Pompeii...

Soundtrack of the afternoon: Guero
Theme: "Missing"
Scene: Pompeii, the city leveled by Vesuvius back in...way back when. Why Beck? He's whimsical, playfully genius and musically profound...like square dancing to Mozart.

Walking the streets through resurrection, I envisioned storms of blinding ash drifting sans warning. I envisioned roaring waves of magma swallowing (quite unlikely and likely impossible, imagined nonetheless) every brick. And I could see the people. They weren't running or afraid. Quite the opposite, actually. They were soaked in laughter...as if playing a children's game. I dubbed it - Run From Magic Melt You to Your Bones, Orangewater - though in hindsight, a name that would likley fail in finding traction. Morbid, I realize...simply found the moment too sweet to let go. But I've seen it before, should have known then as I've witnessed forever. All happy and fun games must come to an end.

I was halfway through the appropriate "Farewell Ride," exploring salvaged pots that spoke loud and clear - clearly the Pompeiians (?) scored high marks in dept. Arts & Crafts. They were stacked shelves upon shelves. Pots...vases...sculpterous endeavors that resembled cowering, deathly afraid people - people ready and accepting of their coming death...encased in, lava ---



The needle jumped, the soundtrack stopped. I saw their faces...this was no game.

...

The bus dropped me off at the base of Vesuvius. As I began to climb, I could feel but chose to ignore a fear that was tracing my steps. After a brisk and steep 30 minutes, I turned to my left, looked down into the face of this once mighty and merciless, now dormant crater. It was so vast and I was so high up, the first thing my body came up with...vertigo.



It came hard, fast. I quickly knelt, dusted my right across the gravel and dirt path as a means for correction. When I stood, the world was steady. My mind, though - elsewhere. There must be things in existence certain people find impossible to grapple. Maybe I had found one of mine. This terror, once capable of a wrath and rage so violent...beautiful, stunning. Contradiction like I've never seen. And in its days of glory? The things I'd give to see it spit, just once...to see the faces of the ancient and God fearing Romans...

Dude, the fuck did we do?

Rome...

I walked to a call shop, internet cafe the first night in...my only intention for the night. Ambition dead, no desire to explore. But walking home, I found myself immediately lost. When I spun a corner, the Coliseum sat before me, lit in distant hues of blue and purple and green. I was scared, almost petrified as a honking car narrowly missed slamming me, breaking his car into pieces.

But it wasn't the car...

I wasn't ready for it, not immediately...a city I grew up to revere so precisely. It's daunting, the moment truth and imagination meet, are thrust upon compromise. These moments have struck frequently over the past 7 weeks, but never like that...and never that heavy.

It grew smaller as I approached. When I reached out and touched it's coarse and cold stone, I couldn't help but imagine the echoes it once housed. I couldn't help imagining a city in its golden era, on the frontier of civiliztion...completely unaware of what they would become to a world not to be born for distant ages.

...

After that first night, the rest of my time in this city was spent in an uninspired droll. I was hungover with mononucleosis and depression and had no idea where it was stirring from.

I wanted to bury this city, bury the past of all our worlds. Bury this world content to live in the sunlight of the dead and dying. I wanted to run away from everything I am, everything I wanted to be, find dark spots of thought and exploration, find minds without limits, minds that put mine to shame and could send me somewhere far, far away...some great and astounding secret...some city in the clouds that leaves all this behind...

And that was all...the great Rome.

Venice...

Prior to arrival, we spoke...Venice and I. I confessed that much had filled these ears - jovial praise, enchantment, worship. She was an illusionary city, borrowing days from the Adriatic. Quite alluring, I admitted. She quickly flapped a hand in my direction in a vacant attempt to discover modesty. Vacant because her glare told a different story. "Let your eyes judge for themselves, I lean on nothing."

And she remained true to those words...

The morning I rode in, the sky was only clouds. Rain fell on the tinted black windows of the bus, broke like a thousand sad diamonds as we rode from the mainland into the islands of her anatomy.

