Paris (Rachel), Paris (Rachel), And Always Paris (Rachel)

Hmm... What I want this to be...

What I want this to be, really want people to see, is a frank, obsessed, depressed, and all desperate love letter to Paris.  To the city, to her woman's soul, sweet Paris Lo.

If there is a question, let Paris be the answer always on the tip of my tongue.  Waiting to slip out at any breath.  Paris, Paris, Paris.  Let the lady be satisfied.  Let her never be forgotten in my mind.

Her beauty, and her inescapable passion.

*****

Rachel, she's unequivocally pretty and not altogether approachable.  It's only by the chancest of occasions that we happened to find ourselves shaking hands politely.

"Rachel," she'd say. "Nice to meet you."

"Brian. It's a pleasure." And it is.  Still now, she makes life such a pleasant melodrama.  But I'm starting to find stress in all the nothing I've been doing.

"Delirious, A Dreamer," She Says

Whatever it is that I had in Bali, I've lost it now, to my utter dismay.  The craving's back, and my soul's gone flown off away from here.  I'm never satisfied.

There's that rancid twitch there now.  That's new.  It's cruel.  Like something that takes over when I've given up.  And I have, I feel.  Somedays more than others.  Maybe that's the problem.  Giving up.  It's a coward's choice to do so.  Or a sloth's, or both.

Giving up's for bitches, and I ain't no bitch.  Just ask Mark Cole.

Fall Paris: Elizabeth

It's noon and Lili's still in bed and there's still colored feathers all over the damned place.  I'm eating quietly in silence, but every noise, every shift of weight on the metal chair, every scoot on the wood floors, every chomp of milked cereal brings a ruffle of disgust from the princess.  "Silence!" she says.  "Be quiet."  The pea was a bother in the night, I suppose, and like a little green pea I pack my bag, finish my cereal and roll on out of there.

"Bye Lil," and I softly slam the door, not from spite, but because with these doors there needs to be some power behind the pull for it to close.  Still, I wonder how she took it.  Well I hope.

Where to now.  Where to indeed.  A lovely girl by the name of Elizabeth has humbly offered her couch for me to sleep on for a few days.  Now I just need to get to her.  I haven't met her yet mind you, but I know she's from Oregon and that already impresses me.  Maybe Rachel has something to do with that, but whatever.  Elizabeth is in the 10th, which is an arrondissement I'm none too familiar with so after I curtly hop over the turnstile and turn the corner I pause for a moment at the metro map.

"The tenth... the tenth... Ou est la tenth," I whisper to no one.  She said her exit was Strasbourg-Saint-Denis on the 4 line.  And it's there, right in the middle.  I see it.  I whisper again, "Up one on the 8 to Invalides, then the 13 towards Chatillon to Montparnasse, then the 4 towards Clignancourt to Strasbourg-Saint-Denis.  Got it."  I take to the right towards Creteil.  It's so easy.  And it goes fast in a blur of French urbanites and Bo Diddley through all the transfers and the trek through Montparnasse plaza.

[stop]

She's a dancer.  A performer.  A Portland whistle on a French wind in the 10th.  Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis.  There's a grand stone archway by the metro stop, and not just one.  I see two and I take a street that one of them arches.  She said to meet her at this bar, "Le Mauri Sept" she said on the phone.  A few blocks down and I step in after one or two oblivious walk-bys.  The street's choked with storefronts and restaurants and doner joints all jockeying for attention as the throngs of Paris are smashing by at a rate like everyone has someplace to go, and maybe they do.  It's mid-day.  There's no leisure here, not on the streets anyway, not now, not on this Rue du Faubourg.  It's a street of workers and dreamers.  Of those restless with a lust for something more.  There's no looks of grand satisfaction on the faces around me.  Everyone is temporary and in-between here.  It's not bad, but it's always more contentment to be had.

Inside, the place is a dim den of that, which stretches back with scattered black tables and tobacco smoke from hand-rolled cigarettes.  It's not a packed house this afternoon, but at the same time it's certainly not empty.  Young adolescents sit in thick cliques here and there and they're posturing, some more than others, with great animation.  They all talk in a French mixture of excitement, interest, and a gaudy Parisian fleur-de-lis cool.  Everyone's young and student-looking so I don't stick out too much with only a backpack over my shoulders.  I look tired (which I am).  Studiously so, one might think given the context.  I stick out enough though because I hear my name beckoned and when I turn, there's a slim pixie-haired girl smiling at me with a cigarette in her hand that she no doubt rolled herself.

I sit down at the table next to her, and the backpack slides off my shoulders.  It's a fast talking crowd here, fueled by tobacco and espresso, talking as much with their chins and eyebrows and shoulders and cigarette hands as with their tongues, and it seems to me that Elizabeth is the queen bee of this hive.  She takes me under her wing.  "This is Brian, the boy I was telling you about. The writer. He's staying with me a few days, isn't that right. How long did you say?"

"How many days? Oh, no more than a handful at the most," I say taking in this arc of theatrical learners around me, and thin smoke and this proper straight-shouldered fairy who was to be my host.  This was going to be interesting.  Intriguing for sure, which is always my fave.  There's polite intros, polite everything for that matter, but it's all quick and ever changing in conversation and language and I just try to keep up.

Focus

Remember when you used to close your eyes and see the stallion's eye looking back from one side.  Black stallion.  Bridle and reigns and no saddle, just a squeeze between the knees holding you up above the beast's back.  You would see the hooves pounding away at the ground, faster and faster, the beach, the sand, the desert, the grasslands, the mountain rocks, who knows what was flying by below.  

It didn't matter, it doesn't now, but I remember not feeling cold so it wasn't snow.  The wind rushed over white knuckles that gripped the reigns tighter, but it wasn't cold.  The hrose wheezed and gasped with every breath, but you didn't see it, and you breathed with him.  Full deep breaths that you flexed with and slowed with.

And everything was all right.

Red Light

It's a beautiful sickness.  So if you think to know this Venus-flytrap of a thing called Love has a cure, or more specific maybe, a treatment of symptoms, then you might just think the whole thing's controllable.  A game of pick-and-choose, but it's not.  Certainly not in it's entirety anyways, although there may be some.  There's a choice in taking the risk, yes.  After that?  Well, after that it's all out the window with the wind.  Caught up and thrown around to the sick heart's content and kicked to a ditch.  Until you treat it.  Treat it.


I seem only able to fall in love with girls I really have no business falling in love with.  What a curse this is.

Moonrise Kingdom

Beauty

Whoever said beauty is only skin-deep?  What an idiot.  She was probably a rotten-hearted malicious feminist.  Beauty doesn't just lay over someone like a drape or a cape or white cloth over summer house furniture.  You banal self-insecurity, no.  Skin is the bulb that beauty shines through.

And I love it when it shines too bright.  It's not safe for the eyes, to be around for too long.  Not safe for the heart either, but one never forgets it.

