London: Autopilot

Inna had moved to London from St. Petersburg not more than 3 months ago.  So, naturally, her MacBook is one hundred percent in Russian.  The keyboard, the operating system, the works.  But in light of the recent discovery that European electrical adapters (which we have) are indeed completely different from English electrical adapters (which we, that's right, DON'T have), and the fact that Grant's laptop is out of batteries and not rechargeable in this country, we have no other choice but to guess our way through the phonetic minefield that is the Russian language, most specifically Russian keyboards, in an attempt to book the next leg of our journey.  It's a tough decision, choosing whether to go to Madrid or Amsterdam for the World Cup Final.  In the end, Amsterdam just holds more of a promiscuous appeal than the former.   Perhaps so too does our method of transportation; luxury ferryliner, overnight from Harwick to the Hook of Holland.  Not too shabby by the sound of it, and so we turn our toes Dutch-ward, across the Channel, towards a sea of Orange amassing in the Netherland's capital city.

Step one: get to Liverpool Station.  Anyone who lives in London will tell you that the station isn't exactly a stone's throw away from Kensington.  According to Google maps, it's more like a good ten kilometer walk through the city.  But hey, we're young and starry-eyed and when life's seen all glittery and serene and fruitful, trudging through the guts of an iconic city such as London midday in the midst of one of those stifling summer heat-waves is none but another notch on the belt of callous, invigorating life stories to reflect upon for years to come.  And that's the guise under which we leave our gracious Inna, all smiles and well-wishing.  Shorts and tank-tops are a must obviously as the temperature's tipped just past 25 degrees Celsius.  We stop for a breath when we reach Piccadilly Circus, sighing heavy and sticky with sweat as we set our packs down and squeeze between this tourist and all seizing their respective Kodak moments with stiff poses and impish smiles at the foot of dainty, dear Eros and his fountain.  The circle is positively bustling with all the foot traffic of an early Saturday afternoon, and we plop down on the curb next to the water, thoroughly exhausted.

Just last night we had casually sprinted the distance, Inna in heels no less, and it had felt fantastic.  The London summer nights are crisp and embalming, and we ran with all the excitement and carefree bewilderment of four friends newly fresh to the Old World.  Our legs had been spry and alive from a night of raunchous dancing and steeply-priced drinks, ending not on account of some pithy last call, but for a unified recognition of increasingly slurred speech and light wallets.  We had just enough cash to be hustled for three grams of MDMA from a desperate-eyed jittery African in a tracksuit.  His accomplice was a fair-skinned Russian street queen.  From the looks of it, she had the been pretty once, but now her only attraction was primal, in that used-up professional sort of way.  She looked like sex, and if that stone gritty alley-way of our rendez-vous hadn't carried that scent of London's Urinal, she probably would've smelled like it too.  She did her part to close the deal, eye-fucking the three of our plastered faces, while Inna waited for us, uneasily shifting her weight from heel to heel at the corner of Knightsbridge.  To be honest, that wasn't so convincing as the heavy supply of English whiskey from the bars and imported Russian vodka, courtesy of our gracious host,  More than anything, the booze did the buying, tickled by our ecstatic memories of that Molly passion.  And when we had finally reached a price and the pounds exchanged hands, the two street rats slid and vanished into the shadows from whence they came and they were gone, leaving us to lick our little fingers and dip into a bag of white powder that had a suspicious hint of sweet baking powder.  We didn't care.  The time was 4:30 in the a.m.; we had had our fun, to its fullest extent, and the four kilometers of late night West End flew by our faces in a flushed hazy dream of Olympic-style delirium, good running form and all.  I felt like Usain Bolt, with that air of conquest and accomplishment that leaves you smiling and laughing from ear to ear as you stumble across the finish line.  It's the way nights are supposed to end.

