I've been back in NYC for almost a week, a surreal time. The old hustle is still a draw, but the humidty droops me down, and I feel purpose leaking from my pores. What the city has done more than anything else, to be perfectly honest, is make me miss Sasha anew; not really a positive development. The colors of fall are coming on, and I feel like skipping town.

And the squarafication has continued apace. Out last night in once trendy Billzburg the streets were bustling, but the crowd everywhere I looked was shot through with pure Long Island. College kids with tans and khaki's out for a lark, just like the East Village was back in my day. Artist colonization led to real bohemia led to an invasion of hipsters -- the difference between a boho and a hipster is that bohos do a lot with a little, and hipsters do little with a lot -- led to a stream of adventurous students (and a lot of single guys) led to a pretty good whack of regular old NYU kids. I never liked that school's mainstream student body all that much. Don't even get me started on the Lower East Side.

I don't mean to sound bitter. Mostly it's that I'm tired, and I feel life calling me to be somewhere else. I feel like a man without a tribe at the moment, and my feet itch to leave. Am I running from things? Sure, a breakup I obviously havn't yet shaken and a sneaking sense that the soul has been drained from things. But I'm running to a lot of things as well. I'm going to California; out west where I belong; golden state; land of opportunity. I'm going out to turn people on.