I was stranded for an extra day in Seabeck. Instead of just telling me outright that it didn't want to drive the 70 miles or so to Seattle, the Millenium Falcon developed a sudden and massive headache: a broken clutch cable. I didn't even get five miles down the road, which, as it turns out, is a good thing because my cousins are AAA members and AAA will tow for free if the car is within five miles of the home. So that's what I did. A really nice middle class suburban man helped me move my car out of the road and let me use his garage phone to call for help. The next day, I went down to Westbay Auto with my cousin, picked up a new cable for $30, then watched him replace it. Done deal. Made it to Seattle without even a stall.

Still, this marks the third vehicle breakdown in two months - and I haven't been driving that much. Paige, who owns the MF, told me she did wonder to her husband if I was, in fact, jinxed. Do you want to know what is going wrong with your old car? Just let me drive it and surely the problem will present itself. But hold tight: I will charge a fee. It's stressful breaking down on the side of the road, and I deserve compensation for the longterm health effects.

Staying at bluejack's place now.

I feel like I'm going through life without a safety net. I'm not nomadic by nature, yet here I am moving around with an entourage of boxes, a bike, various computer pieces, and a suitcase. The apartment is comfortable, but all of my things are missing. All of the things I surround myself with to give myself comfort, security, are an ocean away. I watch myself trying to nest, arranging things in ways that provide me with a sense of safety.

The rational part of me knows that security and safety are only fabricated concepts and never real. I'm in touch with that. Really. But the feeling half of me - the younger self - says, "But I must have it anyway." How can I have what doesn't exist?

Aaaaa. This is useless. A useless, useless train of thought. It exists if I experience it. Simple as that.

So where am I going with this? Nowhere.

Yesterday I drove down to the gym where I was a member before moving to Korea. They gave me a deal on a short-term membership which I deserve because I paid dues for so many years.

It felt like home being there. The people working there are the same, everything is the same except for the addition of newer equipment. Stepping up onto the Gauntlet, the platform slowly gliding toward the floor beneath my weight, I looked over the digital display in front of me and down 14 floors to the street below. Seafirst Central. The intersection below was shaded, as it always is because the Columbia Tower looms so tall above it perpetually blocking the sun. Many people milling around below looking tiny from my view high above. Some were sitting around the small tent of City Grind espresso. I managed a competing espresso cart across the intersection from them. I lived just a block up the hill from there. I exercised 14 floors above the street. Not my intersection, but I belonged to it.

Just now I recall the morning - it was 5:30am - when I arrived at the espresso cart in the darkness and the intersection was well lit by the red revolving lights of firetrucks and ambulances. Early-riser customers told me a man had tried to parachute from the top of the Columbia Tower, neglecting to take into account the northern wind. It pushed him into the building, breaking glass in a few places, before he careened to the bottom. He lived.

Sylvester Stallone worked out at my club while he was making one of his recent movie failures. I was always slinging espresso at the time he exercised, but I could watch him leave the building every single day. I was surprised by my star struckness. Dave was there once while Sly was pumping iron. He used a machine after Sly, remarking to me about Sly's sweat and the fact that Sly had nice hair.

Memories.

So I exercised. It was lunchtime and the place was packed with corporate people taking good advantage of their lunch hour. The women's locker room was packed with naked bodies of every shape and size. I thought it's been far too long since I've been in the presence of naked women and that I really just need to have more exposure to women in general. I found myself staring at bare asses and breasts, marveling at the diversity, and surprised as if I thought everyone looked like me (or worse, that everyone looked the same and I looked abnormal).

When I take a quick mental count, I learn that there are mostly men in my life.