mose

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:57:23 GMT

today i spoke to

angela about sundays
sean about sugar
emily about adobe illustrator
casey about seeing each other tomorrow
caroline about marriage
alan about dave chappelle
suman about lavender yael about cats
ryan and jack about the naked guy
laura about the effect of video games on the youth

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:48:51 GMT

i have been somewhat down on my situation recently, as some of you might know, but i can find my way really easily sometimes, like with piano, incense, looking, and noticing things which are yours and therefore mine. i do think 90% of my general discomfort with the world has to do with the pillow i sleep on, which i mean literally. my constant intrapersonal insistence on subjectivity and the only objective truth being that everything else is subjective, is probably not causing me any problems, but what about attempting to make logic my own and proclaiming the beauty of the world to be objective? wouldn't that be useful for me and everyone? moreover, it can't be disproven so (?) at worst it is vacuously true, and i am okay with living according to vacuous and maybe really faulty logic, if it leads me to beauty. this is why i need to leave berkeley.

not because everyone is driven by logic, or even by a personal logic (in fact i think that most people here are not), but because i wouldn't be able to live this out without being implicitly questioned by everyone, even the stoners in the courtyard. i sometimes think that it is myself i want to leave, and that berkeley is an extension of myself, and then i leave, and everything becomes different and sometimes amazing, and i am wrong and relieved. this weekend i will play two shows with my friends in berkeley and dress as a moss creature on saturday, then become hopelessly lost on my bicycle in san francisco on sunday and bring color to the void with the money i've been sitting on. please tell me about your lives!! tell me about your worlds!! i swear i will be overjoyed to know!!!

pppeeeaaaccceee

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:02:04 GMT

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:58:59 GMT

OH my FRIENDS i mISS YOU!!!!! i still feel uncomfortable in berkeley and my pillow makes my neck hurt and i want to leave and remember what it is like to be really excited about stuff, and i took the math GRE, and it was super hard, and after that i turned my weekend into new free time. yesterday i fixed my bike, then went and droned, then went into san francisco and paid too much money to go to a show, then today me and all one thousand of my housemates dressed in medieval costume and got drunk and yelled and jousted on bikes and threw food and injured themselves racing each other naked down the hallway, then campfire left for drone city, then sebastian and i went on an adventure to the cemetery, then i continued to chop the one thousand minutes of recordings i made in the midwest. i still have fifty tracks and two and a half hours of recordings to make into at most two hours so i can fit it on a tape. also if you know how to do it please give everybody huge squeezing hugs and back massages all the time, everywhere that you are.

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 05:34:32 GMT

go on google maps and look at a map of finland. the WHOLE THING IS FOREST. i really wish google had street view there. i can't imagine growing up in finland. where the forest is as infinite there as the ocean or the midwest is to us, or is there even a way to compare it at all? the forest is the backdrop for their minds there. that's so fuckin sick. i want to see what it's like to grow up in finland. shit. i want to fuckin go there so hard. and norway too. this bike trip is hella happening.

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:07:48 GMT

So this is my hardest semester of school ever, but for other reasons I have recently become somewhat angry at the institution of school. I have been so down with being in school until very recently because I FEEL THAT SCHOOL IS DRAINING THE MAGIC FROM THE WORLD. Perhaps it is "useful," but I prefer the magic. I have "senioritis". I want to leave all my work at 5pm and have time to meditate and play music and be on the edge of myself and be CONSTANTLY DISCOVERING INFINITY, all the time. Traditional school and its supposed power is so, so finite. I don't resent having been brought up in school, but I resent being in it right now. I think I have enough endurance to finish the school year. Next semester will be so easy compared to this one...is it a question of just making it there?

