Had dinner with the crazy Spaniard tonight. First really intellectual conversation since I returned to America. Not that intellectual is what you’re always looking for in conversation. Sometimes its good to just to talk of course. Every group you hang with offers you something different. But it was very nice. Lots of wine and sushi and talk of world affairs, matters of the heart, politics, etc etc.

She spent her summer in Spain and India. We both just got back. We shared horror stories of how depressed we found ourselves returning to Miami. She for over a week. Me, I got over it pretty quickly, and now I am just a walking living breathing depressed person. A cultured person will die here. A slow painful agonizing death. Like the frog in water that slowly comes to a boil. Where you are never quite sure what is wrong with you. You just know that you ‘feel weird’ and that you are unhappy. 

I am actually sick today. Legs hurt. Stuffed up. I think from the news about Cleo. Of course I have assured myself that I am moving soon. I found out that Cleo is moving back to Boca Raton. After I threw up a few times, I realized that there truly is no reason now for me to stay here. But I have so many good friends here and the boys in the band who I love dearly. And she and I haven't hung out in more than a year. We talk on the phone. Now we just don't see each other. We avoid each other. It is a particular situation I am in. Ferret wants his money. Has no idea why I even speak with Cleo. Thinks I should do the right thing. Do whatever it takes. I looked him in eye. ‘Dude. I gotta do what I gotta do. You ever been in love man?’ I ask. ‘Yea once. And look what fucking happened! That fucking bitch broke my heart!’ he screamed. He got his heart broken once; the only time he ever fell in love with a girl. ‘So get over it! Fuck love!’ classic Ferret. Anyone else would be shocked sometimes by the way he speaks to you. But I am used to it. I know in his heart he is one of the truest-blue people I have ever known.

A Must or Want?

At the airport to fly home for the holidays. Long lines to check your baggage. Another long line to obtain boarding pass. Long lines at security. Empty your pockets. Open your laptop, turn on your handheld, open your phone please sir. Take off your boots please, sir. By the time you are finished just checking in and going through security, it's been over an hour if you're lucky, longer most of the time. No food on the flights any more, so you go hungry the whole time. 

Couple in front of me had a baby in a stroller. Going through security for them was a mess. Empty your pockets please, sir. Mam, we need to see inside your purse. Mam, please take the baby out of the carriage. Sir, you're going to have to pack up the stroller and put it on the cart please. Ten minutes later and we’re still waiting for them to go through security and the man turns around to me and says, “sorry about this.” I had already gone through twice myself due to having a butane lighter and a retractable pen in my briefcase, which I had to check. “No problem,” I said, “we’re all in this together,” I mumbled to him and smiled. 

Hotel doesn’t even have shampoo. In the mad rush to get here I forgot to bring any toiletries, so I'll be looking very pretty today. Woke up working on a new song, ‘Caetano,’ this morning. Still trying to capture the lyrics for this one. Thinking a lot about The Adventures of Fishy which is close to being finished, but has been put aside because so much work now on the last two albums and the website and the diaries etc. I hate politics, and reform talk and all that. I went to sleep last night just drained and overwhelmed and thought, you know, I'm an artist. I like to sing and write songs and write stories and stuff. That's my thing. I don’t like the fact that things are so messed up that I feel like I have to do something about it. I don’t want to. I just want to do my thing. If artists are supposed to be the entertainers say and enlighteners, at best, and politicians are supposed to be the guys taking care of everything social, economic, and political, I don’t think things are working out so well for us. You don’t see Clinton up on stage teaching Aerosmith how to play ‘Dream on.’ Why should we have to teach them how to do their jobs right?

O.k. enough of that. I'm back now. On the cab ride to the airport I saw the headline in the Washington Post that yesterday was the biggest protest march since the sixties. Imagine that. So in a way we did it. lets hope it accomplishes something. Spent the day seeing the city and some of the monuments and attractions of the District. DC is a beautiful city. The weather is gorgeous. All the trees are changing color. A crispness in the air that we never get in Miami. After today I feel so inspired to be an American. You can’t help but be inspired after coming here. of course you can’t help but be disgusted as well when you think of the lowly heights we have stooped over the last fifty years. You know, people tell you it's always been this corrupt, that history always has a way of covering up the worst and weakest moves of our leaders. So who knows. Try to remember that when our ‘forefathers’ first drafted the Bill of Rights and the Constitution that it was only for white men; it didn't include women or black people, or indigenous people, etc. So just that is pretty gross, and shows how far we've come as a nation. But boy the ideals that this country is founded on are so fantastic. It is inspiring.