Spooky

I am at the cusp of food-coma delirium, about to topple over into the wonder and amusement of a wide-eyed daydream made possible by the all too intoxicating vices of the dining hall, endless chai lattes, and, lest we forget, that magical secret ingredient, birthday hashish.

The shades had rather ominously pulled themselves a distant fifteen minutes ago and there's still a slice of honeydew and half a chai latte set on the table, tempting my digestive tract.  They'll be acquainted soon enough.  But not yet.  Iggy Pop's droning in my ear at the perpetual Man vs. Food stare-down.  It's shaking and rousing and in a determined reach the time had come for Mr. Chai to meet Mr. Stomach Enzyme along with his wife and immediate family, The Stomach Enzymes.  In a word, they're digestive, in it's most literal form no less.

Why can't every girl speak with the voice of Dusty Springfield?  It would make finding love such a simple assignment.

But alas, they can't all be crooners can they.  It would strip the beauty right out.  And then what would I have to fall for, hmm?  I'm about due, and I do love the fall so.  The climbing back out not so much, but the fall definitely has its moments.  The breathless feeling, the weightlessness.  Maybe it's too much.  Too exhilarating, the rush, because I always seem to forget to pull the parachute.  The climb up always hurts just a little (or a lot) bit more, when that cord's never pulled.  That first touch of ground could be your last, and something's definitely broken.

But I'm not like them.
I can pretend.

London: From Russia with Love

Sloane street is right in the middle of that part of London you always see in cheesy romance films or an Olsen twins flick.  Everything's white stone.  And if it's not white, it's just off-white stone, or black marble.  I'm not sure if it's the timezone delirium or that all-consuming hunger high you get when the only thing you've eaten over the last twenty hours is an airplane chicken salad, ginger ale, and a third of a handle of whiskey, but I feel high and dreamy like I'm in a fairy tale.  It's a feeling often striven for, but rarely duplicated, especially in this magnitude.  The people driving cars, only drive nice ones.  Really nice ones.  And if they don't drive, they're whisked away in little sleek black cabs or towering red buses.  Everyone looks wealthy, those damned British with their pounds sterling and their stupid traffic laws.

We pass by Inna's place of residence twice before realizing it's not a department store, and with all due haste we swing the glass door wide.  It's heavy.  The desk clerk must think us to be a bit out of place with our shorts and our backpacks and dufflebags, struggling against momentum to pull the door open.  If he thinks us humorous, he hides it well.  We walk in like the confused little boys lost in the big city that we are, all big-eyed and still somewhat taken aback by it all, and when we cautiously approach the desk, he doesn't miss a beat.  "And who are you here to see, sirs." It's very English and kind of trails off at the end.  Maxwell, the ambassador, picks up the conversation while Grant pockets the phone map and I busy myself keeling over and grabbing my knees.  "We're staying with Inna at apartment 603," chimes Max.  Sir Desk-clerk smiles endearingly and with a grain of humor; I barely catch it.

"And what's  her last name, then?" We have to smile too.  I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure it's because everyone present, desk clerk included, has little or no idea how to actually pronounce it, and there couldn't have been too many Innas in the building expecting guests.  Miss Rabotyagina as it is, is busy at work for most of the day, but left the key to her place with our new friend.  I wasn't previously aware, but apparently the 600 apartments in this building are the ones at the very top.  There're stairs to the left and a gold-doored elevator to the right.  Guess what we took.

It's not until we get to Inna's door that this newly discovered feeling of trust and charisma for humanity sets in.  This girl's never before met us.  We had talked a handful of times online, and now we're here at the door of her 6th story Kensington penthouse, key in hand.  Of course it's then that we also realize that the Brits don't exactly make doors and locks the same way we do.  For no reason apparent to us, there's a door knob smack-dab in the middle of the door with a lock and handle down and to the side by the frame.  Fancy-shmamcy.   It's a three-minute job, no big deal, and we're in.  Penthouse may have overshot the description, but not by much.