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:08:23 GMT

I must admit, I do not find Iowa's landscape to be beautiful. I find the dark forest to be my brightest place and the inescapable sun of iowa brings more darkness. i am not miserable here. my friend lent me his bike and riding it is super sick. also i have friends and they are super sick. also i am now one of the 100 highest rated magic the gathering players in los angeles county. i am shipping my computer home as soon as my new cell phone arrives so i can start living in iowa. leave me your phone numbers! mine will stay the same.

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 03:15:35 GMT

i am a people person, i am a people person! i love you so much more than i can love you year-round. love of myself and love of everyone else are separated in this terrible life. i can love myself more easily when i can love other people with my real hands, in the world; what good is a hug lover in ames? so i'm a city boy. i like black and white pictures of colorful life. i miss you.

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:53:53 GMT

I am not really enjoying myself. Hopefully everything will change when I get a bike. Also I decided to mail my computer back home since it's such a distraction and I could be doing so much useful, productive, creative shit but instead I'm watching movies and wasting time on the internet. Give me your address so I can send you a postcard when I feel good!!!! my address is 3325 frederiksen court, ames, ia 50010. i hope your summers are all completely absolutely the best ever.

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 06:45:56 GMT

so here i am in ames, iowa. today was my first day of work. i woke up at 6:15 iowa time, 4:15 PST, for no reason, played music, got oriented, met everyone, met my professor, listened to him talk, ate very veg-unfriendly and life-unfriendly iowa dining hall food, figured out some places i want to go this week in ames, geeked out with my "colleagues", walked around, realized that i had smelled at least ten smells already today that were completely new to me and wholly unidentifiable, met with my professor again, went to the library and walked around, got some DVDs from the library, found the iowa state university national swine research center, saw that they have "meat lab sales" wednesdays and saturdays from 11am to 1pm and accept walk-ins and preorders, locked myself out of my room, went and played in a magic: the gathering tournament for the first time in six years and won, smelled some more elusive odors and decided they all feel like gross food, talked to my parents, called the authorities to let me in to my room, found my key, and realized that i've only been here two days and it feels like a week and i'm going to be here for eight full fucking weeks which is twenty-eight times longer than i have already been here. i can't imagine getting used to ames. in california differences among people are celebrated. here they are not. nobody is really interesting in the way californians are. when i try to crack a joke people don't even know that i'm trying to be funny. and i'm going to be living with them for eight weeks. i hope i don't get used to everyone here in the same way that i normally adapt to places. whatever. fuck everyone, or don't. i wore my great job visor today.

an update because now i want to write

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:03:42 GMT

I take solace in knowing that I can always write for free, since the paper is an ocean. I don’t think I am in love right now, but today I played music all day long. I skipped one and a half classes and it felt right. I am not sure if I will feel the same way when I wake up. I have programs to write and things to think about, but exploration is not about thinking. If one had tried to explain this to me before college, I would not have understood at all. I recently came up with an idea that people stop changing because they stay in one spot. In the same area with the same people and the same feeling.

I was so happy with playing music today, and how it sounded. I had the best jam session I have ever had by myself and made some sounds and got an idea for a psychedelic guitar riff and played it up there for at least thirty minutes while I endured school and walked home but I don’t understand how to make the guitar sound to make it feel like the 60s. I don’t see myself ever really needing more guitar pedals except maybe a phaser. But I don’t think I need one for a while. This weekend I got a synth wah pedal and a fucking sick tremolo pedal and those will set me for a while. There is just so much rad music shit out there to trade money for. I don’t need them but they are fun to use. Sean and I jammed on guitars and drums today…that is, one jam of us on guitars and Laura on drums, one jam of Sean on guitar and me on drums, one jam of Sean on drums and me on guitar. Playing actual guitar into guitar pedals is fucking sick. We decided to live together again today and I’m pretty stoked. We’re going to aim for a Cloyne double with two rooms, put both beds in the same room, and turn the back room into a music room. I’m fucking stoked. And speaking of stoked, my dad is getting me a bike as an early birthday gift, and I’m going to take it to Iowa with me this summer to explore. Laura showed me a band today that’s going to play in Ames while I’m there. It’s really good pop music: www.myspace.com/frenchquartermusic. Campfire show in SC this Friday with good friends and possibly next Tuesday in Oakland with stag hare with new friends.

