It's my last night in the Bay Area. The past few days have been hard to take, in terms of the time creeping by and my being here in this apartment, spending a little too much time with Hanna.

My confrontational last day of work was Wednesday. On Thursday, I went out to dinner with a friend at an Ethiopian restaurant in downtown Berkeley. He picked up the tab, of course. This gets embarrassing after a while, as my friends enter adulthood and I stay 16. After dinner we got smoothies, sat on a concrete wall, and talked about the historicity of Jesus.

On Friday, I went to San Francisco on my own. I went first to the San Francisco museum of modern art, which was one of the highlights of my two months out here. Then, I walked up through Chinatown to the pier 39 area, which was garish and touristy. Then, on the advice of a tobacco store clerk, I walked back down again to the north beach neighborhood and little italy. There, I had a sausage sandwich at a well-known pizza restaurant. It wasn't very good.

I walked into a private art gallery to look at some awful abstract paintings. There was a group of three people, one of which invited me to sit down. They played a video of a woman wrapped in a felt, purple snake taking her clothes off to a recording of some tribal-sounding music. The snake's head was a hand-puppet, which the woman manipulated while she danced around in a mysterious way. The snake took off her top, and took off her panties. Then, it did inappropriate things to her as she gyrated on the ground.

All the while, congas and flutes played. It seemed like the kind of thing that takes place in some low-rent university theater, with only the camera man and a two or three grad students hanging around with their arms crossed. I laughed, and the other three laughed, too, because the video was such an obvious self-parody. I liked that the gallery-rats didn't take themselves too seriously, an attitude that is a credit to any artist. I would prefer an artist be able laugh at his or her self than be any good -- at least that way he or she is decent company.

One of the three, who bragged about being a third-generation San-Franciscan, gave me a list of hip, 'inside' things to do in San Francisco. I may have misunderstood some of them, because his speech was pretty lisp-y, but here they are in case a reader wants to be inside and hip:

1. The Palace of the Legion of Honor Museum, the home of, among other things, “The Thinker”

2. The Mechanic's Museum

3. The Neptune Society, which I think was supposed to be some sort of mausoleum with various people's ashes built into the walls, or something

4. The Diego Riviera murals, which were just everywhere in the city, apparently

5. The Coytown murals

6. The San Francisco art academy

7. Tadish's Grill (restaurant)

8. Hangtown Fry (restaurant)

9. Original Joe’s (restaurant)

It sounds like some of these might have been interesting, if I’d had more energy.

On Saturday, Hanna and I drove to Mark and Wei's place for one final barbecue. Hanna always hints, in a round-about way, that I drive there and back, because she likes to look around at the scenery instead of concentrating on driving, to paraphrase. In spite of her explanation, her wishes have more to do with wanting relief from driver-duties; she drives to mark's house an awful lot. Driving there stresses me out a bit, because I was never able to learn the route, and Hanna would have to direct me, exclaiming “LEFTHERE!” or “RIGHTHERE!” at the last minute.

Yesterday, I sat around the house and biked to Borders in the early afternoon, where I read a book on Google hacking. I saw “Batman Begins” in the evening, in downtown Concord. Today, I went to Borders for several hours, this time reading a lot of martial arts books, including 'Kung Fu for Girls” and Muay Thai: Advanced Thai Kickboxing Techniques. From this last one I grabbed an evocative quote, which I’ll presently add to my email signature database:

"Thailand has poisonous and spiny animals. They rarely attack." -- Christoph Delv, Muay Thai: Advanced Thai Kickboxing Techniques.

I don't know what I’ll do tomorrow. Possibly go to Borders a third time, possibly eat various meals at jack-in-the-box (which I don't believe exists on the east coast). Maybe I’ll catch a matinee. Hanna is leaving very early tomorrow for her weekly sojourn to Clearlake, California, where she does some cleaning for a few folks. I’ll be alone on my last day in Concord. I don't really feel like packing. In some ways, I don't really feel like leaving.

