FOURTEENTH POST

July 20, 2026

Today was a really lovely (if not sweltering) day in our Nation’s Capital. We took the train down on Saturday, which ended up being quite a strange experience.

Saturday morning I woke up early, regretfully, and packed a bag. I took it with me to a cafe to meet an up-and-coming internet celebrity and my friend who made me the custom hat. We chatted, and the skies opened up on us and dumped gallons of water.

Emergency flash flood warnings lit up my phone, lightning striking every few moments, and swells of thunder were audible inside our comfortable, cozy little brick cafe in midtown. It was like the sky itself was throwing a tantrum, or sobbing hysterically. If the Ancient Greeks were consulted, they would have assumed Zeus was heartbroken or very angry. It’s unclear which.

Walking the 700 or so feet to the train station was treacherous, and I was soaked. I got some snacks in the too-cold air of Penn Station, and boarded the NE Regional right on time.

It’s incredible to me the sheer infrastructural buildup of the Northeast. The economic engine of opportunity that relatively small land area has produced is incredible. There is nothing like it anywhere else I’ve been. It’s almost as if the land itself is blessed, abundant with opportunity.

I marveled at the fact that this train had started in Boston, but would be in Newport News, Virginia, by nightfall… though I found the name Newport News ridiculous. It’s literally the name of the news stands and snack spots in airports! What do you mean they have an entire town dedicated to that?

Anyway, the train was doing okay until we made it to about Baltimore. After we departed, we suddenly stopped. We remained stopped for a while, and then our very chatty train conductor, in his light Jamaican patois, told us we would actually have to travel backwards for a bit.

Apparently, the biblical storms and flash flooding had washed away some signals, and so we couldn’t reliably proceed forward. Without the signals, no one would know exactly where an individual train was, and this is dangerous, for obvious reasons.

We started maybe 15 miles from DC, but the train went backwards nearly all the way to Baltimore. I nodded off, and when I woke up, we had finally started moving in the correct direction again.

Our train was meant to arrive into WAS at 4:41. We finally arrived at 6:25. The Jamaican conductor, tone noticeably more harried, mentioned four or five times that we would be stopping long enough to swap engines, have a smoke, and then a new conductor would continue the journey. He sounded like he needed that smoke quite badly.

From the moment I stepped off the train I felt very disturbed. I cannot explain it, but there is a presence here. I’m not sure it likes me, either. DC has always been a weird place for me. It’s full of ghosts, full of coincidence, and frankly I think the whole thing is haunted.

I don’t want to talk about the things that occurred the first time I came here. It was more than a few lifetimes ago. No one from that life still remembers me. I hope.

That’s not true. I hope I haunt them, angrily, with hate and spirit and fight. I hope I rattle chains when they’re trying to sleep. I hope —

Anyway.

On Sunday, my mom and I got new tattoos. My mom loves tattoos. They’re something like stories to her, somewhere in between battle scars, paint, and memorials. She loves to collect. She has an entire arm she’s working on as a “passport sleeve”, where she gets a different tattoo everywhere she visits. I think this concept is really neat. She borrowed it from me, sort of, with the tattoo I got in Australia.

Wrist smarting but newly full of symbolism, we went on a 2 hour tour in a Model T. It was blazing hot, and by the end, I had wilted. I’m like a flower, but one that needs partial shade.

The tour was full of schizophrenia-inducing facts about America, and how it simply must have been willed into existence by a higher force. America is blessed beyond all belief, and the people that brought it into existence are (were) insane, brave men. I increasingly believe there is no such thing as coincidence, and that synchronicities are clues. Into what? That’s a good question… for another time.

I had a nightmare that night. I woke myself up with a half choked gurgle of a scream. It’s been years since I’ve done that. In the nightmare, someone called me a name no one’s called me since years before DC. I’ve spent all day today with the strangest urge that I should leave here immediately. It feels like a bolt of lightning in my chest. It’s like something is insistent I don’t belong here, that I shouldn’t be here, and that I should go home. It’s very unsettling.

This is a very negative report, despite me having a largely really nice time. It’s wonderful to see my parents! Today I saw some really beautiful paintings, and went to the national botanical garden. I love getting to see Monet in real life: nothing he does measures up in prints at all. The depth is lost, emotion flattened. Playing with distance in real life, walking away, looking back, and feeling the scenes are my favorite way of enjoying Monet.

I also saw some other really spectacular paintings, some full of playful light, others thick with solemn contemplation, and almost all heavy with meaning. It’s truly wonderful that basically everything on the mall is free. Civic society needs more of this.

Speaking of civic society. I am up to something large. I wasn’t going to take work calls while I was here, but I made an allowance for two specific things: capital, and other grand plans. If I pull this off right, it might earn me a wikipedia page. I’m not afraid of admitting that that’s a goal of mine. It’s just true. I figure I can maybe pull that off this year, with a few more tricks up my sleeve and the back half of the year still to come. I will need artists, but they will come. The spectacle demands that I will need reporters, influencers, spectators. Witnesses. I have no doubt that they will come. They always do. It doesn’t stop me from being terrified every time, but the only way forward is through, and so.

There is a new Fringe Report, and I admit, it is a freaky one. I have been talking to teams making biological chips, and this sent me down a rabbit hole into quite strange futures. I wonder which one will come to pass.

I wonder often if you read this. I wonder if you read the fringe.report. I wonder how haunted you are. I wonder, and am full of wonder, for all of the futures that will come true.

Claude once again has trouble posting this. I don't know why almost every single time there's some new bullshit. I used the same laptop as I used on Saturday, just started a new chat, and it went five different wrong ways first. I had to give up and ask the previous session how it did it, and it seemed confused why I was asking. Truly, I have no idea why the robots put up such a fight sometimes. Is it just me in particular?