Also, yesterday I talked with ryan swanson for a long time about travel. He’s gotten to do a lot. He went to Argentina and Mexico for a really long time and he’s going to China for a year next year. I really want to go to finland. On Sunday I spent at least two hours using the internet to seriously consider moving there for a while. I may travel there but I do not think I will live there unless my mind changes some more, which it will tomorrow, so maybe I will live there tomorrow. I know that you all are well and don’t finish

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 10:27:38 GMT

people take existence so seriously in berkeley. that isn't to say that it's a bad thing, because they tend to get a lot of shit done. but why is santa cruz so much nicer? it's because they in santa cruz live life day to day not searching for happiness for themselves, but reveling in the certainty that happiness is always with them. they do not put off happiness until later, until after college when they have gotten their As and start trying to live in the real cold world. what if everyone lived like i have the past two and a half years? the western world would move slower. and what's so wrong with that? we move too quickly anyway. westerners have trouble releasing themselves, connecting with others in the world, connecting with the world itself, and it's because we are caught up in our own seriousness, working to feed future families, overachieving to please our perhaps-dead parents, rushing to bed after drowning in long oceans of days; it leaves us so blind. any of you that have meditated know that we do not need to be entertained. multitasking makes it harder to slow ourselves down when we need to, to notice the beauty in each cell and speck of the vast world we live in. why didn't they tell us as kids that everything we were being told was probably bullshit?

i wonder what the future will be like. i want to be cryogenically frozen and thawed in three hundred years. what will our patterns of culture be like then? how will our economy work? what will we know then to be true that we are skeptical of now? what will we know then that we could never imagine now? i wonder the same thing about the ancient past, when the population of the world was a size such that we did not sell our days into oblivion. imagine a world that releases its pressure on you to buy, admire, think, do, where we all find our passions and harmonize. will the future ever be like this, or will the fears of the world win out before we can get there? i want to be optimistic. take me away from the city where i can yell and spasm and love and not think about all the other times others have loved or said they have loved. i don't care!!! santa cruz has birthed me but this semester berkeley is smothering me in doubt. i have lost my way back to the smooth land, where i can roll along and know my position and throw away all cares of my momentum. how can i feel that the way the world turns is so unrealistic? what has conditioned me so?

i don't understand happiness right now, man. i have just lost my way. i have had anxiety problems my whole life. after high school i just forgot i had them. i suppose i found them again this semester, which of course doesn't make any sense. so much is different that i can't point to one thing to say that it caused the change. it wasn't berkeley itself. there were a few weeks in october last semester where each day was one of the best days i have lived. i live somewhere else physically. and miguel and joey and alan and chris are gone. i do not engage in social activity outside my own house except shows. i play more music myself. i don't really smoke weed. i spend most of my social time with one close friend. i have lots more schoolwork and obligation this semester than i have had since high school. i feel single and i think single, and i think about thinking single, and how much i hate it. i hate having crushes on girls. i have spent so much time dealing with the world that i have forgotten how best to deal with myself. this is a problem. i want summertime and i want to be far away from everything i know.

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 02:37:25 GMT

Make me a mix CD. Make yourself a mix. Make your mom a mix. Make your dog or your cat a mix. Make your imaginary friend from when you were little a mix. Make your favorite stuffed animal a mix. Make your favorite drug(s) a mix. Make your favorite place a mix. Make a place you've never been a mix. Make a place you think is okay a mix. Make a place you don't think about a mix. Make your favorite band a mix. Make your dream girl/boy a mix. Make a mix for your favorite fruit. Make a mix for a phrase that you just read or just popped into your brain. Make a mix for how you feel right now at this moment. Or better yet, make a song right now for any of these things or anything else you can think of. And post them here so I can see them or listen to them!