My flight leaves at 10:45pm tomorrow evening, which means I get to the airport at 9:15pm, which means mark and I drive from the north Berkeley BART station to Oakland international at 8:45pm, which means that I catch the 8:00pm BART out of Concord, which means that I call a cab company at 7:00pm and say "I’m going to the BART, and then to the airport. I want the driver to show up at precisely 7:45pm." As the reader might remember, I had a bad formative experience with the punctuality of Concord cabbies.

I’m wrapping up my bay area experience, a little over two months after my flight first landed in Oakland. Tomorrow, it's back to Dulles international, and then back to Maryland.

The BART is over. Mark and Wei's house is over. The Mexican ghetto and its tiny swimming pool is over. Biking around Concord is over. The Art Store is over (thank god). Hanna is over. My room here, with the foam rubber bed, one real pillow and one fake pillow in the form of a folded blanket in a pillow case, and felt tapestries on the wall, is over. This old dell latitude, Pentium III laptop, which I ventilate by propping up its back end with a phone book while blasting with a fan at eight inches away to keep it from frying itself, is over. Three meals, of varying edibility, prepared for and served to me every day, is over. My surrogate “Gary Fisher” mountain bike, which has something like an 11-inch frame, necessitating the seat post's extension to heights far beyond the safety limit, is over.

My sunglasses are definitely over; I somehow broke them two days ago. Every time I find a pair of sunglasses that aren't too narrow for my head, making me look like Dr. Strangelove, I break them.

I come away with a few things added to my arsenal: some Velcro sneakers that rub my Achilles tendons raw, a $40, 10-watt 'crate' guitar amplifier, a set of fifty-dollar hair clippers, a black Wal-Mart shirt speckled with a light-grey vegetation print, a pair of red, grey and black reversible athletic shorts, and some new socks. I never changed the strings on my guitar, which I’d planned to do.

I brought some stupid things from Maryland. My dress shoes and suit, because I had fantasies of getting a real job. It reminds me of the time, right after college, when I bought a cell-phone, thinking it'd be ringing off the hook with offers from prospective employers. Bringing my laundry detergent was pretty stupid. Bringing my Jew’s harp and metronome was pretty stupid.

My laundry detergent and the unneeded replacement bike-seat are staying here, for Hanna’s enjoyment. The challenge will be to carry all of my baggage on the BART tomorrow: backpack, guitar, big duffel bag, and amplifier. Hopefully I can avoid taking another bag.

I lost some weight, exercised regularly, was hungry before almost every meal, trimmed my beard into a goatee, got a fairly serious tan (or suffered some sun-damage, depending on how you look at it), and shaved my head to about an eighth of an inch of hair. My arm, which I badly hurt during my first few days here, is only now beginning to heal.

I’m looking around the room now, making sure I have everything ready for tomorrow's packing. I’m also trying to think of other things that are now over. I could go into greater detail about everything, but then this entry would never end.

There are so many things, so many memories and mental ghosts that accumulate, even after only two months. Leaving is like saying 'goodbye' to a tiny little life. I’ll miss the produce and the weather, and I’ll miss having mark and Wei around, but that's about it. Everything else helped constitute what was beginning to be an icky familiarity and routine, which I despise, and yet cling to because new things are so scary and hard to adjust to. Maybe it gets easier the more you do it.

I’ll miss "Bicycle Boulevard" (a road intended for use by cyclists), otherwise known as virginia avenue, in Berkeley. Biking from the north Berkeley BART station to work and back was the most fun I had during my workday. There are a few people at The Art Store whom I won't exactly miss, but whose company I appreciated in a shallow way. Just to keep the tradition alive, I’ll say "never again will I work retail" now, before the next gig inevitably starts.

My mother's house in Maryland is going to feel foreign and uncomfortable. For one thing, my stuff there has been routed out of it's nestling in with the rest of the household. What I didn't bring to California is stuffed into boxes or a huge canvas duffel-bag.

I’m reminded of moving from Catonsville back to Gaithersburg after graduating. I refused to unpack for a month or so, being so disgusted with living back home and planning to leave so soon that I thought unpacking to be a bad idea. As it turned out, I stayed there for three years, latched onto my mom's computer. Now, I’m coming back, after just two months away.

