There are days when I'd like nothing else but to disappear to some place I've never been for an indefinite amount of time in order to gather a better understanding of the decisions I'm making. Today is definitely one of those days.

My friend from home said that looking at every possible situation in a transient light is depressingly practical.

I wish it were colder.

Weekend (v.v.v.0)

I feel like I'm traveling through memories and revisiting points in my life that have already happened.

I have traveled up and down route 1 over 14 times since I've been home.

So much has changed since leaving here and it's fun to hear about and spend time with people that were once a giant part of me.

I love my friends and family.

If you owe me ten dollars, you ain't givin' me nine.

Like Lines

Live poker in the state of California is unlike anything I have ever seen. I was grinding (playing) while eating a mediocre breakfast plate consisting of two cold sausage links, two pancakes, an orange, and ham when an Asian gentleman around my age tapped me on the shoulder and tugged on the cord to my noise canceling headphones. I was playing 9/18 with him earlier in the night, the highest game that was running through the night at Lucky Chances in Colma, CA, where the dead outnumber the living 1,000:1.

Asian Bro: "Hey man. I just lost $550 playing blackjack. I feel awful."
Richard: "That sucks man. Table games are evil."
Asian Bro: "Do you play here often? Is there any way you can let me borrow a hundred bucks? I can leave you my license if you want it."
Richard: "This is my first and last time here. Sorry."
Asian Bro: "Yeah, I'm probably better off."
Richard: "Probably."

It's comforting to know that you are the most skilled player in the entire room. If the rake wasn't astronomical and if the dealers weren't on par with the worst I've ever seen, I'd try to grind it out there fairly often if they were to offer a higher game.

There was one fairly interesting hand that I was berated for. It was a standard hand on my end, but the shit that went on from other players was mind blowing. It was 6 handed and I open in the cutoff with Q9sd. Button, SB, and BB all call. Flop comes Jd Td 5s giving me license to mash on my opponenets, heck of. I continuation bet, button calls, SB raises, BB folds, I announce that I would like to enter more of my money into the pot, button calls, SB calls. Turn comes the 8 of spades and SB elects to donk where I then raise and the button 3 bets. Sb calls. I cap. All call. The river comes a king of clubs. SB donks again, I raise, both players call.

The button shows Jc9c and SB shows KhJh. My mind exploded.

Sorry for the gibberish to any non-poker playing chillers that may read this.

When I'm Asked if I'm Okay, I Don't Know What to Say

I find it pathetic that something as simple and casual as a text message can aggravate buried feelings so severely that I dwell on memories (good, bad, awkward, fulfilling, whatever) for an entire day while staring into my phone.

I had a friend back home who was the most caring and purely beautiful person I have ever met. I hear from her now and then, but she serves as a constant reminder of my flaws and mistakes.

It kills me that I'm incapable of communicating with the people I care for. I find it to be a steady issue.

I'm going to see Bon Iver perform with Megafaun tonight. I've never been to a show by myself before.

I wish I was 18 again.

After free-writing 20+ pages in a Mead notebook, I've come to the realization that I have many potentially interesting things to write about. That excites me.

"I was teased by your blouse.
Spit out by your mouth."

I don't mean to sound self-deprecating in any way. I'm not depressed. I'm not anything. I just float. I'm happier than I've been in the past few months but I wouldn't say that I'm ecstatic for the future. I have no idea where I'll be in three months and that leaves me with a strong sense of unease.

To my mother and my brother(assuming that there's a slight possibility of you reading this), I love you both dearly and the thought of seeing you within a month makes any day much easier.

PDX Take 2

Moments after my plane lands in Portland, Oregon (at around 8:20PM on Thursday) I get word that I should hustle down to a ritzy downtown bar. A friend of a friend had just finished a book reading on the first stop of his book tour and was invited by Phil Knight for drinks and appetizers paid for by the child labor employer/CEO of the Nike Corporation.

I recall having fine whiskey swishing around in my mouth as I ordered another drink from the waiter.

My favorite moment of the entire trip was watching Noah Mendel stick his entire fist in his mouth. About 25 feet beyond him was Phil Knight, a billionaire, sipping gazpacho. Both were in my vision.

