So, after a month in Los Angeles cleaning up the wreckage of the recent and distant past, I finally bid farewell to the City of the Angels and got on a plane to New York for a long week of readings, book signings, Spoken Word shows, reunions, movie shoots, wheels, deals and general mayhem before going home to the dubious safety and comfort of my comparitively simple life in Brazil.

Being back in the city after moving away 5 years ago and turning the page on that long, colorful chapter of my life is a strange experience. Colored by the odd culture shock of seeing it through the eyes of a semi foreigner now, coming from that odd Brazilian immigrant’s perspective of years past makes it even odder still.

Not an entirely unpleasant feeling. And as glad as I am to have left this daily reality behind and turned the page on it years ago, there’s still a big part of me that belongs to this place and always will.

As if to confirm that, all day long people have been asking me directions. Its as if they sense me to be a local, someone with a deep and intimate working knowlege of the mysterious inner workings of this strange and baffling town. And I suppose I am. I feel that way today as I sit here at an open air table at the pizzaria at the corner of Macdougal st and w 3rd.

And as I sit here contemplating the character of this odd city of my birth, feeling my DNA reconnecting to it and watching the people passing by, I feel myself surrender to that feeling of impending familiarity, as if at any moment an old and well known aquaintence will walk up and sit across the table from me with a smile and a familiar, “JS! How ya doin’?”

Memories of days and nights and months and years spent traversing the lights and shadows of this space emerge in a mental tapestry of images, recollections and adventures, people, places, things and events. Details which spring to life from the inner workings of the machinery of my experience.

And suddenly I realize that this is my life today as the parade of souls dribbles by and I feel very very jaded by it all.

Jonathan and Alessandra outside of The Strand

Street vendor reading Narcisa

Howie Pyro and Alessandra

Houston Santa Claus- Billy's Antiques