Some men think they never forget anything but they are wrong. They always forget things and they usually only say that they never do when they have forgotten something and are being indignant about it.
That was the first time I ever saw a fresh water otter, that was in Chincoteague island. There are alligators here they say and I have never seen them. I have never eaten alligator but last night on the back porch at a birthday party a few boys went talking about alligator meat. It was a point of comparison to how eating armadillo is similar to alligator in a way, only there is the shell still there with the meat hanging off. I guess the only part of the alligator anyone is supposed to eat is the tail. Its the fleshiest bit they said. It all came about because there was a possum running across the fence right beforehand and then he climbed a thin branch into a tree in the next yard over and just stayed there forever looking at us. The boys said an armadillo is the same thing as a possum only it has armour and lives in Florida and gets run over a lot more. One of them said that a possum can travel across a river by walking under it. They just hold their breath. I asked if anyone had ever eaten turtle soup becuase my father had once eaten turtle soup and I have never eaten anything, not even duck. The one boy who brought up armadillos said no he would never eat a turtle because turtles are his spirit animal. I wonder who decides these things and how people get so funny about them. I told him about my russian tortoise Fiona Apple and how my dad had accidentally frozen to death the russian tortoise I'd had before that. He had been hibernating her through the winter. It was a honest mistake. My father grew up raising turtles. He also ate one in a soup onetime.
Just then a tall skinny rake of a guy walked onto the porch and I thought I was seeing things. I'd been in love with him once over a cup of coffee. He didn't know me but he knew my friends. I'd had to run off to class. I'd been rambling on like a crazy person, I was trying so hard to make him love me. I made an utter fool of myself when he asked me my name on the porch. He didn't remember of, course, but I did and I'd written a poem and the lines of it spilled out of my mouth before I could think better of it. I've met you before and we were outside and you were eating chocolate cake and you'd said it used to be from Costco but it wasn't anymore and I was talking about a guy who was buried with bells in his coffin because he was afraid he might be buried before he was really dead and he wanted to be able to get out again. He stopped and unfocused his eyes like he was thinking who that guy might have been and I said you couldn't think of who it was, which was also true. Then I asked one of the other boys if they had a hard bit of identification that I could use to go break into my house for a minute and grab my cigarettes. Someone gave me a sonic card and I hopped off on my bike. I had to leave immediately after that and I thought about not coming back at all but I did. I stayed and talked to everyone and had my cigarettes, thank god. And the rake looked at me sometimes but I couldn't speak to him directly after that. On the front porch he stared at me with his hands on his knees the way another man had done when I was in Italy and waiting outside the cafe for my girlfriends to finish buying icecream and wishing I had a cigarette. I was looking around at people and decided that this man with the grey hair was peculiarly attractive and he was having a conversation so I didn't think he'd notice me watching him but he did. I looked away when he noticed but had to turn back eventually and this went on for a while. I think he wasn't sure if I was watching him now or if he was watching me. Then the girls came out and we started walking over to the van one of our teachers had brought us there in and the man must have ran around behind me because he popped up ahead of me and turned around as he was walking and just stared straight at me to see if I would stare back and I did. I never saw him again. That was the way the rake looked at me on the front porch around 3 in the morning and I tried to stare back without twitching but I did twitch a few times. I still stared back for the most part and I just had to leave after that without saying goodbye.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
A Traveling Apology
A Traveling Apology:
“I have not failed. I've just found 10000 ways that won't work.”- Thomas Edison
We have hijacked a train unknowingly. We stay calm and no one kills us. I have washed my hair. We are only babies. We have reached Orte and passed on the first class biscotti. What more can be asked? I am not asking.
May 30th, 2010
“Oh my land/ it ain’t beneath me/ cause I got my head in the sand/ Oh my land”
–Dr. Dog
Buddha said it is better to live one moment in the way beyond the way. It is always better to live one moment. Jacobi said Ancona is the only city in the world where the sun rises from the hills and sets into the ocean. This happens in June and only in June. In Ancona we see the ocean, the hills, the sun, the sunset, the sunrise...but we do not see this! It is May 30th.
“Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes”- Lewis Carroll
A peacock has said its ok. She will remember this now the rest of her life. She will learn to make a right angle. He was speaking to me through a buffer of six. It’s the eye contact that gives him away, always away. It took six people between us to say anything more about it. He was right, always right. I tried to say anything back without saying anything but it can be so very difficult to talk back to a peacock.