[to be continued]


The place is luxurious.  London single-living luxurious, a little hollow-feeling with bare white walls, but the carpet makes it cozy.  The door opens on a comfortable foyer with a big coat closet and a skinny, euro-flat kitchen.  There's a small hallway that leads to the grand bedroom and the living room on either side.  Score?  Yeah, score!  What the hell have we stumbled into?  We take off our shoes and shove all our shit into the most inconspicuous corner of the living room and head back across to the master bedroom where there's a balcony.  A petite brick thing with no door out to it so we have to step through a low-framed window, which isn't as simple as it should've been, but that's London for you.  Max takes down another Red, and fuck it, we all do, suckin' in the sweet cancer, and holding for the head-buzz.  I lean hard on the grey slab guard so my head's out over Sloane, and I look down, letting out all the smoke as the red double-deckers hustle by and the loud hustle of the city sinks in.  "Well, I don't know about you guys, but I'm famished.  Let's eat, yeah?"

"Yeah, after this cigarette,"  says Max.

"We should try and find a market too so we can cook some shit later." Grant suggests between puffs.

"Down.  Let's get a proper English meal in first though."

"Duh.  Fuckin' London, huh?"  We can't help but laughing.  Everything's funny when reality hasn't quite caught up yet, it fell off somewhere over the Atlantic, I think.  Somewhere before Gatwick, because this London place is so silly.  After flicking butts, we fly down the stairs - it feels like running on the moon without those packs on - and inquire of our friend the desk-man as to the nearest eatery.

"Why sirs, there's one right around the corner.  Take a right out the door and then your first left."

"Thank you kindly," I say in reply.  We're at a quaint little deli-diner in no time, and seeing as it's not even noon yet, we all order up proper English breakfasts; eggs, beans, bacon, toast and tomato; the works.  We inhale that shit, it's so good.  Now we can finally put that vacuum-sealed airplane food behind us and relish savory flavor.  Well worth the eight pounds, it is.

"Well.  Now what?"

"Let's go romping!"

"Yes, lets!  Navigator!  Take us on our way!"

Grant's on it, "Aye-aye, you scurvy slags!" and he whips out his phone to gather our bearings.  "There's a park nearby," he says, "a big one.  Hyde Park."

"Sounds regal.  I'm in."

"All right then.  To the Hyde!" exclaims Max.  We bus our tables and bail on foot to the park.  It's not a long walk, and we enter through tall cast-iron gates.  " Day-um.  Regal as fuck."

"'Tis the Queen's park, it is." I say.

"Ah, yes."  So we hold our heads a bit higher than usual, and our should a bit more back.  As far as parks go, the Hyde is one of the grandest I've seen recently.  It's huge.  A true city park with a lake, the Serpentine, and pedal-boats and lounge chairs sprawled out here and there.  There're swans and squirrels and pretentious, plump pigeons that eat food right out of the hand.  There're ancient looking willows set by themselves whose branches and vines hang low like a curtain.  And, of course, there are roller-bladers weaving through lines of cones.  "Epic."  We make a day of it, just ambling around, taking turns taking pictures with Grant's camera.  When we start getting hungry again we head to the nearest market for supplies, but that's not 'til late in the afternoon.  Back at Sloane Street on the sixth floor, Inna's finally home waiting for us.  We hit it off instantly, because shit, we're so damn charming and we cook her a good old-fashioned dinner from California.  She loves it.  She's from Mother Russia.

Everyday Ought to Be

Everyday ought to be a day that carries a Tony Bennett melody and rhythm with it.  Today's crooner's choice: Night and Day.  As Dean Moriarity would say, I dig it.  I also dig the startling number of chubby brown ground squirrels mozin' across the oh-so greeny knolls. But they always stay just out of reach, like a school of fuzzy ground-tuna.  Ground-tuna house slippers? Yes, please.

Says the man who told his friend today that intelligence was not but an attention to wit.  This, opposed to knowledge, which pertains more specifically to facts and techniques accrued.  Anyone with the appropriate measure of tenacity can most likely accrue as much knowledge as another.  The intelligence lies within an individual's capacity and efficiency with which they come to know the things they know, and perhaps most importantly, to what avail.  Always important to be reminded is the fact that despite our best efforts, some sort of predisposition is always instilled into being this high.  Where am I.

