I drive to the nearest city. It took a few hours to get there, a few granola bars, and a gas price that I don’t want to acknowledge. Spaden, an artist’s city. So the price of living and the homeless population is booming. 

The streets are art show after art show, with colorful murals. One of them looked like Scooby Doo blooming from a flower. I took a lot of pictures because it did look nice. Another mural of a knight getting abducted. A statue of Kermit riding a bicycle. Chalk art of a tea party of snakes. 

I get a little cactus from a street vendor, just because they looked sort of desperate and it only cost a few dollars. The pot resembled a hollowed-out rubber ducky, felt like it too. I think a cactus is the perfect plant to take care of but I have underwatered cactus before. I’ll probably give it to a friend. 

Out of all the museums and art shows, the one that just said “ARSON ART” on the front of the building drew me in. It was free to enter too. Apparently, Spaden had a huge fire back in the 80s and an apartment complex burnt down. The entire museum is the remnants of that fire. There are half-burned baby clothes. Ash-ridden paintings. A dozen stacks of molten and water-damaged books. A museum attendant talked to me about how everything they got was in the consent of the residents. Nobody lost their lives but plenty got injured and all of them lost a home. The funds from the gift shop–of course they had one–would go to helping the homeless crisis. A non-profit. 

I poked around the gift shop. A lot of candles, posters of burnt things, and plastic and metal replicas of them. I picked up the book about the fire. It goes over all the reasons why the fire took place, the poor conditions within it, and how it all ties into the current status quo of the world. I bought it and read it when I was waiting for a table at a restaurant nearby.

I had this unbreakable noodle thing, I don’t remember what it’s called. It’s Korean. It was a workout to eat. No matter how much I chewed, it just didn’t come apart. It tasted great but it was insane the amount of effort it took to eat it was. It didn’t help that it was slippery and the fork was awful at cutting it. Even with all the walking I did, I think that noodle dish is the most amount of exercise I had all day. 

I spent a lot of time resting in an outdoor plaza area. I mostly checked my social media and looked back on the images I snagged. When my boss emailed me about something, I put my phone in my pocket and went to find my car. 

I got a reservation at a motel earlier today so I drove around to find it, and then find where the parking was, and finally made it to a bed again. The mattress is stiff but I slept on the floor of my apartment before and that was much worse. I put the cactus on the nightstand and continue reading the fire book. The mafia was somehow involved.