I walked the streetless city, across its bridges and through its squares. Wandering, forever it seemed...through a labyrinth the likes I had never seen or thought to imagine. All I could think - the gondolas, the birds in San Marco, San Marco, hideous and enchanting Carnivale masks, puppets born of nightmares only my brother could understand - from what dream was this place distantly drawn? I found myself in a state that could not have been pulled without the dreary spectacle of these skies...loafing now, half my senses robbed from the bottle of red I drank two hours prior.

It was after 3 walking hours when I turned a corner to face San Giorgio Maggiore, alone. It sat across the canal from San Marco...and it was in that moment she spoke silent...

The gray of the sky broke to a glow, but only directly over this grand chapel. And it couldn't have been seen, not the way I was seeing it, from any other vantage in Venice. Selective rays began to strobe down, separate the sky into a thousand layers and textures...as if an angel or equivalent reached down, peeled back the stubborn shroud for an audience of one.



I can't say how long it was before a boisterous tour group turned the corner, broke my trance. When I turned back, the drabness stood...as if it were all drawn by a hopeful mind.

No...that wasn't the case. I know.

...

Yesterday, waking to the same rains, I folded. 20 minutes from Venice, I posted up in my room. Read the back half of Runaway Jury, dove fairly deep into Lunar Park. Somewhere between, I slept for an hour. At another juncture, I picked a fight with a front desk attendant who claimed there was NOTHING to eat within any reasonable distance and that the next bus to Venice wasn't coming through until 630. Fuck everyone.

I started walking...the direction opposite of Venice, likely for spite and barely sustained by the single banana I had eaten at 8 that morning. By the time my shoes were soaked, I found a place. It was across from a makeshift yet wholly legit casino in the middle of what looked to be Tuscola, Illinois...farm country. Middle of nowhere. I was looking for something authentic...

When I stepped inside and didn't speak Italian, they looked at me like I had a dick growing from my forehead. Certainly, this was the place. I sat down with a bottle of red and blew it out with perfect spaghetti bolognese followed by a house special speck and pepper pizza they wrapped into a monster cigar and finished with shaved Parmesan and fine herbs. Hands down, the best meal I've had since hitting foreign road. Nothing comes distantly close.

I walked out, drunk. A constant state of self reflection does very little for tolerance, I've found. I walked into the casino and out, proud, before heading home with plans of a good sleep.

When my fragile Australian roommate came home at 1, I was still awake. The entire night, I laid in a half slumber, reciting free verse original novels in my sleep(he roused me twice to inform.) When I did sleep, I dreamed of being pulled into a murky lake by a re-occurring beady eyed corpse. This happened 3 times. I can remember, clearly...as I imagine my roommate did...because each time, I woke up kicking covers, rails, the top bunk, screaming like a lunatic in some distant Italian dialect before collecting myself in the middle of the cramped room with an attempted calming laugh that every time, came out sinister. Feet away, he lay like a rock...likely crying and soaked in his own urine. Clearly, he was reverting back to childhood tactics - don't move, not even a twitch...all the bad men will go away.

Oh, how I wish we were only having fun with fiction.

...

When daylight broke through our window, I got up, packed and left. Roomie didn't stir. He stung me, actually, failing to offer goodbye. And walking away from the cabin, I swore I heard the lock turn a third revolution...

For luck, perhaps.

Riomaggiore...

If I ran the board of tourism, better believe I'd hang a sign outside the train station...just before the cavernous tunnel leading into Riomaggiore's one and only main hill of a road...

"Riomaggiore - if our town bled charm, cut its collective throat over the Mediterranean, induce the tide roll high right before your eyes."

I wouldn't make a second term due to infrequent and blindsiding creative marketing choices...choices too graphic for the general public, but I assure my words would reign respected, not soon forgettable...

And for what more could I desire, in this life or the next?

...

Yesterday, I walked the stretches of Cinque Terre on the coast of the Italian Mediterranean. The guide books said it would take in the upwards of 5 hours to complete. Naturally, my plans were to endure serious bouts of self inflicted harm if the ribbon broke anywhere over 2:20. And the beauty...up until the point I wandered path and was chased off by a pack of ravenous, crazed little dogs...goodness. These stretches of land...of hanging olives and grapes, steep seasides and mighty, tumbling hills surrounding these 5 tiny, seemingly forgotten towns...as if this place had the power to make life so forgettable, its visitors regret coming...like a sweet song that can only be endured for a short while without suffering numbness of the ears, before the body succumbs.