Grab the reins and hold on.

All Your Friends

The way it does in bad films.  James Murphy, thank you.  You're always so quaint and true.  Time keeps trudging along in Santa Cruz sometimes and as the weather warms again and I feel a year older with all adieu, there's a sense of a stormy undertow lingering.  But that's nothing a bit of sunshine and solitude amidst the rush and bustle of that forlorn college life.  It's a bunch on the lonely side of the Knoll, nothing sinister, just nothing of any particular interest or desire for in so many words.  And so there are more.

I suppose this place has a certain significance to everyone who comes here, and I hope it's more or less not where precisely we are, but what we are just so privy to see from here.  Especially on a day so clear with a sky so frosted by high clouds and streaked by plane traces.

It's hypothetically a lower sun in the winter thus affording us such a silhouette of Monterey across the bay and the fine, fine haze dusting the horizon line.  The sun is not inhibited in the slightest and it had rained previously for a couple days straight.  Everything that could be is positively vibrant, exceptionally at that, and perhaps only so because of these certain set of circumstances.  It makes it all worth it really.  The shitty jobs, the self-imposed sufferable living quarters, the financial constraints, and of course the numerous buckshot holes in my foot linked directly to the striking number of times I've managed to shoot myself there in so many ways.  Worth it.

For that clinging to the plan, however haphazard and striving to achieve a goal.  One that in my care seems to be continually diminishing in prospect.  But to come out ahead, at least just not in debt, would be solace enough for me.  To know how far one can absolutely stretch himself, that distance into the crevasse, down tighter and tighter until one can barely breathe.

But you focus, you find that slow and steady breath, wherever it may be, and latch to something comfortable.    Something elemental as the sun and how beautiful it makes everything.  It's just Mama Nature doing her thang.  Her ability to take your breathe away and then give it right back; one let's her breathe for him.  And the muscles relax.  Your diaphragm reaches low and fills the lungs full.  The release is soulfully cleansing.  And the storm clouds subside into memories far past.

This is the End

Was I really this out of shape?  My prolific smoking and drinking over the past two months had certainly not made me any healthier.  It was probably just the late summer SoCal air, ripe with that dry smog and airborne pollen that I knew only too well, but until recently had forgotten.  It's funny how nonchalantly run-of-the-milll the end can be sometimes; just me and Sage romping through the hills of Laguna Niguel on one of those dry, short of breath days.  It's a little hard to breathe, so I breathe harder.  Thank God Sage is here, pulling at that big-doggy pace just faster than my own so that the leash was taught and my feet step heavy as we hoe-hum our way up the skinny little dust-dirt trail through the dry brush to the top of the ridge.


Sage stops and i stop, and we're here at the top.  There's nothing to the south but high shrubs and trees concealing Monster's secluded, quiet neighborhood.  To the north, our eyes stretch clear across to the other ridge, with the entirety of Laguna and Dana Point and that beach-town Elysium before us.  Sage has stopped rummaging through the thistle, like she always does.  Looking north with me, sitting on her haunches with her tongue lolling out the side of her mouth, maybe she's finally found what she was sniffing for all this time.  But she's probably just tired from the hike.  I love her to death, the old hag.  I'm not exactly wiggling my toes ready for more myself.  Man, I'm out of shape.  I inhale deep through my nose, puffing out my chest and feeling my diaphragm pull down.  Still, when I try to swallow, nothing gets through.  Ugh, I hate this asthma.  My throat's closed up like an albacore's asshole.    But with another deep breath through the nostrils, a cold dread creeps up and my writing hand begins to tingle and then loose feeling.  But still, that breath won't come so I sit down in the hard dirt next to Sage.  And my chest seizes, so I lay back and try to suck sweet breeze through my nose, and stretch my chest up and out for God's humble mercy.  But my chest seizes again.  And the fingers in my right hand clench deep into Sage's fuzzy chest as she stood over me with her head above mine, looking forward, out towards the treeline.  It's a numbing reluctance, an abashed acceptance.  But my body's still shaking for air and I feel the tears squeezing from the corner of my eyes, and maybe Sage noticed because her head snaps down to look at me now with that big, lovable-dopey face of hers, smiling that pant-happy dog smile that you can't help but smile happily back at.  With that slobbery tongue and those dancing eyebrows and those big beautiful brown eyes, and then, that flash.  That color rainbow of white light prismed.  All-encompassing.  Forever in a moment, and I see it all.  Everyone I ever cared for, all of them.  Everything I ever remembered with fondness, right up to Sage's fluffy face.  And there it was again, before me and above me, and brighter and whiter.  My eyes flow rivers now, but I can't stop smiling.  It had been one immaculate sight to behold for this soul.  Something to be eternally remembered and grateful for.  And look, Sage can't take her eyes off ya, kid.  My only regret is that I couldn't have loved her, and that she wasn't here with me now.  And I wish I'd seen the northern lights, but that's life I guess, isn't it.  What're ya gonna to do.  "So this is the end then, girl?"  I mouth it out, and there's no sound.  That old gal heard me though, sure enough, because I see her smiling lips moving like all the ones I'd loved.  "The end?  Why no, m'dear.  That was just the beginning."