What a lovely trip.

Sometimes, when sailors are sailing, they think twice about where they're anchoring in. I think I could make better use of my time on land. I'll drink less because God knows I could use a warm kiss instead of a cold goodbye.

I'm writing to folks back home to tell them, "Hey, I'm doing alright."

I wrote out this deliberately vague late night post and spent close to 15 minutes laughing at how incoherent and hilariously lame/corny/confusing it is. Instead, this post will serve as a reminder for my time spent feeling like I should never write anything on the internet again.

Cheers.

Whatever (Folk Song in See What I Mean Bros?)

Taking an analytical approach to the "play count" on my iTunes library, I have noticed some distinct trends and have since developed some theories.

While browsing through my library, I noticed that Edan and El-P, both indie hip hop artists, get more play than they probably should because I hardly ever listen to them on my iPod.

The artist directly after El-P (in alphabetical order) is Elliott Smith. Some of you know this about me. Some of you don't. Never in my life have I been able to listen to one Elliott Smith song and move onto something else. Playing one song of his usually expands into a week (or more) of non-stop "XO," "Either/Or" and "Figure 8" play and, as a result, I become considerably less happy.

I compare my Elliott Smith problem to a section in the beginning of "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace. One of the characters cannot smoke weed casually and, instead, needs to shut off to the entire outside world in order to use it. He turns his answering machine off, stocks his cabinets and fridge with snacks and locks his door, segregating himself from any social contact. Pretty close to exactly what an Elliott Smith bender is like for me, minus the snacks.

Once I see El-P appear on my library list, I subconsciously choose to listen to "I'll Sleep When You're Dead" instead of testing my self discipline (e.g. passing through Elliott Smith's discography without giving it a listen). Ignoring Elliott is difficult when his printed name is staring you in the face. That and the week of my life that I'd need to devote to him helps with ignoring the temptation, but I usually succumb to his frail voice.

If I re-read this for errors, I'm going to want to delete it.

All Aboard

I walked outside of Fuse, a bar in North Beach, to look for a purse that was stolen off the back of my friend Mandy's chair. I figured that it was possible for someone to take the wallet out and ditch the bag. A 15-20 person brawl was underway in front of a club across the street. As it ended, men were tearing off their shirts and flexing their muscles. I wondered what the fight was about. There was no lack of passion.

The bag wasn't found. Everyone at the bar seemed to know each other, since it was a vampire themed party and that type of thing tends to draw a similar crowd each time a bar decides to host bands such as Vagabondage and Vagiant. It doesn't draw a threatening "I'm going to come to steal a purse" type of crowd.

The music was horrible.

2 abandoned PBRs later, I find myself in the most fascinating social realm, the late night San Francisco bus. I could write a book on my interactions while riding this bus. My favorite conversation from last night's ride was the cross-bus yelling type, a rarity. A SF via Memphis transplant announces to me that everyone on the bus is crazy and that he has "yellow fever," a term that I later learn to mean an attraction to Asian women.

Like any beautiful, invigorating moment, the bus ride ended. I stayed up until 6:00AM watching Sportscenter and infomercials while drinking into an oblivion.

I needed a pleasant night.

On Being Blindsided

Bon Iver is playing on the 22nd. I'm looking forward to it.

After aimlessly riding my bicycle through the thick mist after class, I found myself sitting at a booth in a Johnny Rockets alone. It was a little after ten o'clock and I had spent twenty minutes sitting between my bike and the curb staring at the bright neon sign before walking in.

Since all Johnny Rockets restaurants look exactly the same, the storefront reminded me of times I'd spent at them in the past. Every year, my mother and father would drag my brother and I up route 128 to the North Shore Mall in Peabody, MA to buy us new clothes for the upcoming school year. The drive felt like hours even though it never took longer than twenty minutes.

When we finally arrived at some department store, my mother would have about a half hour of our undivided attention before my brother and I would mess around in an uncontrollable manner, obviously frustrating the living shit out of our mother. Once our attention spans were shot, my father would take us to Johnny Rockets as my mother would shop around on her own.

