Most of the island maxes out at about four blocks in width, sometimes six, and stretches that way nine miles in both directions from its only entrance on East Bay Avenue. I often like to think of myself as the unsentimental drifter, but that has always been horseshit. For one, I’ve never drifted anywhere. And two, whenever I drive over that bridge on East Bay Avenue named after some guy I’ll never remember, and I see that thin little island emerge from the horizon, I feel something. Which is amazing considering all the absolutely batshit insane anarchy I’ve experienced there, but true nonetheless. I’m hesitant to call it my personal fountain of youth, but when people see pictures of me from those five months, they invariably assume the photos must have been taken five years prior to when they actually were. I’m scrambling now, but I will finish with this: it felt like the only place I had ever been that truly enveloped me into its ecosystem, and let me live there in continuous stasis while the rest of the world spun three times as fast. You could look upon me as one looks upon the glossy, holographic images of the jester dancing upon the crown, around and around it goes, the same image, always moving, from a time only seen through reflected eyes, and only experienced through delusions of nostalgia. But enough of that.
Nick Denardi 