“If you get one hundred percent of mud on you, you turn into a mud monster.” –Gus Varallo
I was once a mud monster too, kid; stuck in the mud in my own backyard, kicking the dirt for feeding me dirt. Everyone loses a shoe or two eventually. If you never lose a shoe, you get stuck in your shoes. You become a shoe monster, which is much worse. A shoe monster cannot wash the shoes off its feet, not even with a power hose!
“Maybe she go/ Maybe she don’t go/ Many time she afraid to go/ many, she do go”
–Odetta
You can tell a bird from a bat because a bat’s wings are in constant motion. A bird flaps its wings three or four times before coasting, and then coasts, and then flaps its wings again. If you throw a rock in the air with enough momentum, a bat will detect the motion and chase it. The bird will not.
On Sheepishness
A sheep cannot shave itself. If it could do you think that it would? Do you think it would learn how to knit itself a sweater?
“Dreadfully sorry/ Apple scrumping/ born in a war/ birthday punching”- The Who
If you are clever no one will ask you the wrong question at the wrong time or when you do not have an answer either, or else if they do by the time you answer they will already have forgotten the question. This is only if you are clever, though.
“I got ninety-nine problems but a bitch ain’t one—hit me” –Jay-Z
I dream we are all on vacation. We wander off and we get a little lost. We end up in what they call a “bar-bar”, the most authentic bar on the trip, so they say. I get a coffee and the waitress says Americans like peanut butter in their coffee and would I like that? I say yes and yes it is delicious. I tip the waitress ninety cents.
“Keep on with the living/ you’ll soon enough be dead”—Dr. Dog
We are entering Roma and we are going to be fine. We are reading the signs and unclenching our thigh muscles.
“You can call me crazy/ you can call me anything you like...even rivers ask for rain”
–Dr. Dog
How strange they are: the shapes of trees separating through a window. The anxious motion of the train feeling anxious and about to vomit. A thing held in will often pass.
Piazza del Gesu: Naples, Italy
“Did she wake you up to tell you that/ it was only a change of plans”—Neil Young
We decide we will go to Napoli. We will ride the train to Napoli. We will get off the first train in Roma. We will get on a train we think goes to Napoli in Roma. We will decide it does not go to Napoli and we will get off. Someone opens the window. We will decide it does go to Napoli and we will get back on. We will end up in Napoli, down a row of skyscrapers. An old man walks us a mile to the metro. He counts the stops out on his fingers, saying every stop before and then: Mergellina, Mergellina. He flies down the staircase. We try to show him our tongues where they’ve gone numb. We try to thank him.
“And the promise of finding a cat you can count on is more than just reading the comics.”—F.D. Reeve
The awnings were all coming down around us. The street pajamas, which had not sold were being pulled & roped into cardboard boxes. The fish were being washed and boxed. Their heads were being all cut off. We ended up in a room of bunk beds. We bumped eachother’s heads. We washed our feet off in the ocean.
Il Grotto Azure (Capri)
A man lays back flat against me through a tunnel & we end up in a cave.
The bluest water in the world is half-green.
Pompeii
“Nor can I go on, without a reflection on those accidental meetings, which, though they happen every day, seldom excite our surprize but upon some extraordinary occasion...How many seeming accidents must unite before we can be cloathed or fed.”
—The Vicar of Wakefield
We are going to Pompeii to see the people who died there; to go into their houses. I do not say I have met these people once before; that I have stood in their kitchens on a grass carpet and seen a purple flower growing there, as a lizard skitters quickly to the wall.
Napoli: Piazza del Gesu (& beyond)
“No, I don’t need no doctor/ to tear me all apart”—Dr. Dog
L’Oriental University is where they learn the languages, says the travel agent we meet outside a bar called Blue Moon. He wants to move to America, maybe he can live with me? To go there forever, that is my dream. He watches MTV. There is no money. It is my home. But the money here is no good. The most important moment in history of Napoli is this church. This is a church and a monastery. Across the street is a Tabacchi machine. I feed the machine five euro and it spits out a carton of Lucky Strikes.
