The clickyclackityclickyclack is starting to decline and the power-stroke is coming on; foot pedal crank gear chain gear hub spoke wheel rubber road -- streaming away into the past along with time's arrow, freewheel burning. Tomorrow I should be signing for an apartment. The signal to noise ratio is improving as the number of moving parts in my life approaches a managable level. Meeting people is easy, business is falling into place with the power of superconducting magnets. We're definitely in sync with the laws of physics here. Plus I got a new toy!

See my new haircut? Thanks kim!

I could get soft out here... iSights, Aeron chairs (50% off at the .com repo furniture warehouse; I kid you not) and an office with a retractable roof in a place where it's seemingly sunny all the time. The only thing we lack is a good stock of juiceboxes in the fridge.

So hopefully the momentum will continue as the process becomes streamlined. Rumble young man rumble; looking forward to setting up camp here in the Bay, maybe even meeting some girls. I picked up a few phone numbers last weekend, but life has been such a fireball I haven't followed up on any of that. Young girls; I don't even know how to talk to them. Suppose I better learn.

If you're feeling a little blue, maybe you just need a group hug. It takes your confession -- some are just brilliant -- and displays it in charming style. I like; helps if you write all lowercase, like ee cummings, who I recently discovered was one handsome man.

Up at 6:50. Out by 7:20. Home around 9. Reminds me of the good old days. It's all a thing of beauty except I forgot to eat between 10am and getting home and arrived in the mother of all foul moods; Donner party on edge. These are shaping up to be some protean times.

People moving in blocks and waves across the Bay Area Rapid Transit; tough-looking Raiders fans, more mainstream Giants enthusiasts, marginalized Iraq occupation protesters, leathermen and assorted queers from the Folsom street fair. Through it all I swim with a giant 40-pound Schwinn, my San Francisco steel horse, trying my best not to bump into people, to smile in the sunshine.

Pending a credit check I have a place to live, a truly gorgeous apartment in the Southwest Mission. Nice wood floors, high celings, a patio out back in a part of town that's near the throb and hum, but just far enough off it to feel like a neighborhood. A little excited to have a place to call home.

I seem to be catching a lot of breaks, things really clicking and heating up. Can this continue? I hope so.

It's hitting home that I'm starting something new out here, that New York is for now a thing of the past. Strange memories bubble up on a thursday night. The time I fooled around with that beautiful, tall, smart girl who'd stage managed for radio/active right before heading back to Oregon for a holiday; John Lennon popping on from her iMac in the middle of kissing, and everything going just swimmingly. She'd never had good head before, and I had to rush home and pack and leave and it wasn't a graceful exit. Never saw her that way again.

I remember a night in soho -- back when it wasn't quite the outlet mall that it is today -- being cold for only wearing my leather jacket and a wife beater. I remember freshman-year conversations with Frank, confessing my virginity on Astor place. I remember the glory days of Byamo, a Cuban/Chinese fusion place on Broadway across from Tisch where you could get killer rice and beans for $2, or a half chicken for $4. I remember biking into the city from Brooklyn the first time, the night after I stayed over with Yael. I remember the Tunnel and the MoMa and the three-dollar hot chocolate.

I remember good times in Greenpoint; Monday-night football with free ziti and cheap mugs of Bud at the Palace. I remember underage sneaking into Panchitos. I remenber second-year projects at ETW, and feeling like it was too much to follow Peter Hale's act, for he was taller than be and had done a rock and roll performance. I remember discovering Inwood because of a Russian math girl, and building Opera sets on the Upper East Side. I remember helping out with an ERS benefit and being an ass when some older lady invited me out on the lower east side. I remember stealing a christmas decoration left up until march and delivering it to a one-night-stand that I wanted more from very late at night, drunken note attached.

