I am at home, on the back porch of the house my mom is selling, typing on her laptop, which doesn't load Gmail, enjoying this little shaded spot for the hour or so that I have in it until the sun makes its way further up, or further down - I am not sure which - but at which point there will not be this little shaded area. I am blaring Fleetwood Mac and drinking coffee. Everyone is gone. I just masturbated in my bedroom, looking at the sports team photos of my high school yearbook. That wrestling team photo from the 1998 yearbook where everyone is in their little wrestling tights and the hair and build of Ryan Autrey's chest cannot be contained by those tights and I think back to seeing him in those Adidas sandals and at that point, being so filled with desire, a desire I had yet to name as gay.

I am pretty convinced that I am losing my mind, or my memorey, which seems just as bad, if not worse. Last night, we were eating at some insanely pricey restaurant on the top floor of someplace in Crystal City, so many of my relatives. I noticed the amber glow of my silverware lit by the candles on the table and I remember when I used to eat out with my parents, I would always stare at that amber glow off the curve of forks, so fascinated by something, lost in thought. And last night, I remembered that staring habit, got lost in it again, thought to how long it has been since I have eaten in what most people consider a nice restaurant. On the drive there, we passed this Salvadorean restaurant and a Hawaiian restaurant, both boarded up for what will be the new entrance to the Woodrow Wilson bridge, and we talked about them both, and then I mentioned my love of this place by my house, Morelos, told my mom I was obsessed with it. And my mom, sarcastically replied, "I couldn't imagine that. You? Being obsessed with something?" And I just thought to myself, Mom, if only you knew, if only you knew. My mom has no clue about my obsesssion with boys, and that is how I normally tend to think of my obsessive personality, but my mom's comment made me realize that I have always been this way, even in pre-sexual ways, with movies, with songs, and with specific objects.

But yes, my cluelessness - leaving the restaurant, one of my aunts made a comment to my mom that it was almost her birthday and wished her happy birthday, and I realized "Oh shit, in two hours, it's my mom's birthday." Today is my mom's birthday and it did not even cross my mind at all before coming here, and I did not have a gift and wondered how I could get something since I don't have a car and there are no bikes here and the nearest store is a CVS about two miles away. So yes, this morning, while my mom was out, I went gift shopping at CVS and felt like shit that I was that jerk of a person running to the drugstore to try to find a gift for someone that I love and someone whose birthday I totally forgot about. The pickings were way slim and I ended up getting some crappy DVD and chocolate. But this has me so worried that I didn't remember this at all.

My mind is totally off in la-la land, thinking about Virignia and my past memories of it. Last night, I slept in the basement and spent hours looking through old photo albums and realizing that things are so different than how I remember them. Like my old house - there were all these photos of it that I took when I was probably ten or so and had got a hold of the camera. You know, how you get all those prints back from when a little kid had the camera for a while, that "waste" of pictures - but looking at them, these random kid's eyeviews of my yard, I saw things again from that age, saw the real path of the sidewalk leading up to our house, and it was so different than how I had remembered it. When I walked to CVS today, I heard crickets and cicadas (I think? Christy, those loud humming noises?) and remembered so much more, was having a fit of recollections all day and thought about how to write those, how to somehow reconcile these different memories, the photos and the ones I have, and the erotic past and how it continues to occasionally pop into masturbation fantasies in this present. There is really so much I want to write about (non-diary stuff) and I really need to buckle down and do it as soon as I get home, when they will be memories again and not the thing here in front of me, that distance is neccesary. I have been thinking a lot about what type of writing I like and what I want to see and what I want to produce, how so much of it is well-written but easy to do so and even easier to read - that I don't want to do that. The closest thing I can think of to what I am shooting for is the writings of W.G. Sebald, but easier to read, less bleak a view of human history, more American, more pop-oriented, but just as dreamlike, and blurred between events. I am tired of books with plot trajectories that are written really pretty - it's all there is - I am tired of arcs and plots.

Other things along this theme:
Flipped through the radio, and even though I remember hearing that HFS was no longer an alt-rock station (all I listened to in high school), it was shocking to stop there on 99.1 and hear this Spanish music blaring. It was fucking awful. Past/living in it/reconciling the present with it.

How much time is spent in cars here, so much time spent listening to the radio, so much time in conversation film noir like never seeing the people make eye contact, but both looking ahead at the road at the passing sights and occasionally talking.

There is a road here that passes under an overpass and it is one way and cars have to stop at each side and make sure no other cars are coming though. It's so small town and such a vestige of this area's past, maybe even only five, ten years ago before all this development out in Lorton, Springfield, and Fort Belvoir.

Walked past a creek today, that smell of Virginia, that scent we talked about bottling from Michael's tree (yes, we were obviously going to be gay), how green and dense the woods are here.

The way people dress here.

That one way road is emblematic of all the change, how you'll occasionally pass something in a desolate stretch on Route 1, an old BBQ place - and that Southerness of sorts is covered up, built over by all the townhouses and the bougie striving. Things built over other things. Displacement of something, some quality.

etc. etc. etc.