Crossing of the Guard

Last year, since I don't know when - not so long, two single hairs grew on my back, one on each shoulder blade.  They were both the same length, about an inch, and the rest was smooth skin in every direction.  My entire back, there wasn't another hair on it (except sparse sycronized clumps on my neck just below the hairline, but that doesn't count of course), and it was silky smooth like a seal, like baby's skin.

Girls would say, "Ew, what is that?" and pluck them both out, one at a time.

"Those are my angel wings! How'm I supposed to get back to heaven now?"

She'd laugh and I'd bite her soft on the neck so as not to leave a mark, and we'd make an afternoon of it.

I never cried.  I was never sad or mad when they were plucked.  They always grew back.

Then I went to Bali.  A girl with a tender accent plucked them one by one.  "These are like angel wings," she said, "on such a smooth back."
"How'm I supposed to get back to heaven now?"

"To heaven?" She laughed and bit me soft on the neck so as not to leave a mark and we made a night and a morning of it. 

Heaven...

It was a small room in Bali.  One bed, one bathroom, one fan.  One desk with a chair and a mirror.

"Heaven..." she whispered in my ear.  Then she turned and bent at the waist, both elbows on the desk, her breasts kissed the wood.  She smiled at me in the mirror and said, "You're too bad to be from heaven." I held her in a tight grip, hard, just above the hips and she made a chorus sing in Argentine.

I've been back a month now and still have no wings on my shoulders.  They won't grow back.

It's on a swingset I realize that it's not two wings I have now, but two angels to lead me, one on each side swinging with me.  My two halves, I have.

Save a Capricorn.
See Aquarius.

I had, I had.

I follow them now, I just hope they don't lose me.  Not ever.

Quote of the Day: I Hate Writing

Gravity

What frightens me is that there's no feeling at all.  She said it first, and there wasn't much thought to it for me to agree.  It just wasn't there.  That will, that knowing, nothing.  So we smiled and hugged and she got out of the car.  It was an "oh well," not some to-the-bone heart-shattering sadness.  Only then did it dawn on me that I didn't really love her.  I just liked how pretty she was.  How sometimes witty she was.  But there was too much silence, too much effort, no click.  We aren't who we used to be.

Jordan said I'd changed.
She's right, I guess.

Still, it was a pretty fuckin' good movie, Gravity.  No matter how high you are, it's what always brings you back down to Earth.  Keep your feet on the ground, you.

The Bali Diaries: Two Sides of Aquarius

The yin to my yang, I figure.  We are two different men, but strikingly similar I'd say.  A brother of an old friend, he is.  Younger brother.  Which is funny to think because he is all taller and slimmer and sharper in the jaw than my dear old high school chum.  And he's striving for greatness, he is, writing letters of possible fellowship to professors, doctors and researchers at universities throughout the West States and Australia.  It's a passion of his, this research, this academia.  The PhD is just a sidenote he says.  Or in his words, "If you do it just for the title, it's probably not worth it."  It's hard work.  But it's hard work he wants.  And that is where we differ.  Well no, maybe not.  I think I'd quite like perhaps the work if it were brought on.

We differ in work ethic, I think.  In determination and laziness.  The work would be all right, rewarding even.  Stimulating in interest.  But the self-will to get the work, the prolonged concentration and goal-sight that he has is lost on me.  For something like that anyway.

Ah!  But alas, maybe I'm too hard on myself.  After all, the pessimist in me holds great sway.  I know this.  I'll give it a go perhaps when I return.  For now, I'll just write.  And write and write like I've been doing, always running away to far countries.  It's what I know, and it flows so freely (as the hairs fall on the page) with such release that I don't stop, even when the palm begins to ache.  It feels so good sometimes.  There's just that reluctant reality in the fact that there's no living in this, not that I see anyway.  Or there is, I just don't know how to get there.  Oh well, maybe I'll figure it out.  I mean look at Blake.  He's on such a path with a strong stride as he always has.  And he likes to write, and he writes like I do.  With passion and well words.

If only he were that way with the women.

(that's where we differ)

The Bali Diaries: Retrograde

I don't know why I do the things I do sometimes.  Like I don't why I told you I'd fallen in love with you over here.  Why would I ever?  What stupid mood was I in that to say that to you was a good idea?  Some ancient romanticism, I suppose.  Some silly ideal of perfection.  When I look back at it, the first thing that comes to mind is ew, what a sap I am.  What kind of little girl would find pleasure in reading that, some soak-stained morning passion in words of a boy that wakes up alone.  I think few hate it more than I do though, the empty bed.  Sure, there are mornings that it's nice, but most are met with a cringe and a thrust and a reach for someone that is not there.  Here in Bali I greet all days like this.


I think the heat's driving me crazy.  I think the lack of weed's writing me lazy.  But who knows really what it sounds like.  I haven't read any of it over yet.  This place though will find me dreaming of my return when I leave.  There's a magic here like no where else.  A magic that found me a bike so much like my car at home, broken and missing things and badass and fast, that from the moment I first rode it down Uluwatu's one road, I knew. I knew she was mine and I'd never want another, no matter how many times the clutch broke.

It's a powerful magic that tore me down with the death shits and cuts and scrapes and gouges in the worst (well not the worst) places.  A calculating fair judge of a power that warrants respect - broken boards, broken boards! - for it's ability to absolutely crush you when it wants to and, good graces permitting, have you flying above the thunder clouds in a soul-full bliss of all-understanding.  I've brushed the ghost-grey l'embrace du morde, I have.  I've seen such beauty, I've felt love like the very first time, Caroline.

The Bali Diaries: Third Time the Charm

"And a romantic table for three please."  Oh, Chris.  He has such a way with nostalgia and the sweet long good-bye.  We're on the beach in Jimbaran just before sunset.  It's a long stretch in front of the fish markets and they serve fresh seafood on the sand.  We picked it out, the seafood, just like at Bingin, but instead of about a dozen or so tables, there's hundreds maybe more and great throngs of Chinese tourists that had come in by the great chartered busload.  We sit farther down, way down at the end of the drag.  Away from the noise and frantic commotion that I guess comes with big Chinese dinners with the tables lined up long.

No, we're far from that, not quite at the fringe of all things, but right up there next to it.  A single small table, three chairs, and three large Bin Tangs that we cheers and sip serenly on in the bright red-orange maroon light of the sky and on the water and while we wait for our food to grill up.  Chris convinced us to take on a barracuda along with the usual; the king prawns, the calamari, and of course the red snapper.

He tells us about Oz, about home in Sydney, and about the absolutely beautiful woman of a Canadian he met while volunteering in Ubud.  He shows us pictures as he flips through dreamy-eyed.  She's stunning and silly and a treat by the looks of it. 

"I can't believe I'm going back, tomorrow already, and then she comes out with her friend and we'll drive up the coast, and well, I dunno, then I'll ask to marry her," he says leaning back running his hands through his hair.  He's not looking at us, he's watching the sky darken.  "She's gonna break my heart, I think."

"Nonsense!" says I.  "How old are you?"