I clocked in just over 3 hours after getting lost, braving a steep thousand step climb to the top peak of trail 7...I believe. After all, If I paid any mind in the first place, appropriate paths, I would have never found myself lost. Upon completion, a self-accord was cut...accept your time, move on. It was still swift. See, I have trouble breathing...at least stopping to breathe from time to time. And it builds a sad pride, see, to run circles around leisurely hikers looking to enjoy a leisurely stroll across the Italian countryside coast. I can silently feel them wish ill will through my blaring I-Pod...

"May you fall, hard on your face, require thousands of stitches. No pain pills, medicine, sympathy." That or likely, "Fucking American."

I enjoy both.

...

I made it home to the apartment last night around 6. The house was full: 2 Scotts, 1 New Zealander, 1 Canadian, 1 Aussie and a Newenglandeer. We cooked fresh pasta, drank 1.80 bottles of Italian wine and talked of living like Kings and Queens in Laos and of a world yet discovered...forgetting already as nearly all of us are moving on, this world, like so many before it, that will be etched into the arms under our sleeves...into the life pump shielded by our royal guards called ribs.

Monaco...

Ivana picked up my step as I walked the hill of the Casino. She couldn`t stop winking, trying to convince me, heavily, that it would be in my best interest to forego Nice completely...stay with her and her claimed, "Much better talk use English roomate" for the rest of the weekend. For a moment, I thought to test my bounty. Quote a price, fair market value to house said stallion en residence...

(My lady would have understood)

Instead, I went high, faked misunderstanding...escaped to blow 20 Euro on video poker and somehow, someway managed to silence my usual merciless urge to lay down cash I have no business laying on tables.

I walked the town, up...down. Monaco and the French Riviera are exactly like the hills in Los Angeles. Simply inject Mulholland Drive so full of Winstrol that she doubles height while maintaining a long, lean muscular stature without any serious or noticeable side effects. Once she reaches desired proportions, sink Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Hollywood...everything stretching out to the Pacific. Last, fill newfound harbors with pricey oceanic vessels...

Let`s say Monaco Harbor is actually a playground...full of boats with which all the eager children love to play. Know that if you pull into the harbor toting anything with a price tag on the light side of 10 million, all the children are going to point, laugh, dish stabs that will manifest into lifelong psychological complexities...

And this is the off-season.

...

I saw Little Miss Sunshine for the second time tonight in Nice. Because...sometimes you need farmiliarity after being away for so long. Other times, you need something else...something like a fix. American smiles, American heart, American sadness, American triumph. Or, maybe simply, a touch of pure joy. And seeing it roll out tonight...with the company I was in...the foreign USA punch pulling company I`ve been in for the past 6 weeks, I felt like I got it...

That sadly, it`s something they`ll never quite get. And they`ll always be a little bit hateful...and a little bitter...and I`ll never quite care.

I miss dearly, my sweet land.

Nice...

The French Riviera is everything it's cracked up to be. Maybe the first place I've stopped where it hasn't been sufficient...being completely enamored with myself. At night, every night so far, I sit on the benches of the Angel's Promenade, develop methods by which to fool mind into believing the carrot dangling in front of my face is actually closer than the 20 odd days carved into its side.

Yesterday, I began running West along the Promenade towards Monaco, 25 winding kilos down the coastal road from Nice. And the road is jagged - branching out, folding in...spinning along the golden coastline. Beyond every bend lies a pearl of a small town. Harbors, boats, circular stairs leading to platforms made for diving into the Mediterranean...little ports spitting so much charm, they nearly circle back, seem vile...

Not really.

Halfway to Monaco, with exhausted eyes but a ready body, I circled around a lighthouse and headed back to Nice...saving one of the most absurd cities in the world for another day.

And turning back, happily doubling over everything I had already seen, I could envision myself buried in this corner of the world...living forever, baking bread in a nook of one of these perfect seaside towns...

If only my aspirations were docile and non-conquering...if only I knew how to fire a baguette.