Every hour or so, the staff would dance around to some 50's song in a half-assed manner as the patrons would look on, eating their one-cut-above-fast-food burgers and thick shakes. I loved the atmosphere of the place. It was my favorite restaurant when I was younger, probably because of the time I was able to spend there with my dad and brother.

As I got older, I worked at the mall briefly and got fired for not being enthusiastic enough. In the short time that I was employed here I met a girlfriend of four years. We'd spend time at the Johnny Rockets, talking about our petty family/friend issues. The conversations I had with her there eventually lead me to fall in love.

Tonight, the booth I decided to sit in was suited to fit five people comfortably. It was difficult not to imagine those that I love sitting around me: my little brother laughing uncontrollably as my father would make goofy faces at us or looking across the table at a beautiful girl smiling and eager to listen or talk about anything at all.

It was even more difficult to realize that those days are gone.

I can't seem to find motivation in anything.

On Pot Limit Omaha and Drunk Driving (Bicycle Edition)

Across almost every poker site that is allowed for U.S. residents, I am getting pretty much zero volume in. I have two reasons for this:

• my screen name has become familiar (since I have the same/similar screen names across all networks) and those that are break-even/small winners avoid me. Oblivious fish buy in for 10 big bets and either lose it to me and quit or win 5-15 big bets and run away. I cannot put in a large sample of hands. Ever.
  
• my screen name is Talue Vown, which is an inverse of the phrase Value Town. People notice this and automatically assume that I am a thinking player. This was an ego driven, dumb decision on my end. Changing your user name is not allowed.

I have decided to invest some time in studying a different form of poker altogether, six handed pot limit omaha. The variance (over the short and long term) is much more prominent in this game, which may prove to be a major frustration while I take classes at the city college. I'm currently exchanging sweat sessions (sessions where you watch another player's desktop and critique their play) with heads up limit holdem (my game) and pot limit omaha (Alex's game). It's required that I put in a ton of study hours before I jump in to multi tabling the 50 and 100 max games. I'm excited about playing a more robotic/mechanics oriented game in comparison to the often creative and mind fuck of a game that I normally play.


Oh. And I drove my bicycle across town completely shithoused (see: enebriated, drunk). My shoelaces got caught onto my toe clips which lead to a narrowly evaded head on collision with a fellow bike-lightless rider in Golden Gate Park. It was completely my fault and yet he apologized to me.

Rather than biking up hill for a quarter mile, I decided to jump on the owl bus. The owl bus is the late night bus system that is often filled with some interesting characters. I befriended a set of twins on the bus and talked with them about nothing. A few seats down from us was a toothless "Yankee fan" yelling about complete nonsense. "Red Sox fucking suck I'ma motha fuckin' Yankee fan. Holler back!" was pretty much the bulk of his monologue. I asked him to name 5 Yankee pitchers on the current roster and this obviously leads to some verbal fumbling on his end. Minutes later, he felt the need to swing his backpack at my face. I lose my temper, clearly, and tell him to get off the bus. Thankfully, the bus driver gave a shit about the happenings on her bus, and sat him down as he spit in my direction.

Nonsense.

After consuming three half pitchers of sangria, I vaguely recall resting in a thicket of wiry shrubs in a park along the highway. Danni's milk crate snapped off of her bike while we were rolling through Lincoln Street, and everything fell out of her bag, including her wallet. Also including the belongings inside her wallet falling both out of her bag and out of her wallet, miraculously. We eventually hopped over the barrier separating the road from Golden Gate Park, and looked for any more lost items. This lead to a wrestling match in the shrubs, which I obviously won by a large margin.

We left our bikes and bags along the sidewalk as we napped in the park; an idea implemented by a collaboration of two drunken minds deeming it safe to leave our shit behind. In my bag:

1. Two different types of Old Spice deodorant.
2. Two pairs of the same shitty headphones I bought at Walgreen's.
3. One pair of not-as-shitty headphones that I stole from Danni.
   
4. 4 napkins in case my nose gets mad runny from allergies.
   
