London: The Many Lives of Travelers

It’s strange for me to look back and wonder how we’ve made it like this.  Because made it we have, maybe just barely, but still.  We’re back on the train from Harwick to London.  And it feels familiar to a comfort.  It’s almost the same, except we’re plus one now.  And that old couple musing on about the old days in England is nowhere to be found.  A part of me misses their tales of the old England team, and our jabs at the goal they let through playing the US.  The sun’s down now though, so it’s probably past their bed time.  His tweed hat and half-circle spectacles, her needlepoint on the train and the way she talked to us like our long-lost old English grandmother, I'll always remember them, even if it’s all so ancient now and in my memory with a sepia hue and cracked and frayed at the edges.  So long ago it seems, such a distant two months.  The longest, I think, that this young soul has flown through up until now.  My gray denim's worn through at the knee and left hand pocket where I put my iPhone.  There's a whole section of my bag packed stiff with stank-ass clothes begging to be washed.  Mine eyes are weighing heavy on my face, pulling down and darkening the puffs underneath, but they're still flitting about.

A dark countryside offers little satisfaction, but the cars are long and although our's isn't packed, not even close, it gives some solace, I suppose.  Those solemn eyes of mine, flitting about in their sockets, weary and restless follow all the lines in the place, the smooth window frames with rounded corners.  Those creases running the length of the car on the steel (maybe not steel, but certainly some train metal) ceiling.  The half-ellipses under Max and Grant and Mike's eyes.  All their headphone wires.   The handholds on the seats and hanging down from above.  The rubber-bordered aisle.  Down the aisle there's another traveler.  A lone vagabond with a heavy-looking pack like mine.  I think quick to talk to him, to hear his stories and tell him mine.  But he's too far down and my legs like sitting.  And LCD's Soundsystem is playing a slow song in my ear, like "Someone's Calling Me".  His pack speaks to me though, yelling from the seat next to his, covered in patches.  And thank God I've got good vision because, hell, I may never even have seen them.  There was a different one from each city, and the thing was covered.  A memorial.  A testament to his travels that everyone who gave him a thought could read.  So I read.  And maybe I not a good reader (I don't particularly like to) but it read like a poor man's tourist trip.  A boast of sewn appendages, like so many pictures smiling in front of things saying, "Hey, I've been here!"  And he'd been every which way and all across Europe.  For a second I wish I'd gotten some patches to remember it all by, but then I scoff to myself with a tired tut of a laugh.  What the hell am I going to do with patches?  Sew them to things?  To my bag?  Well first, I think patches are stupid (I liked them when I saw a kid and my parents took me to National Parks, but I was also a dorky nerd-face back then, and put stock into stupid things like patches and what people thought about me).  And second, I don't like sewing.  It's a thought worth a smile and close my eyes and try to find some sleep on this cradle-rocking ride to London.  I'm not searching long.  Sleep comes easy when you're smiling.

And then London is a late-night's dream.  It's a Burger King dinner at grand Liverpool station, nearly deserted at this hour.  It's a fare-thee-well to Mike as Max and Grant and I hop on the last train to Gatwick airport  (Mike's flying home out of Heathrow).  Our flight's not until 9:15 in the morning so we sleep in a manner we're somewhat used to by now, in a corner, on the hard, cold floor of tile or linoleum or whatever it is they spread out over second-hand international airports.  Nothing but bag-pillows, traveler's delirium, and some of that old familiar Cat Power and her jazzy, blue accompaniment crooning me away in my ears.  Dreams like these don't shatter until there's that feel of the old familiar about.  Homecoming.  Waiting by the curb as the sea of cars streaming through the LAX loop flood by.  There's no accents anymore, everything sounds normal, like it always has again.  A little glaze is still left in the eyes, but it's quickly fading as we acclimate to reality.  The sands of dreamland sieve through my fingers as Mom's van pulls up and we all pile in.  I just try to pool as many grains as I can into the palm of my hand for safe-keeping.  The one's that are too important to forget.  

Mom's full of excitement as we're just coming down.  Beat.  Worn to the bone.  "Hey, guys!  How was your trip? Tell me all about it!"

"It was good," I say softly, and I think she sees the tired in our faces and under our eyes.

"Do you guys want some In-N-Out, hmm?" she asks, baiting.

"Yes, please."

In the Equation of Life, Music is My Only Constant

It's the best constant to have, me thinks, because it is one so powerful, so strong, and so commanding.  Audible beauty that stirs in the mind that stew of moods and emotions into something almost palpable.  Deconstructing each one so as to float the purest form of it to the top.  To saturate the soul if you're really listening.  To bristle prickly the soft hairs on my arm.  To bring the tingly bumps of plucked poultry to my skin.  It's a wonderful thing this chorus of metered passions poured out in lovely words and well-timed twangs and drops and crescendos and hums and bum-bums.  

I LUH DAT.

I love the memories it grabs and the hued filters it chooses to see them through.  I love that it's my finger that presses play, most times anyway.  In the car, on the bike.  In the bedroom, in the kitchen, in the bathroom.  Sometimes at work, but not always.  Even then though, it's still music.  It's a happy song.  It's a sad song.  It's a slow song.  It's a fast song.  It's the song so good your heart yearns for it by name and sings the lyrics true and whistles the melody through to the end.  Oh, "Cotton and Velvet" (I'm in a Cotton Jones mood).  It's the song I breathe when no one's listening.  And still it's all just music to me.  So commonplace.  So ready and available.  Mmm, music.  My drug of choice.  The highest on the totem pole.

Rome: Hearts and Shitty Trains

It's a night-time marathon.  It's Prague all over again.  Except this time, the end doesn't come so soon, and when I finally find my way through those shitty Roman streets, those smelly summer cobblestones leading every way but the one I so desperately need, through the city in the dead of night to the hostel by the train terminal, finally. Mike and Max and Grant are all fast asleep, and when I look at my phone it's five in the morning.  My top-bunk roost comes to me in a panting delirium and I pass out between heavy breaths, drunk and post-coitus.

[stop]

The next morning's our last in old Rome.  Not much in the way of remorse.  We came to the ancient city, saw what there was to see.  Covered it all in two days on foot.  The old, stone roads, and the hills, and the white stone palaces, and the churches, and the Vatican, and the ruins dotting and scarring the city like old, healed wounds, like a badge of honor, a testament to age.  The warrior Italy.  Conquered in two days, with a riotous pub crawl for icing.  Weathered travelers.  Experienced, and Mike's catching on quick.  Our bags are never far from ready.  And now, we're ready to go.  It's going to be an all day affair.

A bold task, but we want to get into France tonight, so at the terminal we jump on the first train headed north.  To Pisa.  We grab four seats facing each other with a table in between.  "All right," says Grant, "I'm breaking out the deck."  And he pulls a deck of fifty-two from the front pocket of his backpack before stowing it overhead.

"Yeah!" I'm stoked.  "What do y'all wanna play?"

"Well, there's four of us," observes Mike.  "We could play some Hearts..."

"Dude.  Yeah, I'm into some Hearts."  Grant's stoked, and he starts shuffling and bridging and shuffling and bridging.

"Man, I haven't gotten down on a game of Hearts for a hot second now."  I'm thinking aloud again.

But Max was a lost puppy.  "What the hell is this old-man 'Hearts' game?  Please don't tell me it's some stupid game like Old Maid or Bridge.  That shit's troublesome."

"What's wrong with Old Maid?"

"Nothing."

"You're being facetious, Max."  I retort to his retort.

"You are the one that is being facetious!"

Grant steps in before the vocabulary gets out of control, "Has a little hot someone never played Hearts before?"  He's using his Papa Grant voice.

Max looks down and twiddles his thumbs, "No... Never got around to that one."

"Don't worry, it's chill.  You'll pick it up along the way no problem.  And well, we've got some time 'til Pisa." So Grant deals out the deck, and we lay down the ground rules in a quick game summary.  We tell Max about the first pass and the Two of Clubs and the Queen of Spades and shooting the moon, and he hits the ground running.  Grant's keeping score in his journal.  Max is the first to one hundred on the first game.  But not the second, and that mother-fucker shot the moon on his third game in.  Like that, we've become old men squinting at cards with furrowed brows.  Spreading them out like an accordion, sorting them, closing them up again, and spreading them out.  Leaning towards the window or the aisle, not each other.  Eyeing with suspicion and daring.  Feeling the pain of defeat, and sipping the sweet nectar of victory for all to see.  It's funny how vested one can get into cards, into the emotion of them, especially when it's the only thing going, game after game after game.  The fear of the Queen, and the agony of taking her.  It doesn't change.  We just get faster, and the hours to Pisa fly.  We get there, the final stop, check the time-board, and the next train going north isn't for a measly forty-five minutes.

[stop]

So we rush headlong, packs and all, towards the other side of the old Italian city, towards the Tower at a brisk walk that comes easy with experience.  The buildings are old, the streets are old.  The river runs slow through the middle, past a modest pearl chapel on the south shore, and the whole place seems to be sleeping in the hot summer sun.  It's a quiet little whisper of a town, and we're to the other side in twenty minutes, with only a slight sweat on our brows.  The Piazza del Duomo, a high-walled castle courtyard at the northern edge of town, is lovely and strangely lively compared to the rest of Pisa, outside the plaza walls.  There's vendor after vendor slanging touristy trinkets.  There's people sprawled on the grass and taking pictures in stupid poses, trying to hold the Tower up.  It's warranted, I guess.  The Tower's got a mad lean on.  We see it.  We photograph it.  We mock the crowds.  Max smokes a cigarette.  Then we hightail it out of there, back to the station, and hop on a train to Genoa.

