SUPERMELON

I suppose turnabout is fair play, so it’s about time I end up being the one who gets all jumpy when I’m not the one playing the “I’ve been hurt before” card.

Just a friendly reminder. Blackmarket, Orchard Central.

Let’s get away and out of this city.

Some clothes tags are better than others. Monki, Sweden.

Truth is powerful, and it is not always that we do not believe what we eagerly wish.

Why you should not be complaining.

From the perspective of the Distancer:

“Worry. Worry a lot. Worry some more. Pretend you’re not worried at all. Tell him you’re having a spectacular time, which you are, but worry that this would make him feel bad. Tell him you miss him every day, which you do, but worry that this would make you a stupid clingy whiner who leaves then clings and whines. Stalk him but always make it look like an accident, which sometimes it actually is (you swear!). Try not to gain weight; excess baggage is never a good thing. Try not to flirt with anyone, and try not to think about him flirting with anyone, and try not to keep tabs on who’s flirting with whom and who started it and why. Try not to be too disappointed when you log on to Facebook and that little green circle beside his name is MIA. Try not to call him in the middle of the night, because when it’s the middle of the night in his part of the globe, it’s high noon in yours, and pulling #dark, dramatic stunts like these when the sun is out is just pathetic. Instead, have fun at your secluded arts community halfway around the world. Meet tons of new people; keep the loneliness at bay. Most of the time, feel happy, productive, and fulfilled. And when you’re as happy, productive, and fulfilled as you can possibly be, pack your suitcase and plan to come home.”

Hunter S Thompson

It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant… history is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of ‘history’ it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights — or very early mornings — when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour… booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turnoff to take when I got to the other end… but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: no doubt at all about that…

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda… You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning…

And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

The seven hardest addictions to quit

cocaine

alcohol

Valium

heroin

cigarettes

fatty foods 

LOVE