Black Hole Sun

Red-tint sunglasses.  A frame only holds on by the top, straddling the bridge of my nose with its two little silicon footsies.  It's a passion, a passionate hue.  Everything looks livelier and redder robin.  But it's not the robin, it's the sparrows that befriend me.  Amuse me with their hopping.  Their hunt for crumbs with not but a beak.  How... how else to say but bleak.  They thrive I suppose, so the comparison can't be all bad.

EESPINOZA
36x

[best regards, Santa Cruz]

Whatever that means.  From a sparrow kick and a narrow glance.  Both an affinity for post-its.  'Tis a curious thing to have been written on such a small square of paper.  The name of a boat?  Sure.  That's my final answer.  That's the ticket.  The point to saying it all in the first place.  Because intellect breeds curiosity in all the loveliest looking places.  Under the chairs of spry legs and fresh faces.  See now, I've lost my train.  Jimi's frying too hard, and that's why he was the best.  Maybe not, but nobody could ever say it wasn't all the drugs.  With definity.  Not altogether incredible.  Mais, something amazing.  I'm going to start pulling out my hair now.  Because I can.  Mais, I probably won't though now will I.  I don't know.  It's fun to write down things you want, or want never to forget.  I wonder why that is.  Perhaps it's that I like remembering things, by either photo or words.  Yeah, pictures are easy.  Sometimes it just has to be words though.  They can be more telling.  And often more tattling, and almost always more long-taling.  And altogether more lovely.

Thank you, Miami Holiday.

Quote of the Day: But I Like These Shoes

“To be happy, it first takes being comfortable being in your own shoes. The rest can work up from there. The hardest situation to stay happy, I think, is when you’re trying to find love, and yourself at the same time. It just doesn’t seem to fit well. So I believe that happiness is being able to wake up and just know that this is what you wanted, and not what somebody else wanted.” ~Sophia Bush

Barcelona: No Reservations

On our third day, a couple of Grant’s friends from life-guarding back home let him know that they just so happen to be in Barcelona as well.  So naturally, we come to the idea that we should meet up with them for a bit of lunch and paint the marina red in a matter of speaking.  Breakfast is quaint, some light banter with Mama Pla, some juice, and this amazing chocolate chip cookie cereal that gets immediately soggy in the milk and melts in your mouth.  We hump out the ten minute walk to the San Cugat station, and after all successfully slipping through the gate with one swipe of the ticket (we're getting quite good at that), we take seats at one of the benches on the platform to wait for that elusive S5 train.  The sun's already pretty high in the sky when we get on.  Next stop, Plaza Catalyan and Las Ramblas.  We head south down the storied street, past this gift shop and that, past the cattle-like tourists taking pictures of themselves in front of things, past the innumerable painted performers of every size and theme, until we finally come to that majestic pillar atop which stands everybody’s favorite fifteenth century explorer looking out over the Marina. 