It's a bitch of a ride.  Hours upon hours on end, through little Italian towns and Tuscan summer landscapes.  Definitely not one of the faster trains we've been on, and the rolling brown hills, the olive groves, the scattered stone ruins, the trees that stand not like the evergreens of California, but quaint and puffy-bulbous like tiny green clouds stuck on toothpicks' ends, they all seem to be crawling by in this dreary heat.  This particular train's rather shittier than the one to Pisa.  No tables, just little fold-out side desks that remind me of college lecture halls.  Awesome.  No hearts on this train.  So I read through a handful of chapters in All the Sad Young Literary Men with some LCD accompaniment.  It's dry.  The author writes like he's writing a paper, but it's good, I guess.  It written well, and it's real.  It's real life and real drama and real growth, and his analysis of it all is meticulous and, at times, thought provoking.  In the intellectual sense.  In the world issues sense.  In the sense that it's someone's life.  Three persons' lives, in fact.  But it's so mundane.  That's not my type of living.  Their problems aren't my problems.  Or maybe they are, and it's just the setting that's different, and the way things build up over time.  I don't have that kind of time.  I'm on a goddamn train to Genoa.  And I'm tired of this man's words so I think I'll write my own.

[stop]

There is an inherent musk of shit encased in this, probably not the shining flagship of Tren Italia.  Couple that with the beating Italian sun and it's ensuing heatwave, it is a scent most unappealing to say the least.  But one can only hunker down in the questionably designed hard, rubber-lined seats and blissfully hope that this train to Genoa is not much more impossibly long than it already seems.


A rather curious seat choice lends to some unlikely entertainment.  Out of the fifty or so empty seats in the car, my new friend wisely decides on the seat directly across from me.  Same side of the aisle, and my feet off to the side now so we're not playing footsies. His beady little brown eyes only more pronounced by his exaggeratedly furrowed brow.  It's something that comes with the years passing, and by the gauge of leather exterior and the wizened, blatant way he keeps looking us over suspiciously, I would say he's passed quite a few.  He's grandfather-looking, his eyes deep wells, glazed and opaque with ancient knowledge.  I wonder what they've seen.

[stop]

We get to Genoa and the shadows are long, and the sun's soon setting.  Genoa's on the coast at the top of the boot Italy.  It's west, towards France, we need to go now.  There's a lurch in my gut that tells me we're probably not getting to Montpellier tonight.  We all feel it, so Grant e-mails our host, Elsabeth, telling her we'll be there the next day.  There's no trains actually going into France, but there's one to the coastal border-town of Ventimiglia in an hour.  Just enough time to stuff pasta in our faces at a cozy little sit-down looking out onto the station and the main square.  I'm famished.  Still, i eat steadily.  Slowly, there's no rush.  A little TV in the corner is playing some Italian reality show not unlike Punked.  Except without the celebrities or production value.  It's pretty much just some Italian guy fucking with other Italian guys, but we don't understand a word of it and maybe that's why it's so hilarious.  When it's over, the sun's gone down outside.  Our plates are cleaned, bone dry.  All the bread's devoured.  All the water cups empty.  Grant puts the meal on his card, we tally our debt, stroll back to the station and hop our west-bound train towards the border.  We get to Ventimiglia just before midnight, and there's no more trains across the border until the morning.  Well, looks like we're sleeping here then.  "Fuck sleeping in the station though," I say, "Let's go sleep on the beach.  It can't be too far."

"Yeah!"  And it's not far at all really.  Except there's just one minute detail I didn't account for.  The whole beach, as far as we can see in the dark, is rock.  Small rocks, not particularly comfortable.  Whatever.  We jump in the Mediterranean, for me the first time (the water's pool temperature and saltier than a sea dog), and then we all pass out on our bags on the beach in Ventimiglia.

When There's Nothing Left to Burn, You've Got to Set Yourself on Fire

Sure, it's a metaphor.  What else could it be other than an arsonist's inner thoughts just before the match strikes, standing there still, doused, with an empty gas-can in hand.  They are words kept to one's self.  Never to be uttered save for some sad prelude to a Stars song.  And those Stars kids are no arsonists.  At least, I'm pretty sure they're not.  No, it's a metaphor.  But I wonder what it means when it's not meant for me.

[stop]

Because personally, I believe I've burnt it all up inside.  And after that, that Paris love, found and not had, I'm afraid there's nothing left to set to flame.  Or at best, just a tiny bit more.  Paris accomplished what it was supposed to, it seems.  The distractions are gone.  There's nothing left for them to grab onto.

Not for a little bit at least, or not like before I left for Paris.  I have this sensational feeling rolling through me that's akin to knowing what I want.  To an exactness.  Or to a particular aura.  And it's not so specific so as to be a rare sight.  Just not a common one is all.  And at present she has a name and a face.  She stands out bright in a crowd.  But I won't see her anytime soon I think, or ever again really.  Nothing could distract me like her, and now it seems she never will.  Everything in that close depth of field is fuzzy and unfocused, and the distance is sharp as a morning cock crow.  It looks beautiful.

I'm stepping strong towards it now.  At least I think I am now more than then.  I just hope I'm on the right mountain trail.

Familiar Surroundings

It's getting dark now, and the lights have flickered to life on the pier.  But it's not night yet.  The stars aren't out, and the sun's glow is still lingering deep orange on the horizon.  The ocean's a rippley blue lake reflecting the sky.  And it's cold.  An LA chill that just barely bites through my thin pull-over.  There's three middle-aged maritime seamen singing songs and playing a beat-up old stained-wood guitar.  This end of the pier is an Eden to them.  This dry spring Christmas weather.  They love it, but only because it's something new and incredible to them.  They're not from here.  They don't love it like I do.  These numb fingers is not a braving for them.  Moving across the page with a graphite trail in tow.  And I feel like their moving is keeping me sane.

Munich: The Hard Rock Syndrome

We get to Munich in the late afternoon and, fuck, there isn't another train to Zurich until tomorrow morning.  Looks like we're spending the night here.  Here?  But where?  "Is there a hostel around here?" Grant asks and looks around outside the station.

"Dude, I don't know if I can afford a hostel right meow," says I.
"Me neither," says Max.
"Yeah... And this place looks too nice for hostels.  It's all fancy-shmamsy hotels," says Grant.  "Let's just go threesies on a locker and rock the night in the station.  Copenhagen style."  We're in.  It's something like four euros total for the night, and we shove all our bags into one of the deep station lockers, squeeze the door shut and turn out the key.

[stop]

Munich, mother fuckers.  Drink it in like a hefty German brew.  But chug it because the sun's already low on the summer horizon and we have to be in Zurich tomorrow.  If there's one thing I learned to do in Santa Cruz though, it was to gulp down beers.  Relax the jaw and open the throat, but get your tongue in there to get all flavors as you pour it into your gullet.  Ladies, take notes because that's definitely what she said.  We've got about eight hours to kill in this rich city, but there's no rush.  The less time we spend sleeping on the grit-grimy station floor the better, so we take the place at a casual stroll.

Stroll right into some glitzy hotel we do, near the station, and pick up a city map, get our bearings, and stow it, heading towards the center on foot.  Through a not-too-old looking castle gate with battlements on top and, voila, it's a wide pedestrian street straddled on both sides by boutique shops, department stores, and grossly overpriced restaurants.  It reminds me, strangely, but quite strongly of the Promenade back in Santa Monica, and I chuckle a little.  "So this is Munich, huh?  Super old-time-y German, this place."

Max and Grant laugh a retort.  The spirits are high and light, in part, I think, due to that fact that our shoulders also are without those cursed packs on.  And we point and giggle at funny things, and side-hand comments and quote movie nostalgia to one another, and get giddy in the legs at the prospect of Mike's so-soon rendezvous.

Into another square, Marienplatz, and ohh, ahh, the town hall.  Finally, something that opens my eyes to this capitol city, that arrests my attention after being unceremoniously courted by the mundane open-air Munich mall walk.  It's a menacing building, especially with the dreary cloud cover, overtly gothic and medieval, all pointy, stone-framed windows and prickly spires and a bell-tower.  Not unlike Prague.  But at the same time, markedly different.  Not so ominous, and with a definitive tint of Bavaria that tastes rich to the eyes like dark chocolate.

From the middle of Marienplatz, there's a pair of bell-towers looming not too far behind the town hall and, well, I love bell-towers, so we romp in their general direction.  We amble past an old-looking building or white walls and old, glass windows that shone unclear with a yellow from within.  It said HOFBRAUHAUS in bold letters, and a thin metal street sign hung off the side with the initials HB and a crown all in gold.  We had a sneaking suspicion that they served beer inside and when we came around to the front it was quite obviously a bustling, rambunctious beer hall.  "Ohhh!  Say what?  We should def get dinner here," says Grant.  And Max and I agree.  But first, the bell towers.

