2002-02-12 - 9:43 a.m.

I went out of town this weekend with Jim and La - we went camping up the coast for Saturday night and tripped shrooms as planned that night. Sunday we drove home and spent the day visiting beaches along the way, and we even stopped to see Ry in La Conchita too.

It felt really good to get away for a while, out of the city, into the sun -- it felt good to relax, to not think about anything but just the sand and the surf, and it felt so good to laugh. This mini vacation was just what I needed . . .

The trip itself was not at all what I expected. Normally, whenever I have tripped, it has created a safe accepting positive space and I find myself afterward lingering in the playfulness for days afterward, feeling close to me for days or weeks afterward -- This time the trip started out that way, and Jim and Larissa and I were childlike and laughing and staring at the stars and splashing in the ocean and my heart was rushing fast and Jim was playing his guitar and seranading us and it was soooo enjoyable --

And then later we got cold and the tide came in and we went back up to the campsite and made a fire, and laughed and laughed and laughed together as we tried to feed it pages from the book I was reading, The Thorn Birds and tried to get the fire to catch - WHILE TRIPPING! You can imagine the hilarity. But thanks mostly to the perseverance and surefootedness and clearheadedness of La, we got the fire lit and then were warm.

But after the fire was lit the shrooms began to wear off, and we were all so cold that sitting by the fire was a necessity, and I guess we got bored, only we didn't realize it, so the trip was a little wasted . . . and then it was also strange because there were three of us, and I really think shrooms are good in groups, or good in pairs, but I realized this weekend that 3 is an unbalanced number for tripping, because I could feel the unbalance . . .

And then La came down before we did, and for some reason seemed to be pulling herself out of the trip, back together, back to normal, and while I adore her personality I really wanted to linger in the childlike playful warm fuzzy space, but instead we ended up getting sore at each other, which wouldn't be a big deal but since we were just coming off the shrooms our sensitivity was heightened, so it felt really awful.

The next day I woke up sad, for no reason, but after a good cry I felt somewhat better, enough to enjoy my day -- and then we proceeded to have the most wonderful relaxing day together just puttering down the coast. We layed out at a nude beach and warmed our bottoms and our bellies in the sun - and then we stopped by an ostrich farm and bought a big chaw of ostrich jerky on a string, all the way from Africa! And we fed the emus . . . and then we hiked down a hidden creekbed to an almost empty beach near Santa Barbara, and saw a ground hog coming out of the path on our walk back . ..

And then we saw Ry. And it was the first time since my birthday 2 years ago that the four of us had been in the same room -- and his girlfriend Leslie was there too. And it was chill. It was very heartening. Leslie seems to be more grown up, she seemed pretty, she seemed a lot like me when I first got out of college . . .only i don't think she's headed in any of the same directions, but anyway it was cool and La was so warm and friendly to her and to Ry, i really didn't expect it all to go half as well as it did.

When we got back into town that night La and I found a really hip coffee shop to go to to talk -- you can smoke inside this one and there were couches and the coffee came in huge cup-bowls which the shop chick refilled for free -- we met a couple of nice people, an actor and a guy who works in a cemetary, who became our friends and La and I officially established that place as our hang out.

It feels good to finally have a "hangout." I plan to go to this coffee shop every week forever now -- just to establish myself, to establish a feeling of familiarity and home-ness, its the kind of coffee shop I picture all writers hanging out in, and I think I can go there alone and write as well as go with Larissa to talk -- I'm happy we have a place of our own now,

and I'm happy we made the coast our own, and took time to relax --I'm still processing my trip and the things I learned about myself, so I guess those will come out later . . . it takes a few days for it all to sink in, I think