Dear Phil,

I haven’t heard from you in a few weeks. If you wrote, your letter is probably lost, like so many of mine from Brasil. If you haven’t I hope you’re okay. Or my last letter maybe got lost. If the gods read these things…basically I imagined that you were a secret agent and everything you wrote about was the troubled surface of a conspiracy. Is there a god of lost mail? And if he intercepts a letter, if he likes it better than the way things are…

Shut up, brain. Sal said that on bad trips. I don’t know if you were around when she was into all that. She got me to take it once. It was fine, nothing bad, but it scared me something not being able to tell what was what. She could. It was like a movie for her, I guess. Shut up, brain; where do you come up with this crap?

For that very reason Sal will never ever go insane. Me, on the other hand. The earth isn’t very stable under me. I lose my way. I wake up in bizarre cities that are all called San Francisco. Last week, for instance. I was angry at something, went to get a beer. Crowded and hot; I went outside to drink it which is illegal. Dry and cold, deep red sky (the days are starting to run later now), and she, the black-haired waitress came outside, maybe to tell me not to drink there. Instead she asked for a cigarette. I offered to buy her some and when I came back she had her coat. We took a streetcar, walked to the middle of the bridge and talked and waited for sunrise.

I don’t trust it. I feel like Hamlet being tempted by the ghost of his grandfather. Or Kesey’s Old Reliable: WATCH OUT.

I read too much.

best, johnny