There's a lurch in the stomach and a tick of the head because across the skinny walk-street from the Hofbrauhaus is that silly staple we've seen now in every city of our journey.  No, not a kebab joint.  And it's not a McDonald's, but that's certainly closer.  "Oh, hey look.  Another Hard Rock."  It's the Hard Rock Munich, and it gives me a moment's pause, probably the first Hard Rock to do so, because it has been in every city.  We've stumbled upon each one, starting with original in London.  It's that something so American, like hearing the same pop songs on the radio over here, listening to the same music and I guess that's what it thrives on.  A universal love of music.  That attraction to rock legends' guitars on the walls, to be so close to a thing so timeless, whose strings echo with distortion through the ages and, for better or for worse, probably always will.  The good, the bad.  The bands we loved, and the one hit wonders.  Served up with chicken wings and hamburgers.  Now who wouldn't love that?  Who cares what country your from.  What a tourist trap-looking kind of a place, and there's some fat boys coming out with their Hard Rock t-shirts.

We'll pass though, walking past, down skinny streets and through tiny, old squares and courtyards to my lovely bell towers.  They're at the head of some grand cathedral called the Frauenkirche.  It's simple brick and baroque-Italian.  No spires or prickles here.  Just a red tile roof we can barely make out, tall windows, and green plumes (of bronze, I'm guessing) at the tops of the towers.  "This thing looks old," I observe with a guise of inflection.

"Mmm, indeed."  And we stand at the entrance and ponder it for a while, necks craned to put the whole thing in perspective.  There's some ancient stone-carved cartoons on the side, and I'm no historian, but the general theme of it seemed to be rape.  Got to love religious fervor.

After a minute or two Max chimes in, "So is it Hofbrauhaus time yet?"  And the trance is over and my stomach makes it's presence known.

"Yeah, dude.  I'm ready for some beer and bratwurst."

"Bratwurst!"  So fun to say in a German accent.

Prague: Nighttime Marathons

It's 22:00 and we've got our pretty clothes on.  I've only got one nice button-down shirt, and it's on.  It's some shade of gray, which I don't think ever gets old or blase.  Grant and Max have their black ones on, and we've all got our decent shoes on for once.  I don't think we wore them at all in Berlin.  Well, maybe at the beginning when we were in the hostel.  Hostels always demand the best, I guess.  There's three Austrians (not Australians) in our room also and we all get proper sloshed and riotous before we stumble out and towards the center of Prague.  Someone, I can't remember who, told us of some magical six-story club that we absolutely needed to see.  According to the map though, it seems kind of far, and before we're even at the old market square we run into a horde of drunkards, riotous and swaying as well, and among them is, of course, the dastardly duo, Bobby and Ryan.  It's the pub crawl, and they're on the last leg, going to the last bar.  What are the odds.  I hadn't even gotten their phone numbers and well, I don't have a phone so I'd thought that chance encounter after the weed deal would be our last.  But the fates had other plans, I suppose.  And we're already wasted so we forget all about the six-story mega-club and mesh with the crawl and end up in some basement bar with two big dance floors and free shots at the door.  Works for me.  Bobby throws me a courtesy cig and we just burn 'em down inside.  Smoke hang heavy over the whole place, even with the AC on, but it's a blast.  A dance riot.  A bunch of English girls and Aussies drunk off pub crawling, grooving to an eclectic mix of American pop songs from across the decades.  A lot of Michael Jackson, and thank goodness for that.  Grant, Max, and the Austrians leave around 2:00, they're tired.  But Bobby and Ryan are still down to rage, so I stay and we rage right up until they play us all out of the place after last call with an old Sinatra number.  Worth it, it's 4:00.  I say good-bye to Bobby and Ryan, that high school nostalgia, and I don't really know when I'll see them again, if ever.  But hell, it's a romping good time.  I figure I'll just go back the way I came back to the hostel, and it's a bit far so I pace myself at a fast jog.

Surprisingly fast considering how drunk I am.  And maybe I'm too busy realizing how fast I'm going to notice how fucking lost I've gotten because as far as getting lost goes, I'm pretty much peaking.  I'd made a wrong turn somewhere, I think, and I flat-out forgot to make a handful of them.  After thirty minutes, I'm sick of running, but too pissed off and aggravated not to.  The streets are all empty and lit orange gothic and eastern European by the streetlights.  They fork and split and splinter off in every direction at times, and I haven't the faintest clue of which one to take.  No cars, no people.  No clue.  Miraculously, I stumble upon the train station, and there's flashes before my eyes of our night-time walk to the hostel the first night we got here.  The place certainly isn't as inviting by myself.  It's rather gaunt and creepy actually, but I'm too drunk and annoyed to care.  And my legs are starting to burn.  Apparently, I'm also too drunk to even remember how we got to the hostel that first night because before I know it, I'm lost again.  Maybe it's the booze, or maybe it's the hour, but every street looks like the one the hostel's supposed to be on.  Same looking buildings, same looking intersections.  It takes another thirty minutes to find the stupid place.  The little walkway to the back, next to the closed tattoo parlor.  I'm panting and sweating in the lobby as I tell the young Australian (not Austrian) man behind the counter that I don't have my room key (Grant and Max had it).  He must've thought I was crazy, sprinting up into the place at five in the morning.  "Well, that's all right," he says regardless.  "What's your room number?"

"Umm..." Please remember.  Remember. "309?  Yeah, that's it."

He fiddles around on the keyboard for a bit, asks to see my ID, then hands me a key, "Here you go, mate.  No worries."

"Why, thank you," I say.  "And good-night."

Insight: I'm Leaving

Life's one of those funny things, a thing that laughs with deep breaths.  Screaming through the lungs, pumping red to extremities, and tearing from joy or sadness lest the weed's dried my eyes out.  I still feel it though, something I can't quite put my finger on.  And it's slowly seeping out.

Paris: Short of Breath Days

I hate these days.  When the sun's shining, and the air is dry and for no other reason, it's hard to breathe.  The days are floating by now like those cotton-ball, soft breezy clouds over Haussmann's Paris in the 14th.  It's not the brevity of our time here in the Old World that's choking my throat, slurring my words out in a soft mumble with no breath behind them.  It's just asthma, I figure.  That's what it feels like anyways, from everything I've ever heard on the subject.  I never had asthma as a child, but then again, these lungs of mine aren't what they used to be back in days of AYSO and swim team.  I've got a lot more spliffs to my name now and that's just one of those things you don't think about too much because the numbers'll make you dizzy, and you can almost feel the tar nestling in your insides.  It's just something to take note of.  Be weary.  Let it be acknowledged, but don't stop living.  Ever.  Snags like this are a dime a dozen on our vacation turned feat of survival, and I'm just trying to suck all the life I can out of it.  And out of my ever-dwindling bank account.  So as we're walking from Marie's with a Carrefour baguette and Tucs and stolen Carrefour cheese and meats and Granini fruit juice, to a lovely park she told us about in the south of the city adorned with bronze statues on tall white columns, I suck again, inward, pull the air in through my nose and hard down with my diaphragm to fight against the close.  Just another thing to fidget with, another road-block to bypass.  No sweat.  And now it's time for lunch in the green grass and a spliff and an epic tournament of gentlemen's hearts.  Ah, summer in Paris.  We play 'til the shade draws from the side tree grooves.  It's a slow sun these days.  Nico knows.

Tell Sylvia Her Library's to Die For

Fuckin' writer types.  They play with gullibility as a cat would with a ball of yarn, mildly amused because they know the privileged truth.

But here I am, always the hypocrite because who am I kidding, that yarn ball's damned fun to paw around with, just so long as I'm not the one coming unraveled.  Touche you company of Shakespeare.  Your wit is well-noted.  It's a pity I won't be joining your ranks because I truly love this place.  But maybe it's not so bad.  I hate that haughty upper lip of proclaimed writers, assholing their way smartly through life's bowels because the recognition of that privileged knowledge and tongue feels so good.  But it leaves a taste of shit in my mouth.  And I know, or fuck, I fucking hope that air never becomes my defining one.

Shh, now.  I think Sylvia's listening.  I wish, maybe, that she'd smile at my words and pull up a rug corner for me.  Oh, hey!  I think I see her though falling slowly before this one window here upstairs, and she's content, alive in that magic space of hers.  Hard to catch she is, and discreet too.  I almost miss her.  She's spinning webs of silk thread instead of words now, with eight arms and eight eyes, not two.  What more would a perpetual reader and writer want.  More eyes to read with and more arms to write with.  I'd like to see her web sometime, but I won't ask questions.  I bet she's the silent type.

Quote of the Day: Inside There's A Child

"Other men are the lenses through which we read our own minds."


~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Prague: Marijuana and the Czech Koruna

T'is the summer glow, I reckon, that's got the mind all a-flutter for some sweet, Czech cheeba.  A little something lingering from Santa Cruz maybe, that sweat sun and a cold beer sloshin' around in my belly that calls to it.  And it's almost too easy, especially with no packs on.  Packless, there's a flex in our step, and it pushes with all that strength accrued in our calves from dancing and trekking and grinding all over damned Europe.  It's good.  Our heads are chattin' off as we romp down the cobblestone streets, about our weekend in the Berlin forest and Devil's Hill and the high times, and Shahar, the Colorado Kid and the girls, and everything Mike is missing back in summer school.  And this city we're sprinting through in two days.  I wish we had longer in this grandfather of European kingdoms, on the skinny one-way streets lined with tiny Euro cars.  The buildings on both sides are just tall enough so that the sun may never touch the cobble, even at it's highest.  The shade's warm, and that's when my sweet Mary Jane's lips taste the best.

