Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

I said hasta luego to S.B. at a concert at Blossom Amphitheatre in northern Ohio. Goodbye is a dirty little word, and he advised me to use "hasta luego" from now on.

I saw Jimmie Vaughan and Bob Dylan play a show at the minor league ballpark I used to see games at in elementary school. Eric Clapton came out and played with Vaughan. During his set, Dylan sang, "But even the President of the United States/ Sometimes must have to stand naked." Those lines are carved into the sidewalk up the street from a coffee house I used to go to in college.

Once I arrive in L.A. on my way out to the Pacific islands, I'll have visited New York City, Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles in about six months. It's my rock star national tour. I stood in the most snow Central Park ever got, I ran The Marathon, I took my dad to Wrigley, I said hasta luego to a couple of my oldest friends (whom I have known for only five years, I am young), and, well, I'm not to L.A. yet.

I'll be saying goodbye to our Empire in about two weeks. That knowledge hurts. But then I'll come back. Remember in the film version of Breakfast at Tiffany's when Holly is talking about leaving for Brazil? She's wandering around Manhattan and she says she'll come back some day when she has children because "they must see this." That's how I feel about America.