We revel longingly on those events that now seem so distant, and begin once again our journey east to Liverpool, the full breadth of which is slowly beginning to dawn on us.  The springy-stepped mysticism we had broke from Inna with is all but evaporated and dripping away like so many beads of sweat.  All that remains is a resolute determination and a glazed look in our eyes as Grant's phone's GPS takes us down street after street, through plaza after plaza.  By the Charles River something clicks ever so slightly in the back of my mind.  Looking out across the water, eyes and thoughts arrested by the Tate Museum and its solemn entrance obelisk that rises up to meet the Milennium Bridge, I still feel my figure cutting through the dense humid heat of air ahead of me.  But I've altogther lost track of that walking feeling; my feet stepping heavy on the boardwalk, my legs swinging up to keep pace.  It's lost to me, and I smile.  Auto-pilot.  The human body is truely a wonderous machine.  I look at the road ahead towards a destination that I cannot see, then down at the black canvas Toms on my feet.  Whatever energy is left in my chest lets out a half-chuckle in time with my breathing and I shake my head the way you do when something off-handed and silly pops into your head.  I'm wearing geisha slippers; thin black-canvased geisha slippers, like the ones all Asians wear in old movies.  Ten paces ahead, Grant and Max haven't heard.  No doubt they too are in their own little heat-stroked worlds as well.  I want to Charlie Chan light-step up to them on the balls of my feet like the stereotype suggests, but that will have to wait.  For my feet at this time are not mine, but their own, assigned and set on the task of Bible-time travel.  I don't mind.  And I hear no complaints from my feet, although I know I surely will when they'd relinquish the reins.  My eyes shoot right, back over to the Tate just as we pass the Bridge entrance on our side of the Charles.  The symmetry looking through it to the Tate is altogether perfect aside from the walkway choked with eager camcorder- and camera-toters, dissinterested children, and vacationers like too many red-blood cells crammed into a clogged artery.  Contemporary modernism at its finest.  Still, a soft regret lingers at the idea of all the musing at modern art that we're passing up.  The regret's short-lived and dies altogether when we turn away from the River and the city swallows us whole.  The tall gray-stone brick and forlorn windows shoot up on either side of Queen Victoria Street, and although the sun has just passed its peak in the sky, both sidewalks are shaded, and a cool breeze is at our back.  I catch up with the others.  Walking auto-pilot is still engaged, and my mind has little else to do but wander.  Infinite intrigue flows like euphoria and the city pushes past the sweat and soaks into my pores, flashing majestic domes and stately monuments from a distance down side streets and looming over courtyards as my feet whisk me by.  Hello, London.   And goodbye.

We're close, finally, after three hours and ten kilometers, the station's just around the corner.  So fuck it, we break into song.  We sing in unison and loudly pretentious like Americans, maniacally throwing every inch of soul and volume we can into each verse.  The people shoot us queer looks as we pass, three jolly Yankees in sunglasses, tank-tops, and wild shorts, hunkered down with backpacks and duffle bags, and sweating like expectant mothers in labor (the natural kind).

"Juh-ust a small town girlll..."

Barcelona: Great. White. Buffalo.

Another morning in Barcelona.  The days have trickled into something new.  No longer a thought of what we'll do today, what we will see.  Now it was more a sense, of when did we want to do something.  A subtle crossover as the place we presently resided was no longer a tourist stop, but a home.  The place we come back to at the end of the day or in the early, early morning on that first train out of the city.  Where we smoked our weed on the porch and sunk back into that familiar white sofa to watch Spanish action movies with Papa.  And Mother watched while we cooked, and told us how she did things in that smiling, exuberant way she always has about herself.  And in the mornings we lazily ate the giant chocolate-chip cereal with milk and Granini and then were on our way.

Into the city again!  Oh, Barcelona!  But first the train, it's a half-mile away.  Down the stairs and out the gate we turn left and trot the steps off towards San Cugat station, always more merrily than we had the day before.  And the talk changed too.  Less and less about what exactly where we were going - we knew that now (Las Ramblas, as always), and we knew how to get there - and more about what was happening.  To us.  In our lives, and with who.  Not directly, maybe.  It is not, consciously, the pursued subject of interest.  It's just the conversation that comes, I suppose, when you're in that comfort zone.  That comfortable place.  Home.  But certainly not the only.

We had another life besides this one, and when the shock of new surroundings is gone, you remember.  We did.  On another hot, muggy day in August Spain, trotting the travelers trot, strong steps on sure legs.  Family.  Friends.  Girlfriends.  Ex-girlfriends.  No girlfriends.

"Monster's chillin'.  Saw her last night.  On the Skype.  Ughh, this is too long.  I can't wait to see her."  Max was lovingly seduced by that girl.  Mind and heart filled.  His hot red-headed skinny little firecracker, with a wild blue in her eyes.  My silly sis roommate.  Matured past the years in that freckled face, or so she'd have you believe.  With Max's emerald greens, that offspring would pop be handsome and tall and have a beautiful set of soul windows.  

"How's BB?"