Back out in the busy Old Market square, we mosey around in front of St. Nicholas Church (Santa Church) and remember what Tony and Dajana had told us back Berlin, "You know, just look for some ghetto-looking black guys in the square."  "Yeah, they usually always have some."  Racist?  Kind of feels like it in the moment, but, sure enough, in no time, Max picks up the ambassador torch and makes eye contact with two guys in baggy jeans and Fubu jerseys.  In Prague.  In the summer.  He makes the motion of a joint and they both nod, smile, and come over.  We're just a trio of smooth river stones, and with tourists flocking like schools of salmon and swimming by this way and that, we tell them,  "Hey, we're from California and we're just looking for some marijuana."

"Oh! California girls! That is cool!" Oh, yay... And they tell us to wait for them under a tree with a bench circling it in corner of the square.  "We see you there in, uhhh, ten minutes, okay?" they say through a heavy Czech accent, "Eet well be, uhh, 380 koruna, okay?"  For two grams?  There's a chort of astonishment before we remember that the Budweiser's were like 23 koruna, and that the Czech koruna is kind of a bitch. A quick head calculation brings us to the conclusion that it's just about 20 doll-hairs.

"Okay," we say and stroll over to the shaded benches.  It's so exciting!  Nothing like the pre-drug-deal jitters.

[stop]

"Man, I hope it's good stuff and we don't get shafted," thinks Max aloud, and, not surprisingly, his thoughts mirror my own.  But when the FUBU twins stroll casually up to us and one hold's his hand out for the ole' shake-n-switch, it's on.  Grant shakes and now we've got a small baggy.  We all sneak a discreet look at his hand and nod acknowledgement, and the Berlin girls' shining stereotype scoots off and disappears into the crowd and around the corner.

Grant cracks the little baggy seal and we all sneak a sniff this time.  It's a promising scent.  Then I hear, "Absher?" from behind me and for a second I freeze at the criminality of our being at the moment.  When I turn, it's a laugh of nostalgic recognition and there before me are two old friends I hadn't seen since high school.  strolling the city Prague just as we are.  Bobby and Ryan, two rapscallion sons-of-bitches.  We all used to binge drink at expensive mansion house parties in the Los Angeles hills on weekends between those 8-3 school days.  A couple of LA wise-cracks, those guys.  There's old jokes, sarcasm abound, a quick catch up, intros to Max and Grant, and we make plans to meet in the evening.  That dastardly duo's got a bar crawl on the mind.

Late Afternoon Paris

[written in cafe by École Militaire on borrowed paper with a borrowed pen.  A blue pen.]


Is this blue?  Lindsay's a blue pen girl.   She's a sucker for hot wine with orange rinds and cinnamon.  And she's a Mac girl, but let's be honest, most girls are.  It's Steve Jobs' uncanny knowledge of the creative feminine and desire, I think.  He was a master.  And what's more, he knew it.  His clutch on the world will never quite let go, not anytime in the foreseeable future anyways.  This world of iPods and iPads and iPhones.  And iTunes.  And the might Apple.  Our generation is his dynasty, and he's not even here to watch us grow.  His old bucket of bones and flesh couldn't carry on with such a life.  The body of a true genius often suffers on it's balance with the mind.  The strong mind.  The strong mind overpowers the body, living through lifetimes, tenfold, who knows, bringing it's physical being along for the ride.  I don't know how he managed on for so long.  What a testament.  But maybe he knew how to carry on.  To endure through the ages so as to make time no gauge of existence.  So precious few have the words that ring through the decades, the achievements that we live by and because of.   There was Edison and his bulb.  There was Gutenburg with his press.  But I think Jobs was the diamond of them all.  Everlasting to another degree.  Because before his departure, he gave us one last creation to remember him by.  A voice with a name.  A faceless feminine of all knowledge, always there for you, to talk to you, to guide you.  And Siri is her nameo.  She's a being of no physical presence.  And still everyone knows her.  Millions talk to her everyday, and she talks to them.  She's getting to know them, like he never could.  RIP Steve Jobs.  Long live the diamond.


It's funny to me to think though, that (if you believe it be like those crazy scientists say) we evolved from much primer animals.  From things having sex in the water to things having sex on land, to things that smelled each other, that relied on the basis of instinct to survive, then began communicating through physical posturing, emotions, and then audio signals, and using tools, and convening and congealing into herds and civilizations and all the in-between's and mistakes along the way.  Curious that Siri should begin with civilization at her fingertips, our tools are her tools, our questions are her concern.  And she's evolving back the way we came maybe.  Or MAYBE these hot wines with cinnamon and orange rinds are just too AMAZING.

The Shepherd German

Shut up and write, bitch.

What the hell is this?  It's mornings when you wake up in a bed next to a cute freckly French girl batting green eyes.  And it coaxes a laugh after I kiss her "Good-bye," and "Good morning," and I'm stumbling down the stairs, five flights, into the bright, high-sunned, pre-noon Paris.  Well, that was nice.  Where the hell am I.

Yesterday's such an old memory, it seems.  A day after a night of stunning masters students of theater from all over, Oregon, London, Sweden, Algeria.  Their French is animated so it's easier to understand or, at least, to follow the conversation.  They're talking projection projects of the body like a hurricane, and it's all so fascinating.  And French theater-like.  The spliff and glass after glass of red wine help.  They sit and still move with a rhythm and telling hands and quick-wit expressions on their faces.  The Swedes talk in English, and I think they're my favorite.  Two sisters, one visiting the other from Stockholm with her boyfriend.  Like porcelain dolls with red lipstick and short, brown haircuts.  The sisters go on about their father, the clown, in the most delightful way.  Such a standard Swedish disposition, to be awash with delight and sarcasm.  And toting liter bottles of Heineken.  The boyfriend tell me he skates.  I tell him about the park on the beach in Venice.  He tells me about Terje and the epic snow they get in the mountains of Sweden.  I tell him of the times I went surfing in the morning and snowboarding in the afternoon back in Los Angeles, the shop, the sun, the weeds.  And it goes on into a night of fast talk talked smartly on silly subjects and living.  What a girl, this Elizabeth, for letting me sleep here on her couch.

And when I wake it's without the aches and hip-pains of floor sleeping.  It's refreshing, as is the coffee.  And the bread and the butter and the jam.  And nutella,  of course.  A small breakfast, but that's Paris.  What're you gonna do, except scarf it down and smoke a spliff, grab a notebook, and flush downstairs with Elizabeth in a sweater that's almost too thin for this day-cold in the sun.  I'm off to some old-timey English bookstore, cramped quarters and shelves stuffed and table-space piled high with dusty volumes and big photo-books and every kind of thing written in English, both new and old. Shakespeare and Company it's called and lovely Elizabeth tells me they let writers live there for free, and I still gots like three more weeks here, so why not.

But what's this, Elizabeth?  Your going to a chicken farm outside the city to look at an apartment?  Why of course, I'd love to come.  The bookstore can wait.  I want to smell fresh, country air, desperately, because it's been too long since that sweet breath of Santa Cruz.  And I love chickens.  So I hop on the metro with my new theater friend and we screech off to the fourteenth arrondissement to meet up with the landlord.  He's a jolly, middle-aged Asian man and he's driving us out to the farm with his six-year-old daughter in tow.  My French still sucks, and I'm high so I just sit in the back seat across from the shy-looking little girl and listen to Elizabeth and Mr. Landlord ramble away in French down the highway.  Try as I might, I only really pick up a few words and phrases, and by the time I've finally managed to figure one out, it's forgotten as I try to decipher the next.  And so it carries for forty-five minutes.  The sky's gone gray now, and the city's all but slid away.  It's the suburbs, but not in the way I usually picture the word.  It's not Westchester, or the Valley even.  These suburbs are old and European and eveything's got a look of chipped stucco and something that used to be nicer.  There's traffic Mr. Landlord takes his time shifting between first and neutral.  Crawling.  It crawls right by some small mansion of regality led astray, An old thing shoved between two other buildings with a worn wall and a rusted metal gate.  Past the gate, two sets of stairs split off to either side as the ancient house were higher up, about level with the top of the wall.

[stop]

"Don't got a lotta time, don't got a lotta time,'
Don't got a lotta time, don't got a lotta time,'
We came into the light, we were older than we've ever been."


Ah, the days, a month through and counting.  And fuck, what've I got to show for it?  Some handful of dreary pages?  Nothing's finished, but  then again, when's it ever going to finish?  Not until that grand finale when the cymbals crash and the heavy curtain pulls.  When everything unfinished is left untouched because no one else is especially adequate to touch it and those hands a' mine won't be touching anything except that cotton breast pocket on my best suit.  While my eyes play behind closed doors in that eternal dream. 


I should finish what I can.  I owe the great trial that much at least, because I'd hate to think of what's to become of me if it's not given my all.  


What would the German Shepard think, peering over the wall from his perch on the high, fortress yard, with the two lonely trees dying on either side, leafless in that French winter coming.  As he's watching all the lives crawl by between first and neutral down the old ville streets.  They say he doesn't see in color, but maybe he sees in something else, not so black and white.  A vision of the spirit, I think, because his kind is always so reciprocal with their emotions, and always so revealing.  The sly ones anyways.  Like Marlee the tough mustached sea rat.  And maybe even that stupid Golden, Lizzie.  She's so pretty though, and such a whore.


The German is neither.  No so much pretty, but rather statuesque, and gravely so.  Much too grave for whoring.  And for a second right when he catches my sight, I see him not as the dog German, but as the vision of that ancient king, that Charlemagne framed so sadly between two dead trees, above a high, rust-iron gate, under a somber mid-day sky that casts no shadows.  I wonder it he looks at the ground on day s like this and forgets he exists, with no mirrored shadow to follow him around in acknowledgement.  Locked away in his dreary castle, with no one and nothing else but to read those spirits trudging by on the walk, and wonder at those closed souls on the road.  