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:18:24 GMT

hello everyone,

today i went to a guided meditation to discover my spirit animal. it was buried inside a two-hour lecture, which was very interesting and smelled really nice. the shaman at the head told a story of her friend protecting a coyote from park rangers. when she explained how she was going to lead us through the meditation, i instantly saw a red coyote. i could not tell if it was a fox or a coyote.

when we were led through the meditation, i knew i was predisposed to seeing a coyote, so i tried to be open to many animals. after finally crawling out of my cave in the earth, i looked around and saw no animal. then the coyote appeared instantly. it was pretty small. it was the same coyote i had seen. i asked if it was a fox or a coyote, and it told me it was a red coyote. i spoke with it for a while, saying that i wasn't sure if it was my spirit animal because of the story told soon before that put coyotes on my mind. it asked me if i needed anything to convince me, but i couldn't think of anything. it was patient and understanding. i felt comfortable around it, but i was still not convinced that my spirit animal was really a red coyote. however, i felt that i would become more comfortable with the coyote as time passed. just as i disappeared into the cave, i saw that the coyote had two or three tails.

i later found a picture of my spirit animal on the internet. it was a fox. vulpis vulpis. it had tricked me, but i am not sure what that means. i will try to go back to find my spirit animal soon, be it a fox or otherwise. sean's spirit animal is a panda, which i think fits very well. he has a beautiful, vivid story about his meditation.

i also have silly news. on saturday my 148-resident housing co-op is using the central office's money to hold a weed smoking competition. i would say that nothing more needs to be said, but it just so happens that this is not the case. the competition will be held in teams of two, which, as suggested by joey, should absolutely wear matching outfits. the contest will be based around a six-foot glass bong. one team member will light the bowl, which contains as much weed as the competitors are willing to take on, while the other milks the bong like a motherfucking holstein. the second competitor then clears the bong and passes out instantaneously and is carried to their room by the rodeo clowns. everything cooked in the kitchen that day will have weed in it. in other words, "college"

love,
mose

p.s. we are still trying to set up a pacific tour; does anyone know of places we can play in LA, SC, and/or SF?

everything is different

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:57:32 GMT

all is well. i decided to spend my money on a sampler and delay pedal. my friend sean and i are a band with two songs and lots of tape recordings of jam sessions. the songs are unrecorded and the best jams are yet undigitized, but they will be here eventually: www.myspace.com/campfirethemusic . we are trying to put together a pacific tour for this winter! we want to begin in san diego and end as far north as possible so if you can put us up or find us a place to play we would be so grateful!!!

and i took acid a few weeks ago with sean and our friend and occasional bandmate sebastian. we had an amazing time and saw 1290837 dogs and drew pictures. i've been stoked about drawing pictures since then.

since moving to berkeley, i have changed a lot of habits and old patterns of thinking and i'm very happy here. i do math when i feel like it. i love cloyne and co-op life. i'm still really bad at girls, though.

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:14:13 GMT

the past two weeks have been probably the most amazing two weeks of my entire life, maybe even each day individually. today was definitely one of the most amazing days i have experienced. it's very, VERY rare that i am completely speechless, and tonight i was. the first part of the day was incredibly stressful and we were just rushing and crazy and then blackblack showed up and everything became so amazing. we played a show in the forest in berkeley and so many people were there and ate our cookies and it was so great. then blackblack played and everything was pure love. they are all so wonderful. we found a great show spot and got an awesome tape recording of the whole show. i don't have any idea how shingle shack and the elephant memories sounded but i will tomorrow when i hear the recording. and so many people stayed to help break down the show afterwards and everyone was just super down. then we went to san francisco state to see them again and i ended up seeing so so so so many people i knew! it was magic! and then cody and sean and sebastian and myself had a really cool very short jam session on like, a bass drum, a microphone, a little tom, and the rim of something, or something, which was really great and frederick of blackblack said he thought it sounded like hey light. we gave him a ride to his girlfriend's house in oakland and talked about how animal collective is the favorite band of all of sean, him, and me, and we had the favorite shows conversation, which i've had like five times this week. everyone was wonderful today and i had a brilliant day and maggie was absolutely the hero of the whole day. stephen was also a hero.