"Santa Cruz is miserable she says, hahaa!  It's cold and overcast, and she was all wrapped up in hoodies and blankets in the cave when I talked to her.  Boom left.  He's back in Cleveland and it's just her and the rando's now.  I miss herrr." Grant loved her.  We all did, really.  And the same with Monster.  But for Max and Grant it was something more.  And special.  And Grant and BB made their picture timeless and pretty.  With that pinch of hippy vintage and a headband with Ray Bans.  And they were each other's missing full length mirrors.  

"Kathleen keeps talking to me."

"Well, what about Jackie?"

Mike half-laughs and smiles at the retort and looks away.  So it is and always has been.  Seduced by the Prince.  The one's that want you have that look on their face like you're the world to them, nervous because they're so afraid to lose you.  But your eyes are always off in the distance.  A hunter's eyes, scanning the horizon for that immortal foe.  The beast that you had, then got away.  The attractions in the her calm, steel gaze when she turns to you and smiles and you don't know if it's good or bad, but you feel like you've met your match.  "Dude, why do you still talk to that crazy?"  "What?! She's my great white buffalo, guys, c'mon.  Brian's got one."

"Great white buffalo..." we all whisper and look into the distance.  

Haa, that pretty, little bastard.

"Oh, does he?  But I thought you never had a girlfriend?"  Max is intrigued.

"Yeah, Brian why is that?  You've never had a girlfriend?"  Now Grant's in too.

I don't know why, but it's these moments that give me the most pause, I think, especially with the Hot Tub Time Machine preface.  When I look back and see the gap.  The hole where nothing's been, and how more and more guarded it's become along the way.  That point of weakness I protect.  People know, but it's always a point on which to prove myself.  Could I be so wrong?  And yet there's not a soul I can think of who's not had that relationship by now at whatever age.  No, there must be some meaning.  Some reason for such a devolved existence.  One with no close loves.  I had one great one, with a few grand lusts.  And I suppose that's the problem.  The stunning grandiosity of it all to me.  That Great White Buffalo.  The queen of the open plains.  The most beautiful thing you've ever laid between your sights.  The most cunning.  The beast a lesser man might dream as an enviable trophy.  I could never.  I'm not much of a hunter.  My walls and corridors of the mind aren't lined with mounted faces.  Gripping memories of the hunt's all I have.  But she was close.  So close that I could touch her and when she alerted and saw my presence, I still hadn't lost my chance.  She looked at me forever, and maybe her wisdom sparked curiosity at why I didn't shoot.  And still, I didn't shoot.  No, I reached out with my hand and with one finger pushed those brown strands in her face to the side.  I'd never seen a more beautiful look in a pair of eyes before, dark brown and behind them as well, and they breathed excited and studied me on the pillow next to mine and I was in love.  And she loved me.  Such an awe-inspiring feeling.  

In reality - and oh, how I hated such realities - she lived on the opposite side of the country.  And the next time I saw her I pushed her away with some invisible envy.  I pushed and I pushed and pretty soon she stopped holding on.  She was smart.  And she was beautiful and charming and she was found and held with intrigue by another.  But before this, I stowed a piece of myself away with her, that maybe she didn't know about.  Something about me that I didn't really know myself until it was too late; she was everything I'd ever wanted.  

And now that's all I look for.  That thing that fills the hole weakness, fits like a stopper, and makes my heart race and my soul smile.  Everything I want.  She's just so hard to find now.  My Great White Buffalo.  

Merry Go-Arounds

There appears to be an indiscreet merry-go-round of white gardener/rapist Econolines shuffling around the Knoll.  A first flash is that of Paris.  An ancient thing at the feet of the Sacre Coeur steps, horses and pony-drawn carriages bounding hum-drummly up and down,  and round and round like the revolving door between an upper sanctum and those lowly streets of tourist trinkets and cramped quarters; quarters ideal for acquiring cheesy massed produced wall magnets of plastic Tour d'Effiels without parting ways with any of the precious few euros we had left.  Maxwell has always been a man of consequences in my eyes, but there was a slyness missing on that day up to Sacre Coeur and incurred the wrath of the seedy souvenir shop security and a stiff but settling realization in some sense.  