He doesn't see me, and maybe that's better because I'm afraid of what those eyes might tell him now.  A desperate spirit to gawk at, wrought tired with determination, and perpetually bag-eyed.  


But I see him, maybe imagined now, but I'm quite certain he was there.  "An omen," some Alchemist character would say, but good or bad, in the details of such a thing I'm... what's the word... oh right, lost, as always.


Just keep swimming.  Who needs a boring old shepard-boy Alchemist to tell you how to sort it all out when you've got a talking clown fish to guide you.


[stop]

The chicken farm's lovely.  A little cabin with two rooms upstairs at the peak, squashed low in the corners by the sloping roof.  Downstairs there's a bathroom and a kitchen with windows looking back at an old garage.  And behind that, the chickens roamed free on a skinny stretch that stretched back for a ways, with a trampoline and a garden, and a little fort with a tree swing.  The four chickens flock, clucking, and the little girl throws seeds and old food from her city home about them on the damp ground littered thick with dead leaves.  It's frigid out.  Abysmal.  "I bet this place shine's in the summer, though," says Elizabeth.  I agree.  and we take some time on the trampoline to jump out the day, all of it.  What's been, and what's to come.

There's another girl living in the place right now.  And it's far as fuck from the city.  One and a half hours far by the RER.  Elizabeth tell Monsieur Landlord, she'll have to think about it.  But she loves it, I can tell.  She loves how it smells of wet leaves and forest air.  She loves the garden and the yard that reaches out forever.  And the chickens.  And the man's daughter throwing seeds and swinging from trees.  And the work-space is perfect.  It's just far.

She tell's him, en francais, that we want to take the train back, and he drops us at the station, "Au 'voir!" "Au 'voir!" The little girl waves shyly before the door's shut and the two, father and daughter, shuttle into the darkening afternoon back to Paris.

The trains.  But first, where's the fucking boulangerie.  Because my tummy's growling objections at it's neglect.    I don't think I've got another hour of traveling in me.  So we turn down the empty main street, and the town's a slow-paced old lady of a place.  A one boulangerie town and we find it in due time.  It's a short wait in line, all the time eyeballing pastries and tartes and sandys with wolf hunger.  "The apple ones," I whisper to Elizabeth in English and she orders.  We walk out chomping some pomme-filled pastries, lightly toasted to a dark brown on the top.  We're half-way to the train station, and we look at each other and nod agreement, and turn back to the bakery for some chocolate croissants because hell, we're starving, and that coffee, buttered bread, jam, and nutella breakfast is laughing us in the face.  The baker smiles amusement at our return.  It's a small-town wholesome amusement, endearing like my mother's.

At the station, Elizabeth buys a ticket and i hop over after her.  It's Saturday, and the train's especially slow, and the stops seems excessively long, and the car's packed, both up above and down below, but we manage to find seats across from one another by the window.  Still, my stomach's a-churning to the seconds' tick-tock, and ah, finally, after two hours we're onto the metro, and out above ground again at Cadet.

[stop]

To some cheap Lebanese sa ndwich shop by the metro stop.  "Ehm... les toilettes sil vous plait?" I ask the man behind the counter. He points.  Elizabeth laughs and orders for us.  "Something with meat," I tell her as I hustle into a little closet with a toilet in the back and piss an Amazon into the depths of that old porcelain.  It's a tingly one, with that indescribable euphoria behind my eyes after the shake.

"I got you the beef shawarma," she says, sitting at the closest table to the door.  Then she sips sweet tea from a small glass, and I see there's another one on the counter, and when I look, the old Lebanese man nods and makes a vapid show of presentation with his hand.

"Shawarma sounds bomb," I say, "et merci beaucoup" to the counterman as I take a swig from the sweet tea glass.  The sandwiches are done and we shoot the rest of our tea, "Au 'voir!  Merci!"  Nom, nom, nom, and it tastes so good.

[stop]

Back at Elizabeth's flat, we're both still chomping, and I get a slew of texts.  One from the ole' Lil, how I miss her so.  "Come to erin's Thanksgiving party thing.  Here's the address," it says.

"Shit, that's tonight, huh," I sound off to myself.  Elizabeth had invited me to a soiree of sorts, a college dance party in the south, and oh, how I love college dance parties.  But I promised, and Erin texts me as well, so I tell my gracious host and she takes it graciously, with a sarcastic air of drama because, after all, she's a student of the theater.  She understands.  She sees the conflict in my eyes, and we cheers beers.  And after she showers, we romp down to metro together and wish each other good nights.  What am I getting myself into.  I don't know, but I rarely do anymore, and I've come to accept the beauty of it.  The wandering.  The leaf in the wind of it all.  And I take my line and she takes hers.

Mine takes me to Convention.  In the south.  In the 15th.  Or the 14th.  It doesn't matter, really, does it.  And after some mild street finding, I'm at the address from the texts.  The pleadings.  And I pop in the door code and I'm in, and up three flights, and I'm there.  There's a pumpkin on the door, and I burst in.  Erin's there to greet me in a skinny hallway with three rooms on one side and a bathroom on the other and a kitchen at the end.  "Hi."

She has that look about her.  A look I only know too well.  It's a thing of puppy love, and I'm scared.  I hate to hurt, and I fear that hammer will come down soon enough.  But first, some wine.  In one of the bedrooms there's a mass of young undergrads from all over (a couple of Aussies and Frenchies, but all American girls, except for one belle francaise) and Lili's there flirting up some dashing, serious and cool, Swedish type.  His name's Victor.  She smiles at me, and I smile back, "Hey, is Rachel here?" That tall blonde gypsy queen.  I think I love her.  "Shh," she says at a tone below the party hum, and she hands me a cigarette under the muse of long lost friends (but it's only been three days), and I try to ignore those nervous side-long glances from Erin, that bright-eyed, young Midwesterner just trying to find herself in this French foreign land.  I almost feel bad.  But I play along, and follow the flow, and try to find that happy medium of wine-infused content amongst cigarette smoke and smoking by the chain in Parisian flats.

[stop]

I think I found it.  For a second, anyways.  Because by that time, I'm always just a few too over.  It's always so hard to hit that nail on the head, and once I know I'm over, I think hell, I might as well go for it.  Pass the wine.  Another cigarette, sil vous plait.  What are these, Marlboros?  Perfect.  I hear those are nice for a good head-buzz.

And it's like a Sex in the City episode in there.  Drunk hussies and sex stories, which are inevitable whenever Megan's Law comes up.  And it does for I don't know what reason.  I guess law is a more intriguing subject in an international crowd, especially when it pertains to sex.  America's sex laws.  Our offender database.  The website with the dots.  Enthralling, I'm sure, but before it has a time to fizzle, our dear Lili takes the stage with a definitive, pent-up, wine-sloshed anger about the subject.  "Whoa, Megan's Law?  Okay, hussies.  I need to tell this story..."  And it's the story of the Barnes & Nobles jerker, who was jerkin' it in the bookstore, while Lili was reading down the non-fiction aisle upstairs.  "Just wankin' it," and she's so animated.  With the kid's books one aisle over.  It's repulsive, and he's old, and he goes running downstairs, and her friend finds him on Megan's Law, with a picture and everything.  She's distraught, and wound-up, and, well yeah, she's pretty drunk.  She's definitely out-pacing me by a few glasses, that's for sure.  But hey, I got here late, what am I supposed to do.  This ain't some old college wine-chugging contest (well, I guess it was actually), not for me anyway. Silly undergrads.  I used to be so naive.  You drink slow, not fast, and that's how you last.  And that usually works, but you can only have so many wine runs.  After three, all bets are off, and it's turns to an Italian man hanging out down some street in the Roman summer.  Just jerkin' it in on his motorcycle, as girls walk by.  Every girl's got one, it seems.  Stories of the men in India, that just grab at Western women.  Everyone except the French belle.  She's just got green eyes and freckles and a smile I catch smiling at me sideways while I'm talking to Sezen.  "It's seven with a z," she says.

I get to thinking while she's talking.  "That's strange," I say to her, "I think if it were turned around and I caught some girl gettin' all DJ down there, I mean, yeah weird.  But compliment, thanks.  Talk about a self-esteem bump.  Sexy, kinda."  And the red-bearded Kiwi (Sezen's boyfriend) to my side agrees.

"Yee, if I saw that, I wouldn't feel too bad about myself.  It's not so aggressive, I think," and so, of course, we both go through the motions in our head and in the air above our crotches with our hands, laughing.  "Yup," he says, "It's got a different feel for sure...  Softer, I'd say."  And I agree.  It's the woman's touch, soft and cute, not aggressive and dark like our's.  It's poking, not choking.

"Well, I suppose it is quite an aggressive posture.  Not attractive in the least," says Sezen.  She's a banker, a student of finance.  "It's different with someone you're intimate with, though."

"Really?  I mean, I come out of the shower and she's gotten started without me.  I think that's much more appealing for the guy, than if it were flipped around on the girl, right?  I can't imagine getting a little slap in while I'm waiting, or while she's watching even.  That's weird. "  And I'm drunk, glancing whenever out the window at the Paris streets below.  Weird to think I'm here, really.  Silly weird.  Erin catches my eye for a second before I look away, and it's back to Sezen.

"Well, it depends if I know the guy."