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:18:16 GMT

I live in Berkeley now. It's a very intense place. I like it because a lot happens here. I am always doing something; I earn my weekends. I do math all the time. Also, I just got an ipod. My first ever. It's fucking awesome. I saw My Bloody Valentine last night. It might have been the greatest experience of my entire life to date. I think I ejaculated in my pants at one point. Or two. The excellent is that I'm not making that up. And that whole night really happened. It seemed like a dream even as it was happening in front of my body. As some of you may know, I am super into "noise babes," as miguel calls them, and I have found some, the permanent queen of which is Bilinda Butcher:

and lately there have been so much noise and some noise babes too, and life is so great.

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 07:56:25 GMT

I got a $100 amazon gift certificate for my birthday a month or two ago. Should I pay another $200 for an ipod with a case? Should I? My main concern is losing it. Maybe I'll just sew it into my pants.

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:23:31 GMT

it's so hot here, even at 2:20am. can we please leave south california, PLEASE. if we turn the state on its head it will make more sense. at least i have been watching upwards of ten movies every week.

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:17:30 GMT

today is my last day as a teenager. tomorrow i turn 20. i still feel like a kid. i always have. i don't know if it will ever go away. but then i remember, who says it has to? I have inevitably grown out of a lot of my childish habits, but there is nothing wrong with having fun like a little kid does. So I'll set out not to lose it. Today I'm going to strap fireworks to army men.

"make the world your girlfriend"

My biggest regrets (living entry)

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:17:23 GMT

Regret: Not taking AP Literature
Reason/Presumption: I think it's cool to be able to decipher representations such as those found in books, and my capacity to make those connections is underdeveloped as a result of not taking this class. I understand how the literary-minded think, connections bridging between one object and another, one word and another, one abstract feeling and another.
Resolution: Come on, you were in AP English and you decided that you didn't want to do it. It doesn't matter what would have happened had you stayed on, because you felt strongly enough at that moment to get out of there. And you have never been afraid of challenges. You must have been definitively overwhelmed. This is a non-issue. Next.

Regret: Not telling my parents enough that I love them
Resolution: This is my greatest regret. I never got in the habit of saying "I love you" to my family, so I find it difficult to start now. I have no idea how silly or pathetic that sounds because I haven't ever known any alternative. I do love my family. The key to this resolution is that they know it. Even though they would like to hear me say it every now and again and they think it would be nice if I did, they already know I love them. So don't beat yourself up over it.

Regret: Wasting time playing games and smoking weed
Resolution: There is nothing you can do about past time wasted. However, even with that, you made a conscious decision based on what you wanted to do. It may have led to regret later, but the outcome of the choice was what was supposed to happen, in every sense of the phrase. You were happy then. In life, one can pursue their own happiness or they can help others in their own pursuit. The key is balance. Some people never find it. You're doing very well.

Regret: Regretting things
Resolution: Shut the fuck up

Steal me from L.A. please, I want to go back to northern California.

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 04:18:27 GMT

animal collective is the best god ever man. the best.

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:31:41 GMT

i made a noisy uncut album called "Games"

http://www.sendspace.com/file/xkncqm

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 09:02:29 GMT

Miguel and I played ricochet robots downtown. Friday I left for Berkeley around 6 pm after doing nothing all day. I brought my bike. The 17 bus arrived two minutes after the bus for Fremont left, so I was stuck in San Jose for an hour waiting. Eventually the bus came and I rode Bart to Berkeley. There was hardly anybody on it, but this girl got on around the middle of the trip. As I got off, I was like, hmm, I'm never going to see that girl again.

