On the eve of my departure to another land, I am happy. Happy to be traveling somewhere else, but at this moment, I want to send a little shout-out to my home. Ocean Beach, California.

It’s a special place that calls out to you and reminds you before you even depart, about how awesome it is. I love the end of summer here. I love that I go out for my morning walk and wave at people I know three times at 8:00 in the morning. I love that I can go to the Vine and get lessons on life, and when I walk home the palm trees are blowing but there is also a hint of winter in the air and the smell of fireplaces and fish at the same time. I love that I love this place I call home, and I love that, for this moment, I totally belong here. And I love that I know this.

It’s very strange to some, talking about your home as if it was your lover. But it’s the only way to live, for me, at least. Or, as they sing in that Wilco song, Distance has a Way of Making Love Understandable.

I’ll post from the road.

Last night, I was at the Vine, hanging out with Mark and Andy, and Brian had to replace a glass of wine for someone because a fly flew in it. So then I had to start talking about a conversation I had recently had there, where other people were talking about how it wasn’t so bad to fish a fly out of a glass of wine and keep drinking it. I was like, that is gross, I wouldn’t drink out of a glass of wine if there was a big ol’ fly in it. (Fruit flies I can deal with. Big ol’ grandpa flies I cannot.) So then, Brian says, “do you know how many bugs you ingest in your lifetime?” Or something like that. And I was like, “yeah, but not huge flies swimming in my glass” or something like that. To which Brian replied, “I bet you don’t walk barefoot on the sidewalk, either, do you?” And I all but roared, “HELL no, I don’t walk barefoot on the sidewalk. That is gross, also, you could step on a rusty nail, and then you would have to get a tetanus shot!”

Brian just looked at me and calmly said, “Shannon, with all that shit you put in your hair, you are probably going to get brain cancer.” Uh. I guess he has a point. There is not much use worrying about a rusty nail when you’ve been plastering your hair with chemicals for a million years. Is there?

So then, today, in the slowtrav chat that I co-host with Marian every week, there was a discussion about bringing wine home from Europe. Due to the new (totally ridiculous) restrictions on bringing liquids in airline cabins, I went out and bought a really big suitcase, so that I can bring home more wine in it. Because I HAVE to bring wine home. Only, in the chatroom, someone I totally respect and trust was like, why are you doing that? You can get wine here. Well, I know I can get wine here, but somehow I just want to get it there. The crazy thing is, I have a feeling that this giant suitcase is going to get to be a bit of a drag. Even though it rolls. I am wondering if I will be cursing it in the end. Especially when there is no elevator. I am strong, and I am not a pussy, but I am going to be moving around a lot. What am I doing? Hmmm.

Oh well, I am all packed now, and maybe I can just treat this as an educational opportunity. As in, my mom can remind me for the rest of my life, “REMEMBER WHEN YOU HAULED THAT UBER-SUITCASE AROUND SPAIN JUST TO BRING HOME FIVE BOTTLES OF WINE?” Maybe I’ll just get brandy, instead. Fundador, like Mike drank in The Sun Also Rises. Oh wait, can you get Fundador here?

Oh well. Like Tim Gunn says, Make it Work. Make it Work. Make it Work.

Sometimes, when I feel sad, I cure my heavy heart with a dose of Clinic. Their just so wacky and awesome that I forget everything that went wrong in the day and concentrate on how fabulous they are.

So tonight, really and truly trying to escape this gaping hole that my legs are currently dangling through, I went searching on youtube for Clinic videos and what did I find? THIS!

Not only is it one of my favorite Clinic songs, but I am actually IN THIS VIDEO. Yes, it is true, one of those heads on the left is mine. I was there on the rail that night. I don’t remember the light show being so awesome, but I think I was kind of drunk.

Anyway. Next time Clinic come I might just have to stand back a little, in order to see that light show from afar. And they might be coming soon because they have a new record coming out (yeah) but I am not seeing it for sale in the States (fuck) so thank god for amazon.com.uk ($$$$$$$).

Something is missing. Can’t put my finger on it… live show? CD Drive? Sanity? All’s I can say is, Saturday I am not looking back.