"Thirty-three. But she's got to go back to Canada eventually."  He's a soft-spoken romantic, this guy.  When the food comes out,  the barracuda's delicious. 

After dinner, and a fucking dinner it was, a damned good one, we follow Chris out of Jimbaran and into the lion's den.  Kuta.  We meet again.  Chris has got a place picked out for us to stay.  He's been to it before, down a little alley just off Poppies II.  It's nice, 200,000 rupiah for the night in a fan room with two beds for Mike and I.  It's on the third floor, the very top.  The city's a chocked sea of concrete and curlicue roofs and wires and metal tanks and antennaes and lights and lights and lights. 

I lean on the railing in front of our door which is not so much a railing as it is a waist-high wall - it's wide, I could lay down on it.  Below is the silent pool in place of a courtyard, and Chris' plush air-conditioned single to the left on the floor below.  He's outside too, and like I, he's just showered.  "You boys all clean up there?"

"Just about. Mike's almost done. How far is this place?"
"Alley cats? You could throw a rock at it from here."

"How promising..."

Mike's done.  He busts out the door yelling, "You boys like Mexico?!" like some trailer trash redneck and with a rebel yell we're down the stairs and meet Chris in the alley. 

The rest we won't speak of. (maybe later)

Suffice to say, I woke up the next morning with blood everywhere, and Mike was missing.

The Bali Diaries: Full Moon Folly

But always, remember where you are, dear soul.  This isn't gay ole' Paris.  This is Bali.  No romantic comfort here.  Not on the swash-buckling side anyways, the eleven dollars a day side, the three dollars a meal side.  No kitchens, no AC, no refrigerator, just sweat stroking heat through the night and the day, even with the fan on.  I doesn't even oscillate.

It's difficult to think sitting perfectly still when you feel the beads squeezing out over your brow, feeling your arms and your back turn moist in the shade.  You can barely wonder how the local villagers manage with sweatshirts on walking around selling trinkets, hand-crafted wood pens, boot-leg DVDs, and what have you.  Or else they're breaking up rocks, setting stones, always building, building, building.  In the morning and the late afternoon and at night even by light.  This place is a wild place.  An untamed frontier.

There's an abandoned half-finished bar at the top of the cliffs overlooking all the peaks at Uluwatu.  You can see it from the water saying "RESPECT LOCALS" and "ULUWATU STREET BOYS" in big bold black letters.  It's covered in graffiti, everything from mystic looking symbols to threats and warnings to "wet pussy for free" to #liau.  A crooked rail's cemented to the floor among the clutter of loose sandstone and rebar and broken glass, between the bar and the stage, and there's stairs going up to the roof.  There are no outside walls, just support columns, but that's the way it's meant to be, that's how everything is here in Bali.

It's usually where I check the surf from if I want to surf Ulus, and it's here I found myself in the late night/early morning with two friends in their mid-thirties, Kellie and Robbie.  Aussies.  Not a couple, just friends themselves.  Kellie's a tall, tight bodied sexpot with hair that's long blonde, perfect handfuls for breasts, full handfuls, no bra, and big blue doe eyes.  I'm pretty sure we both wanted to fuck her.

I'm pretty sure she knew it too, but she stayed the straight line between us, relishing in the moment, and we talked and talked.  If you're wondering, yes, we were drunk.  Quite plastered really, with empty Bin-Tangs and half-packs of Samporenas scattered about.  This was after a dinner party at Kellie's, she lives here.

She's on that journey of independence.  Not to give, to our chagrin (more Robbie's than mine I imagine, I'm too drunk at this point), but to speak sermon on it.  A full moon sexual innuendo, legs bend laying down.  Knees touching, twisted to one side so her cut-off denim shorts pull tight and her perk bra-less breasts push through a loose singlet.  Her hands run with her hair past closed eyes as she tells all the things that women want.

"We're not having sex," she says.

But at sunrise she takes me home to the shower.  Robbie sleeps on the daybed.

The Bali Diaries: I Should Sleep This Off

With a cautious air, I will now tell you all the fears that sit, with standing room only, inside the affairs of my heart.  I will try to lay them all out in a slow sad parade that everyone knows to be so, but no one's come to see, and I'll try to make something more of it.

Is that possible?

First and foremost, no writer am I.  To be sure no fame shall ever come to me.  Age and my eyes reading other's words, and this depressing dirigible of sickness presiding over my head have taught me this simple fact: there is truly mad and mind deafening genius out there, not all alive, but they persist on in their works.  And then's there's me here on the magical isle of all things just trying to reach up and touch their reflections in the mirror sky.  There's no greatness in me.  Not now.  Now there is only a joint-aching and heavy-eyed defeat.

Across the world there are the vast oceans, et moi, I am not the great whale or the shark, or the luxury cruise-liner or the navy's aircraft carrier.  Non, pour moi, c'est la vie de l'eau.  One drop.  One crystalline tear shape that falls in and is forgotten.

But a weak smile dawns as I look out to that blue horizon, just past the red tile and spires and strange curlicues of Balinese roofs, and I see what I guess to myself that everyone sees.  The water, sure, some see the sea turtles and the killer whales and the little orange Nemo fish.  And sure, some see that all-inclusive getaway, and I'm sure there's much more.  But no matter who, I'm sure everyone sees that mighty blue.  That drip-drip-drop.  The water.

I'm no the big fish, but in that magnitude, the vastness and the might and the power, they see me, and what I write makes sense to them somehow.  Then what's greatness but just a swell stacked in the distance coming towards us.

After all, it comes in waves they say.

The second fear is simple: She doesn't love me.  Not much to that one really.  She's too good, and me, well, I'm me.

And that's it.  Those are them, as the lazy would say.  It's a two-seated affair, my heart.  Everything else in life is leaning on the walls or the railing for the show.

The Bali Diaries: The Addict and The Analyst

Maybe it's just the way I see things.  Me, personally.  The way I'm hard wired, an ingrained filter through which my mind has no other option but to see the world daily.  If so, I wonder what this place looks like to others who see through different lenses of their own devices, a subconscious grain and hue that's so inconsequential and slight (to some) that they fail to recognize any filter at all.  It's there though, trust me.  We've all tinkered and tweaked them as years pass to see things as we see them, not as someone else does.  It's what makes me see things in contrast, makes me maddening analyze every fiber of being.

It's what makes Nate so easy to slip into any routine that brings immediate pleasure.  Today he slipped out and we had a fuckin' wild ride up to Ubud.  To heatstroke and rice paddies.  He almost didn't, but Ulu's was too big to surf with the swell, so he kicked the habit for the day, hopped on his bike with his Hitler youth helmet on and no shirt like a mad Nazi ready to invade Poland, and joined Mike and I on the long and windy road to Ubud.  Come to think of it, I think most roads, save for the main highways, are windy.  Very windy with some untold secret behind each sharp turn, but that's not the point here.  It is funny though that our choke-point, a police checkpoint was on the main straight-away, just before Sanur.  Fuck the police here.  They squeezed 500,000 rp. out of us before giving back my license and Nate's registration.