5. David Foster Wallace's, "Infinite Jest."
6. Roughly one dollar in change.
7. One pair of Nordstom's underwear that have not ever been worn.

In Danni's bag:

1. Danni's mad tight journal with Sagittarius written in gold print across the pink cover.
2. Probably a pen to write in the journal.
3. David Foster Wallace's, "Infinite Jest."
4. Both vinyl and compact disc editions of Jay-Z's "Bitches and Sisters" single.
5. Limited edition Andrew Jackson Jihad ipod with autographs engraved on the metallic backside. You're probably not even close to punk enough to have ever heard of this.

Moving on, a girl passing by the scene of the spill noticed our bikes and bags abandoned. She was wearing an adorable black helmet that was bobbling around the top of her head as she was talking to us. She was probably rollin' up to our shit thinking, "Yo this is hella tight. XFREE SHITX!!!11." until she realized that we were laying in the distance, listening to her thoughts. I calmly told her, "Get with the program." as I rolled up my sleeves to reveal my gargantuan biceps. She wisely got with the program.

Danni was so impressed with how I dealt with the situation, and rightfully so, that she took her right shoe off and threw it at a bush in a moment of raw excitement. I took it to be a west coast way of showing her appreciation for my actions, and a very nice one. I showed her the east coast way of showing appreciation for people showing appreciation to you by giving her my right shoe as a consolation. She put it on and we started pedaling home until I thought to myself, "This is bullshit. Why should I be the one to ride home with one shoe, having the metal teeth of the pedal digging into my foot? Why should I encourage spastic behavior?"

The rest of the night sadly becomes a blur. I remember falling onto the couch, taking my shoes off, and falling asleep.

CORRECTION: 3 half pitchers of sangria were consumed. As we were leaving, Danni noticed that someone left between 1/6th and 1/7th of a pitcher behind. We also sat at their table and finished it for them.

Writing

My break from unhealthy amounts of poker has officially ended.

I've been testing the waters for over a month now, never really playing consistently. Over the past few days I've decided to take advantage of the jaw-dropping, horrendus regulars playing heads up on the Cake Poker Network. Never in my life have I seen such consistently terrible play. Come join in on the fun.

One of the players that I model my style of play after overdosed on antidepressants. He wasn't famous or filthy rich and no one's ever heard of him. I never met him, just watched his digital avatar collect more money than most.

Writing about almost anything causes me to reflect and realize certain characteristics of my own in such a raw and honest way. I'm able to understand myself on such a scary and limitless level. I find it therapeutic, but it certainly doesn't make me any happier. I've been working on a short story about my relationship with a man that I met during my time spent in underground poker clubs. The idea of reading to my new writing group has had it's ups and downs. Probably not going through with it.

My worst quality is my ability to hide and bury my true feelings so deep that my facade becomes a part of me.

Yankee

While drinking at Vesuvio's, a Columbus Street bar once frequented by the likes of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, I met a friend by the name of Yankee. Luckily, his name is in no way related to the baseball franchise, therefore allowing us to become homies.

As we drank whiskey and wrote haikus about the events happening around us, my train of thought was suddenly shattered by a knocking on the window. Yankee, someone I believe to be either homeless or doing a fantastic job at creating the false image that he's homeless, knocks consistently until he has my undivided attention. He holds up a piece of cardboard. On the piece of cardboard it says, "Will draw your entire group for any donation." In my current enebriated state, I nod approvingly and give him the thumbs-up.


He takes a moment to study our facial features and retreats back to the sidewalk to begin his work. I decide that it would be fitting for me to join him outside and ask him for a quick run-through of his process, in case I ever feel the need to draw group portraits of my own some day. Very little was learned about his technique other than the fact that he really likes the way orange chalk looks on cardboard. And he's right. I never really took the time to think about it, but it ends up looking wonderful. As he touched up the portrait by adding fire-red colors to the lips of the women, he told me that his wife, who lives alone in Louisiana, is pregnant and that he needs as much money as I can possibly string together for him...



After the exchange of twenty dollars for a fantastic piece now sitting atop my living room mantle, Yankee and I are no longer able to control our cheerfulness. We hug and rejoice, as seen above.

