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fearing i’m not getting enough sleep, cause everyone i fucking know down here is getting sick. trying to take it easy. failing, but trying. tonight is for easy. easy like thursday night. don’t call me and ask me out for a few. don’t do it. i can’t have it …

got some good things on the horizon. big gig(s) at chelsea’s next thursday. hopefully everyone will be fit enough to perform.

decided to cancel any thanksgiving adventures and finish up a few papers/projects over that time.

thanksgiving.

i’ve had such an emotional connection to thanksgiving over the last decade plus. once i left home, it was always my favorite day of the year. started when i left phoenix on thanksgiving day, 1995 in a 1980 honda accord filled with my meager pile of belongings and arrived that evening at chad and jay’s place in pacifica, california.

they day i arrived in cali. 21 years old and a total mess.

jay had a wonderful thanksgiving feast prepared, and i remember talking to my friend jay casselman in phoenix about it after and him saying, ‘man, you got lucky. i was figuring you’d spend thanksgiving at a chinese buffet somewhere on the side of the highway.’

jay casselman in his 'rape van.'

then there were all the great gatherings at the guerrero flat in s.f. with a bunch of people far from home, most of whom felt closer to each other than they did to their families. dh, white, chin, big j, ben, crazy almira, pac, farrug, ralph, george, brett, jay-o, kd, scotty, nan, sarah, smokey sparks … here they are:

jay-o-o-jay

geiser. you should hear his grover impression.

miss ezra (wherever you are), and christopher

andrew 'smokey' sparks

a younger, slimmer, christian semmel

p is for paco.

ben and crazy almira. she's not puking. she's photographing.

there's a white man ...

farrug and andy. good looking broads, no?

dh and our beautiful ralph

this. is. christopher.

jess and the 500 club. trouble squared.

spread

some heavy eating. heavier drinking. music. photographs. fun. games. a late afternoon siesta. then a night at the 500, where we’d bring whoever got stuck bartending plates of grub. good times …

we had a few nice tries in topanga, too. when jessica and i weren’t at each other’s throats, anyway. one at the hilfman compund comes to mind, when i smoked the turkey out front all day – in my pajamas. nader kept calling me hugh heffner. big kev brought over his dart board. jessica was seething at me about everything. but we survived (and that turkey was fucking amazing – inspired by that rollo cat i used to work with at barnes and noble who once told me “unless a turkey is smoked, you have no reason to eat it.”) we all went camping at the kern river the next day.

chin and beta had a good one towards the end of my so-cal stay over at their place on skyline. good light at that dinner. sun setting over the mountains. pictures. great food. i think i brined the turkey that year. that’s my new thing. haven’t had access to a smoker in some time.

then last year, i had hooch and sarah down here. small, but still family. organic bird. very nice.

so this year … i’ll just find a nice party down here and hang out. bring a casserole. i think jt and sean are on it, which is good. they’re honorable.

it’s nice in a way to let go of thanksgiving. trying to force a family connection that isn’t really there is exhausting. let it go. see this life for what it is at this point. what it lacks in home and love and family it fills with the fluid, fragmented, unpredictable, unstable, and unexpected. it is what it is. i made it. i make it. i will.

looking past the semester, i have a possible adventure on the horizon that would involve getting an oil change and checking the brakes on the subaru. don’t want to jinx it, though. cause if i don’t, you’ll be there.

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