Mike managed to scuttle away in the traffic.

The Bali Diaries: His Little Instruments

That angel at Mango Tree, an actual angel she is.  Not romantically, but in that Biblical sense.

"Pagi," I said to her.  Good morning.

And "pagi," she said to me.

"How is your day so far?"

"Busy!" she says, "Busy! Busy! Busy!"

"Oh, no! Already?" It's not yet 9:00 in the morning.

"Yes," she sighs. "Or just lately."  I touch her on the shoulder and tell her it will be all right, to just breath in deep and let it all go.  She takes a deep breath and smiles.  "How long are you here for?"

"Well, the blond guy leaves in a week, but me and my other friend are here 'til the end of October."

"Oh! Well, lucky you."  Her hands are already back to work sorting through bills.

I smile.  "Yeah, kinda. We're running out of money though," I say, and I manage a half laugh.  "Hence the hot water refill in my coffee," with Nate's old coffee cup raised.

She puts the bills down and before I turn to leave she puts her hand on my shoulder to say, "Listen, if you ever need a coffee just come ask or tell my staff it's free."

"Really? Oh, you don't have to do that."

"It's no problem. Really."

"Well, thank you. Terima Kasih." I mean it.  I hope she knows that.

As I turn to walk up the stairs to the top balcony where I like to write, she calls after me from the counter, "Brian! Remember this. Money is like a beard (she motions an Abe Lincoln fully), once it's gone it always come back."

The Bali Diaries: A Rooster Story

"Courage ain't nothin' but the belief that you have it."

It's a Western because why not.  But really it's all the same so it could be anything - an old 50's greaser tale, a modern dystopian, hell, even some way off in the future sci-fi.  I've always liked Westerns though.

I imagine many of the writers of old stories spent their time, or just some time at least, around animals.  Watching them.  Seeing them day to day and routining their actions.  Getting into their heads and into their thoughts (if they have those).  I don't know.  Maybe the old misers just gave them thoughts, but those animals definitely live out their stories.  And they're rough and real, and there's no filter or etiquette and no rules.  Nature's law reigns and the biggest and strongest and meanest always prevail.

That's why every story has a hero.  That X factor.  To raise up the weak and fight the status quo.  He's from out of town (it's a small setting).  He's Shane, he's the Man With No Name, or he's my personal favorite, Russell Crowe's Ben Wade.

Here's the players as I see them now before me in rooster form (their names will probably have to change):

There's Robert Redford. He's all salt and pepper so he looks older and maybe he is older.  He's the black sheep and he's smaller.  The other's pick on him, fuck with him, and try to separate him from his family because yes, he has (I think) the prettiest hen and a small flock of chicks.

Then there's Rex.  He's the big red one.  The head hauncho of the land, the big prick, the asshole.  And he's got two bitch hens too.

There's also Reginald.  He's the stupid French one with white spots on a black breast and a red neck.  He's about as big as Robert, but younger and devious and conniving in his scheming.  He's a loner, no hens, but when Rex is picking on Robert, so is Reginald.  He's a weak mind and a coward.  I fed him a couple times and then he'd crow everyday at our step expecting food pretentiously.  That's Reginald.  (Redford never crowed for food when we fed him; we mostly just feed the chicks now).

Finally, there's the outsiders, the out-of-towners, Mike and I.  We're un-natural beasts among chickens.  Mike likes to feed everyone, good or bad.  He's across the board, and wants everyone to like him and trust him in the chicken kingdom.  I try to bring some morality to a world without it, some balance.  When the roosters pick on Rob, I run out and roust them and I feed the chickies because they're cute and I want them to grow up strong and I want the best for the Redfords.

It's the standard outsider tale, I guess.  We come on a scene of injustice and out of, well, boredom sometimes we try to make things right as we see fit when we're around, and the Redfords are grateful and Rex is angry and vengeful eventually.  We can't stay forever though so we try to give Robert the heart he forgot he had and the courage to stand up to Rex for his family.  We make him a fighter, or at least try to, and hopefully he survives our departure.

The Bali Diaries: Fatima

A postscript means everything sometimes.  A short second afterthought, five words can change the tides and push the seas back into the soul to fill it once more with the life of the world.

Then one hears the soft wind through the leaves as it kisses the skin and the construction, the cars, the motorbikes, the loud music coming from the kitchen at Jiwa Juice are all a faded far-off background.  It brings an unexplainable, almost intangible feeling - not even a feeling really, but some sort of focus or filter that makes everything beautiful, even tremendous hardships and disappointment.  The worst of things are no longer chances of bad or good worthy of a woe-be-me, but simply a rock on the path to pick up and learn from.

Change pace.
Walk around it if need be.

A rock is not good or bad.  It can't make you sad, or mad or curse the stars unless you're not looking where you're going.  It's only a stone really, to be stepped on or stepped over, depending on the size, and if one takes the time to see it - really see it, all its porous grains or smooth sides, its rough edges and hard points - takes the time to feel its texture and judge its weight, then, as Lennon the Sorcerer once told me, that focus, the knowing of a thing - anything, a rock, a mountain range, a sunset, a stubbed toe, a quick wave, a callous tone, a sickness, a setback, anything - the knowing of that thing to be so can make you whole.  Just see it, see it's beauty (everything has a beauty about it, no matter how fucked or depraved, after all, Scarface is a beautiful movie, is it not?), understand it, understand its energy and draw from it with a deep breath.

The Bali Diaries: Science of Coincidence

Nate said something today at breakfast that was right along the lines of my thought as it (not this) happened.  He said, "It's funny - well, I guess not funny but... well, you know what I mean.  Its strange.  Yeah, strange that you should come here to write and have something spill on your laptop half-way through.  Isn't it?"

That's coincidence, I suppose.  Not it, but that just then.  Him saying that.  To have the same thought as I at the same moment when I'd all but forgotten.  Or maybe it's just like minds.  Or hell, maybe it's not coincidence at all, because now the more I think about it the more meaning there is in it.  I wouldn't be writing about it now if that weren't the case, and in coincidence there is no meaning, just silly afterthought.

Like seeing Woody Allen throw around the name Stravinsky quite randomly in the randomness that is Side Effects (the book I stole from Jordan), not a week after I'd spent two hours trying to name and place and process that ridiculous fountain by the Centre Pompidou.

Silly coincidence.

[I still have no idea who Stravinsky is other than he wrote some concert piece about springtime.]

The Bali Diaries: Lucky Strike

My mind hasn't been molded, really truly molded in quite some time.  I feel as if the older we get so too does the clay go dry and harden like ceramics.  But here in Bali there's always a sweat on the brow or a salt water wave breaking over it, and in that way maybe the clay stays moist and a little malleable, and a strong hand can still change its ways, still make a firm impression.  It has to be firm though because, after all, I'm not so young anymore.