"You might never get arrested for stealing from a souvenir shop because quite simply it's more cost-effective to demand thieves caught to buy all they stole at double the price on the spot.  There's a lot less paperwork as well.  Unfortunately, it also cost Max twelve euro for a six euro pair of shitty sunglasses worth two euro.   He had gotten rusty under the hot summer sun and sheer exhaustion of the day.  Grant and I managed to get out of that nest of shops clean with a handful of pretty somethings for relatives and a bottle of orange soda (not orangina) for the road ahead, back to chez Marie.  Neither the soda nor its nourishment lasted long, and not much farther than the Academie de Musique down those canyons of multi-storied tope stone walls with tall, blue-trimmed windows.  After so many blocks and with dehydration drawing ever nearer, it was hard not to feel like one mousing around in a city-sized maze with each approaching corner teasing with that miraculous cheese, the meal for which we so longed.  Nut we were now in wealthy high-to-do part of the city, and no matter how many numerous corners we came to there was not a doner-kebab hole-in-the-wall place in sight.  And we didn't necessarily want to go to any of these fancy sit-downs with awnings and umbrellas and seats casually strewn across the sidewalk and old French couples in expensive looking attire eating their single serving of tiramisu and their single shot espresso.  And if we did, we certainly couldn't afford it.  I don't think we saw one doner place on the whole way back, but now that I think about it, we most probably jumped on that fateful metro after a good while and ended up just buying bread and wine and stealing cheese and meats from the supermarche around the block from the girls' apartment.  That was the night of our feast, I believe. 

We went with our go-to; homemade pasta and meat sauce, several bottles of wine, and sometimes a none-too-shabby garlic bread, ingredients permitting.  That night they were, and we got the wine that mattered.  I forget what it's called but it's dark and it's rad and it's 14.5% by volume per bottle, and it all felt very French.  In that tiny French apartment, table littered with empty and half empty wine bottles, Marie sitting on the window rail with one leg crossed, facing us, but holding her Lucky Strike politely in the window's out-draft and now and again blowing her smoke over her right shoulder towards her outstretched cigarette hand.  She was eloquent and so sophisticatedly French and we all secretly loved it about her more than we would care to admit.  And she could dance.

Nice (pronounced Niece): The French Connection

In France, there is a certain respect paid to the language.  Like the most things french, the French are proud of it.  And to be perfectly honest I can see why.  It is a language that, when whispered in your ear by the right set of lips, puts all other communication to shame.  It melts and at the same time cuts sharp with a passion and a grace lost on most European phonetics.  The Dutch, in all their smiles and hospitality, have the language of a jolly people.  The pitches rock up and down like all the sways and shifts of an old wooden ship.  And it's merry.  German, on the other hand, has all the care and grace of a beer hall.  It's boisterous and aggressive.  As one heads south into the land of the Romance languages things begin to sound a lot prettier, not in a necessarily better way, just in a prettier way.  And what's more, an ugly disposition for an inability to speak the native tongue is much more prevalent.  It's the vanity of a beautiful tongue, I suppose. A vanity that leads to despised eyes all around moments after we'd opened our mouths to speak in Montpellier, in Mariselle, and in now Nice.  I guess we stick out like sore thumbs down there.  And that isn't a particularly appealing characteristic to have following you while you're humping around the city looking for stimulants before a concert.  We get hustled hard in what could quite easily be described as a projects a few blocks away from the stadium venue.  It's a welcoming and comfortable place; not.  Lovely, if lovely described a place most undesirable.  But that's where you get drugs right?  We sit in a sprawling courtyard that looks cracked and old and is surrounded by tall boxy apartments with dark stairways and tiny units.  Different groups of men in all manners of tracksuit attire watch us from afar with calloused eyes, hissing sinister things to each other in French.  Super undesirable.  When the guy who had brought us there re-appears on first-floor landing of one of the shabby nearby complexes he looks fidgety and nervous.  He quickly darts eyes in our direction and pulls us over with a slight twitch of the head in his direction.  "There is police everywhere here," he says, "we need to be quick."

So cash in hand, we make the exchange and "swish" we're gone, out of the projects and around the corner before we even get the bag open and examine it's contents.  Rookie mistake.  Whatever the fuck it is, it definitely isn't what us doctors had ordered; no MDMA, just fragments of crushed pills with letters and numbers on it that we hastily look up on Mike's blackberry.  Diabetes medicine.  Those French bastards.  So we go back and confront that short, fat pig-faced son-of-a-bitch back in the courtyard.  We're loud and pissed off and American.  Weary eyes, disgusted eyes from all around watch and we feel them bearing down on us and suddenly realize the number of people staring us down.  Older, shady, wild-looking men turning their shoulders our way.  But no one so much as makes a move on us.  Mr. Pig-Face says he'll come back with our money and he disappears into the shadows and around a corner while everyone else stands watching.  "He's not coming back, is he?" I whisper to Grant.

