1/5/2023 > At some point in the middle of the night saw the yellow full moon out our window glistening over the Mediterranean. Woke up in Fiumicino w/ a belly full of raw fish + scampi risotto. One last walk along the Tiber after breakfast. Returned car at airport, big weight off our minds. 3000+ km roadtrip w/ no incident... every 1 of these roadtrips we feel we're pushing our luck, time to quit while we're ahead. Next step, the flight... if the plane crashes, well, so be it, it's out of our hands.

the Tiber is a long way from North Dakota

last shot of Italy for a spell

Started to read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, or perhaps we shd say re-read as think we read it in high school, tho it gets jumbled together in our mind w/ The Pump House Gang + The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. Having just watched the Magic Trip, (which had actual footage of the infamous cross-country bus trip the merry pranksters took on Furthur), we knew Tom Wolfe wasn't on the bus, tho in the beginning of the book he acts like he is part of their bohemian nomadic gang, talks about how he had to go to a nearby gas station to sneak a leak in the restroom. The 1st read we naively just assumed he was a merry prankster, that he was on the bus, especially when we didn't have google to check. Some say this was the power of "new journalism" but we think that's a lame way to write. 2 posts ago we said we didn't like reading non-narrative writing, well, this is worse. This is a narrative Wolfe writes himself into by just doing research, an armchair hippie, a sheep in Wolfe clothing. 1st hand experience is more important than a college degree in English or an MFA. We'd rather hear it straight from the horse's mouth. As Willem Dafoe tells Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July, "U weren't even there, man... "

Nevertheless we had nothing else to read so read ½ of it to distract us from the goings on around us waiting at the airport + on the plane + being that we lived in these places he mentions (albeit a decade later) in Northern California + Mexico (he even mentions Ajijic a few times) it was sort of nostalgic. Then we watched Everything Everywhere All at Once, which was awesome, like watching a mash-up of The Matrix meets Office Space on acid, but very 2022. Then we re-watched Drive My Car which we've been wanting to re-watch ever since we watched it earlier this year, 1 of the better movies in a long time. Then re-watched The Basketball Diaries for the 3rd or 4th time not cuz it's good, just cuz we were bored + only ½-watching.

Jan 6 | DC > Home sweet home. Tho the real home-coming felt like landing at JFK. Went thru immigration + customs then had to do battle going thru security again. Then waiting + waiting as always just for the short flight to DCA. No broken pipes or raccoons living in our basement (got a text from our neighbors while we were gone that they were having such issues + wanted to inspect the "entry points"). Today marks the beginning of our resolutions. Jan 6 is also the day our dad died, or the day they found his body, which has now been co-opted as the anniversary of the insurrection. Now we got to wrap our heads around the move back to NYC.