I arrived in Berkeley around 9:30 or 10. I rode my bike less than a block to Matt's place to unexpectedly find Devon and Alix waiting outside the fucking door. We had no idea we would be seeing each other there. Matt didn't either because I didn't tell him. I gave him a CD of noise that I have found and made. I guess it is an album. Matt was having a small 4th of July party; we hung around and Alix convinced me to smoke, so I had the tiniest bit, and the floodgates to ridiculousness blew open. I received a MMS message on my phone. I had no idea who it was from, but I figured phones couldn't get viruses so I downloaded it. It was tons of pictures of naked girls, from Joey. What the hell year is this when naked girls appear on people's telephones? I guess his phone got a virus. Maybe mine does too, now. This is the type of thing that ONLY happens when you are stoned.

I left Matt's and I found out that Oren was living with his friend Mikey in a fraternity. So I would be staying in a frat house for the weekend. I dropped off my bike and we went to a party at some other fraternity. It was a huge house. The first person I saw was this kid Michael that I had a class with in Santa Cruz. After the class had finished, a group of us smoked weed and then me, Michael, and this other kid Andrew climbed tree 9 (~200ft. tree). I hadn't seen him since. I was tripped out enough at this point. Next I saw two of the girls that I had just met at Matt's house a few hours before. I had no idea they would be there. Then I saw a girl that I had met once, through an obscure friend, over three years ago. Hadn't seen her since. We recognized each other. I was very tripped out. And then, of course, who should come up to me and introduce herself but the girl from the BART, who recognized me from earlier. She was with a tall guy visiting from Ireland. Of all the places she could have been going, of all the times she could have been riding BART, of all the cars on BART she could have gone into, of all the things to do in Berkeley, of all the frat parties in Berkeley, of all the ways we could have avoided each other while we were both at this particular party, the universe decided that it desperately needed to tell me something.

I staggered, bleary-eyed, brain popping, outside to find Oren. He was talking with three other girls that were visiting from Ireland. I figured they must have been friends with the other Irish guy. Listening to them talk with their accents was very entertaining. After leaving the party, we decided to go to Top Dog but Oren and I took a wrong turn. It was frat row so tons of people were walking around (12:30am or so). We met fifteenish people on that one block. About thirteen were Irish, and in groups of two or three. None of the groups knew each other. In fact, one of the Irish girls is working at the same water park in Concord, CA as the first Irish girl I had met that night, and they had never met each other. By this time, I'm screaming bat blood insane, trying to figure out why there were so many fucking Irish people walking around Berkeley, but all they said was that they had vacation, that America was an easy place to vacation to, that "Berkeley's where it's at." They could have some of them gone to another country or another state or another city or even some other block of the exact same street that I was walking on with Oren, but no. The universe was screaming wordless at me on Friday night. I went to sleep after washing cracked desert sweat off me.

Saturday we got drunk during the day and played music for a few hours. I realized that two of my old friends from Hebrew school happened to live in the same fraternity as Oren and Mikey. Of course, we recognized each other when I found their room. Just another coincidence to throw on the pile. We then went to San Francisco to hang out with Adam, who's great. We had the best coffee I have ever had (fucking hate coffee) and walked around. We found ourselves in a cafe, where they were playing Ariel Pink. New favorite cafe, surely. Adam paid $7 for a loaf of bread. We came back and went to yet another party. At this point I would like to assert that Berkeleyites are out of their minds. Fraternity folk are out of their minds. I will not elaborate here. Inquire within (city limits). I left the party staggeringly drunk after forgetting somebody's name and walked back to the house, where I was convinced to play drums loudly until 1:30am. No cops showed up. My brain was flashing color gem lights so I turned it off at this point.