Ostello Mergellina
“The radio was blasting/ someone’s knocking at the door/ I’m lookin’ at my girlfriend/ She’s passed out on the floor/ I’ve seen so many things I ain’t ever seen before”- Odetta
Old folks (I am guessing) from a home sit in a row. Their backs and the backs of their chairs watching Italian soap operas, sit in the lobby of our “Ostello Mergellina”. The espresso machine drops a cup down but misses the cup with the spoon. A pigeon is heard murmuring through a halfway opened window. The two girls spend an hour pushing buttons for a Coca-Cola.
Il Grotto Azure
“but its calm under the waves/ in the blue of my oblivion”—Fiona Apple
Inside the cave a man rows the boat in a memorized pattern; lazy, slow. He is singing an operetta. His voice booms and echoes around us. Il Grotto Azure is half-green.
The train to Pompei
The train to Pompei is staying put. It sits around and does not leave. At every station they play the same song. It is in English and it has one verse. The verse goes: “I just want to be ok/ be ok/ be ok/ I just want to be ok/ be ok/ be ok.”
--So what was the big crisis?
Mergellina
“And what you thought was a hurricane/ was just the rustling of the wind”—Dr. Dog
In Mergellina we find the Ostello hidden inside a hill and through a tunnel. Inside it is orange. I think of Max and everything is orange. The window does not open. The door never really locks. We live in a room of bunk beds. We collect our bed sheets at the front desk. It is a relief that everything is orange.
Spoleto
“I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!”—Pablo Picasso
Before we leave Spoleto, we are walking down the hill. A bird’s nest is lying in the road. I want to show it to my father and tell him how I found it here. I want him to see the lightning bugs that come out at night all along the path to get here. I hide the bird’s nest in the bushes off the road.
“I’ve been around a long time/ It’s more than I can say/ I’ve searched for the truth/ I’m looking today” -Odetta
I forget to buy apples for the horses. If the horses were cows they would eat stale bread. They would love it. We could stand at the fence for hours. If you just stand still enough, they will always come up to you.
“The engine of curiosity is a lack of knowledge” –Brett Lott
I’ve seen them scared off so many times. They can’t take the rapid movements. You should stop moving. You should become quiet and listen.
Dear Bob,
“You skinned my cat and donned it!”—ferry tanka
I have brought your sweater somewhere it’s never been to before. I have worn it there. I have thought of you.
Dear Bob,
Have you been very alone there, Bob? Would you tell me honestly if you were? I can’t see into your room from here.
Sincerely,
What do you think of when you think of me, Bob? I won’t ask you. There is this one question I have tired of answering here, though. No one believes me. Some of them are answering for me and they are answering wrong but I won’t say it. You know me, Bob. I guess I didn’t want them to know, Bob. Every time they ask the question they think they do not know me yet. They are so very innocent then and I can’t lie to them so it kills me. They ask and I answer. They say why kind of, why really? I pinch my arms.
“And you found another way to tell the truth”—The Morning Benders
I want to be a fox again and also for you to be here. I want to go home and I want the house to be swallowed in a black hole and be gone forever. I want to wipe things clean. I want to forget things. But there are things I would like to remember!
On the train to Feligno
“My voice is climbing walls/ its smoking and I want love”- Jeff Tweedy
I want to feel my own bones and organs with my own un-washed hands. I want the high pitched bell on this train to stop singing. I want to know what your plan is, William. I want to know if you have one. I want to be the cat I see in Mergellina, walking towards us as if out of the sea across the rocks & like a sea-cat.
In the bathroom on the train to Feligno:
I am a cigarette smoker
“Out of my brain on the 5:15” –The Who
Cigarette smokers are restless & cigarettes rest together in packs of twenty on shelves in convenience stores. The stores can be easily found; there is at least one on almost every street that anyone has ever been on. Cigarette smokers spend their money on cigarettes, maybe for this, but maybe for the nicotine, and maybe just to appear a bit more like a dragon.
“I have not failed. I've just found 10000 ways that won't work.”- Thomas Edison
We have hijacked a train unknowingly. We stay calm and no one kills us. I have washed my hair. We are only babies. We have reached Orte and passed on the first class biscotti. What more can be asked? I am not asking.
May 30th, 2010
“Oh my land/ it ain’t beneath me/ cause I got my head in the sand/ Oh my land”
–Dr. Dog
Buddha said it is better to live one moment in the way beyond the way. It is always better to live one moment. Jacobi said Ancona is the only city in the world where the sun rises from the hills and sets into the ocean. This happens in June and only in June. In Ancona we see the ocean, the hills, the sun, the sunset, the sunrise...but we do not see this! It is May 30th.
“Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes”- Lewis Carroll
A peacock has said its ok. She will remember this now the rest of her life. She will learn to make a right angle. He was speaking to me through a buffer of six. It’s the eye contact that gives him away, always away. It took six people between us to say anything more about it. He was right, always right. I tried to say anything back without saying anything but it can be so very difficult to talk back to a peacock.
“If you get one hundred percent of mud on you, you turn into a mud monster.” –Gus Varallo
I was once a mud monster too, kid; stuck in the mud in my own backyard, kicking the dirt for feeding me dirt. Everyone loses a shoe or two eventually. If you never lose a shoe, you get stuck in your shoes. You become a shoe monster, which is much worse. A shoe monster cannot wash the shoes off its feet, not even with a power hose!
“Maybe she go/ Maybe she don’t go/ Many time she afraid to go/ many, she do go”
–Odetta
You can tell a bird from a bat because a bat’s wings are in constant motion. A bird flaps its wings three or four times before coasting, and then coasts, and then flaps its wings again. If you throw a rock in the air with enough momentum, a bat will detect the motion and chase it. The bird will not.
On Sheepishness
A sheep cannot shave itself. If it could do you think that it would? Do you think it would learn how to knit itself a sweater?
“Dreadfully sorry/ Apple scrumping/ born in a war/ birthday punching”- The Who
If you are clever no one will ask you the wrong question at the wrong time or when you do not have an answer either, or else if they do by the time you answer they will already have forgotten the question. This is only if you are clever, though.
“I got ninety-nine problems but a bitch ain’t one—hit me” –Jay-Z
I dream we are all on vacation. We wander off and we get a little lost. We end up in what they call a “bar-bar”, the most authentic bar on the trip, so they say. I get a coffee and the waitress says Americans like peanut butter in their coffee and would I like that? I say yes and yes it is delicious. I tip the waitress ninety cents.
“Keep on with the living/ you’ll soon enough be dead”—Dr. Dog
We are entering Roma and we are going to be fine. We are reading the signs and unclenching our thigh muscles.
“You can call me crazy/ you can call me anything you like...even rivers ask for rain”
–Dr. Dog
How strange they are: the shapes of trees separating through a window. The anxious motion of the train feeling anxious and about to vomit. A thing held in will often pass.
Piazza del Gesu: Naples, Italy
“Did she wake you up to tell you that/ it was only a change of plans”—Neil Young
We decide we will go to Napoli. We will ride the train to Napoli. We will get off the first train in Roma. We will get on a train we think goes to Napoli in Roma. We will decide it does not go to Napoli and we will get off. Someone opens the window. We will decide it does go to Napoli and we will get back on. We will end up in Napoli, down a row of skyscrapers. An old man walks us a mile to the metro. He counts the stops out on his fingers, saying every stop before and then: Mergellina, Mergellina. He flies down the staircase. We try to show him our tongues where they’ve gone numb. We try to thank him.
“And the promise of finding a cat you can count on is more than just reading the comics.”—F.D. Reeve
The awnings were all coming down around us. The street pajamas, which had not sold were being pulled & roped into cardboard boxes. The fish were being washed and boxed. Their heads were being all cut off. We ended up in a room of bunk beds. We bumped eachother’s heads. We washed our feet off in the ocean.
Il Grotto Azure (Capri)
A man lays back flat against me through a tunnel & we end up in a cave.
The bluest water in the world is half-green.
Pompeii
“Nor can I go on, without a reflection on those accidental meetings, which, though they happen every day, seldom excite our surprize but upon some extraordinary occasion...How many seeming accidents must unite before we can be cloathed or fed.”
—The Vicar of Wakefield
We are going to Pompeii to see the people who died there; to go into their houses. I do not say I have met these people once before; that I have stood in their kitchens on a grass carpet and seen a purple flower growing there, as a lizard skitters quickly to the wall.
Napoli: Piazza del Gesu (& beyond)
“No, I don’t need no doctor/ to tear me all apart”—Dr. Dog
L’Oriental University is where they learn the languages, says the travel agent we meet outside a bar called Blue Moon. He wants to move to America, maybe he can live with me? To go there forever, that is my dream. He watches MTV. There is no money. It is my home. But the money here is no good. The most important moment in history of Napoli is this church. This is a church and a monastery. Across the street is a Tabacchi machine. I feed the machine five euro and it spits out a carton of Lucky Strikes.
