VACATION DIARY # 4

8.14.25

Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica

Dear cuticle-pickers, earlobe-pullers, and chin-scratchers,

I finished Grey Bees and found the author’s Diary Of An Invasion on my library app, but before I get into that I’m going to finish Rollins’ Stay Fanatic! Volume 1. It’s really fun, so many recommendations.  I’m not that into the collecting of regional pressings and acetates and test pressings but it’s all good.  I need to do a deep dive on Hawkwind and I’ve only explored The Gun Club up through Las Vegas Story.  Jeff P’s favorite all time artist.

I dig this new journal I got from my friend Matt at work--texture of paper is good, graphic is weird.  I’ve always journaled at max speed to work through more introverted subject matter but on this trip I’m focusing on what I enjoy.  That includes music, books, film and TV, food, and the topic of journaling itself.  I want to write legibly and write as if it might be worth re-reading.  I can have a gut-spill journal too, that’s important to keep the powder dry, but if writing is not a practice of appreciation what is it a practice of?  Ambivalence? Irritation?  

Curiosity is a lip-service value sometimes, but I’ve really learned a lot at work about how energizing curiosity is, to you and your surroundings.  So I’d like questions to be part of my journaling too.  It doesn’t have to be earth-shaking.  How do you make brandy green peppercorn sauce?  And I’m endlessly curious about toxic evangelical religion and its impact on our culture and politics--and how it sets up camp right next to our best impulses.  Will it lock in like the Taliban, with corporate and country club right wing support, or will it die down?  Will decent Americans kick that BS to the curb? How many good people does that car-wreck of a culture discourage from going down their own spiritual path?  Kinda meta. So much for questions about peppercorn sauce.