zzzzzzz

I’m actually dozing off at my desk today. Part of this is because I probably covered 25mi on my bike yesterday, from the beach up to Beverly Hills, then to Westwood and back down through Santa Monica after work. Burn calories, not gas, I say – especially when that gas, these days, is laced with blood.

More of the drowsiness is just because I can sleep now. Most of the tension of the last ten days is gone. It’s like when I get home to the Island and I crash out for twelve hours. Today, with the drama of the last ten days finally dying down, all I want to do is sleep, dream, and let my brain rest. Without the anxiety driving me, I’m exhausted.

However, when I did doze off, Pearl Jam’s “I Got Shit” came on my Rhapsody shuffle, and I started dreaming I was at Bumbershoot in Seattle, walking down the steps of the Memorial Arena, down past the food and T-shirt vendors onto the field at a Pearl Jam show. Pearl Jam haven’t played the Bumbershoot festival since 1991, so it was a merged memory – but still a happy one. And then, when Rhapsody brought out U2’s “In God’s Country” next, I was dreaming I was driving down Mercer, towards the water, along the south side of the Seattle Center park, below the Space Needle.

I woke up with a start, hoping no one caught me asleep at my desk, but still with that image of the street in downtown Seattle, leading down to the Sound, and realized, how much I miss that city. How I was so used to the idea of a city on the Edge of the Wild. The last image in my mind was of Puget Sound at summer sunset, down below Pike Place, dead calm water with that salt damp coming off of it, of looking across the water to the islands, of being able to see where the towns and city were carved out of the forest along the shoreline.

I’m getting a little L.A. edgy, I think, is what all this is telling me. It may well be high time for an extended period of time outside of the city. I used to get L.A. claustrophobia attacks my first year here, where I just couldn’t handle the idea of this much civilization, and would have to leave for a few days to get out into an area beyond the megalopolis. And I haven’t left the City since Labour Day Weekend, with the exception of the weekend I went to Washington, DC, which was just another big city.

I guess the moral of all this is just – I’m exhausted from stress, from work, from everything else, and I need a vacation. Preferably one that’s a little closer to the Pacific Northwest. I may have to see what I can do about taking jentwo up on her offer of a NIN show in Oakland. San Francisco isn’t Seattle, and it isn’t Vancouver, but it’s the closest I can get to home without leaving the state of California.