Bridging the Gap!

Dear Juliet

"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take..."

Just half-remembered this prayer, and I did wake up all right. I'll do another post for you to receive just before 8.00 am tomorrow, Sunday 12th, but I'll just throw this one in to fill any gaps.

A smattering of thoughts:

It seems I'm thirty-five (I'll explain later).

The recipe for my lethal mocha is:

Three heaped teaspoonfuls of hot chocolate.

One-and-a-half teaspoons of coffee.

Two-three tablets of sweetener (in the UK, Canderel).

One-and-a-half teaspoonfuls of sugar.

Three squeezes of syrup (Lyle's Golden Syrup).

Chocolate milk (optional).

Huge Starbucks mug.

Too many chocolate chunk cookies and optional Frasier!

The last time I told you all that, you said "goodness!"

Next, I think you've read all the articles on my blog. There's that one about telling Trump exactly where he can stuff his ESTA, and you'd think that's probably just what I sadly did.

Except, well, I didn't. Perhaps, once again, it was a bit like Kirk finding a way to cheat death and turn it into a fighting chance to live.

I'd made the decision, wondered whether I'd ever see Point Lobos again, and that was that.

Or so I thought.

Then a simple reminder came in, telling me that my current ESTA was due to expire and it was time to get a new one.

And Trump hadn't enacted his Jim Crow-style laws yet.

So in a word, I got myself relicensed. I'm okay until the first week of January 2028.

I'm not sure what I'll do with that. My professional traveller's judgment is that I look just dopey and different enough to be pulled out of a customs line (possibly by Dean Cain) and spend three months in a freezing jail cell thinking of you.

But I can legally re-enter the U.S.

I suppose you also know I was in Hollywood, Avalon and Needles in January 2024. Of course I wanted to go and see you, but I knew I couldn't. That if I tried I'd get a frying pan thrown at me or a real bashing plus deportation by the LAPD celebrity stalker squad. I thought about you all the time, although I suppose that's small consolation. You'd have liked Avalon in the off-season, there's a nice coffee shop called the Brew House and I checked that Scoops sold the hot fudge sundaes we decided Dru likes. I wonder where she got that sweet tooth from?

I found a nice church halfway up the road to Dru's house on the hill where she prays on Sundays, and I sort of got the strong impression (it's very subtle, hard to explain) that she waved me off from the pier. She's wearing yellow these days.

You probably wouldn't have liked Needles as much, because the Southwest Chief got iced up due to that storm blanketing America at the time and I got trapped in Death Valley. Most other Aspergers would have had a complete gibbering meltdown but I changed the rules as usual, got a $300 taxi ride to Vegas, spent half the night up the Strat, had a very nice chat with some young nurses with the Strip in the background and got the first plane back to L.A. in the morning.

Went back in September 2024, saw Point Lobos/Drusilla's beach and the National Steinbeck Center; and got out just two months before Trump won the election. Not quite by the skin of my teeth, but close...

I don't know if my America's even there any more.

Anyway, I've got a story about fate, destiny and Shifnal for you tomorrow. I wasn't the architect of all that's happened these past seventeen years, and like Dan Myrick and Bainbridge Island it seemed like other opportunities were flung in front of me without fuss but with forceful clarity.

And I guess you know about the cancer, but not the amazing thing my doctor said to me...

'Til tomorrow, with lark of bud and dew.