heading west

because I must

[day 7/7 - god bless america]¹

I will be in SF from feb 1st to feb 16th! (and at EAG SF) Feel free to say hi to me if ur in the city (expect less blogposts for a while, or maybe more, unsure)

But I’m not flying directly, no no no. On the 29th of January I will touch down in Chicago and take a 53 hour train to SF.

It’s also -17 degrees (celsius sorry freedom fighters) in chicago right now. If the ICE agent doesn’t kill me in cold blood, the Chicago Ice will.

Why? Because I simply must head west. ²

In both locations I will be staying in the houses of strangers who read my blog.³ I am planning to document the entire adventure in one big beautiful blog post. I am doing all of this “for the plot” as the kids say. I suffer for your reading pleasure.⁴

Anyway. Have this draft that would otherwise never see the light of day.

California as the final boss

At first, I thought this was surely just about her. But no, you stayed. Reality slapped me in the face, a thousand counter-arguments by friends. None of it helped. It took me too long to realize that this is personal. This exists outside the sphere of mimetic desire. Well, maybe not. But one thing is certain: I need to go, by myself, just me and you, California.

You can’t conceive of a city with more mythos if you tried. The ancient proverb in American history (at least, ancient by american standards)

Washington [D.C.] is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country.

You can’t get any more west than San Francisco.

The cars drive themselves, a seven-digit salary is considered the only way out of a nearly certain fate in the permanent underclass. Effective altruism is close to a norm. Billboards speak of pull requests, wage slaves go to sleep with their AI wives on heated mattresses that stop working when us-east-1 goes down.

Everyone “hates” it. No one wants to leave.

You can’t find more contrasting cities if you tried. Medieval streets vs grid lines. Unambitious, european students versus 996 workaholics. Busses vs Waymos. Good beer vs chinese peptides. Social safety nets vs employer insurance. Tenure vs equity. The ideal life is obviously somewhere in the middle, yet I can’t stop idolizing you.

You may be merely a place, but what a place you promise to be. I have heard so many stories about you. I can’t wait for none of them to survive contact with reality.⁵

The fog is more than beautiful weather. Like the fog walls in a fromsoft game, I do not know what lies behind. And when one goes in, they tend to not come back. When you cross, you make a deal: nothing from the other side can hurt you now, but you are forced to face. The final boss.

The thing I can’t escape. The idealization to end all idealizations. The city of “my people”. Whatever it is you end up showing me. I clearly needed to see it.

I simply have to go. Even if it’s to see a man addicted to fentanyl keeling over next to a self-driving car with peter thiel in it.

So I will.

1. I have posted 7 blog posts in 7 days. I have been a good celeste

2. On a more serious note, I have always been obsessed with America for as long as I’ve been alive basically. This has recently kicked into overdrive and I thought visiting would help with this emotion.

and it also seems like a fun adventure

3. I hope they don’t kill me.

4. this is not true. I just like maximizing an interesting life. But pretend-martyrdom feels funny here.

5. except for the homeless people