Ostello Mergellina
“The radio was blasting/ someone’s knocking at the door/ I’m lookin’ at my girlfriend/ She’s passed out on the floor/ I’ve seen so many things I ain’t ever seen before”- Odetta
Old folks (I am guessing) from a home sit in a row. Their backs and the backs of their chairs watching Italian soap operas, sit in the lobby of our “Ostello Mergellina”. The espresso machine drops a cup down but misses the cup with the spoon. A pigeon is heard murmuring through a halfway opened window. The two girls spend an hour pushing buttons for a Coca-Cola.
Il Grotto Azure
“but its calm under the waves/ in the blue of my oblivion”—Fiona Apple
Inside the cave a man rows the boat in a memorized pattern; lazy, slow. He is singing an operetta. His voice booms and echoes around us. Il Grotto Azure is half-green.
The train to Pompei
The train to Pompei is staying put. It sits around and does not leave. At every station they play the same song. It is in English and it has one verse. The verse goes: “I just want to be ok/ be ok/ be ok/ I just want to be ok/ be ok/ be ok.”
--So what was the big crisis?
Mergellina
“And what you thought was a hurricane/ was just the rustling of the wind”—Dr. Dog
In Mergellina we find the Ostello hidden inside a hill and through a tunnel. Inside it is orange. I think of Max and everything is orange. The window does not open. The door never really locks. We live in a room of bunk beds. We collect our bed sheets at the front desk. It is a relief that everything is orange.
Spoleto
“I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!”—Pablo Picasso
Before we leave Spoleto, we are walking down the hill. A bird’s nest is lying in the road. I want to show it to my father and tell him how I found it here. I want him to see the lightning bugs that come out at night all along the path to get here. I hide the bird’s nest in the bushes off the road.
“I’ve been around a long time/ It’s more than I can say/ I’ve searched for the truth/ I’m looking today” -Odetta
I forget to buy apples for the horses. If the horses were cows they would eat stale bread. They would love it. We could stand at the fence for hours. If you just stand still enough, they will always come up to you.
“The engine of curiosity is a lack of knowledge” –Brett Lott
I’ve seen them scared off so many times. They can’t take the rapid movements. You should stop moving. You should become quiet and listen.
Dear Bob,
“You skinned my cat and donned it!”—ferry tanka
I have brought your sweater somewhere it’s never been to before. I have worn it there. I have thought of you.
Dear Bob,
Have you been very alone there, Bob? Would you tell me honestly if you were? I can’t see into your room from here.
Sincerely,
What do you think of when you think of me, Bob? I won’t ask you. There is this one question I have tired of answering here, though. No one believes me. Some of them are answering for me and they are answering wrong but I won’t say it. You know me, Bob. I guess I didn’t want them to know, Bob. Every time they ask the question they think they do not know me yet. They are so very innocent then and I can’t lie to them so it kills me. They ask and I answer. They say why kind of, why really? I pinch my arms.
“And you found another way to tell the truth”—The Morning Benders
I want to be a fox again and also for you to be here. I want to go home and I want the house to be swallowed in a black hole and be gone forever. I want to wipe things clean. I want to forget things. But there are things I would like to remember!
On the train to Feligno
“My voice is climbing walls/ its smoking and I want love”- Jeff Tweedy
I want to feel my own bones and organs with my own un-washed hands. I want the high pitched bell on this train to stop singing. I want to know what your plan is, William. I want to know if you have one. I want to be the cat I see in Mergellina, walking towards us as if out of the sea across the rocks & like a sea-cat.
In the bathroom on the train to Feligno:
I am a cigarette smoker
“Out of my brain on the 5:15” –The Who
Cigarette smokers are restless & cigarettes rest together in packs of twenty on shelves in convenience stores. The stores can be easily found; there is at least one on almost every street that anyone has ever been on. Cigarette smokers spend their money on cigarettes, maybe for this, but maybe for the nicotine, and maybe just to appear a bit more like a dragon.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
bill bryson:here nor there/ a sense of place
a sense of place:
Shapiro: ...but the other thing is that Seinfeld had a bit about the show being about nothing. Now I mean this in the most complimentary way: Is there a similar thread in your work?