The athletes on TV and the stars in the magazines are now younger than I am, some of them anyways.  There's no longer a dream to be them, only a will to see them succeed, or I guess crash and burn depending on the player and the team.

Fuckin' Steve.  These sports metaphors are all a product of his coffee, vodka, and Bin Tang high for the Dodger playoffs.  Game 1 in Atlanta, but here in Bali it's not yet 11:00 in the morning.  Still, he spats off play-by-plays from his phone with a crack happy whoop and a holler and a smile because the Dodgers are up in the 7th.  Mike's drinking a Bin Tang with him and Nate's on his fourth cup of coffee for the day and's already been surfing (it was shitty 3 ft. Ulus), and he's having his second breakfast to go with my first, and we're all set here at one of the square tables out front at Jiwa Juice.

I drink my tea and the glass of orange with slow deliberate swallows, trying to saturate the very top of my throat and the very back of my nasal passage because it has that dry sickly feeling I assume is from all the salt water getting way, way up there last time I surfed.  The Lucky Strikes I bought last night surely didn't help any though, because the phlegm my nose is flushing out isn't clear anymore.

Whatever, last night was a whirlwind of seafood BBQ and Bin Tangs and cigarettes and reggae music in Bingin and Polish girls, California girls, and Brazilian girls.  And in the wind of it all I got kicked out alone and biked home and nearly finished the Alchemist before I tried to sleep, through restless legs and midnight squats, and tossing and turning and pained breathing, and a sweat on my brow and my neck.  Sweat from all pores and the corners of my eyes.  A wet mind, most impressionable it's beginning to seem when under distress or duress or both, and with a strong hand like the Alchemist's I feel like I can turn to wind as well or at least wish I could feverishly so I could blow across the sea to see sweet Caroline.  And I wondered where exactly the treasure was.

I finished in the morning in bed and found out.  It wasn't at the end of it, but way back at the very beginning.  And at that there's her smile and a long look in her eyes and a kiss.  And bacon pancakes.

Maktub.

The Bali Diaries: Alchemist

"That's strange," said the boy, "I've been trying for two years to read this book and I never get past these first few pages."

How funny that this should be The Alchemist.  I must've read Part One three times since it was first handed to me in Paris.  [Keep writing even though there will be no typing this next month.  Just write, write, write, write.  About Paris, but also about everything, but don't forget to write about Paris.  It's this season's namesake].

For having just re-started it not but a few days ago, I've been strangely watchful for signs lately.  A meaning behind certain somethings.  I like to think that the way the universe works is, for each individual, that either everything means something, or everything means nothing.  We can't pick and choose our signs, we can only recognize them or miss them or not believe in them at all, in which case they don't exist.  Personally, I think they do, and they occur whenever things are starkly un-routine or out of the ordinary or even if something randomly should happen to just grab our attention.  It could be anything and it happens all the time.  Daily.  So keep a sharp eye and a sharp mind.  And for fuck's sake keep writing.

The Bali Diaries: Uluwatu

I feel as if I haven't written about surfing yet, and it's been a month nearly so I'll try and start now.

First and oh, so foremost at the western tip of the Bukit Peninsula is a menage of peaks that break off a wide reef affectionately known as Uluwatu.  I say affectionately out of charm, or cuteness, or whatever.  I'm not sure really, but the more appropriate word would be respectfully.

The waves at Uluwatu, all of them - Temples, Bombies, Outside Corner, Racetracks, and of course the Peak - all of them demand a certain respect.  It's a respect of all the water moving because at times and in certain places it can be a rushing rapids.  It's a respect for the shallow reef sitting serenely and razor sharp just below your toes in the line-up.  So serrated that when I tapped it with the top of my foot after foolishly pulling into a barrel form behind, I came up with a sharp pain, and when I looked down there were chunks of meat missing that showed white and lacerations through my toes.  Out of the water, the white and everything else turned rouge red with the blood streaming out.  Respect.  Pay it or pay for the lack thereof.  People get wrecked out there, so I always try to surf it on a higher tide (that means there's more water, and hence, the reef is deeper).

Don't get me wrong though, the wave's probably the best and most consistent in Bali and there's almost always guys out, and to surf there just before dusk is a thing of beauty.  The sun sets big and red out way off over the ocean and seems to be its biggest and most vibrant just before it leaves.

The waves weren't that epic for the one particular session, but it's one that I won't ever forget, waiting for Steve to get out with my feet still in the water in the cave, with the sun slowly fading, but not so slow because like that, it was gone, like a beautiful Keyser Soze sunset as Steve picks and slips his way across the low tide reef.

The Bali Diaries: Write It Out, Bitch

I want to break something.  Just crush something with my hands until they can't squeeze anymore.  Like an orange 'til all the juice is on the floor and there's nothing left between my cramping palm and shaking fingers but a dripped dry orange pulp of rind and see and chewy innards.  

FUCK.  Fuckity-fuck.  Cock.  Balls.  Shit.  Cunt.  Twat. 

Okay, I'm better now.  This is what I need to do.  I need to find a computer place, and just save the hard drive and I'll be fine.  I can do that today.  After breakfast.  And after that a surf.  A good long one.

[stop]

There's no saving things so thoroughly fucked, I guess.  At least they were nice and only charged me 35,000.  It's an empty hopeless feeling that grips me now.  No other words for it.  Empty.  Hopeless.  Dazed too maybe.  All this trying to think my way out of losing one month of work has left the inside of this poor little coconut stripped bare and dry and devoid of any goodness that was once there.  It's left out in the sun, open to rot it has.  I don't know what to do.  I don't know where to start anymore.  I'll salvage the drive back home I tell myself.  Salvage the pages on pages on pages.  But homes still a month away, and I pray, dear God, have mercy on that little drive until then, and let whatever crack-whiz I find in LA be able to rescue it.  Please.  I won't rewrite it here, and I hope that I'll never have to.  I just soldier on by hand 'til it cramps, by the pencil and paper, new chapters, new thoughts, not ones that have already been written.  Be brave and have courage with your fucking words.  

Hemingway, out.

The Bali Diaries: Kuter

There's a time for such dingy depravity as the city of Kuta and, for me at least, it doesn't come often.  The second time was out of a necessity of sorts.  For Mike, for love.  Well, for an ex-girlfriend.  We took a taxi this time.  200,000 for about an hour drive, and one the way, at the big hill just before Jimbaran, there's a line of standing officers of the local law picking motor bikes out of the traffic like fish from molasses and checking for, I'm assuming, international licenses.  My stomach spun a half turn in memory and I was suddenly glad we decided to spring for the cab.

We didn't know exactly where we were going, and we didn't have an address so when we saw a Green Garden Hotel on the main drag with all the hotels we told the driver to stop, but turns out it's the wrong Green Garden Hotel, go figure.

We were looking for the Green Garden Resort and Spa, which is conveniently a twenty minute walk away.  In the scorching mid-day sun.  With backpacks on.  "It's like the nature walk we never went on!" I say with a can-do smile and a fake attitude.

