end of the line

The tour is officially over. I've got a few appearances left, but it's not all tour like. They're just readings in places where I'll already be, like Kansas City and, um, Kansas City.

What a long, strange, fun, exhausting trip. Seems like a year ago since that first nervous reading in St. Louis. Now I'm sitting in the dinky Long Beach airport, after talking to a crowd of five at Eso Won Books in L.A., and selling all of two books, one of them to myself because I didn't have a freeby to give to my housing host.

But I've long since stopped caring about sales. The LA event was set up because I had planned to be here anyway, and the goal was to make a connection with the store's owner, which I did.

Yesterday I rented a bike at the Santa Monica Pier and rode it south past LAX and back. Then I went for a walk at sunset listening to Mile's Davis's In a Silient Way, the best beach-at-sunset album ever made. Today I drove the PCH from Laguna Beach to Long Beach, stopping at various state parks and walking the sand barefooted.

I hate to say it: I love Southern California.

It's like heaven on earth. Too bad it would be hell to live here.

Oh, what a drivellish blog entry this is. I've had so many I've wanted to write over the last several weeks. One about the night I sang a kareoke duet of "You Never Even Call Me By My Name" with an old black woman in an all black bar on the black side of Louisville. Or about Robert Caro's magnificent Master of the Senate. Or I need to rework my proposal for number 2, a prospect I'm actually quite thrilled about. Or...

See, that's what happens. I get these ideas and then they just disappear into mush, because I'm so damned tired.

Christmas music is playing. I hope this overdose of sunshine I've had for the last five years will carry me through the bleakest months in the Midwest. The sun here is as tart and satisfying as orange juice.