"I should hope you know the guy," I laugh, "He's in your bed wankin' it while you're taking a shower."

"No, I mean if I'm seeing the guy, or if he's just some random," and she smiles at the Kiwi.

"True," he says. "Relationships change things."

"I'm sure they do," says I.

"Well, have you ever been in a long term relationship?" inquires Sezen.  And oh, how I hate this corner I always find myself in.

"Well, no."

"You're kidding.  A good-look guy like you's never had a girlfriend?"  It's always a shock when a girl hears it.  A surprise I don't know whether I value anymore (not the way I did in high school, anyways, when it always gave the girl a challenge).  That shock's more a glare from myself now.  Right in the face, as I see it.

"'fraid not," I shrug.  And she slowly works at the nails in the coffin lid, always prying.  Always questioning, and drunk-intrigued.  I think maybe she gets me.

It's a small room.  Erin's room, in fact.  Just a big bed, a closet, an old bureau with a mirror, and a pair of chairs.  Everyone's spread out on the floor and bed with wineglasses and ash-trays and cigarette butts and legs and limbs abound abound.  Sezen and I talk sitting in the chairs by the bureau, talking passion, and she's got me going now with these damned wine refills.  She's intent, probing, and when I say something she latches onto, she takes the mike, "Wait, what's wrong with girls not wanting to have sex right off the bat?  I'm not sure I follow."  Perhaps I've touched a nerve in my drunk ramblings.  And everything sways and double-focuses as the cigarette smoke and cheap wine play tricks on my mind.  I'm floating in the chair now.

"Oh, there's nothing wrong with that.  I respect that.  It's when a relationship pivots on sex that I think is funny.    Some girls are all, 'I only have sex with my boyfriend.  It's something for a committed relationship.  It's something special.'"  I do my best dumb-betch accent.

"But it is something special," Sezen retorts.

"Okay, maybe it is special to some, but it can't be so special to everyone now can it?  We're all different here and, as such, we probably all see it in a little different light," I say, and she half-nods a calculating agreement.  "The problem is," says I, "is that when a girl does that, she, unwittingly or not, makes it all about sex.  For the guy, anyway.  Isn't she?"

"I don't know.."

"It's the end goal though isn't it?  It's the carrot at the end of the stick she's holding in front of some jackass as she wraps him around her finger.  And then when it all goes down, then what?  That silly girl thinks that all this time this boy was falling in love with her, being ever so charming, bending head over heel, when really, he just a wanted the sexy time.  And I just a need some more wine." And like that, my cup's filled again, but I can't imagine who from.  I think it's Erin because her eyes are desperately trying to dance with mine.  Mais non, I don't want that.

There's a vauge dawning on Sezen's face, "Ok well, that's just stupid.  I'm not like that."

"Well, good."

And then a drunk French-Canadian with beard and glasses and an air of esteem about him, he tells us all the French theory of love, one hand with a wine glass, the other in his tweed jacket pocket.  It has to do with Russian dolls, the kind you pull apart and pull apart, just to find another smaller one inside.  "You see, to the French," (he's so haughty) "love is like a Russian doll.  There will be many until we find the one.  It's not romanticized like with you Americans."  Meanwhile Lili's macking hard on her new undergrad beau she's been playing footsies and handsies with all night.  "You see, it something that we approach knowing that it's going to end," says Frenchie.  "And it goes on like this, the love doesn't last and we get bored.  Until we don't anymore.  And when that time comes, it is truly special.  We don't try to make things work.  It just does when it does.  And in that tone, we're never distraught by a break-up, only lovingly surprised when things last."  What a douche.  But I suppose that's the way it is with me, maybe.  And inside, I hold onto to what he says, even though his words sounded so arrogant.  But hey, he's French.  What do I expect?

Everyone chimes in with their thoughts, Sezen, the Kiwi, Erin and the French girl beside her, laying back casually on the bed with her legs crossed. It's mildly interesting, just not enough so to remember, especially with another cigarette and my glass empty and on it's side on the carpet floor.  I just listen, eyes darting back and forth as the conversation continues.  They pause every now and then on the freckly French girl on the bed, and she smiles and looks down her shirt at me, head cocked to the side, whenever they do.

"So then what's your type, lone ranger," and it's Sezen and she's address me once again, but I'm to silly to realize it for a second.

"Hmm?  What's that?"

"Your type, your type.  What kind of girls do you like?" she reiterates.

"Haha... really?"  And it's funny to me because just yesterday I'd been Elizabeth had asked me the same question.  And the answer had come quite easily then, although maybe at least a little misogynistic sounding.  But then again, Elizabeth was a student of the theater at a cut-throat theater school, and she preferred things acute and to the point, I think.  Or at least she understood things that way, which is handy because that usually how I tell things.  And I don't think she saw me as a misogynist.  But will Sezen?  I'm not so sure, and already I'm drunkenly trying to word it just right.

"Yes, really," she says.

[stop]

"I guess to put it concisely, I like bored model types."  And everybody laughs.

"Oh, really," says Sezen between drunk chuckles.  "But isn't that every man's type?"

"Hmm.  Well, I guess so."  And I guess she's right, but is my type really everyone else's type?  "When you put it like that, anyways.  And what's wrong with that?"

"Um, for starters, it's a cop-out.  And it's a bit lofty, don't you think?  Maybe that's why you've never had a girlfriend jackass.  I mean... bored models?  C'mon, haha.  You're ridiculous."

"Ok, ok.  Maybe I shouldn't put things so concisely.  What I meant was that I'm deftly attracted to bored-looking model types."

"Oh, yeah?"  Still laughing.

"Yeah.  I need a body that fits with mine, tall and slim, and I need a girl that's too bored to try.  It's something you see in her pretty model face though.  In the way she carries herself.  In the way she talks to people.  She's not nervous.  She's not self-conscious.  And she kind of looks like she's stopped caring because well... she probably has.  She indulges in comfort, and she's frankly open and quirky funny and animated and there's nothing left except a pretty frame, a nonchalant confidence, and dreary eyes that casually scan a room for something to intrigue them.  But things rarely do, really, so she has that polite conversation tone to carry on small-talk in the interim.  I love finding that, and when I do, I desperately wish to catch their focus, as long as I don't have to try too hard, because if it doesn't come naturally, it's a bit unnatural, isn't it?  Whoa, how long have I been talking..."  Because I realize I've just described someone I'd just met.  Well, not just met, but here in Paris.  And I look around.  She's friends with Erin, in fact, but she's not here.

Lili had stopped macking in the corner and was now sitting on the Erin's bed beside her.  She's wasted. "You're crazy," she says.

"Yeah, well..." I shrug and I try to avoid Erin's gaze yet again.  But Sezen's starring me down hard like she's trying to make sense of it all, looking over my whole face with her eyebrows furrowed for the slightest second, and I can tell the gears are grinding behind her eyes.

"I think I know what you're talking about," she says.  "You really need to meet some of my friends.  There's one that'd be right up your alley.  She's beautiful."

"Oh, really?" says I, and I we keep up the conversation for as long as I can as Erin's eyes burn a hole in my temple.  Then, "Oh my, what time is it?"  And I pull out my phone and it's almost 1:30 in the morning.  "Shit! I need to catch the metro!  I have to go guys, it's been a pleasure.  Thanks for the wine."  I stand to leave, lean with one arm on the chair's back for a second and decide to take my time getting my jacket and my scarf because holy hell, I'm wasted.

The quiet French girl suddenly perks up, "I need to take the metro too!  How much time do we have?"  By now, everybody's getting up for good-byes, for hand-shakes and double-kisses.

"Not long," I say with a smile as I wrap my scarf around.  "I'll race ya."  And she laughs.

[stop]

Elena (the freckly French darling with green eyes) and I make for the door, and Lili grabs my arm, pulls me close and tells me to stay with a head tilt and a backwards eye point and Erin standing behind her.  "You have to," she whispers close.  Except I don't.  And I don't want to.

"Are you staying?" I ask.

"Yeah," in (drunk) serious tone.

And Erin chimes in with a puppy-dog look, "There's plenty of room here to sleep."

"Oh..." sigh, "that's all right," I say with a forced smile.  "I'll just catch the last metro."  And I follow Elena out and we race down two-flights of stairs, laughing, with one more to go.  But wait.

"Wait," says Elena, and she backs into a corner on the landing between the first and second floor.  Smiling and facing our feet.  With her eyes closed.  Shaking her head slowly to a rhythm that her whole body followed.

Perhaps it's from the night's chain smoking.  Or the barrels of wine.  Or the two flights flat sprint, or all of the above.  But I'm short of breath on that landing and breathing deep.  When I come up to her asking, "Are you ok?" and lean down to try and meet her gaze, I get close, and the next thing I know, her arms are around me, pulling me closer, into the corner, and my arms are around her, my fingers locked in her hair, and I'm breathing from her lips with heavy inhales as she breathes in.  She wraps a leg around me, and she spins me against the wall.

My phone rings.  She take's it out of my front pocket, and pulls away to look at it.  And with a small French gasp, "It's Erin," she says.  She's nervous as she hands the phone to me, still ringing.  "You can't tell her," says her whisper.  "Oh, please?  We work together at the school.  And I think she likes you."  You think?  But there's a desperate, pleading look on her face, like the girl who just broke mommie's vase.  Yearning for empathy.

So I smile back at her and "I promise," I say, and take the call.  Erin says that she's mixed a drink for me, and it's waiting, and I have to come back up and take it.  Quickly.  "It's gotta be quick though, seriously.  Just one.  I can't miss this metro."  Elena's kissing my neck ever so softly.