Grant calls his friends who say they’d be at a restaurant in the Olympic Village in two or so hours at 3:00.  So we have some time.  And what does one do with time in Barcelona under that sweltering Spanish summer sun?  Why one goes to the beach of course.  And so we do, but not before stopping by a hole-in-the-wall liquor store for a couple tall cans of Modelo Especial and some Granini pineapple juice.  The two hours fly by, which isn’t surprising at a beach where the water’s lukewarm and there are no prissy nudity laws.  Our extinguishing of the beer/juice cocktails coincided quite nicely with our timetable, so when they're done with, we trek down the beach towards that massive metallic fish swimming towards the sea. 

We meet Grant’s pals at a clean-cut-looking restaurant set at the base of the fish’s mouth.  They're likable.  A somewhat refreshing splash in the face of that long lost, familiar Laguna Beach attitude.  This in the sense that one is soft-spoken, handsome, and looks a strikingly similar to our friend Taylor, and the other is a bit more boisterous and odd-shaped, a characteristic he masks to a tee with a mustache and a girlfriend from USC; the looks and the personality, two individuals perfectly complimenting one another, almost symbiotically.

With the weather like it is, sitting outside's a must.  Our lunch orders vary, but all include some sort of seafood persuasion.  Except pour moi.  Not on purpose mind you, it’s just that the seafood dishes on the menu, tantalizing as they may be, all have rather staggering prices next to them, especially considering my financial disparity.  So I opt for one of the salads.  It isn’t the cheapest, but it does make the seafood plates seem more priced like bad contemporary art (expensive). Plus there's one important word in its description that catches the attention of my eye, my stomach, and mine soul.  That word is bacon. And when our meals come out, I'm not disappointed.  My salad's served on a main dish plate piled high with no less than four full grizzly slabs of bacon sliced and laid down decoratively on top.

The table talk is quite interesting.  They had been traveling for three weeks in a similar fashion as us, but with some stark differences.  For one, they're a bit older, clocking in at twenty-five and twenty-six years of age.  As to be expected, they are afforded a certain fiscal promiscuity that is not available to some of us (myself), and with that luxury comes a very different perspective of European travel.  It's a subtle difference, one that would only stand out in comparison to our escapades, I suppose.  Of course they have a bit more money to play with, but that’s not the difference I’m talking about.  It’s a predisposition that I guess comes when one is born into a financial safe-haven.  I’m talking about making reservations.  It’s always been a thing that I’ve regarded with a quizzical demeanor.  They paid to reserve seats on their trains.  They made reservations at restaurants.  In no way am I saying that it’s something to look down on.  It’s actually something that, if anything, is something of a status symbol; a show of preparation, etiquette, and class; a status that many of us probably strive for.  And the only reason I think it sticks out is for the peculiar situation it brings us to after they tell us of a place not far off Las Ramblas that we should check out for dinner while we're still in Barcelona.

By the way they describe it, this place was a veritable seafood haven; sushi, seafood, both fried and raw, salads, desserts, buffet style and all for only 10 EUR.  “You should definitely make reservations,” Taylor 2.0 tells us.  

With a full meal in one’s stomach, it’s much easier to fully appreciate the beauty of a place.  And so it is as we return to the beach.  The sand's coarse and hot with my sandals in hand.  The boardwalk helps.  As we lay back and breath deep the salty seaside, we're afforded a chance at an observation that I personally love; that frank unabashed stare of curiosity that is becoming only to one wearing sunglasses.  And what does this knit-picky, inquisitive scan of our surroundings bring to our attention?  Take away the topless Aphrodites, take away the curious looking Asian women walking from beach-goer to beach-goer whoring out skill sets ranging from deep-tissue massage to braiding corn-rolls, take away the cruise-ships and high-rise hotels on the horizon to the west.  Take it all away, and still, there's one thing that dominates my thoughts.  It is the sea. There's a breakwater about one hundred yards off the shoreline that calls to me, beckoning me to swim out and run across its uneven concrete surfaces, to dive off the corner of one of the hundred or so concrete sugar cubes that Spain has seemingly barged out and dropped there for our enjoyment.  So we all do, the lot of us.