3/11/04
Venice, CA
There is a feeling you get when you go to a strange country; you plop your suitcases down in your "bedroom," wander the cold hallways, smell unfamiliar plants in the night air, and suddenly realize that you have planned for everything except actually being where you were going.
The skies are cloudy, gray and cold – the surf pounds outside in a forbidding manner, and I have forgotten everything I've ever known about this city. I left it in 2000, so humiliated and angry I couldn't see straight, and now I've been invited back, and the feeling is so different that it might as well be Eastern Europe.
I have checked the phone; the dial tone sounds the same. The power outlets all give forth 110 volts. The people on the windy boardwalk speak English and the gas was measured in dollars. I know I'm here, but I'm not entirely sure where here is.