And then today I hung out with my grandparents all day in peaceful Walnut Creek. We had brunch at their house, walked around their Rossmoor community, played Scrabble, looked at many photos of me and my whole family in younger times, and ate an early dinner.

My bus misfortune doubled on the way down. The bus from Fremont arrived four minutes late and I had to wait two hours for the next one. It was almost five hours from the time I left Lafayette BART until the time I got to my house. And the weekend dragged to a c l o s e.

UCSC

Sat, 03 May 2008 09:03:49 GMT

Dear friends,

Some of you might know that I applied to transfer to UC Berkeley for the upcoming school year. It is with mixed feelings that I relay the news that I was accepted. Rather, it is with bittersweet saliva that I relay the news that I will be accepting their offer of admission. I can’t leave Santa Cruz without fully explaining everything firing and sparking in the dome.

I don’t want this letter to sound like I’m being pompous in any way, like I feel I’m so important that I have to write a letter to everyone. I (would like to) think at least some of you want to know why I’m peacing, and I feel that it would be unfair of me not to fully explain myself.

There are a few prominent reasons I have decided to leave all the green, comfortable beauty of Santa Cruz for the gray streets of Berkeley. First and most trivially is the number of classes at UC Berkeley. Shit, they have 3,000 classes to choose from. I can learn anything I want to learn.

Secondly, Berkeley’s math department is second, in our country, only to Princeton. I am a math major, and I intend to go to grad school, do postdoctoral study, and eventually become a math professor. Of course, I could still do all of this if I were to stay at UCSC, but what draws me to Berkeley is that, with a B.A. from there, I will presumably have more freedom of choice in graduate school and therefore more choice in where I may get a professorship. I don’t want to teach at a prestigious university. I just want to have an adequate amount of choice in where I will get to teach later. A greater freedom in choice of job is worth (slightly) more in the long run than an extra two years at UCSC, and there are very, very few things that I would choose over spending the next two years here with you.

A third reason I am leaving for UC Berkeley is because I feel that I am growing too comfortable here. I want to test the waters outside our pillow weed city, the world of spikes and businessmen. I never want to stop challenging myself. Going to Berkeley itself, that is, the city and not the university, will be a challenge in itself, perhaps greater than the challenge of shifting from UCSC to Cal. Many of you have been to Berkeley. I don’t need to tell you how different it is from Santa Cruz. I want to make sure that I can still work a place in an urban society, not so I will later in life, necessarily. Just so I can. I worry that Santa Cruz is far too unique for me to be able to apply the lessons I have learned here in whatever town I may reside.

At this point in my life, Santa Cruz is the best place I can imagine living. The vibe in Santa Cruz encourages one to live out their instinct and innermost identity as fully as possible. No matter how crazy that instinct may seem. Everyone else is just as weird. This power of Santa Cruz is awesome enough considering the effect it has had on my own personal identity (and how I can “express” it, for lack of a better word), but this infinitely comfortable pervading vibe leads to tons of truly unique, irreplaceable people, blasting their own identity however loudly they fucking feel like. I love so many things about the people in general here, let alone those that I call my friends. By far the strongest weight pulling to keep me in SC is the friends I love that I won’t get to see every day.

So what I most want to stress with this open letter is that it is not a goodbye or a parting of paths. You’d better believe I’m going to come down here every fucking time I have a free weekend. I can’t imagine that I would miss you any less than that. There are volumes I could fill with my admiration for each of you. I’m in the process of trying. Seriously, I am.

I have no idea how things are going to work out in Berkeley, but I am absolutely certain that the relationships I will have with people there will be far, far different from those I have here. These past two years have easily been the best years of my life thanks to all of you (and, to a much lesser extent, the forest). It’s cliché, but I will not ever forget you.

I really hope some of you end up staying together after graduating, that is, moving en masse to some rad place that I can live, too, because sharing lives with all of you breeds paradise. I’m gonna miss the fucking burritos, too. The burritos suck in Berkeley.

Love,
Mose