What is it about writing that makes me feel completely weightless—on a correct path—at peace—and true? Here I am, right now, sitting on my sofa as the sunshine blankets my apartment; Un Verano Sin Ti playing, and an uninterrupted YouTube video of someone driving through the streets of Los Angeles playing on my television screen. I have a book of Terrance Hayes’s poetry beside me and my notebook in front of me. And it’s perfect.

This all adds up to a perfect feeling. It’s not entirely real, of course, because a real perfect would be writing for a living in Los Angeles, not a video of someone else driving along the streets I wish to drive down. And there’s not much merit in this kind of writing… not so introspective or inquisitive, but deeply personal, to me. Something probably so unbelievably lame to others brings me a joy that has me on the verge of tears. Yes, really.

This intense joy probably stems from the intense sense of a weighty existence, however. One where I am deeply and existentially aware of my 20’s slipping by without having anything to show for it (in a way that my future self would be proud of).

So that’s it, really, a completely unvarnished attempt to express the joy in the mundane but how that exists on a level of “maybe one day.” Because that is the truth of me. I want to live in Los Angeles, writing, creating, and deepening myself. Not through a screen, but through the air, the sun, the grass, the paved roads, the petrol, the facade so transparent that it actually has come back to authenticity.