Here is some new Clinic. I love them and miss them and wish I could put all their stuff on my Ipod for Spain but I can’t because my friggen CD drive is broken. Bummed.

Anniversary day, and I can’t seem to get this melody out of my head.

Isn’t it weird how, at the end of the summer, all of a sudden everything changes? I’ve been so sleepy, as though I am going into hibernation mode. It’s cooler at night, and everyone is suddenly walking around with hoodies and jeans. My floor is cold in the morning. Tonight I actually had to find a pair of sweats to put on. I have a lot of sweats. I forgot about that.

What happened to the summer? What happened to the last two months? One minute, Radiohead was coming, and then I blinked, and then it was now. Were the last few weeks so boring I slept through them or something? I’m not sure they were exacly fun.

Anyhow my book is almost done and I am leaving for Spain in just a few days. And when I get home it really, truly will be Fall.

Onward.

OK. Maybe this is not why we love Jeffrey, after all.

My brother’s 40th birthday is tomorrow and I just want to get this in today in case he checks in the morning:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOM! YOU ROCK.

Last year I had my 40th in Sicily, with people I love. This year Tom will have his in Belgium, with people he loves. I wish I was there, but I can be there in spirit. Yum, frites taste GOOD.

Anyway Tom, if you get this (or Kasch if you read this print it and bring it to him) I want to say I love you and I am proud of you, little brother. Have a fantastic day.

All my readers feel free to leave Tom a little birthday message of your own. ESPECIALLY the ones who know him…

This one is for Kasch. She wants me to write something.

Writing is hard sometimes. I struggle with my own voice. I wish for more discipline, but I hate what discipline does to my voice. It’s a bitter battle, so thanks god I am not relying on this for my income. I do this for myself, I do this for my friends, I do this for a woman in Berlin who I have not yet met by maybe could be someone I know for the rest of my life.

Life is weird that way. All day, actually for a few days, I have been thinking of the connections between people, how they can all of a sudden just happen, just like that. There you are, just like that, you have a friend and a sister, living in a different reality. She sits in a European city, lonely, thinking of someone we both love while it rains outside. The image has entered MY reality. The lines are clear. The connection is strong.

When I was young, I met a rich guy who was in and out of my life for a number of years. I first met him when I was fifteen, then for the next few years, I ran into him here and there, in weird places, like the Orange County airport. He was kind of a weird guy – he had various businesses and was into holistics, but at the same time he was also, basically, a drug trafficker. When we finally hooked up in a more-than-just-running-into-you way, I was twenty, and he was on trial. He went to jail for a while, but when he got out, I saw him from time to time (again) in San Francisco, where we would go out to a fancy dinner, then a bar, then I would castrate him vocally for a while, which he loved. Then I would drive his ginormous expensive car all over the place when I should definitely not have been driving. It was the late eighties. We got away with a lot back then.

Anyway. What I am getting at is this weird connection thing, and it is about to get weirder. I believe in reincarnation, and there was something with this person that transcended normality. When I looked at him in the beginning, later on when our relationship took on this bizarre mother/son/castrator mode, whatever it was, it was deep. Then one day I learned that in a past life I was a German nightclub singer in World War II who was killed by an American bomb at the age of nineteen. Telling this to my millionaire friend, HE tells me he was an German officer in World War II, who was killed by his own government because he was not doing what they wanted. Now, I know this all sounds totally crazy and farfetched, but seriously. I screwed around with that guy before we both died back in 1944 or whatever, and that is why we kept running into each other in this lifetime. We have a thread that ties us together and it will go on and on until we resolve whatever it is we need to resolve (which we, I am quite certain, did not accomplish in this lifetime. More fun is yet to come.)

So, Kasch. There is a thread that ties us together, made of silver silk. Made of memories, from the past and the future, and from right now. THIS is the memory, the moment between jumping off the cliff and hitting the water, the moment between entering the club and the lead singer taking the stage. Or the drummer. Heh.

I see the silver thread that connects us. It is weird, but it is there. Now I want the whole suit.