Beds

Whenever I sleep on a friend's couch or on a hotel mattress, I revert to thinking about beds that I have normally slept in and how they compare.  I do this as I gradually sink into a relaxing breathing pattern and doze off into an often quirky dreamscape.  Usually involving the ability to jump great distances.  Don't ask me why.  Don't tell me why, either, because I don't believe in those ridiculous dream dictionaries.  

Tonight I'm sleeping on a futon in a spacious three bedroom home located in the northeast section of Portland, Oregon.  This futon reminds me of the way that a dorm-style bed feels like, in my experience.

I recall working long hours in one of Boston's many illegal poker clubs and walking down to South Station after my shift.  There I would catch a bus that would bring me to Manchester, New Hampshire, where my then girlfriend was attending art school.  It would take the duration of Bedhead's "Transaction de Novo" album and few tracks off of Andrew Bird's "Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs" for me to arrive at the Manchester YMCA, where she rented a closet sized dorm room with a surprisingly spotless shared bathroom and a filthy communal kitchen.  I remember the Hello Kitty sheets wrapped around the twin mattress placed snugly in the far right corner of the room.  There were regularly stray art supplies sprinkled across the floor.  Paints, pencils, paper, glitter, charcoal. 

Most days, the room was either uncomfortably cold or absurdly warm.  I didn't mind.  I didn't mind sharing a bed hardly large enough for one person.  I actually enjoyed it more than any other sized bed.  The idea of being tightly wrapped up in the arms and legs of someone you love is a wonderfully safe and unnerving feeling.  Knowing that, for those silent hours, our worlds would remain completely still and safe from any guilty thought or petty argument or room to grow apart was the most selfishly satisfying feeling I have ever experienced.

But, I regret to inform that waking up is inevitable.

I'm in Oregon

Wildly chill.  

Radically rad.  

Rainy.

Tired.

Excerpt

I stepped directly onto the bus. No one was there to kiss me or hug me or simply wave goodbye with a smile, and it was new to me. Regardless of where I was or what I had done, there was always someone there to bid me adieu from the sidelines, whether they were important to me or not. A true sense of loneliness never hit me as suddenly as it did here in this moment. It paralyzed any excitement I had built for the foreseeable future, and rightfully so. Rather than linger around the bus terminal, I quickly hopped onto the bus long before it's departure time in order to shake off the distinctly depressing state of mind that I created from nothing.

I sat in the back of the bus and watched the couples, business acquaintances, friends, and families fill the seats in front of me. Children began to cry as their parents would quietly hush them to sleep. Loud conversations among friends and family soon followed. The aisles were covered in a layer of garbage from patrons past consisting of empty bottles and plastic bags, making crinkling sounds every so often. It was far more comfortable than a sleek, spotless, and silent bus ride, for sure. Those tend to go by a lot more slowly, in my experience. Being fixed on my surroundings so intensely postponed any truly depressing feelings of my own.

The bus departed and the soft rumbling of the interstate pavement tried to lull me to sleep. A bump or pothole would wake me just as I would get perfectly comfortable enough for some much needed rest. Giving up on the idea of a beginning-to-end bus ride of uninterrupted sleep, I decided to write a letter to someone whom I hadn't seen in many years.

"Please excuse the sloppy handwriting to follow. I am currently riding on a bouncy bus heading toward Seattle, Washington, and my hand is being jerked all over the paper. You will be reluctant to hear that I have not developed Terret's Syndrome or any spastic disorder of the like. Just simply cruising down the highway..." It was a letter to a girl from home. She was the first woman that I had ever loved and she still owned a fair portion of my heart, whether she was aware of not I am not sure. I would write to her time and time again, never recieving a response, and I will constantly make up reasons to justify it. "Maybe my letters aren't reaching her. Maybe she moved away. Maybe she's become illiterate." I would think to myself. I still very much enjoyed writing to her because on the off chance that she actually was reading the letters, it made it worth my while.

