I leave town in two days and I've packed everything up in boxes. I am writing this from the laurdromat down the street from my house.

The other day a man in a car almost killed me on the way home from Westwood. I was so angered by it that I followed him home. When he got out of the car he was stumbling. I made a scene and all of his neighbors came out. It was in a rich neighborhood in the Cheviot hills. I called the cops to report him, which felt weird considering how many friends have driven me home drunk, but he almost killed me so any qualms I might have about hypocrisy went out the window. Three cops came and even though he was looking at us from his bedroom window he wouldn't come out. The cops said he seemed obviously drunk even from the fleeting glances they could steal but there was nothing they could do. I didn't really mind because all I wanted to do is to shake him from the idea that he could go around driving drunk with impunity. The cops were nice except that the first thing they said when they saw me was, "you should be wearing brighter colors". I had lights, front and back and a helmet. They gave me a ride home. It was the first time I had ever been in the back of a cop car. It was uncomfortable and smelled like puke.

I woke up the next morning with a cold.
Today was spent cleaning. I hate moving but this is a lot simpler than it could be if I had a lot of stuff, or kids.

we have ice

Will be leaving town on Tuesday night. Feels weird. Like I'm ending some sort of extended vacation. I know Los Angeles from a different angle now than I had had known just by growing up (around) here. Nonetheless I am excited to be moving on to greener pastures. Some days here feel so isolating and hollow. Like there is nowhere to go that doesn't involve acquiring garbage. One giant highway.

I have been really sore ever since the night that I went to see Shearing Pinx play at the smell. I raced there really fast and I had tried doing this thing called "ladders" that my friend Kellie showed me over Thanksgiving. Ladders involves doing a series of push-ups in sets that increase incrementally by one to a number and then decrease back to one. I'm out of shape and my arms feel like they are going to fall off days later.

Yesterday I went with my friend Athena out to Pasadena to the vegan drive thru and we ate burgers and shakes and rode are bikes a little and then ate at vegan house. We like to eat.

I am now officially done with academics at UCLA but I still have business here until tomorrow. I am proctoring an exam for the class I am a teaching assistant for and I am grading the exams tonight, and returning them in the morning to meet a deadline set forth by the professor. By Friday I expect to be able to cut the strings and focus on getting my shit together in boxes by Monday. I will have the weekend to try and erase any visible artifacts of my 6 months of residence. Toothpaste in drywall, scrubbing a spot of turmeric from a patch of beige carpet. Defrosting my mini fridge is going to be a fucking pain.

update

Although it wasn't forecasted, it rained all day on Friday. I skipped out of lecture and met up with a friend downtown. I took the bus. When I got there we didn't really do much. We had no business in the neighborhood. We had no goods to purchase. We were loitering. It was raining and that to me can constitute a holiday in Los Angeles. I got home after dark and was greeted by my cat's incessant howls. I remembered that I had to take my teaching competency exam the next morning. I sat on the floor doing nothing for a few hours, the clock radio may have been on in the bathroom. An hour or so passes and I began to leaf through my test prep book.

The next morning I woke up before dawn and turned off my cell phone's wake up call function. I biked over to Los Angeles High School which was in Koreatown and there were hundreds of people waiting in a conglomeration in front of the gym. A man that I can only guess was a coach started to bark at the crowd, "for those of you who need to use the restroom. FEMALES first and second floor, MALES first floor.". It was surreal. The man obviously could not turn it off. An hour passes outside the gym and they let us inside and we are seated. A pair of women comes by to take everyone's fingerprints giving instructions and criticism in equal doses. A trend became apparent. It validated a belief I have had for some time now that my teenage perspective was not totally obscured by angst and that many of the teachers I had had were insultingly condescending to their students.

The whole process from that point on became increasingly vexing. About twenty minutes into the exam the fire alarm went off. The proctors told us to stay put and continue taking the test. The siren continued to let out a piercing squeal for close to half an hour. I asked one of them if I could put in a pair of earplugs and after a short conference with the other proctors she returned to tell me no.

A few hours pass and I was happy to leave. I returned home and tried to make my apartment look as presentable as possible for an open house I was having to find someone to take over my lease. I'm leaving.
Leaving Los Angeles. Leaving UCLA. Leaving. I have a lot of reasons but I haven't paired it down to just a few or even down to a set which isn't somehow contradictory. One reason is that grad school, in the sciences at least, is mostly preparation for a career. I've come to a point where I'm sure that those options are not for me. Formally, I am only taking a leave of absence from UCLA but I don't see myself returning.

In the mean time, or for winter at least I'm going to be living in Portland. In fact I already found a room. I am looking at moving to Oakland in the spring but who knows. I found a taker for my apartment lease. I started cleaning. In two weeks I will be gone. I'm going to have a lot of free time. I don't really know what I am going to be doing. I am going to try not to jump into anything.