[Weathered the storm- She had something to say, Though our great thirst compelled us, To unremember that day.]

I haven’t updated in over a month. Although I still like to maintain the idea within my own head that I am active, avid, regular blogger and writer.

*Sigh.

Isn’t it sort of funny how we sometimes subsist on a mental diet of unarticulated rationalizations of a penetrating procrastination that pervades our true reality?

Or maybe that statement only applies to me. Right now. Maybe most of the time….

Whatever. We’re all here now. How ‘bout a travel story?

I stopped over in New York City in late August on my way back from Italy this summer. Spent a few days in the Village with my dear friends Jill and Jessica who have been there for about a year working on their master’s degrees. There’s something about the big city that brings out a side of people that was never obvious before. For Jessica and Jill, two non-conservative ladies from conservative rural Texas, it’s the previously unexplored freedom of self-expression and open mindedness not afforded to them anywhere else.

Actually, it’s so much more than that. You have to see it in people to understand. You’re right in the middle of the action, there’s always something going on around you. Sometimes it’s a simple Wall Street protest that eventually makes it’s way around the globe, other times it’s just real gay-looking straight white dudes in khaki’s glee-clubbin’ it up in Washington Square Park when you’re just trying to digest Dostoyevsky by yourself. Either way it’s a pretty severe catalyst for anyone to take the dive head first into whatever element they need to be in -if only to avoid getting swept up in the current and drowned by a city that regularly preys upon and destroys it’s weakest residents.

So there was a “hurricane” while I was in town.

Ok, really the local authorities decided to over-compensate for past severe weather prep failures and shut down the entire New York City Transit Authority for 24 hours because of a little rain and some high winds.
Wandering the streets of the Village during that period of time was a singular experience. Very post-apoc. I heard one say, “For the city that never sleeps, it’s definitely taking a nap right now.”

Jessica, Jill, and I decided to handle the situation with hours of reading, pointless YouTube videos (read; “bro-nado”), Netflix instant-cue movies, bottomless bowls of lentils and rice, naps, and a photo shoot or two with their adorable schnauzer/ yorkie mix, named “Pan”.
(Like this one)


In all we probably spent 36 straight hours in their apartment bedroom just waiting for the subway to open up again.

By about 3pm the second day (Sunday), the rain had cleared and people were starting to come out of their caves onto the streets again. The subway was still closed, but there’s plenty to do in the Village, so we decided to venture out to St. Mark’s and get an afternoon beer. No big deal. Just a little Sunday brew before we went back to the apartment and continued on our quest toward sedentary internet enlightenment, right?*

[*Foreshadowing...]

We started the afternoon off at McSorley’s – NYC’s oldest bar opened circa 1854. Hay on the floor, looks like an old saloon inside. In fact I would have sworn I actually stepped back in time (think ‘Gangs of New York’) had the patronage surrounding me not been conservatively clad in crew-cuts, khakis, Ralph Lauren polos, cut-off jeans, all toting some travel guidebook-or-other doting on the unequivocal authenticity of this must-see tourist draw.
As such, we chugged our pints standing up at the bar and promptly bounced before reality set in.

On to Grassroots around the corner. This bar was more your general dive and offered $7 pitchers, an obvious rarity in this booming metropolis. We were the first ones through the door and we posted up at the bar. The conversation rambled and we ordered another pitcher. The bartender eventually opened up to us and started recounting tales of trips to Burning Man. We all got to laughing and he started handing us the free shots. Inhibitions disappeared. Plans dissipated. Time fell away…

We had that moment between the three of us where we simultaneously realized/declared that we were…over-served (in layman’s terms, Ready to Party).
Things get hazy here. The next thing any of us remembered was yell-singing the ever-epic “Don’t Stop Believin” while sloshing beers up in the air and onto other people in a dark and neon-lit Karaoke bar called “Sing-Sing”. Behind the deeply tinted windows and surrounded by unfamiliar but similarly “over-served” Asians spilling just as much beer as us, it felt like it must’ve been 4am.
For awhile, there was this obnoxious Japanese dude who kept coming up to the three of us and trying to wiggle his way into the group, hitting on us in broken English with a big shit-eating grin on his face. We were about 3 Shania Twain songs deep when I vaguely remember cornering him, looking him square in the face and slurring, “Dude. Go away. Nobody wants you to be here. Why are you STILL here?”

Eventually I escaped outside, apparently moved by the spirit(s) to drunk dial.