Barcelona 2...

It was last night, walking up the Plaza Espana as the fountains shot endlessly across football fields...mists of color and sound spewing extravaganza across my face, through my ears, into my eyes. Though I was already swooned, it was in that moment I fell in love with a city that carries itself with a casual blend of arrogance and restraint...a moment where I can safely say - no matter where anyone else was walking in this world, no matter the shoes on their feet, the style of their strut...they would find no envy in me.

And in the brief time I´ve spent in Barcelona, these moments have occurred dangerously often. Why dangerous? Ask Gravity.



I came here to straighten bearings, hardly knowing where I´ve been or where I´m going. Someday, I´ll invent a life compass for people like me...it´s just that I don´t have time for the 8-9 days it would take to develop and perfect the concept, put it into production and walk away with the Nobel Prize. Yet. I came to find a beach, many beaches...spend many hours doing little and in one way or another, find self.

Pick a spot and drop anchor. It´s what you do at the beach, customary in many countries. It is not customary, however, to ride your bike onto the sand, stop mere feet from virgin Americans (yes, I am), peel shirt and spandex shorts to prep for a playful frolic and flop(junk swingin´) into the Mediterranean. Trust me...on THIS beach, I was speaking for the heavy majority.

When the man I named - Hey, These Are The 00´s...We Clean That Up - made it back up onto the beach, feet from MY anchor, he made a delightful personal election to air dry - standing...as if his survival relied on photosynthesis. I drifted off to sleep with dreams of waking to find that he had continued onward - his Tour De Offensive. Then, I woke-

"Masaje!?"

Well, if it isn´t a Spanish beach entrepeneur...who obviously loves New York as per her outrageously original T...

"What, que?"
"Masaje!?"
"Oh, masaje. No, gracias. Otro tiempo."

She hesitated, pulled her bag of ointments and contraptions before cowering into a slow retreat. I looked over to find that Cockman had also opted for retreat. This time, I drifted into a peaceful sleep...

"Masaje! Masaje, Senor!?"
"What, Que?"
"Masa-!"
"No, no. Dormiendo."
"Masaje!"

I dropped my head and fell asleep, lightly. It couldn´t have been more than a half hour. Startled and a little pissed, I closed my eyes, eventually sensing her approach in the curdling sand. It was like feeding stray cats in North Carolina...and this persistent little bitch who certainly must have been suffering from a bout of solar induced brain damage was clinging tight. I have patience...and courtesy. Both were spent.

"Masaje, Senor?...Masaje, Senor!...Senor! Masaje!!!"
"No!"
"Si, masaje."
"Hand job."
"Masaje."
"No, no. Hand Job o nada. Aqui...enfrente de todos. No tiene miedo."

Still lacking multilingual clarity, I turned to sign language...which she understood, splendidly, finally...and left me alone for the rest of the day.

And no, neither of these moments qualify as such I was previously speaking...

...

It was the first night I arrived...walking, wandering. The pink sky turned red to purple to gray to black, starless. The warm winds began to blow cool as I walked the harbor. Soon though, they grew angry...enough to blow settled fragments of trees onto the ground surrounding my steps. As if the rest of the city knew a secret that wasn´t to be told, I was quickly alone, standing naked foot on the sand...looking out onto the Mediterranean. When the first drops hit, they were cold and alarming. After the first hundred, they were welcome.

The sky began to light in silent flashes - lightning buried beneath the thick clouds. When the bolts came clear, I took a seat on the sand, imagined setting sail from the millions taking shelter in the city over my shoulders. I imagined drifting in the middle of the sea, fighting murderous waves until the fraction of a moment before it...and they claim life. In that moment, just as my eyes taste clarity for the last time, lighting falls from the sky, freezing the rolling sea into an endlessly stretching empire of black marble. Silence...

The sky would be scorched by an army of stars. The only remaining echo, my breath. I would climb into the boat, wrap my shirt into a pillow and fall back to rest a weary body and mind...drifting forever without ever moving or falling asleep, waiting out eternity for lighting to strike again, the same place...a second time.

Barcelona...