It's kind of like a nature walk, except instead of green trees and birds and bees and lizards and elephants we're walking down a shit-muggy street on a skinny shit sidewalk with random slabs missing and motor bikes constantly mounting it to get around the traffic of single lane city streets in this city with cars and taxis crawling both ways and bikes, bikes, bikes.  The air's nauseating, and within minutes my skin's sticky with sweat under the light weight of my backpack, and all along the way it's hotels, hotels on both sides, and fat tourists from Oz or Eastern Europe, and gift shops and restaurants - there's a Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. - and $1 movie stores in Circle K strip malls, and so many hole-in-the-wall massage parlors with women outside begging us, "Come in, please.  Massage. Please. Come in." The ladies are so-so, we walk by.  It's just like a nature walk.

Bleh.  When we get to the Resort and Spa some twenty minutes later, the girls aren't there.  The place is pristine.  There's a pool and spa (of course), and a bar/restaurant up some stairs by the front desk, and there's scented little birdbaths full of flowers everywhere and glossy stone statues of couple in the nude.

"I don't get it..." Mike says trying to get a hold of Alix.  He's texting her on What's App, but it's in vain.  There's no response.  The last thing he'd heard from them was that they were just leaving Singapore. "They should've landed an hour ago."  He's lost-puppy-dogging and antsy.  There's nothing we can do though, so I tell Casa Nova to leave a note at the front desk, and in the meantime we should probably have a beer or three.

To the beach.  Bin Tangs.

"Tell me again why we can't stay with them?" I say sitting down at a table on the beach.  I sip slow from my beer, as always, and keep my feet moving as the ants are thick in the sand and finding it too easy to shoot up my legs.

"Because man, it's her birthday.  She wants to be with her friend."

"I thought she wanted to be with you."

"Yeah, well... I don't know.  It's fine," he says.  "We'll just split a cheap hotel around here.  There's gotta be one somewhere."

I really don't care either way.

[stop]

The Bali Diaries: Zen Lunacy

Nate eyes me funny, "I'm not meditating, I'm just sitting here."

"That's true meditation," I say.  "Think of nothing."

I put a towel over Nate's head like a dick (in a cum rag), while he sat there on the white tile with a pillow underneath, and one leg crossed over the other, hands together, palms up and thumbs together like some tattooed blond-haired bodhisattva.  He'd just finished reading my copy of the Dharma Bums (it's not even mine, it's Katarina's) two days ago and was discovering the Zen Lunatic within.

I talk to him in a deep voice after he throws the towel off and says, "I need to be aware of everything, Becky!"

"You need to be aware of nothing," I say, slightly sarcastically Buddha.  "Empty your mind of every thought, don't think of the day, don't think of me, or you, or these words.  Don't think.  Just let it wash over you like a rock in a stream that just sits and is.  That's you."

He probably hates me.  I'm laughing inside.

"Count without numbers, Nate. Be without feeling," I say as I walk inside.  "Let that be your eternal mindset."

The Bali Diaries: Kuta Balls

Kuta's different.  If Uluwatu was a beautiful girl, which it in many ways is, then Kuta would be the shorter stubbier sister that drank too much and gave it up way too easy.  She's fun, for a night or two, but's she's needy and most always tries to take advantage.

Our first foray into the big city was one of disgraceful disappointment, miscalculation, misfortune, and a lot of bending over and just taking it.  We'd decided against our better judgement not to wear helmets.  After all, we never needed them in Uluwatu.  The roads down at the tip of the Bukit are a pretty even mix of helmets and free flowing hair.  There's more sunglasses than helmets in Uluwatu.  There's also next to no police.  Anywhere.

Kuta's a different ballgame entirely though.  I began to realize this on the highway halfway through Jimbaran where we were pretty much the only ones on the road without helmets.  Kuta isn't a place where you want to stick out like a sore thumb, and we weren't in the city, off the highway but five minutes before a man in a yellow reflective vest and a funny hat comes running out into the middle of the street blowing his whistle and waving his arms to flag us down.  

We pull over by his little booth and he asks to see our licenses so we show him, and he tells us to come sit on the bench in his little booth.  He shows us a piece of paper, apparently with laws on it, and scrolls down with his finger to the lines about helmets and all I can make out is a word that looks like helmet and a price that says 500,000.

"No helmet," he says.  And then he scrolls his finger more and says, "No license."  The price by that reads one million.

Fuck.  "We didn't know," we say, and in honesty, we didn't, but something tells me that's not going to matter.  And, big surprise, it doesn't.  He tells us he can either write us a ticket for not wearing helmets and not having international licenses, or we can just pay now for the helmets and not have to come back to Kuta tomorrow to show at court at 8:00 in the morning.  We pay, gratefully, and when we ask for a receipt or a note or something in case we get pulled over again, he tells us not worry and just say we already paid.  What a nice guy.

We were trying to meet up with Steve to go party and rage the night away, but we were already lost as all hell and had no idea where we were going.  Steve said they were going to Seminyak for sunset so we asked the officer where that was as politely as one can after forking over 500,000 RUP.  He pointed us down the road with a smile that only seemed half-condescending, but looking back, I'm suer he was fully laughing at us behind that smile because not a kilometer down we're stopped again at a stoplight, not by the light, but by a trio of officers this time with their own little booth and everything.  By this time, the sun's already set. We pull our pants down once again and bend over, pay the fee, and turn our bikes back toward Uluwatu with our tails between our legs.

The Bali Diaries: Where Everybody is Wayan

Or Ketut.  In one of Nate's travel books we learned that there are only four names in Bali among the locals because of the caste system.  First born is Wayan.  The second's Made, the third's Nyoman, and the fourth's Ketut.  Man or woman.  And after that, come kid four, they just go back to Wayan and start over.  It makes sense kinda, or not sense, but I understand why everyone   has the same name here now.  If it makes sense or not is still up for debate, I believe.  It must make for pretty interesting roll calls at school, ah, but I guess that's what last names are for.

Lucky for me the people in Paris, specifically the girls, aren't named based on the tenets of the caste system or my book that's beginning to grow harder to write over here would be quite repetitive as far as chapter titles go.

Here's what I think I'll do with that, the book that is.  Each chapter needs to cover something about the whatever the fuck I was doing over there, like a grand overview in each chapter, at the beginning before I dive into the laconic dialogue and wandering.  That's what Steinbeck did right?

There has to be something more.  Maybe about the writing in some chapters, maybe the grocery habits, something I don't want to write more than once.  Maybe about the particular girl, or maybe about that seductive city itself.  Something.  I guess it'll come to me.  I need to write all the other stuff first, I suppose.  I can't write the beginning of the chapter until I've written the rest of it.  All the pithy stuff, because maybe then, with any luck, I'll be able to suck some truth out of it.

The Bali Diaries: Rooster Techno

Our mornings are split now, between Jiwa Juice, the quaint little Spanish cafe by the base of the hill by our new place 3D Homestay, and our old familiar haunt Mango Tree, the place across from Padang Padang Inn.  The walking commute couldn't be beat in the mornings, but all the late night yelling surely won't be missed.