I have a kind of travel I do which is very limited. I'm a motel traveler. And if you have a really successful book, then you get really pigeon-holed because publishers want you to do the exact same book, part two.
One of the things I find most gratifying about what I do is once you really get into a subject you reach a point where you're almost insatiable in your curiosity. You just want to know more.
...I really like the idea of setting off and just walking. I'm pretty sure that I'll never tire of that.
Is there anything, apart from a really good chocolate cream pie and recieving a large unexpected check in the mail, to beat finding yourself at large in a foreign city on a fair spring evening, loafing along unfamiliar streets in the long shadows of a lazy sunset...
All human beings do essentially the same things everywhere on the planet. We all eat and drink and procreate and watch a little TV in the evening. And yet, there's such a variety of ways in doing these things. And I love that.
I don't think travel is the least bit broadening unless you want it to be.
Part of the reason English is such a great language for humor is that there are so many opportunites for puns. Words have so many different meanings and how you arrange them is particularly fruitful in that way.
Neither Here Nor There:
Hammerfest
...I have this terrible occasional compulsion to make myself a source of merriment for the world, and I had come close to scaling new heights with a Russian hat.
Sometimes I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands on my knees and just gazed about me. Often I talked to myself. Mostly I went for long, cold, walks...
Oslo
I don't want to know what people are talking about...Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.
"And you have sex with all these creatures, do you?" the host was saying.
Paris
In halting french you would ask for a small loaf of bread. The woman would give you a long, cold stare and then put a dead beaver on the counter.
Brussels
I hate asking directions. I am always afraid that the person I approach will step back and say, "You want to go where?" The center of Brussels? Boy, are you lost. This is Lille, you dumb shit."
Belgium
I did just that and never once saw a street I wouldn't want to live on, a bar I wouldn't like to get to know, a view I wouldn't wish to call my own.
Shapiro: ...but the other thing is that Seinfeld had a bit about the show being about nothing. Now I mean this in the most complimentary way: Is there a similar thread in your work?
I have a kind of travel I do which is very limited. I'm a motel traveler. And if you have a really successful book, then you get really pigeon-holed because publishers want you to do the exact same book, part two.
One of the things I find most gratifying about what I do is once you really get into a subject you reach a point where you're almost insatiable in your curiosity. You just want to know more.
...I really like the idea of setting off and just walking. I'm pretty sure that I'll never tire of that.
Is there anything, apart from a really good chocolate cream pie and recieving a large unexpected check in the mail, to beat finding yourself at large in a foreign city on a fair spring evening, loafing along unfamiliar streets in the long shadows of a lazy sunset...
All human beings do essentially the same things everywhere on the planet. We all eat and drink and procreate and watch a little TV in the evening. And yet, there's such a variety of ways in doing these things. And I love that.
I don't think travel is the least bit broadening unless you want it to be.
Part of the reason English is such a great language for humor is that there are so many opportunites for puns. Words have so many different meanings and how you arrange them is particularly fruitful in that way.
Neither Here Nor There:
Hammerfest
...I have this terrible occasional compulsion to make myself a source of merriment for the world, and I had come close to scaling new heights with a Russian hat.
Sometimes I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands on my knees and just gazed about me. Often I talked to myself. Mostly I went for long, cold, walks...
Oslo
I don't want to know what people are talking about...Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.
"And you have sex with all these creatures, do you?" the host was saying.
Paris
In halting french you would ask for a small loaf of bread. The woman would give you a long, cold stare and then put a dead beaver on the counter.
Brussels
I hate asking directions. I am always afraid that the person I approach will step back and say, "You want to go where?" The center of Brussels? Boy, are you lost. This is Lille, you dumb shit."
Belgium
I did just that and never once saw a street I wouldn't want to live on, a bar I wouldn't like to get to know, a view I wouldn't wish to call my own.
group morale
"It felt so magical I couldn't help myself from singing and lighting cigarettes on fire while running figure eights down the street."
