well, phil. i have made my way most of the way around this puddly little residence of crackpots, war criminals, and vagrants. i am here on your precious little island and where the fuck are you? so much for the grand plan of walking on to your beach and acting as if nothing much special had happened.

i write by way of a stolen handheld and the stray signal from one of these hotels. running no doubt some of the software i wrote back when we all planned for the glorious future. i have walked around this piss-for-blood town wondering how you managed to survive here. i can find no spiritual trace of your existence (if such a thing exists and i can in fact as i imagine smell it) but the truth is you have surely spread it all over by now, in every cafe and bar. no doubt fought outside of most of them and fucked every kind of woman this planet has manufactured in back.

they are all here; the women I mean. every language, richer and poorer than I imagined for this place. all in the paroxysms of romanticism run through with the usual cold steel pins and knives of desire; this monstrous desperation of our sexually repressed age. this i can imagine driving you nuts with both desire and hatred: were you in search of a personal hell for yourself?

a complete lack of books here. in general there are more english books scattered around the globe than roman jissom: empire of thought. but finding good books is another thing altogether and i will not tell you what kind of trash i have bought, borrowed, stolen, and traded, in the hopes of finding something for the long spaces in my travels. but there is nothing here: these people want to be as empty of thought as monkeys.

for all these reasons i think i will only stay here for a week. i lost nothing by coming this way – that i have not lost already – but it is a shame not to see you and i confess that i had designs in which we continued these worthless travels together. write soon, or find me in the usual way. i have considered blowing up the town to see if you can see that smoke signal.