Her majesty is beautiful...this city of Spain. Queen Barcelona. She stretches high above any these eyes have yet seen in this month of travel. Trying to wrap it all up here, now, is utterly daunting. I´m not going to do that.

Yesterday, I was walking back from a day spent at the beach...through the main park, past the Barcelona Zoo. There was a child with his mother. I saw it in his eyes, the utter ecstasy only a child can produce. The great and rare animals of the world, all wrapped up in an afternoon, all in his backyard. Doubting the courier of good fate would even think to deliver anything else, he saw it...a spore ball on the ground. Suddenly, impossible spun possible...and his day was about to get even better. At least so he thought...

His mother told him to leave it be...which he refused. And turning himself around, he threw it up into the air just as the wind changed direction, unloading millions of lung clogging parasites into his fragile little body.

He maneuvered evasively but it was too late. He was already chagging...and violently. If a sneeze, choke and gague could meet and have furious sex...this boy was its father. His mother rolled her eyes in a, "You should have listened. Now, you will die because of your reckless insistence...just like your father."

Of course, she said this in Catalan.

When I laughed out loud she turned, caught me with a stare so dirty, I had to check and make sure I wasn´t made of stone. Then the guilt hit...laughing at this poor, helpless child and his lone moment of misforture on what would have otherwise been a perfect, shiny and happy day. Guilt...realization that I lack compassion, heart. Guilt...fear of the animal I´m becoming. Guilt...it wasn´t so long ago that I was considered in some circles to be a decent man...

Guilt...but really, only cause she caught me.

Hilarious.

Dublin...

I said it with tonal tragedy, trying to explain my initial impression of Dublin...of Ireland. If there's a foreign land that holds my ancestral claim more than any other, this is it...

And wrapping the first day, looking out from the top floor of the Guinness Factory, I felt I'd seen it all. Everything...and it was heartbreaking. I walked home across frigid streets, quickly recalled that time of year and geographic location make for ever-changing climates across the world...

That's when I saw it. Across the street, a small Irish pizzeria...a little wooden sign over the door...

"Steve's - Probably the Best Pizza in Dublin." Now, certainly, I had seen it all.

I took an Ad class or two in college...and though I likely attended something in the ballpark of 8% of the lectures, I fail to recall the comparable bullet point: There is nothing like the Siren Song of indecision and professional insecurity to lure the undecided into your business or establishment.

...

Yesterday, I took a train through the heart of the country and ended up in Galway, a city on the western coast...and it was swell. Swell, I suppose. I walked through town, bought a .35 Euro, "cheat without cheating" McDonald's vanilla ice cream cone(That's what happens on birthdays - you get quoted). Then, I bought a bag of mixed fruit and nuts from a whole foods shop and wandered as far as I could wander...which turned out to be nowhere. Just as my legs loosened, the town ended. There were no bikes to ride the endless coasts...no cliff tours free of hassle. The day faded into a consolation of satisfaction as if seeing both coasts cleared me of the ignorance of not giving this country a fair chance.

I boarded the train for Dublin at the always fateful 6:30, long after my impossible expectations had faded away. And it was immediate, pulling out of the station, the look of Galway Bay...exactly what I had been searching for. Sunset. That ceaselessly stunning paint of perfection stretching across the bogs and channels. The lush, stretching green surrounded by stone fences and rolling hills that I didn't quite catch the first time through. Every moment in that hour, until the sun went down, I found satisfaction, then disappointment...what else was out there? What else was I missing? Quickly though, I decided not to push luck. To salvage this mind is not an easy trick to turn.

...

On my way home, with a thirst to intoxicate freshly inspired, I ventured into the land of Temple Bar. After discovering an inability at the first stop(Madigan's...maybe) to decipher even a syllable of the English genuine Paddy's speak, I moved onto The Temple Bar...in Temple Bar.

When I walked in, it was full. When I walked out, drunks were spilling out its ears. I give attribution to the two man band. The lead singer was immediately named Ricky Gervais. His side wizard of a string-plucker took a lap of thought before I settled in on Soafl Sodef - Strung out and fossilized lead singer of Def Leppard...

Obviously.

