There is always a point after any traumatic event– and when it occurs depends on the kind of event and its length– when you realize that the tension has eased; that it, like all things, has faded into the tapestry of your past. The fading can not be faked, nor can it be be forced. One must stick with the game until its end. Eventually you forget the general shape of people’s faces and the tone of their voices. They become strange memories. Homeric shades. You used to fuck her but now you don’t. He used to be your friend but now you can’t even remember his name. You can’t even recall El Paso, honey. This is neither the end of the world nor its beginning.

By the time that I left New York in 2006, I was sick enough to die. California has been, as is its long tradition, just this: a blissed out crash landing and small oblivion of sunshine and subdued misery. (There are many fine novels on this topic. Your friends can probably recommend several.)

My reoccurring problem in life is that I am infinitely cheerful; there is nothing that can throw me off my baseline of persistent amusement. All personal, and impersonal, tragedies are minimized as they become part of the laughing jag. Usually at my own peril. I had split NYC at the end of August 06. It took roughly a year to recover; it took the full two years to recognize that I had been suffering someone else’s disease.

Thinking back, one feels the passage of, literally, ten years. Hard to conceive, but exactly two years ago today, I hadn’t even exiled. It was a long time ago.

So. This is what you learn and what happens, in rough chronological order, when you return on the two year anniversary of your departure:

1. That you still really, really, really, really, really like New York. Even though everything you once loved has been destroyed and washed away and the West Village has chased out the queers and replaced them with the worst people on the planet. Even though the East Village is unrecognizable. Even though Brooklyn continues to bug the hell out of you. Even though dudes from DC carouse the LES. This may not seem a big thing, but I assure you that it is: three months ago, I remained convinced that hating New York was the reason I had taken leave.

2. Pretty much everyone that you know is insane. Not kinda crazy, not weird, but very possibly bonkers. Probably a side effect of aging and entering the grey zone of the 30s. This is not your problem: you know who you are, what you want and vaguely how to get it. You were crazy ten years ago. Then you got better.

3. Running into ex-girlfriends on the subway when they don’t recognize you is infinitely preferable to hanging out with them.

4. You will violate a long-standing rule and go to Pete, His Confectionery Shoppe in Williamsburg; it will be full of ridiculously attractive Christians. You will walk down Lorimer towards a party comprised of boring, unattractive hipsters. On the way, you will meet a 37 year old Irish-American drunkard and cokehead named Dennis. For twenty minutes, your pal Jason Tallon will talk to him about mobsters and organized crime; Dennis will give you the unwanted affection of masculine bonding. Naturally, you bring him to the loft party, where he spends about four hours intermittently hugging and kissing you. Somewhere in here, Dennis makes you feel his muscles; this signals to a girl from Sharon, Mass that she should come over and condescend. She regrets it. Later, back on the roof, you will give Dennis substance-abuse counseling and $20. You will beg him to not go spend it in the Marcy Projects. He promises he won’t. You know that he will anyway. Jason Tallon thoroughly disapproves, questioning your moral compass. Not all of us ride with the Good Book. You realize, yet again, that you really are the son of an alcoholic.

5. BookWorks of London has rejected your proposal for the Semina series that they’re doing with Stewart Home, a guy who has said very nice things about you in public. You got all the way to runner-up with your crazy Saddam Hussein psychedelic odyssey that you churned out in 5 hours before the deadline, but you didn’t make the cut. An Iranian guy beat you. You will wonder, for a few seconds, if being half-Turkish is not as good as being Iranian but then you decide, no, being Turkish rules even if Iranian women are, basically, some of the hottest women on the planet. Accidental photographic confirmation will be a few days forthcoming:

6. Later, before an audience of twenty, you will read an heavily-edited excerpt from the Saddam Hussein psychedelic odyssey. You will enlist your pal Kaia Wong to bang out a drum beat of accompaniment. Your performance will cause an earnest frat troubadour, guitar self-consciously out-of-tune, to walk out, his mouth spitting with rage. He tells Fritz Donnelly that he had to leave or else he would have punched you. He describes your reading as both “gibberish” and “a diatribe.”

Vote change, bro.

This will be the most successful reading of your life, the first time that it ever feels real, and convince you that you’re doing fine. Later, people get naked.

7. You will watch artist and filmmaker Jason Tallon spend two weeks with a dog. There will be no specific lesson. It will look a lot like this:

8. After a month of intense ambiguity, you reconnect with your old chum, elly jonez. You meet on the steps of Union Square and have no idea how to interact. You manage thirty minutes before you’re making out in Washington Square. Soon you are doing disgusting things on the streets of West Village. Screw Iain Sinclair– this is the real psychogeography. It’s two days before you’re temporarily living together in Park Slope. You will not know the names of the people who rent the place. You will love their cat, whose name you will also not know. When you leave, you realize that you have finally, at long last, come to a point in your life where things are completely intense, not a little sleazy and totally beyond your limited understanding. If nothing else, this has taught new lessons about beauty and loss.

9. When you get back to LOS ANGELES, it feels, as it always does, like you’ve entered another world. You have forgotten, as you always do, who the hell you are. It’s a little split-personality. You discover that you’ve left the bathroom sink running three weeks. You avoid reading symbolism into this fact.

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BONUS: 10. Kanye West’s “Love Lockdown” is the best single of the last ten years, and True Blood is the awesomest trash ever.