We've grown into old men over here in the South Pacific, and today this old man craved banana pancakes, and Mango Tree has the best so that's where I find myself today with a pencil scribbling away waiting for them to grill.  We walked in as we used to everyday to the early morning electronic dance music they open the place up to before switching it to some trancy island music with a flute.  

Somedays the early songs are some good old gangster rap Snoop Dogg, but today it's fast house and when the rooster crows it's always somehow meshes perfectly with the beat like it's some action on a DJ soundboard in the club.  It's hilarious.

Good morning. 

The Bali Diaries: Cock Crow

That's what I write to now.  Not to music anymore.  No tiny buds in my ears, no wires dangling down.  Just Sacha's silly hat on my head so I don't pull my hair.

And here the breeze carries the rhythm in my head, like a trance house steam sizzle rustling through the trees.  The roosters chime in whenever they so feel like it, and it always seems to work.  Kinda.  Even if it doesn't really, it's funny as hell, and that works for me.

It's a lazy life here to be sure.  Simple.  Not much to do in the grandest way.  Not much to need either, just a good meal here and there, a decent surf if it can be managed and most times it can.  Uluwatu always has waves, and when the swells hit, there's always waves everywhere.

So I'm clear of the dreaded wilderness now.

It's strange.  Ever since my death-gripped seven day dance with the devil, every vice has seemed to loose appeal.  There's a craving that used to be there that isn't anymore.  There's no insatiable lust.  No finding for a smoke whenever I see one.  And it's been three days now and what's most weird is I don't particularly care for a Bin Tang or any booze for that matter.  So much more than that is the desire for a fruit juice because hot damn, they're delectable!

There's an incredibly pure feeling of clarity that keeps washing over me, like I have a lovely little rain cloud of it over my head pouring down on me all day.  I care for precious few things now, which is funny to write because I feel like I've been saying that forever, but now I see the airiness of my past.  The precociousness.  The pedestal I perched myself on like some lofty busted philosopher, and the fool that all self-proclaimed thinkers are, or at least have leading them around by the hand in their heads. Because that used to be me.  And I say used to with clasped hands and a prayer that it is sincerely so.  

The Bali Diaries: Hell Hath No Paradise

Heaven done sent me an angel I believe.  And yesterday of all days.  A Friday night at Mango Tree, brought me, somewhat, out of the five day daze of weight loss and pain.  She came down in the form the of purveyor of that fine establishment.  It’s right across the street from our dear Padang Padang Inn so we end up eating there all the time.  She saw me last night, and I must’ve looked particularly wretched because she asked if I was all right.  “I’ve been sick,” I said.

“Oh, no,” said she.  “Have some ginger tea.  And eat light, fruit and veggies.” So I ordered the Mediterranean salad, which upon seeing it come out probably wasn’t my best bet.  It looked delicious, don’t get me wrong, all oily and covered in feta cheese, but I only took one bite before my stomach lurched and found myself floating on stumbling legs to the bathroom in the back.  To yack, I thought.  The chunder never came though because I spit out the acid like I always do.  But my body wasn’t done in there, and I turned bottom-side and let flow with an all too familiar shudder and a whisper, “Fuck.”

When I returned to the table, there was a cup of filmy liquid beside my plate, and as I sat down Mike told me to drink it.  “It’s lime water.  Her husband said it should kill the bugs inside you.”  Through all the grogginess, it made perfect sense.  You squirt it on reef rash to kill bacteria.  The shit cooks fish for crying out loud.  It’s strange and silly to me when those moments of clarity come.  One sip felt better than anything I could recently remember, and I thanked her one thousand times.

The Bali Diaries: Delirium Tremens

Not the beer, but the tired desperate feeling that comes so unceremoniously after three days of peeing from my butthole.  I don’t want to deserve this anymore.  And I remember why I wrote “DOG” on a random piece of cardboard now.  Yes, they’re everywhere here, roaming free on the roads, at the beaches, all curious cute and for some reason always young, all pups.  It wasn’t that though.  I remember now.  There was a little voice in my head that night and it said in a sharp whisper, a girl’s tone, someone familiar but I can’t remember who. She said to me, “You’re a dog, Brian. You’re such a dog.” And she despised me when she said it.  In my mind’s eye, I ticked my head to the left, because I knew what she meant, but I wasn’t sure if being a dog was such a bad thing really.  He’s loyal.  He’s most always a true mirror.  He reflects, he’s reciprocal.  There’s no games with him except stick and ball and belly rub and right behind the ears.  And yeah, he wants to fuck a lot, but he just wants to make you happy.  He’s man’s best friend.  

And then there’s man on the other hand.  We’re scheming, deceitful, and so many times despicable beings.  A dog can be this, but not on its own.  It needs a man to model after.  We’re wretched.  We’re never satisfied.  Even with paradise right behind us.  

Listen to me, wow.  The pain of my digestive tract is coming through my fingers.  I can’t wait to be through this.

The Bali Diaries: Dog

There’s “DOG” written on a piece of torn cardboard that used to be the packaging for one of my leashes.  I remember writing it there way late two night ago.  Early early Monday morning  before the gods of this land decided to exact their devious revenge for the way I treated Aga.  She deserved better, and my, how fun it would’ve been.  But Sundays at Single Fin seem to have a mind of their own.  A bitter taste is in my mouth now from that night’s decisions.  And it’s not just the grapefruit extract that Nate promises will make everything better.  I should’ve stuck with Aga, but I somehow ended up on the beach at Padang Padang with some woman from New York.  She looked my age, but she told me she was 29.  It was a desperate hour.  

And then in the morning something didn’t feel right, and as the day progressed it got worse.  Dehydration.  Diarrhea.  Delirium.  My head was feather light when we went to surf Balangan, and last night the cold chills gripped me and every joint screamed and my fingers shook and trembled to try to grab something that wasn’t there.  Aga was gone.  I probably deserved this.

The Bali Diaries: Cotton Jones In The Morning

Mother fucker this place is amazing.  I don’t know what it is.  The weather? The insatiable merry-go-round of beautiful girls? The impeccable surf?  The food?  The new friends?  Who knows.  It’s probably all of that and more.  Like the little things.  Like the dogs roaming Dreamland beach.  And the roadside roosters and brown cows.  The little fires, and the dead kitties.  

There was a party on the beach last night at Padang’s with the tide slowly rising.  The Polish girl was there, and I only say girl because she’s three years younger than me.  When they’re younger they’re girls, when they’re older than me they’re women.  That’s just How my mind works.  But this girl is intriguing.  As soon as the homies bail, she grabs me by the hand and says, “Let’s go hang out somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere.” So we march-stumble down the beach, around a rock to seclusion and she pulls me down to the sand with her and puts her lips to mine and her tongue to my tongue and like nothing we’re rolling and grabbing until she flinches.  “My pussy’s burnt from the sun today.” She’d been naked sunbathing on some secret beach down 500 stairs not far from Uluwatu.  “And it’s a shame because I want to have sex with you right here right now.”  In that moment I thought to myself how funny Polish accents are.  How cute.  How deliciously seductive and to the point.  She put her hand down my pants and grabbed me in a firm grasp.  