I recall somewhere in the fog an ostentatious jaunt through the aisles of a local organic food market, wherein I proclaimed to every employee in dramatic soliloquy our dire need of boxed macaroni and cheese and it’s corresponding ingredients.

They obliged me, kind souls, despite the fumbled merchandise aisle-for-aisle in our wake. We made it home, drowned in the buttery elation only midnight mac and chee can offer the pack of hungry wastoids and…if only I could remember any of this.

I woke up hours later unaware of my whereabouts in time and space. Am I on the floor? Are these my clothes? Is this real life? What room am I in, wait, what city am I in…better yet, what continent is this?
Putting some of it together I felt around in the dark for my phone. Instead I found 3 unopened water bottles. What Luck! The Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy may be a farce, but for that night and that night alone, the Angel of Hydration saw fit to manifest herself in that tiny apartment and bestow upon us her divine tears of unopened Dasani.
I chugged….too. soon…..The room swelled. I crawled to the bathroom, through the spinning vortex. Lifting the seat, I gripped the bowl and… well, no need to get graphic. You guys know where this is going.

When it was over, I slumped over the sink and splashed water hap-hazardly near my mouth, with one hand. Eventually I remembered who I was and where I’d left my dignity. I promptly turned off the water, wiped off my face, stood up, and walked calmly back to my palet on the floor of the bedroom.

I lay down on my back, looking up at the street light gradating across the ceiling from outside the open window. It soon became clear to all three of us that we were all lying awake doing the same thing in this dark bedroom – trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

The conversation which ensued was as you would imagine – laced with questions like “where did we go after that?” and followed with statements like “Oh shit, we DID go to the Karaoke bar!” and “...wait…What grocery store? …I ate mac and cheese??”

It wasn’t until the next afternoon when we found the photos.

[I’d explain, but it’d be a shoddily pieced together narrative of rationalizations and postulations rather than an actual recollection from memory. Plus, I’d like to allow you the same perspective we had upon discovering this delightful surprise cache of artifacts.]

Day in the life.

Being in a foreign environment can easily turn an average day into an adventure. Took a trip to the grocery store where I went out on a limb and bought some cheese. I was looking for some stuff called burata - which is semi-solid and tastes like heaven when smothered in olive oil and sprinkled with pepper. I couldn't remember the name so I approached the situation similar to the way I decide what move to make in chess - I poked packages of cheese and struggled to remember the name for about 10 minutes, and then chose one at random and hoped for the best. I'm not such a pro at chess, so this ended up the way you can imagine. What I chose wasn't exactly cream cheese, but it wasn't exactly bad in any way at all. In fact it was the best not-exactly-cream-cheese I've ever had. God, the grocery store here just brings tears to my eyes. The first time I saw that wall of dried salted meats and every type of cheese imaginable it was over for me...

I decided to take Amanda and Zeno's dog, Bobo for a walk today. He hadn't been out in a while so he was a bit ecstatic about the situation. At a certain point in the walk, we reached a park that was about 3 feet above street level - so there was this little 3 foot wall dividing sidewalk from nature. Bobo decided he wanted to walk at park level. So he jumped up on this skinny little structure (he had maybe 3 inches in width between the iron fence and the ledge within which to walk) and pretty soon I was walking him at eye level. It felt a little weird, like holding a balloon on a string rather than walking a dog, and I got some weird looks, but if the pooch was happy, so was I.


[This is Bobo]

Late in the evening, I went to the bar to meet up with my friend Stefania who was leaving the next day for Calabria to go on holiday and visit her family. Our other friend Tone, originally from Sweden, were having beers and chatting when this very drunk woman comes bumbling up to the bar, dog in tow. She’s tiny, dressed to impress in a cute little dress and giant heels –maybe in her mid-twenties. She was at the level of intoxication I like to refer to as "Bambi drunk". You know the type- like a baby dear on new legs. Her dog was this little white ball of fluff that only weighed about 9 pounds and it was attached to a pink retractable leash which was un-retracted and jumbled up in her arms with the dog. The stool she chose to plop herself down upon was in the middle of a small aisle- the only one leading to all the rest of the places to sit. It also happened to belong a man who had been sitting at the table behind hers with his friends, and he was approaching to reclaim it when she swept in and obliviously claimed it for herself.

Leaning down, she placed her dog under the table directly on top of someone else's purse, and then in her mind I think she tried for a time to tie the leash to someone else’s purse in order to keep the dog in one place. From everyone else's perspective, she was just jumbling the leash up more and pushing the purse around until eventually she decided that it had taken long enough, gave up, and ordered a drink.