I remember Shakespeare; in the park; in the home; on the stage; in the bathtub and in German on acid. I remember the first time I discovered Battery Park City, the quiet and the autumn mist and the sound of kayakers on the Hudson as I rode my bike by. I remember pulling off a girl's belt with my teeth for the first time in the floor of my dorm room. I remember being blind drunk and mighty high too on a dead man's pot on the Statin Island Ferry, fucking up a cardboard box and puking in both bathrooms when I finally made it home. I remember the magic that christmas would work on the whole place; the power of small lights to make any place seem humble and inviting. I remember cabs over bridges and trains underground, slicing through times square on a bicycle in traffic, the sheer urban beauty, dreams and desires, concrete and light.

In all these things I remember the unique thrill and amazing electricity of New York City; heaving, steaming, perpetually teaming bitch goddess that it is. It is hope and pain and anger and love forged together in the most dense human metal known to God, a testament to what is possible. As Douglas Macarthur said, I shall return, but my heart lurches and swoons as it seeps in that I don't quite know when or how that will be. I miss it all tonight as I listen to the silence of Berkeley. I love you, New York.

I'm very happy with the way my life is going, but the changes still engender sadness. I'm moving. To San Francisco. I'm leaving New York City, my home now for some six years, and for the first time I don't know when I will return. The wheels are spinning and life is ramping up for another big shift. Hoping for smooth transition -- avoiding a stall, minimizing the aroma of burning clutch.

In the odd early morning hours odd fantasies creep in. I've been up all night packing and goofing off and thinking about things. What will the conditions of my next trip to town be? What would it be like if I lived off in rugged New England, spent time verbally sparring and making out with country-musician lawyers. What dreams may come.

I hit the circuit of friends. The final rounds. I saw Sasha again, which was easier to do and harder to walk away from than I anticipated. Still a lot going on there, not that it's of much consequence at the moment. Then a long ride through the City and into Queens to have good Puerto Rican dinner with Sam and Andrew; keep the connections alive and flowing. Finally a couple drinks in a couple Brooklyn bars and staying up all night packing and posting in a fun thread on dKos.

I'm moving. I'm moving. I'm moving. I'll miss you New York.

I'm savagely hung-over and I lost a credit card, but the suspicion is that the plastic wandered off somewhere in Vermont; Winooski, those tricky fucks. I think I said goodbye to a lot of people last night. I also think I might have been somewhat of an intoxicated ass. I don't quite know for sure.

Everything is flexing now; the past month like an extended acid trip, or something equally ineffable. I can't summarize, and I don't want to other than to say "I'm moving." It works on a lot of levels -- thinking now of Britt's core principle that the best response to trouble is acceleration, about my own little self-mantra, "Trust in the divinity of your forward momentum." It's a remix of Kerouac -- believe in the holy contour of life -- like a lot of my axioms of living.

I rode around the city yesterday, sorry to leave it. Fall has always been my favorite season here. I'm heading out just as the good stuff gets started; feel like crying a little bit.

So I found this link in the usual convoluted way, off the blog of someone who's resume I was reading. I thought it was worth repeating, maybe partly because the author appears to be rather attractive (the truth always feels better). It's a nice little story about someone buying a house and fixing it up, and someone leaving them a note in their mailbox saying what a pleasure it was to watch it happen. Nice human connections and all that jazz. I often get real upset at how marketing destroys meaning in languge. If it weren't for AT&T, I would close this with, reach out and touch someone.

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.

The man came around for the Man in Black. We all knew it was in the mail. Still, it highlights for me the poverty of meaningful popular culture. You look at a figure like Cash and all things current become grey, dry and insubstantial. My generation, like the one before it, seems to thrive on the trivial, a disposable culture, the cult of the new. Would we know a young Johnny Cash if he came up and played in front of our faces? Do we recognize our own authority, responsability and complicitness in the great parade of shadows that carries on for our entertainment? The culture isn't going to change itself, you know.

Here's a photo of me doing a reading at Burning Man's Center Camp. Yes, those are my underwears.

More on this and Everything when I stop acting like headless poultry.