"Just one more for the road," says Erin.  "I promise."  Click.

"Your hands are so cold," Elena's holding them to her face, palm to cheek, moving them back and forth, and nuzzling my fingers with her nose.

"I know, right?  Okay," I say.  "I just have to go and take one drink upstairs and I'll be back.  And you... You just wait right here, yeah?  Don't leave me, please.  I'll only be a second" She nods, looking at me nervous, and biting her nails out of habit.

[stop]

Back up two flights.  Goddammit.  Through the door with the pumpkin, and Sezen's in the hallway.  Lili's there too.  "Where's Erin?" I ask.

"In the kitchen."  So I walk to the end of the hall into the kitchen, and there she is.

"All right.  Where's this drink at?"  And I'm as chipper as possible.

"Uhm, I have to make it still," says Erin and she quickly grabs a bottle of gin and a pair of shot glasses.

"Oh... no wine?"

"Yeah, we ran out.  I'm sorry."

"That's okay.  I'm too drunk for gin though, and I really can't miss this metro.  Maybe another time, yeah?"

"Uhm..."

"Yeah, another time," I say, and I hug her and kiss her on the forehead and turn heels and bolt back down the hall to the door.

Sezen grabs my hand first, "Wait.  Where are you going?  Stay."  And there's urgency in her eyes.

But I laugh, "I can't."  And I pull free.

Then Lili get's me just outside the door in the stairwell.  "Stop.  Go and kiss her.  You need to go back there."

"Uh... No, I don't.  Plus the French girl's downstairs waiting for me, tehe."  Oops.

Her eyes widen "Are you..." I can't not smile.

"But don't tell Erin," I cut her off and turn to go, but she grabs my arm one last time.

"If you leave here tonight, you can't stay at my place anymore," she whispers close in my ear, and I don't see it as a bluff. I see it as a threat, and I'm taken aback for one second and mull it over.  Really?  But I don't care right now, and I call it anyway.

"That's all right," I say with a kiss on her cheek, and I'm gone.

[stop]

I fly down the stairs and Elena's waiting in the foyer, just standing in the middle of it, watching me stumble down the last flight and approach.  Closer.  Closer still, and then her eyes fire green and her lips part with a French gasp and we're against the wall again.  Her hands up my shirt, holding me.  The cold on her fingertips wakes the skin, a feeling alive after a long slumber, and my soul rustles to.

When we hear the steps on the staircase, I look up to see Lili's legs and the bottom of her blue, hussy-fur jacket descending, and we bolt like kids startled in a hide-n-seek, out the door and down this street, then that street, sprinting.  Running hand in hand.  On drunk legs and a brisk Paris night's air.  It burns the lungs to laugh,  maybe from the cold, or maybe from the cigarettes, but we can't help it.  At least I can't.  Running for seclusion down late Paris streets in the tow of some French belle.  What am I doing.

We're not even running towards the metro.  We've missed the last one anyways, so we stop at a corner on a small quiet street and she slips into personas.  There was Natasha the street-walker.  "You should arrest me, officer.  I'm being bad.  You need an officer name.  Like Cliff."  Then the innocent French doe, "Where am I?  Who are you?"  with a blase curiosity as she pulls her head back, arching her hips into mine.  "What is your name?"

"Me?  I'm Elena.  Oh, pardon.  Je m'apelle Elena," I say with a smile at the game.

"Elena...? But that is my name."  It's an Audrey Hepburn innocence in her tone, like she's already thinking of breakfast.  "Give it back to me..."  She coaxes with persuasive neck kisses.

"Hmm.  Fine, fine.  You're Elena.  You're Elena," because the feeling's so wonderful, and the way she accents words is exciting.

"But then what is your name?"  Elle dit entre bisous.  "What is your middle name?"

"Ah, well my middle name's Brian."

She pauses, "But... then what is your first name?  Are you Brian Brian?" and she laughs at it.

"Oh, mais non.  George Brian."

"George, mmm," she smiles and pours her eyes into mine.  "I like this."  Her hands move up my shirt again to my chest.  "It is sexy, I think."

"Ha! George is," I'm not convinced.

"Yes."

"More than Brian?"

"Mmm, yes."

"Well, call me George then."

"I will then."  Oh, the French.  She grabs us a cab to her place.

Flims: Life on a Mountain

We leave Zurich early.  My head's still ringing from the night before and, while we're packing up for the first time with Mike on board, I can see it in everyone's eyes that their's are too.  The sun's still behind the clouds on the dawn of this new chapter, and we all pack into Stephii's little Ford Fiesta-looking stick-shift with all our bags, and she cranks that thing into gear, and it takes off onto the Swiss highway with everything in the metric system.  Three of us haven't been in an automobile for nearly a month and being squished in there in the backseat between Max and Grant brings a little pang of nostalgia to my soul, to everyone cramming into the old Explorer back home in Santa Cruz on some Thursday to the bars.  Ten heads?  No problem.  We're only four heads here in Swissy-land.  And Stephii, of course.

[stop]

Jonesin' and it feels great.  Mike cranks down the shotgun-side window manually because that's how Stephii do, straight manual, gunning up the Alps, past aqua-blue, still mountain lakes.  And all the waterfalls feathering lazy down the green slopes and wet cliffs, black in the summer sun, rising slowly around valley on both sides.  I want to live here.  A soft sea of clouds, bleached white, washes into the peaks out yonder.  Lord, don't let me be dreaming, because this is just too beautiful.  It makes the heart beat slower, and the blood pumps with joy at the fresh air it's breathin'.  It's blowing in from Mike's window and blasts me in the face in buffets, and it whips past my ears so it's all I hear.  Thank God I's a got my sunnies because I hate to eye squint.  With those bad boys on, it's a puppy dog's heaven, zoning out in a tongue-lolling euphoria from the feeling of speed on my skin.  What is this wondrous countryside we've stumbled upon, of clear-water waterfalls, and lakes, and greens and mountains and crisp blue skies, this Zion, this Shangri-la, like on of those yellow-paged, ageless fairy-tale picture-books come to swallow us whole.  It's a dive in, willing, for me, and there's a tiny voice that whispers through the wind telling never to leave.  It's enchanting, this place.

Paris: The City of Love

Stop kissing everywhere.  Stop holding each other while you walk.  That's not comfortable, and don't just keep walking on with that second-guess in your step, just trying to synchronize the beats of the heels as your so sure the ones of your heart are.  They're not.  Or if they are, how strange that is to me.  Are you living her life, or if she living yours?  Because there's definitely a feeding off the other.  And in Paris, it's everywhere.  There's a feeding off everything.  The "Babe, I love you," looking at the Eiffel Tower, en Francais, en Anglais, en Allmand, however you want it.  And a kiss just so she knows for sure.  It's the gooey love I can't stand, but maybe because I've never understood it.

Let me be your everlasting light
Your train going away from pain
Love is the coal, that makes this train roll
Let me be your everlasting light


I've never understood it.  That giving of the self, to grow so attached.  That feeling's lost on me.  Maybe it's something of a growth in the other direction.  Towards the solidarity of a life on my own.  With close friends and passing relations.  Nobody's going to get that close, of that I'm reluctantly certain.  But we can always hope can't we?  For that shining star at the top of the Tour Eiffel with the world an ant farm as I hold her close and she squeezes back, gliding so high above it all that nothing else matters anymore, and that beam of light into the night reaching around towards the horizon, ellipsing right above to hit every point on the line, that beam is just ours to share.  I'll probably never be up there.  In that chocolate ganache of true romance above the city.  But at least I know what I want.  It's particular.  It's peculiar.  It's something special in the way I see her.  Something different.  Something comfortable.  It has to be.  Until then though, let me just sit here in the park Champs de Mars with my friends, high as a Parisienne disposition on dry Barcelona weed.  We all have our sunglasses on.

Prague: The Real Budweiser

We catch a train.  One of the last ones out of Berlin to Prague that late afternoon.  Zach took off with Corinna and Dajana and Toni to Belgium for his last few days before flying back to Boulder.  The girls kiss us on each cheek, and we do the same, and hi-five "fare thee wells" to the Colorado Kid.  He leaves me with a book he's finished already, All the Sad Young Literary Men. What a champ, that guy.  But hey, we're going to the Czech Republic now, Eastern block almost, and sleeping off the festival for most of the ride.  Just one or two transfers, and we arrive at Prague Central a little after 1:00 in the morning and the place is empty and our footsteps bounce off the high ceiling as we shuffle down stairs and out the glass door entrance.  A guy's holding it open waiting for us to leave.  Outside it's Monday morning, and the city's dead.  No host.  "Well... we made it guys," and we all look at each other.  Max and Grant look spent.  I'm sure I do too.  Grant locates the nearest hostel on his phone, and we hump off with our packs into the late, late Czech night.  Of course, we get lost for about twenty minutes because all the roads are forking and splitting off this way and that.  When we finally find it, tucked away around the backside of some building on whatever street, I don't even care how much the bed costs, and I don't remember.  "Three beds, please," and we sign some shit and take our keys up to our room on the third floor with a fiending anticipation of this pack not being on my back and my head pillowed.  In the room, the motions seem mechanic.  Put pack in locker.  Walk down hall to brush teeth.  Come back, unwrap pillow and sheets.  Take off pants and lights out.  And as my ear's on the pillow, top bunk, eyes closed, I hear the Nation of Gandwana still thumping in my mind, and I drift off.

