.

I looked into Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington.  I looked into Portland, OR.  I looked into a boat in Coos Bay, OR.  I looked into Salt Lake City, UT.  Then I looked at the fine print on my unemployment insurance terms.  Then I started looking in California, because that's where I had to stay to keep collecting checks.

My brother's girlfriend (now fiancee), Jenny, kept her apartment in San Luis Obispo during the summers when she was back in LA working in a law office.  The rent was steep but the lease was renewed annually and she didn't want to lose it.  I couldn't have afforded to live there, but we came to an agreement where I would pay her half the rent for the remaining two months of summer so I could stay up there and focus on writing without distraction.


The plan seemed fit and fortuitous.  I knew only two people in SLO, just enough to ensure company when I needed it, but not enough to impose upon my work.  I could move in July 1.

May 2008 - mr. evans goes to europe

I had limited time from the start, unfortunately, but I knew if I postponed this trip to sometime more convenient, it would conveniently never happen.  On April 29th I entered Los Angeles International Airport and did not breathe open air again until reaching Toronto's Pearson International.  Not Europe yet, but I reckoned I was passing over Canada one way or the other so I might as well stop by and visit some friends.

Myia met me at the airport and we took buses and trolleys to her Spadina Avenue apartment.  She and her partner Mike live in this incredible upstairs apartment on a major thoroughfare in a neighborhood I somehow remember being Chinatown and Kensington Market at the same time.  In fact, I just discovered you can see a photo taken from just a few doors down from theirs on Wikipedia.  We gathered up all sorts of old friends from the Vancouver days and cooked and dined and drank.  Mike played for us a rare album, a 70's rock opera based on the War of the Worlds.  I got drenched in the heaviest rain I'd ever even imagined, beneath a daytime sky blacker than I'd thought possible.  I stayed some at Myia and Mike's, some at Sarah and Marta's, and then Myia and I caught a train (moments after my soaking) to Montreal.

Mr. Foxman met us in Montreal.  Adam and I stayed at a hostel the first few nights, while Myia stayed at a friend's.  We bought wine and cheese and bread and hiked the Mont Royale, from which the city derives its name, but not before killing a couple of hours in the playground at the base of the hill.  Myia's friends Etienne and Virpi were incredible part-time tour-guides.  They took us to an avant-garde art show as well as the greatest and most fancy vegan Thai restaurant on this earth.  Remember the world famous appetizer!

Time ran out for us there all too soon.  Foxman found a plane to his next stop - Colorado, I believe - and I found a bus to Burlington, Vermont from where I would hop to New York City's JFK Airport and then to Dublin, Eire.  Then began a trip much too dense to attend to in this much detail.  Just know I rambled:

• from Dublin, where I discovered a man can live at least a day on Guiness alone,
• to Killarney, where I played guitar with Poppa Goodtimes on the roof of a pub,
• to Belfast, where I took a day trip with a pretty German girl,
• to Edinburgh, where I nearly got stuck on an island in the middle of the Firth of Forth,
• to London, where Colin, a 36 year-old gutter punk lectured me about those who were tools of society and those who weren't,
• to Paris, where I drank at least two bottles of wine a day and sneaked on and off the Metro,
• to Amsterdam, where I stayed with Sarah and Marta in their acquaintance's canal-adjacent apartment,
• to Berlin, where I visited with two new friends a concentration camp just north of the city,
• to Nürnberg, where I cemented my addiction to wurst, lager, and sauerkraut, 
• to Düsseldorf, where I had one great night playing the Wii with the beautiful Catherine LeBlanc,
• to Los Angeles, where I seem to inevitably end up despite myself, at times.
  

I would like to have stayed longer in Europe had it not been for the big event - Lara Carina Spade was to marry Samantha Lemke on the 06-07-08.

April 2008 - spring renewal

Back in California, I was restless still.  A few days after returning from BC I set about on a drive to visit friends north of me.  Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Sacramento - I guess just about every California town that begins with 'S'.  I drove through Big Sur with my windows down, and took my time doing so.  The fresh pacific air is shielded here from the filth produced on the mainland, and I relished my privilege place along PCH between the shore and the cliff.

I had lunch with Nicole in Santa Cruz, unaware that in less than a year we would fall in love with each other.  In San Francisco, as I was leaving Alex's apartment after a late night of bar hopping with him, Jess, and Evan, a rabbi invited me to his home for sabbath lunch.  I had to decline, of course, for I had places to be.  I was due in Sacramento for a night of drinking with Adam.  Then, on Sunday, it was back home for me.  Back home again.  I was expecting company soon.

Mel was coming into town later that week, and I had been making an effort to become more involved with the CouchSurfing scene, ramping up for my trip to Europe.  I met a girl who worked as a photographer at Disneyland at a CS ArtWalk gathering on Thursday that offered to get Mel and me into the park for free on Friday.  So that's exactly what we did on Friday, straight from the airport.  Then we went to another CS event, a pancake breakfast, on Sunday morning.  She stayed with me for a few more days and then went camping with Kyle.

Passover came and went with relative insignificance.  All I really remember between Mel leaving and April 29 is researching, packing, stressing, budgeting, going to the DMV, and waking up late in the day.  I just remember being excited for my first trip to another continent.  I left for Toronto, the first stop on my trip, on April 29, but that whole venture is basically May material.

March 2008 - moneymoneymoney

This was the month that my contract at the hospital job came to an end.  As is common with the end of fancy corporate jobs, this meant a lot of money would soon be coming my way.  I explained a bit about this in another entry, so I'll swerve away from being too Jewish and just leave it by saying I received six checks this month, each of them larger than a typical paycheck - some factors larger.

With my new found fortune and ever expanding leisure time, what was I do?  By the end of my last week working at the mental health clinic just above downtown, I was more than ready for a change of scenery.  My home away from home beckoned me.  G and I ran away to the north, to old Vancouver and Victoria.  We stayed with Kristina at her historic downtown apartment in Vancouver, and then with Sarah at her middle-aged duplex in residential Victoria.  It was deliciously cold up there, and sumptuously moist.  The rain, interspersed with moments of snow and moments of drought, refreshed me inside and out as it always does.

Sarah and her friends took us out to a Jamaican restaurant that actually had vegetarian items being jerked alongside the pork and chicken.  G bought a fabulous coat at a thrift shop on a bargain, albeit at a price still far beyond her means.  The ride back to the airport was decorated with daffodils, just popping into season in fields beside the highway.  We flew into Seattle, then into LA, a truncated week that felt even shorter upon our return.  Back to the lions, back to the relentless sun.

20.

I have a blog. You're looking at it. It's been almost 20 months since its last update. I'm not making any apologies, for I have no readers. Instead I'm using this as an opportunity to attempt to remember the past 20 months of my life.

Each day for the next 20, I will remember on this blog the events of a month of my life beginning with March 2008, moving forward to October 2009. Nobody will read them, but I will know myself better for the writing.

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20.