We had been on the euroline for what felt like fifteen hours but probably came closer to five. Maria and I turned to Kim (whose idea the whole trip had been) and began to wonder aloud about her trip-planning skills. So what do you really know about Naples? We wondered in her general direction..."Nothing!!",(as if for her to know anything was a gross and innapropriate expectation) she returned, "It was in the guide book." Are we there yet? we began to wonder out loud in five minute intervals. "I think its the next stop," Kim said, at least three times, before ceasing to answer. Naples was not the next stop, nor the next next stop, nor the next next next stop after that, but we kept up our questioning without the hope for an answer.
Two or so hours later, after passing a beautiful ocean surrounded by promising hilly cities which we all assumed must be Naples or very nearly Naples (but as it turned out were not Naples), we arrived at a stop overlooking the Industrial Revolution of Italy gone awry.
"Ah, and here we are in the city of Naples," joked Maria. We all laughed and turned to look out the window in jest, only to see the sign which silenced our giggles and confirmed our darkest fears. Welcome to Naples, said the sign...only it didn't say Welcome to Naples, it just said Napoli (in a desolate manner).
We consulted our euro line pamphlets. This was the last stop on the rail. We were here. We turned to Kim. "I dont know!" She shouted.
Warily, we exited the train. It was around 6 o clock. Somehow, we had believed we would arrive in Naples shortly after 3 pm, where surely, a youth hostel would inevitably appear directly across from the train station...where we would conveniently drop our things and jet off into the city. Coming out of the station into the hazy light of Napoli, we were immediately and narrowly avoided by a stream of cars and pedestrians; a current which streamed constant through the trash filled streets. "This is great," I said, "its like New York." Maria and Kim had either hopped the first train back to Spoleto or had fallen into a resigned silence behind me, so I lit a cigarette. "Well then, where to?"
"Maybe we should find a place to stay," Kim (the travel agent) suggested.
We looked directly in front of us, where our place to stay was supposed to be as it had genially been in the last Italian city we had mistakenly visited, but there was no hostel, hotel, or enterable builidng facing back at us. "We'll find something," I said in my most assured tone. With Kim obviously in defeat, I was resolved to now pretend to know my way around Naples. In a pinch I can be great at pretending to know things I do not know about a person,restaurant, event or town until some kind of desirable outcome occurs. Often this requires some minor, less desirable events as well, but in my experience, things usually work out. The key is to not give up, and often, to not let on either.
Soon enough a squat man riding a motorcycle pulled up and offered us assistance. The good thing about being an American girl in a non-American city is that you are frequently very obviously American and often everyone assumes you are lost. This is good because you usually are. We told the squat man we were looking for a place to stay. He looked a bit discouragingly at us before instructing us to meet him three stores back down, on the opposite side of the street, assuring us that he would pull around on his bike and have a friend make a call for us. He owned a bed and breakfast, and for a minute I wondered if his job was involved poaching clients from off the street (those looking desperately lost around station Garibaldi). Unfortunately, the B&B was booked to capacity.
I started off down the street, following his directions, when I heard Kim making strange guttural noises behind me. "Whats up, Kim?" I asked, "We're in your dream city." "I don't think this is a good idea," she murmured into her handbag. "Do you have a better one I asked?" (not at all peeved). "I think we should just walk down the street back at the stop light," she said. This would have been fine if I did not feel a horrible, horrible guilt in promising anything to complete strangers without fulfilling that promise. I lie to my friends and family all the time; strangers, however, I hold in higher regard, especially old men, especially old men who ride motorcycles, and this one had been all three. The concensus was that we would go it alone, however, and I was not about to start an argument now, when team spirit was already dwindling. "Ok, Nicoteam!" I shouted thinking we could all stick our cigarettes into a huddle before taking off farther into the abyss but my hoo-rah was met with half-laughs and drudgery. Instead we quickly turned down a side street and I instructed the others that we were now in hiding from the old man and anyone who happened to catch his eye would be responisble for the immense shame such an occasion would cast down upon us all.
We proceeded down a series of narrow streets that did not look promising in terms of finding a place to stay, but which did look vastly more interesting. This change in course may have been my fault. The first thing immediately apparent about Naples, is that everyone owned a motorcycle. Everyone. Teenage girls, old men, grandmothers, theives, all on motorbike and maybe about to hit you.