"Fuck."  We've been had.

After five minutes, we kick rocks out of there, tails between our legs.  It's 8:00 and the sun's getting low on the horizon.  There's still an hour though until the concert starts and all we have to our pre-game credit is an expensive pouch of worthless diabetes medication.  Great.  We flick the pithy powder into a planter and sulk into the next liquor store we come upon and pick up a couple packs of cigarettes, a desperate bottle of cheap tequila and an even more desperate bottle of cheap vodka.   There's a not-give-a -fuckery in our disposition, and we chalk up the afternoon's events to life lessons.  Something to make us feel better, if only just a little.  The tequila makes us feel a lot better.  Impressive, considering both the tequila and vodka had been stored at sweltering southern France liquor store temperature.  I'm not sure whether or not the cigarettes help.  Mike, Max, and I convince ourselves they do and we suck down half a pack in line whilst we extinguish the contents of both handles of liquor before reaching the security checkpoint.  Our alcohol tolerance this far into the trip is at the point of biblical stature.  We all feel like alcoholics, especially an hour or so into David Guetta's set when we begin to sober up and we only have a pack of Marlboro Reds and 5 EUR a cup beers at the bar to hold us over.  Despite our best efforts, we fail to find anything remotely amusing to buy off our fellow concert-goers.  Not for lack of trying though.  Mike and I get hustled again during Tiesto's set and get pissed off and chain smoke the rest of our Marlboros into a delirious tobacco-fueled second wind and dance crazy, laughing a maniacal sort of laugh that comes round when your still up and dancing at 4:00 in the morning.  The music keeps us moving and as we looked around, we notice and curiously observe the French and their abhorence to the wildness and promiscuity of those certain substances that make the music shudder through your bones and tickle that need to move your body, to step this way and that, to raise your hands to the lights and the open summer night's wind.  I close my eyes and pretend.  Meanwhile, the surrounding half-interested crowd have all the conservatism of a Republican presidential candidate, swaying in small motions, chin up, plastic glass of wine or cup of beer in hand, weary of their personal space.  It's one hell of a concert and after Laidback Luke played his last song around 6:00 and we walk down the main road towards the water laughing nostalgically at the night's fiascoes.  We're at about our wit's end, I'd say.  Completely sober, and all we want  is to be in Barcelona already.  "Fuck Nice," says Max.  "I'm fuckin' over France."

Yeah, A Tunnel

Don't change the names.  Lennon was his.  He was seeking transport to Los Angeles and he was willing to pay for gas, so why the hell wouldn't I take him?  To be honest, the farther I drove up the road winding into the wood north of Soquel, the more I began to question that principle.  I turned off onto a dirt driveway and coasted to a stop in front of one of the two adobe buildings on the property.  They were situated next to each other and across the driveway there was a quaint garden.  Farther up the driveway, on a higher ground there was a hippy fountain surprisingly lacking in terms of mountain-hippy-living flair.  It was awkwardly more in fashion with cheap, gaudy early 1990s imitation stone (probably plaster) middle-class suburban lawn fountain.  Such a strange ornament to have overlooking the complex.

I should tell you now, the place was not a hippy commune.  Merely a Hare-Krishna commune, and it's inhabitants were a bunch of steady-paced soft-speakers high on their own self-imposed forest bliss.  And it carried through in their speech, in the way they offered freshly prepared food for my journey in that flowy, far-away focused rhetoric of theirs.  Hare-Krishnas.  Of all the places to find myself before the drive to LA.  These people were absolutely fascinating.  Over time and through meditation and such things many of them had learned to block out, disengage, and avoid all the negativity in life.  Nothing was sad to these enlightened folk, no one was angry and everyone wore their blissful compassion in toga sleeve or bald scalp like a point of pride.  They live in perfect harmony in their isolated forest paradise shut out from the rest of the world.  But that's not really living, is it.  What's life if not the experiences that define it.  They are one symbiotically with nature and the existence they have carved out for themselves.  They never have too much, and they never have too little.  It's a relationship of constant routine, shrouded and sugar-coated in chronic bliss.  And so their days pass, ignorantly indifferent to anything but their compassionate fix of bliss.  They grow old and wise in the institutions and capacity of their beliefs.

And the world passes them by.

Lennon was not an inhabitant of this place.  He was a roaming traveler, and he was a wizard.

[stop]