I was given the advice that if I wanted to, I could own a house in Pennsylvania. They come for less than $40,000, which would be, if I were actually gainfully employed, about two-thirds of my yearly salary, which is a conservative estimate based on my resume.

I told him that the reason that house is so cheap is simply due to the basic law of supply and demand: Nobody the fuck wants to live in the middle of nowhere.

Unless that place is named 8 Sophomore Lane, where I live now, in that middle of nowhere called Stony Brook.

There was a time when this house of mine filled me with an insane joy and boisterous pride. I would brag to people how much fun it was to live with Harold and Kumar and Upepo and MFJ and the gang and how we would have random wrestling tournaments and midnight barbecues and truth-or-dare games and binge drinking for no other reason but that we are awake.

I live here now, of course, because I'm writing a book, not working, and so, not making money, and need someplace cheap.

There was a time when I thought of this as a bargain, but more and more as I walk home and make noise and scream there is no Upepo to bounce down the stairs to greet me and no MFJ to poke and no Vampiro to make fun of.

There are only the white walls of my imagination and a vague reality that the book will never be done.

I wake up in the middle of the night to correct a stylistic apostrophe. I memorize and recount backwards every reference I've made to apples. I write the first thirty digits of pi over and over and over again. I play with Milton's opening line – of man's first disobedience and the fruit – and try to find a place to put it.

I wonder if two intros are enough. I obsess if five endings are enough.

I write esoteric questions that I don't even understand an hour later.

Then I answer them.

And I don't understand the answers either.

I scribble on notepads then I trace the scribbling over and over again.

But I will not move to Pennsylvania and I will not move out of Stony Brook – I will finish this book or you will pry my pen from my cold dead fingers.

I have not been complaining about my life, I have been expressing which is my life.