Runny Nose

Have you ever felt as if your brain had suddenly melted into a liquid form and started to seep out of your eyes, ears, nose and throat but there was nothing you could do about it because as you would plug one hole, the others would leak more quickly and right as you asked a friend for a helping hand in plugging all of your holes, the bottoms of your feet began to crack because of the pressure build up inside you and as you crawled to the nearest hospital you wonder if there will be any brain left by the time you make it and right as you finish that thought the hospital flips the "OPEN FOR BUSINESS!" sign to a "CLOSED! HOPE TO SEE YOU SOON!" sign at the main entrance so you sneak around to the back of the hospital and break a window and right as you carefully step through the broken glass you realize that it was merely a sinus infection?

No?

Me neither.

Even Everything Bagels Have Hearts!

Every major city seems to have a bar with second rate Boston-sports memorabilia (i.e. a signed Wade Boggs jersey, a giant signed photograph of Tim Nearing, a Larry Izzo signed poster, etc.) that New Englander's feel comfortable at and frequently visit. In San Francisco, that bar is called The Connecticut Yankee. I was skeptical of the name at first, too, and almost thought that it was a joke. "Hey let's tell the die hard Red Sox fan to check out The Connecticut Yankee, a Yankee bar filled with their fans armed with their Blackberrys and iPhones, occasionally looking up from their mobile devices to check the score. That will be a funny joke, right?" As it turns out, it actually is a Red Sox bar with a comforting New England feel. If a shot of Maker's Mark were affordable (and I'm usually flexible), I would be a frequent patron. Unfortunately, seven dollars is pushing it, if you ask me.

A friend of mine happens to be a close friend of the owner, Fritz, and we had the chance to talk briefly. He's been in San Francisco since 1980 and is originally from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I hear a lot of objective opinions on how native New Englander's tend to have a "hard and rough" look, generally speaking. The same with Californians and their California glow. I've never been able to pick up on anything like that, having always lived in Boston. Now that I'm a San Franciscan, it's a lot more noticeable when you're able take a few steps back and view it differently. He had a native New-England-like aura about him and talked about his passion for Phish, The String Cheese Incident, and bands of the like. The rest of the time was spent talking about how he just got back from Tahoe and before that he was camping in Humboldt, and from there he went to Seattle to see a band, and from there he hung out in Portland, and blah blah. The tone in which he talked about his role as "professional traveler/camper/band see-er," it sounded like he thought of it as a chore. "Oh I had to go all the way up to Seattle to see some friend. Sigh. Poor me." Tough life, man.

Part 2 of 52132 tomorrow.

Clean Out of Partially Clever Titles

Last night consisted of, but certainly was not limited to:

• Going to two shows; The Tallest Man on Earth and Mi Ami/Double Dagger.
• Getting into a fist fight in front of a bar called The Knockout Room. Irony. Discuss.
• Not winning the fight, but not losing. Considered a win when all body parts are still fully functioning.
• Telling a girl from Boston that I was from Ireland in order to measure the believability of my new Irish accent/alter ego.
• The consumption of three beef empanadas.
• Breaking into a coffee shop after hours to watch an indie film about Werner Herzog eating his own shoe.
• Realizing that I settled for some p-r-e-t-t-y lame parrot-like friends/other-types-of-relationships-that-aren't-defined-as-friends in Boston.
• Evading the early morning bagel man by laying completely still.

I want to write about this day. Beginning to end. When I wake up from my nap, hopefully I'll attain enough knowledge to depict the reasons for my actions in a clear manner. What I truly mean is this; I hope that I don't rise with the moon accompanied by a brain-splitting hangover.

Wish me luck.

The Most Uneventful Blog Post on Earth

I am eagerly awaiting tonight's show. As long as I've been a San Franciscan, I haven't been able to check out any shows. Tonight, The Tallest Man on Earth, one of my favorite artists at the moment, is playing at The Independent.

I plan to write a review and submit it to an indie webzine that I've been talking back and forth with. Well, I haven't been talking to the actual webzine someone that works for them. We'll see how it goes. For some reason, they seem to be interested in offering me a review column.

Cheers. People love to use the word cheers in San Francisco. Whenever a bartender brings me a drink, which is often, they say, "Cheers!" I like that.