[stop]

Morning comes when we wake up, and there's some breakie supplies downstairs in the tiny lobby.  Wolf down the bread and cheese, and some milk and cereal with some Aussie girls, and then it's time to go romping.  Exploring in the most Tom Sawyer sense of the word, just walking towards the center with no map, towards the old shit.  I love it.  Prague castle looms on the hill in our minds (we've seen pictures, obviously), across the Vltava and Charles Bridge.  We'll get there, eventually.

Walking Prague is like walking back in time.  Half the city's older than our country, five times over, the buildings are so Gothic-old and wise.  The ones that you remember anyways, humming with that dull violin of history that still shrieks with spires and rusted-green and -grey bronze gargoygles abound to the blue skies of the day, perfectly-clouded fleets of lovely puffs that danced all at once into the slow west in rhythm.  Together now, past the Powder Tower all goth-ed out and reeking of age,and  across the old market square, by Tyn Cathedral towering over the thin facade of young building around it.  And the old man in bronze with his rop all green from time and white from birdie doo, birdie doo from a bygone time.  Around old Town Hall and the Astronomical clock and down some ancient cobblestone streets and ah, there she is.   Pausing for a moment on the far bank of the River Vltava, the castle catches a frame of itself between the shore tower and baroque statues.  It's one of the first buildings, definitely the most striking, to look physically daunting, like some fearsome fortress.   The hum of the crowds dim, just for a second, and try to imagine how it must've been, some wretched foot-messenger walking through the city with a message for the Emperor.  Across Charles Bridge, the castle's a straight shot up the hill, sitting on it's natural throne, towering over the land.  From the grand, old stone staircase wrapping up the hill, we can see all of old Prague, red-roofed with tiles, stretching out before us, The new city with it's blacks and grays, and it's skyscrapers lay off to the distant south down the Vltava.  It's a puff up the stairs.  Thank god we didn't have any weed with us, because doing it high would suck.  At the top we're greeted at the castle gates by two Gothic kings, I'm assuming, with a huge sack of hair on his balls beating the crap out of what looks like some helpless medieval peasant on one side, and on the other, stabbing another with his mighty sword of stone.  Very welcoming.  And the guards don't move from there little barber-shop-stripe painted guard-boxes, they don't move a muscle, and we walk through.  Walking out into the courtyard, the Cathedral kinda jumps up at you.

[stop]

It's this monstrous old hunk of twisted, intricate Renaissance-goth wonder.  Preserved in Prague's castle courtyard, some relic of the past, and the "oohs" and "aahs" sound off in my mind.  That beauty of old.  My feets are in that marching mood though and we're soon off, through the castle gardens, back down the hill on the back side, and across the Vltava.  It's beer time.  We've earned it with all this walking.  We pass the opera house and it's golden, angel chandeliers of old-timey street lanterns.  It's a quick pass, back through the centuries, back to the present, and we find a cafe with seating outside and plop down, and all order bottle of Budweiser.  Oh, no American Budweiser though.  This is some antique Czech recipe, and it's crisp, and it's flavorful.  As I sit there, the clouds shuttling over the single tree in the square and the high flat-buildings around us, I try to think of my last red-canned American Budweiser with an ankle on my knee, leaning hard in the metal chair.  From the retrospect, from the old Santa Cruz days, the memory sticks to the top of my mouth with a taste as if someone pissed in the Keystone.  I gotta wash it down with that old Czech original.  I love it here, thing's are just better over here, even without the amenity of knowing what's going to happen next.  It's so beautiful, and the age of it all is refreshing, cognizant the Redwood mountain air, and we start a-hankerin' for that good spliff high.

Zurich: Elevator Clubs and the American Way

Oh, we’re raging tonight.  Raging with Stephii and Marcia, two Swiss lovelies that had crashed on Mike’s couch for two or so months last summer.  They’re rad chicks.  Stephii’s lives in a little mountain town, Flims,  in the Alps by Luzern.   But she drove into Zurich tonight to rage with Marcia, who lives here, and to take us away to the Alps in the morning. 

But first things first.  We make Sara and her brother dinner, the usual, pasta with chicken and veggies in tomato sauce.  It’s so simple and still, it never gets old.  And we just keep getting better at making it.  Grant grills and spices the chicken, and Max and I chop away at the onions and garlic and zucchini and whatever other crunchy clues (green peppers, maybe?) there are to be strewn in.  Mike boils the pasta.  Daunting, I know, but hey, he just got here.  Give him a break.   It turns out delectable, as always, and the six of us can barely shove it all in our tummies.  Better to cook a lot than a little, I think, especially on the road.  Just in case though, we got a bunch of wine and whiskey at the market to wash it all down.  Properly though, with drinking games.  We teach them Fuck the Dealer and King’s Cup and a hippy-bohemian game with a penny and a lighter that Corinna taught us back in Berlin.  It’s a good one.  There’s a bowl, and on top of that bowl there’s  a piece of newspaper pulled taught  over it by a rubber band.  The penny goes in the middle, and the objective of the game is to burn a hole in the paper without the penny falling in (to the bowl, that is; pay attention).  It’s a wild game, one that keeps you on the edge of your seat as the flame burns fast or slow, or you don’t blow it out hard enough.  And whoever loses has to drink from a cup in which everyone’s put a little of their own.  Or a lot of their own.  Regardless, it’s a bottoms up affair, and by the time we’re all out of booze, there’s shreds of burnt newspaper everywhere, burnt precisely so that Sara’s living room and the table look like a pyro’s studio space.  And Max smokes one (three, really) more cigarettes on that balcony over Idaplatz before we leave the siblings to a quiet night of recovery (Sara has work in the morning) from the alcoholic hell we just put them through.   Off gallivanting towards the bus that will take us to Marcia’s with a whiskey warmth in our soul and at the back of my mouth, and a silly, stutter swing in our step.  It’s Mike’s first proper drunk in the Old World so we go, and we go hard. 

From the metro stop that Marcia tell us, it takes a little while for us to find our way to her flat.  No surprise there.  And really no hurry.  Just traipsing down quiet Swiss streets with the streetlights burning clean white.  The streets turn to green-grassed walk-paths between three-  or four-story (American stories) apartment buildings and sprawling lawns.  It’s a late weeknight, so when we catch the slightest wind of loud music, it must be Marcia so we follow it, that muffled bass, and before long there’s laughter and shouting as well.  Haha! Her neighbors must hate her.

Lord knows she doesn’t care though.  Stephii the mountain fairy loves to snowboard.  It’s her passion, and she kills it.  Marcia kills it at raging.   We knock on the door and she drags us in and I don’t think thirty seconds pass then she’s shotguning a beer with us in the kitchen and grabbing us all another.   In the living room, there’s kids playing beer pong (we taught them how to play that summer last).  Stephii gets us all to drink tall cans of this god-awful concoction called Desperado.  It’s a beer-tequila mix with a hint of sugary lime, not something I’m particularly keen on trifling with, but what the hell, why not.  The night’s getting dirty.  And sloppy.  And after we finish our Desperados with a cringe, it’s back to the bus with Marica and Stephii and their fun Swiss friends that love because we’re from California and we surf and they think we invented beer pong.  We don’t bother correcting them.  Why would we?  We just ride, standing, trying not to fall about at each stop, hooting big teary-eyed laughs from all the forgettable hilarity of drunk night metro musings. 

I don’t remember getting to the club.  That’s not true.  I remember being in front of that office-looking building and bulky Swiss bouncers in sharp suits shooing us with Swiss-French (or Swiss-German?) onto a snazzy, glass elevator going up the side, six stories, I just don’t remember getting off that caterpillar bus we took back into the city.  Spotted recollection.  But the good stuff sticks.  When we walk into the club, it’s this monstrous ballroom sized thing, just a huge dance floor, a bar, and a DJ.  It’s dark with lights strobbing our slowed retinas.  And the girls are beautiful and full of dance, and we move with everything we’ve got.  Grant and Max and Mike are still getting drinks at the bar, but I only swing back to it for some water when my swaying starts swaying too hard, and my knees start tickling.  We’re there forever because when your drunk, dancing never gets old, just more difficult, like a mind’s challenge to the body, and I don’t think any of us are the type to shy away from that.  Until the music stops that is.  And the lights come on, the bright squinting ones that push you out and down the elevator.  Out on the street at who knows what time, but everything’s closed.  And we’re drunk and rowdy and talking loud, American English so that some of the club-goers littering the sidewalk shoot us funny looks, and turn back to their friends to laugh. 

Mike sees it, makes eye contact, and nods up in their direction, “What’s up, bitch.  Yeah, you Swiss motha fuckers, laugh it up.”  It’s probably the whiskey.  Or maybe the Desperados, but Mike and Max are set on fightin’ words.  Boisterous, drunk English words of daring and hot blood, like outside some douche club on Sunset, and there’s four of the Swiss button-downs, so Grant and I know we’re in if anything goes down.  Except we’re in Zurich and there’s a divide, a language barrier.  One-sided though, because more likely than not, they understand most of what Mike’s yelling and Max behind him, and just taunt them with Swiss in a jeering tone, as Grant and I roll eyes and hold back. 

Nothing comes of it though, and Stephii grabs the first cab she can, and we pile all in and I question,  “Hey, honey, d’ya think KFC’s still open?”  Sometimes when you’re wasted (check), you gotta play the stereotype, I guess.  No big.