In April of 2017, my partner and I drove from Salt Lake City, UT to Walnut Creek, CA to live. I drove the moving truck and took along my digital recording device. Here is part one of my speakings.
Utah
I’m voting for Misty Snow
Here is why I am voting for Misty Snow to become the next U.S. senator from Utah.
UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
Psychic anesthesia
I am listening to “Waitin’ For A Superman” on $40 headphones I purchased at an outlet mall.
I visit a place called City Creek the Mormon Church erected in the middle of downtown Salt Lake City. I find comfort and a disquieted mind in the sky-touching ceilings, the smooth futuristic flow and the glass, everywhere the glass. I am worshipping in a hypercapitalist cathedral simply by stepping into the place. I ooh and aah at the displays and the diamonds and the fountain. This place is only futuristic to 14-year-old me. To 32-year-old me it is simply uncomfortable present.
Jeff Buckley’s “Last Goodbye” is rich and haunting through the $40 headphones from a brand called Skull Candy.
I am now listening to “Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth).” When I was a teenager I thought the song was meant to make one’s teeth hurt (which would mean the anesthesia wasn’t working I suppose). I believe I clung to this myth because Alan Nichols, a guy who could actually play some Metallica songs (or at least a couple of cool riffs) on guitar said so. Even now I imagine I feel my teeth ache to Cliff Burton’s distorted bass solo (take one).
I am sitting in a living room watching a one-hour video of logs burning in a fireplace.
I attend a rally at the Utah capitol building. The rally is for clean air. Many persons are wearing masks. Basic masks, gas masks, respirator masks.
I am living in the future. The air is too toxic for our present-day lungs. Reality is too much for our fragile bodies and psyches. Our fireplaces must be safe pixelations.
Before sunrise
13 September 2012
I awake at 5:15 am today. GF prepares to go to Snowbird for work and I hitch a ride, currently unable to spend $4.70 for a roundtrip ride on TRAX.
We get in the car and pull out of our building’s parking garage into darkness punctuated with the lights of industry: warehouse exterior lights, streetlights, headlights and taillights, traffic lights. The world is starting its arbitrary shift change from night to day.
I feel completely comfortable. I tolerate the daylight hours everyday, but desperately crave the darkness. The wee hours of the morning or the dark after sundown.
The I-15 is shockingly busy at this time of day. The interstate has a magic sheen from the combination of highway lights, automobile lights and the slowly discernible sunlight. The mountains rest calmly in the background, all purple shadows.
GF drops me off at Bakery and Brews, a coffee shop specializing in South American food. The coffee shop is 1/4 mile from where I work. I am able to purchase a coffee and homemade empanada thanks to a rewards card and the owner allowing me to pay him in nickels and dimes. I want everyone in Murray and Salt Lake City to visit Bakery and Brews at least once to try the homemade soup, clam chowder (on Fridays), empanadas, pastries or sandwiches. You can also purchase nutritional supplements if you desire. I have yet to purchase said items, as you can probably tell when you see my unsightly physique ambling along sidewalks.
The sun is up now and I am trying not to be annoyed with it. Every day I wake up hoping this will be the day when the clouds take over and block the sun for 24 hours.
I will do well in the apocalypse. Unless the apocalypse includes a blood red sun, because I imagine that would be even more annoying.
-JPR
Forwarding address
DC Exile Day, ok. Wait. Stop that. Just fucking stop it.
Seriously. Just, dude. I’m warning you.
Dear readers, I know you know that I left DC over one month (or three kilometres) ago to head back west. Over the past 30-something days I have been including the line “DC Exile” and the number of days since the move on this blog.
Today, that ends.
It is time to stop looking back at my time in DC and Virginia and recognize where I am now—in Utah writing, reading, recording and working on where I am going next.
I have no idea how that will look, but I know it will not look backward.
It's me. Looking forward (and sexy for that matter).
The Joseph Richards Show 