California Pt 7 | Vesuvio

I hadn’t expected Kerouac Alley and the bookshop to move me so much; the emotion of it all took me by surprise. Truth be told, I don’t often think about Kerouac these days. I read other authors, other genres, and when I write I don’t try to sound like him anymore; I feel I’ve found my own style, more or less. I had my phase and I moved on – left it behind, along with all the other stuff I left in my twenties, voluntary or otherwise. But despite all that, being there did something to me – something visceral. It felt exactly how watching the Lion King on TV feels, even after all these years: it felt like nostalgia, it felt like loss, it felt warm, it felt like a hug.

Continue reading

California Pt 2 | Artificial Impertinence

I’m always sheepish when I see friends for the first time in a while – and it wasn’t even that long of a while! But I don’t know; I’m not very good at hellos, and I’m atrocious at goodbyes. I think as I get older I’m increasingly wary of sentimentality. A cautious counter, I think, to the oversentimentality of years gone by – of alienating people, weirding people out with my emotional intensity. I’ve learned, quite subconsciously it seems, to say less. Maybe that’s what happens to a lot of boys when they’re little – maybe that’s why so many men are so stoic and silent and struggle to know what’s going on in their own heads. For some reason it happened to me much later on. I never know how much emotion is appropriate, so it’s safer to just be pragmatic.

Continue reading

Monument Valley

We were driving through Arizona, although we were passing through states so quickly I found it hard to keep track, especially with all the lack of sleep and the bottles of wine I was putting away at a rate that would draw a lopsided smile and thumbs up from Gerard Depardieu.  Over endless miles of highway we sang songs and played games and drew on the windows with wipe clean pens. We laughed at each other’s gaping mouths when we took naps, and we disagreed on who should get to be in charge of the radio. (Nobody else wanted Meatloaf, dammit) The rocks around us steadily turned red as we headed south. We stopped at a deserted little settlement, some depressing metal huts in the arse end of nowhere. Navajo people sat in the huts, browsing magazines with disinterest, all kinds of Native American bric-a-brac stacked around them. Daggers, bows, arrows, necklaces. I hobbled straight past all of it and found a bathroom; the first we’d had passed in hours. Thank god. Continue reading