"But my lips," she puckered. "They are good for sucking, no?"  They were.  Moist, full red Jolie lips, glistening in the moonlight, they were.  "Let me. Please."

[stop]

The Bali Diaries: The Animals For Miss Caulker

We’d stepped off into greatness, we had.  Straight off the plane, the swell was roaring.  Eight feet, ten feet, twelve feet.  Just epic.  Big boards at Padang.  No more EPS at the points I told myself as the Bill Johnson chattered off the bottom at Dang-Dang.  Fun boards at Dreamland.  Left-hand racers, and beers, and a beautiful Polish woman and noodles make that place heaven.

The Bali Diaries: The Bali Bums

We wake up here, now, with nothing more before us.  It’s a strange feeling after two days of just one more step.  Two more legs of the flight.  One more Ambien.  Three more hours in Singapore.  One more purchase at the airport.  One more airplane meal.  One more security check.  A cab ride, a homestay, a mo-ped.  One more meal at Yeye’s.  A surf, a shower without soap, and a quiet night out.  

The bed’s hard and thin, just softer than a box spring I take it, and my neck offers a chime of complaint on both sides today in the early light.  But still, we’re here.  The morning’s all clouds and cricket calls and sticky sweat that’s not really sweat, but a moist film on the skin and everywhere.  On the tile floor, on the desk, on the door.  Humidity is Bali’s blanket, and we, her weary travelers.  I want to surf my brains out.  But first, a good stretch.

What Comes First

Remember.  Everybody wants something out of life, girl.  Some people want security.  Some people want adventure.  Well, I guess we all want both really.  Not just one or the other.  No one really lives to such an absolute extreme.  We all want both, but the difference between one individual and another is the degree to which we strive for each.  The priority each takes within our lives.  Be it security, adventure, family, or pleasure.  Self-sufficiency, self-respectability, whatever.

Something always comes first, and that's what defines us.

Fall Paris: Marie

I don't know it yet, but I'm going to fill a whole book with them; all girls, every kind.  It's funny to me presently later, because I came here to - well, in part to write, but in another part to try and get away from them, those lucid sirens of LA, and all the distractions and trouble they cause and all the worry they're worth.  The trouble being that they're so many times worth the worry to some beholder.  And that's distracting, and with distractions I can't write.  Not to the volume that I require anyways.  This writing isn't something that just flows out and splatters on the page like a Johnny cum quickly.  Unfortunately, no. It's painstaking.  It's focus-draining, and I wasn't gifted that much (focus, that is) in the first place.  I can handle two things at a time, easy.  It's around the third one that everything always seems to fall apart.  I can't play and sing. The drums are a tearful mystery. I'm not a juggler.  But when I tried, writing was always the last ball (if I were say, juggling balls).

So I'm in Paris to try and get away, and somehow I wind up drowning in a sea of them.  Women, the most distracting are the ones you find living in this city.  What waste for a restless eye, but yes, I get some writing done too.  It's what came first, foremostly, and I guess that makes all the difference.

A nice man lets me into the building right off Rue Didot and I take the stairs three floors to the landing, to knock a couple times at the door.  No answer.  Not having a phone sucks.  The landing's a bit long, but not so long, with Marie's door at one end and a low, tall window at the other, and I almost pass out sitting on the old wood, leaning against my bags, my legs wrapped in my arms.  It's quiet, and the air moves in softly from the window, a cold-in-the-day-sun foreign air that chills my hands.  There's a wet sweat on my back though from lugging the backpack and that stupid Samsonite shoulder luggage, and when I close my eyes to breathe deep of the French city air, each time, breeze from the windows whispers past my face just a little more subtler, and my head lolls back because it feels so nice.  A click, and the door opens and there's Marie.

She starts at my presence. "Brian?"

"Marie!  Hi," I say, getting to my feet. "Sorry, I don't have a phone.  And I knocked a few times, but I guess it wasn't loud enough."

"Oh, no! I was just in the bathroom getting ready. I didn't hear a thing. How long were you waiting here?"

"Not long at all. A nice man let me in, and I've just been sitting here a few minutes, I think. After knocking, of course."

She looks at my bags, then back at me. "Well, get your stuff in here. You can use the bed under mine. Oh, and here's the key," she says fiddling with her key ring until a key comes free. "Here. I have to go, but I'll be back in the evening sometime. Julian, my roommate, should be home before then though."

I can't imagine what the look on my face must be other than one of complete relief and gratitude.  Whatever it is, it strikes her funny and she almost laughs handing me the key.  "Thank you, Marie.  Thank you, thank you, thank you. So very very much." I have to hug her. "Thank you.  Now don't let me keep you. And have a glorious day!" I say as she whisks down the spiral stairs out of sight.  The front door goes straight to the bedroom, a small space with room for a raised bunk and a mattress underneath and a bookshelf and not much else. It's cozy. A delirious sense of familiarity from being here before muddles my brain into feeling like it's home again. Paris veritable. This is the city I remembered.  This is the same flat.  These are the same streets, the same cafes, the same metro stop.  Familiarity is a strong feeling, and it melts the bags from my shoulders and lays my head gently on the pillow.  The mattress is divine, and it's not ten minutes before I'm knocked out cold in a musing French dream.

[stop]


The door shuts, and I startle.  "Good evening,"  she says coming in.  She's rarely not moving, and when she talks she moves too so that our conversation is a flurry of clothes before my eyes, and she's in nothing but her underwear, tight grey lace, still going on about the day, about school, some guy on the metro, the brisk air, and all the little stresses.  She grabs a towel quick on command from over a wide beam on the side of the bunk and pulls it up under her arms and behind her back and ties it in the front like so, and then puts both hands through her hair and out with a short shake.  "I need to shower." It's abrupt, almost mid-sentence but no, she caps the last one off first on a mashed high note all on the same breath.  It's a gift of the French. Their English always sounds like a song.

"What time is it?"

"Just past ten," she calls over her bare shoulder as she turns the corner towards the bathroom.  It's a tiny place to say the least, but it's cozy.  It's actually bigger than Lili's place, but just barely.  The other door in the bedroom leads to a living room of about the same size that consists of shelves, a four cornered table, four chairs, a tiny twin-sized daybed, and a fireplace all mashed together.  The roommate's room has a door to the landing as well, with another door leading to the what's technically considered the kitchen I believe.  These other doors, Marie's and her roommates, stand directly next to each other, with about a foot of wall making Marie's door deeper.  Once around the corner from the bedroom, it's three steps through the kitchen to the bathroom.  An old brick bar with a high wood counter-top separate the kitchen and the living room which is painted a faded lemon meringue yellow, but yellower.  Mustard yellow actually.  It's a faded mustard yellow.

[stop]