We had been on the euroline for what felt like fifteen hours but probably came closer to five. Maria and I turned to Kim (whose idea the whole trip had been) and began to wonder aloud about her trip-planning skills. So what do you really know about Naples? We wondered in her general direction..."Nothing!!",(as if for her to know anything was a gross and innapropriate expectation) she returned, "It was in the guide book." Are we there yet? we began to wonder out loud in five minute intervals. "I think its the next stop," Kim said, at least three times, before ceasing to answer. Naples was not the next stop, nor the next next stop, nor the next next next stop after that, but we kept up our questioning without the hope for an answer.
Two or so hours later, after passing a beautiful ocean surrounded by promising hilly cities which we all assumed must be Naples or very nearly Naples (but as it turned out were not Naples), we arrived at a stop overlooking the Industrial Revolution of Italy gone awry.
"Ah, and here we are in the city of Naples," joked Maria. We all laughed and turned to look out the window in jest, only to see the sign which silenced our giggles and confirmed our darkest fears. Welcome to Naples, said the sign...only it didn't say Welcome to Naples, it just said Napoli (in a desolate manner).
We consulted our euro line pamphlets. This was the last stop on the rail. We were here. We turned to Kim. "I dont know!" She shouted.
Warily, we exited the train. It was around 6 o clock. Somehow, we had believed we would arrive in Naples shortly after 3 pm, where surely, a youth hostel would inevitably appear directly across from the train station...where we would conveniently drop our things and jet off into the city. Coming out of the station into the hazy light of Napoli, we were immediately and narrowly avoided by a stream of cars and pedestrians; a current which streamed constant through the trash filled streets. "This is great," I said, "its like New York." Maria and Kim had either hopped the first train back to Spoleto or had fallen into a resigned silence behind me, so I lit a cigarette. "Well then, where to?"
"Maybe we should find a place to stay," Kim (the travel agent) suggested.
We looked directly in front of us, where our place to stay was supposed to be as it had genially been in the last Italian city we had mistakenly visited, but there was no hostel, hotel, or enterable builidng facing back at us. "We'll find something," I said in my most assured tone. With Kim obviously in defeat, I was resolved to now pretend to know my way around Naples. In a pinch I can be great at pretending to know things I do not know about a person,restaurant, event or town until some kind of desirable outcome occurs. Often this requires some minor, less desirable events as well, but in my experience, things usually work out. The key is to not give up, and often, to not let on either.
Soon enough a squat man riding a motorcycle pulled up and offered us assistance. The good thing about being an American girl in a non-American city is that you are frequently very obviously American and often everyone assumes you are lost. This is good because you usually are. We told the squat man we were looking for a place to stay. He looked a bit discouragingly at us before instructing us to meet him three stores back down, on the opposite side of the street, assuring us that he would pull around on his bike and have a friend make a call for us. He owned a bed and breakfast, and for a minute I wondered if his job was involved poaching clients from off the street (those looking desperately lost around station Garibaldi). Unfortunately, the B&B was booked to capacity.
I started off down the street, following his directions, when I heard Kim making strange guttural noises behind me. "Whats up, Kim?" I asked, "We're in your dream city." "I don't think this is a good idea," she murmured into her handbag. "Do you have a better one I asked?" (not at all peeved). "I think we should just walk down the street back at the stop light," she said. This would have been fine if I did not feel a horrible, horrible guilt in promising anything to complete strangers without fulfilling that promise. I lie to my friends and family all the time; strangers, however, I hold in higher regard, especially old men, especially old men who ride motorcycles, and this one had been all three. The concensus was that we would go it alone, however, and I was not about to start an argument now, when team spirit was already dwindling. "Ok, Nicoteam!" I shouted thinking we could all stick our cigarettes into a huddle before taking off farther into the abyss but my hoo-rah was met with half-laughs and drudgery. Instead we quickly turned down a side street and I instructed the others that we were now in hiding from the old man and anyone who happened to catch his eye would be responisble for the immense shame such an occasion would cast down upon us all.
We proceeded down a series of narrow streets that did not look promising in terms of finding a place to stay, but which did look vastly more interesting. This change in course may have been my fault. The first thing immediately apparent about Naples, is that everyone owned a motorcycle. Everyone. Teenage girls, old men, grandmothers, theives, all on motorbike and maybe about to hit you.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
the start of a film...
one: would you like to know what im gonna do with my future?
two: yes...
one: so would i !
two: yes...
one: so would i !
Friday, July 2, 2010
text from last night: john-its-ma-birthday
Sooo, remember a charming black guy you met last night at Upper Deck?
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