I’m leaving the bay area right at that point where Concord, Berkeley, San Francisco, the BART and everything was starting to feel familiar, but not in a good way. It's just another suburb here -- the metro stop, a minimal downtown, several shopping plazas a few miles away, etc. I was getting the lay of the land down pretty well, but I’m not going to miss Concord. It feels barren and without a soul -- it's like Gaithersburg, which I won't be overjoyed to see again.

I’d like to live somewhere other than the suburbs. I wasn't overly impressed with San Francisco, but that's probably because I don't really know, and am not really interested in knowing, how to enjoy the company of any major city. Berkeley was better, with its low-slung, junky-looking, crowded blocks of independent, idiosyncratic restaurants and stores, and the odd folks who hang around there, especially at night.

Let me think of more memories and ghosts. Mark and Wei's jock-nerd synthesis roommate Greg (a surfing astrophysics post-doc), with whom I got along really well, and from whom I borrowed "Star Wars II." Mark and Wei's co-owner, who was a bit of a shit. The all-uphill bike-ride from The Art Store along the impossibly steep hills and sharp bends to mark's house. His narrow street, which necessitated parking a car with its wheels popped up on the curb, and half its width hanging over the sidewalk.

The climb of about 50 feet via staircase to mark and Wei's front door, that always left me partially winded. The thumb-print reading door-lock, onto which mine was coded and with which I never ceased to be impressed. Hanna's orange, grey and white semi-friendly cat with only half a tail, that hung around aloofly at mark's place, occasionally killing mice and leaving them around the house, but who meowed happy greetings whenever Hanna showed up.

The all-female, all-tattooed cadre of managers at The Art Store. Crossing San Pablo ave on the way to work every day, and every day softly singing that line of “American Life” by Primus:

Spending spare time down on San Pablo Ave., once a week gets a woman for the night. And he writes home tales of prosperity...for the boy we have American life.

Finding the post office, and then the movie theater, in Concord. The look of all the buildings and streets. The feel of the road under my bike tires.

My bedroom dance -- taking my evening medication, settling in on my side, eventually crushing my collar bone with the weight of my own torso, resigning to shift entirely onto my stomach, and gradually falling asleep with a few fits and starts. Being woken up prematurely by the piercing dawn, then wrapping a blanket over my eyes and dozing for another hour or so. Gulping down my morning meds. It's all subtly different from the bedroom dance in Gaithersburg, just because it was done here, in a different place and with a different feeling.

Wei's friends: Lakshmi and Marlene. I met them a few times. Greg's friends at one of his parties, one of whom crushed my hand to the point of pain in not a handshake, but a MANSHAKE. Meeting up with two computer friends.

Seeing Peter’s red truck 100 feet or so down from where I waited on the curb at the airport, when I flew in two months ago. The first two weeks here, when Peter and I lived together in Hanna’s apartment, driving around in his truck and spending some time with Peter’s gamer friend, who never leaves his apartment. Peter's iPod. Hiking around on mount Diablo, a nearby park. Peter, Hanna and I had a picnic there one day.

The first few days when I was unbearably depressed until I adjusted my medication. Spending a time at the apartment on my own, during which it turned into a filthy, subhuman pig-sty, with half-eaten food, crumbs, dirty underwear, and trash strewn all over everything. Another week, where I lived at mark and Wei's place while Maya inhabited the apartment. Then, the Hanna years. Then, the Hanna freak-out, after which I bought my ticket home.

There are so many little details -- sights (racks of paints at The Art Store, the 'end bike route' sign in Concord that marked the street that took me from the main drag to Hanna’s residential street), smells (the varnished wood and sweaty laundry in mark and Wei's study, eggy food being fried up in Hanna’s kitchen), sounds (the BART accelerating from a stop, Mexican children screaming, laughing and playing in the pool outside the window) and textures (sticky, dirty, rubbery hand-grips on my surrogate bike, four cold, little, metal buttons on mark's thumbprint-encoded door lock, with 1, 2, 3, and 4 engraved on them) -- that it's impossible to get them all down.

I’ll miss it here, not because it's a particularly nice or wonderful place, but just because it's a small part of my life that's disappearing.