And they were most-licious...with an advanced and impressive understanding of how to assault a multi-generational crowd with a near perfect playlist. Sandwich a 4-song Police medley between Mrs. Robinson and Losing My Religion...while whipping out the baby gii-tar...and watch the asses of a nowhere near sober or docile crowd light on fire.

I stood in the back, eyes peering over the heads of the less genetically blessed and became caught in the moment. With a likely gallon of Guinness down and destructing, finally...I got it.

Dublin, Ireland.

Brussels...

I must have fallen asleep without knowing it, knowing better than to fall asleep in the corridor of a 24 hour parking garage at 2:45 in the morning...but I did, nonetheless.

He was about a body's length away, swishing his shoes against the ground as he walked...a man I instantly and subconsciously named, Holy Shit. I leapt to my feet, drowsy, trying to figure from which side the shank strike would come. It didn't. Instead, he pulled a cigarette, lit it with shaking hands.

"Fucking cold out there, man."

Yeah, it certainly was. And not just cold, but angry. Every room save the 500 Euro suites at the Meridian were full. In most cities, the major train stations are open all night. I've found, as I did in Munich, that though they have some glaring holes in terms of accommodative quality, they more than suffice as a means to burn off hours waiting to jump ship to a new city.

Well, in Brussels...they close. And in Brussels, I found myself wandering, trying to find remotely safe places to read or write through the early hours of a new day...

Which delivers us to the point from which we began. I quickly discovered the impossibility of reading through an entire night on determination alone. It takes fear...and a compilation of such I would soon meet. I pulled a dip on Holy Shit, still reeling, and emerged from the parking garage into the face of a fight. Usually, I would stay and watch...pick the underdog and secretly root. But this was too much. After all, I had had no time for collection. It was delirium...then a flurry of blows, one after another.

My eyes shot through the scene, tried to settle mind on the next move when I noticed lights on top of their cars. Cabbies, crazed cabbies. They weren't drunk or drugged...at least that much credit I'll partially give. Finally, a moment of ease. Their confrontation faded after a punchless tussle over the cons of interplanetary warfare(likely, do I speak like I speak Belkriesch?). Soon after, Holy Shit emerged from my nest. I watched as he walked into a nearby park, took a piss and continued his pilgrimage(again, likely). I walked back into the tunnel, took a cold seat on the tiled ground and read and spilled ink for the next four hours.

...

The next day...or later that day, depending on your consideration, I found hell on Earth. Charleroi Airport. They call it Brussels south, which would be like calling yourself 100 pounds when you actually tip scale at 145...as if you could somehow justify that as a round down.

Thinking I could get an earlier flight out of town, I showed up 12 hours early...and would end up sitting there for 12 hours as the cattle calls of cheap flight fliers stormed through the terminal. Sometimes, for half hours at a time, I would drop head on my backpack and fall asleep. When I would wake up with knowing and glaring impressions across my face, I would stare at stare-ers with eyes, "What? I was born with this you inconside...find a mirror, YOU made THAT." I was steamed. It didn't matter that the airport music was pulled from the John Hughes' greatest hits soundtrack...however the fuck that came to be. I'd had enough of Belgium, this sweet country and experience I knowingly elected to turn on its head...again. Yes, the re-appearing themes here are glaring.

When the ticket agent stepped to the podium, the masses erupted. If ever you want to create lawlessness, simply don't assign seats to passengers. It was a perfect portrait of this place...Hell on Earth, yet on this day, it didn't even begin to scratch surface.

I gave in, stepped up. And in that unexpected moment where I joined the ranks of anarchy, I was saved. Saved by Sinead O'Connor...

"It's been so lonely without you here. Since you took your love away. Ah, Ah, Ah, Ah, Ah..."

I closed my eyes and imagined, against the dark backdrop of her video...singing with Sinead. Nothing compares to me, Sinead? I know this. She would sing to me and I her. We would share notes and she would, at first, think it adorable...my insistence to play with her bald head. Midway through the second verse, she would grow angry and storm off the set. I would be left there with no Sinead...the lights shining down...the cameras still rolling...the-

I opened my eyes. Window seat. One of the last ones on the plane. Flight attendants, prepare for takeoff...

Time to move me the fuck on.