Last night I started thinking about luggage. As in, what am I going to do about it. Basically I am thinking about how I can buy wine in Spain and bring it home – now that I can’t actually bring it into the cabin, I am sort of screwed. So essentially I am visiting three different wine regions of Spain and I can’t bring any wine home. Well, screw that. Ship it? Not (too expensive.) Put it in a box and bring it home like that? Not (too complicated, too hard to move around when you are exhausted.) No, I have to buy some sort of a rolling suitcase that is big and also, hard-shelled. Then I can throw away all my clothes and just fill that sucker up with wine.

So since I have been thinking about this so much it is only natural that my overactive imagination would take over, especially since I have had immense quantities of mindless time over the weekend with nothing to take my mind off it. I started to think about those big black cases that musicians haul their gear around in. And I started to think, how cool would it be to have a suitcase that was not only big, and not only hard and tough, but also looked hella cool? As in, if you rolled it around in the airport everyone would think you were a rock star, or at the very least a roadie? I figure, with one of those big black cases, I could slap some wheels on the bottom and outfit the inside with some styrofoam wine holders, and voila, I could bring home ten, maybe twenty bottles of wine.

The only problem, of course, would be the weight. I guess each one of those cases probably weighs something like twenty pounds, and this would probably be kind of a drag when the airline wants to charge a hundred and fifty dollars because you went fifty pounds overweight. So then I started thinking, well, you just have to make this luggage DESIGNER, and charge $5000 for one suitcase just like Prada does, because rich people don’t care about extra weight because they not only have people to carry their shit, they also have private jets, hence they don’t have to worry about overweight charges. Then with all the money I make on the Prada Roadie Luggage, I can then afford to pay for these charges myself.

So in my mind I have the whole line of luggage going, complete with bumperstickers of rock bands you have never heard of, and stencils that say stuff like PROPERTY OF BRITT DANIEL. And it would be sold already banged up and thrashed. I swear, sometimes I have some brilliant ideas, what can I say, maybe Irving, Texas is good for me.

Now I just have to find some investors but in the meantime, if you ever see luggage that looks like this, let it be known right now that THIS WAS MY IDEA.

Sometimes I wish for this: traveling all around Europe and Eastern Europe and maybe even past that by myself and then blogging about it. I do want it, I think it would be really cool, and weird, and scary and also, fun to do this. But then I end up by myself for a few days and I start to rethink that plan.

I guess I can’t really compare Irving, Texas to Stockholm or some random Greek Island, but I do have to say that sometimes I get insanely, overwhelmingly lonely on the road. I can’t really say it is one place over the other, because I have spent too much time in other places (even horrible places) and not become too lonely. I travel to so many weird, sometimes desolate places for work that I just try to find the beauty there, and usually there is something – at least one thing – that I can call beautiful.

But Irving, Texas. It’s awful here. It’s been hot, it’s been muggy, and today it is raining AND hot and muggy. I am trapped in the Four Seasons wishing my guts out that I could leave right now for the airport. It’s dry here, meaning you can’t buy a bottle of wine at the store. You can’t buy a bottle of wine at the grocery store! This is the 21st century, people! What’s next, no pudding?

Thankfully I was able to scam a couple of open bottles left over from a tasting yesterday, otherwise I probably would have called the airline and paid the hundred bucks to get out of here as soon as possible.

Oh, you can get a glass of wine at the Four Seasons, but it is $10 for a glass of Whitehaven Sauvignon Blanc ($7.50? I think, at The Vine) AND they tack a 17% service charge on every bill. Now, I totally would have tipped more than that anyway, but the fact that they add it and then leave a space for “additional gratuity” just galls me to no end.

Anyhow. It’s not all that bad here if you like staying in a sprawling business park type setting. Sometimes people say “oh, it’s so cool you get to travel for work.” Yeah, sometimes. But then there are those times when you are trapped in a Holiday Inn Express with no car and nothing around you and are forced to watch Jon Benet Ramsey’s “killer” fly from Long Beach to Boulder Colorado over, and over, and over.

I guess I could read. But places like this make me so brain dead that I find myself reading the same paragraph over, and over, and over like it’s the same CNN loop entrenched firmly in my brain.

It’s not what I expected, really, but there is this: I never got Texans, and they’ll never get me.

I’ve been having hardware problems, and now I have an ulcer. However, I can’t not post something, so here you go.

The new carry-on rules are also a bitch.