Meanwhile, the dog goes sniffing around the floor, under people’s feet. He starts wandering farther and farther from her. Eventually he realizes he's free and tries to run, but the sound of the leash handle dragging on the cobblestone startles him. He's running and stopping and running and stopping. Everyone else at the bar is watching this except for Drunky and her friends. I get up to go the bathroom, and as I'm climbing over her to get out of the seating area, I let her in on the scene unfolding behind her. 'Hey, Honey. Your dog is running away." She stares at me blankly. She doesn’t speak English.

"Sua Cane?" I say in Italian, pointing. She leaps into action, mumbling an obscure dialect of drunk hobo Russian and running after the dog, all Bambi legs through the cobblestone streets.

Later that night, I became a rap video hoe, but you already know about that.

How I met my Italian boyfriend

The other night I was riding my bike home from the bar at about 3am. At one point in the ride, there is a passageway that takes you under the highway and a train crossing. I am always on alert at this point in the ride because it’s a little bit sketchy. It’s a dirty tunnel riddled with graffiti, I have to get off my bike and walk it because of the stairs, and I can’t ever see who is on the other side until I am right up on them. Somehow there are always voices at the end of the tunnel. I amuse myself each night by imagining who they will be. One night it was two old ladies and a dog. The next, a few people in their mid-twenties standing around outside of their car. Usually pretty benign stuff. Nonetheless, I always mentally prepare myself for it to be a group of drunk thugs looking to wake some snakes – just in case.

This night was no different than the rest, voices on the other side speaking a language I couldn’t understand, tunnel smelling of piss and old garbage. As I began to make my way up the stairs at the end of the tunnel, the passageway turned and there were four young men and one older fellow scattered around the steps, a couple drinking beers, a cigarette here and there. I sized them up quickly. They younger ones looked pretty, um, hip-hop, sideways hats and big t-shirts, baggy jeans, piercings, tattoos – generally the type of riff raff your mother wouldn’t want you cavorting with abroad. I probably would have been worried had it not been for the older man. He was about 60 with long white hair and a kind face and he was chatting with them, calmly, not drinking or smoking. They looked pretty relaxed, non-threatening. They didn’t take too much note of me, so I gave them a quick “Ciao” as I passed, and kept on. But then one of them asked me a question in Italian. I slowed down a bit as I asked him to repeat it in English.
‘Ah! English. Yes. Um… would you like to be in our rap video?” He said in a thick Italian accent.

I sort of giggled as I stopped walking, still holding the bike.
“Um, rap video?”
“yes! We are making a rap video! You want to be in it?”

I looked at him sideways and squinted an eye. “Does that mean you want me to wear tiny booty shorts and dance like this?” I asked, doing my best to demonstrate that I may not have been the best candidate for said task.

“No! No, you just… Do you want to do it?” He asked again.

I stood there contemplating for a minute, looking them all over. They didn’t seem creepy. They weren’t invading my personal space or acting drunk or strung out. I looked at the old man. He was waiting calmly for the answer just like them as he shrugged his shoulders as if to say ‘why not do it?’

“Sure. Per che no?” I answered, engaging my bike’s kick stand. Why the hell not?

They sprang to action. One of them readied the video camera, while another busted out the boom box. Another guy explained that I was simply to stand next to their friend while he rapped and just sort of groove and look cool while he put his arm around me. Easy enough.

They started the camera and hit play. He did his thing. It hit me that I have no idea how to compose myself and look cool in a rap video. My dance floor charm stems from my refusal to refrain from dancing, despite my incredible whiteness. I realized that the closed-finger robot/mannequin hand just above the face wasn’t going to fly here. So I laughed the entire time. WTF? How was this hard?
They stopped the tape and were laughing too.

“Noo! You can’t laugh. You must have serious face like this.” I tried real hard this time. For whatever reason, I decided that of everyone I know, my friend Sierra would know how to best handle this particular scenario and not look like a chump. Why? I have no idea. Sierra is neither black or particularly skilled in the art of hip hop video dancing, but I guess you could say she’s pretty good at looking super chill in awkward situations. So I tried real hard to look super chill next to this guy I didn’t know who smelled kinda like B.O. and was spitting mad Italian slang through his late night beer-breath. I was pretty sure the result was going to be nothing short of cheesy as hell, but it must have worked because they high-fived and thanked me afterward.

*The video is posted on my facebook wall, if you’re interested in checking it out.
Also available here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CxMUsXa85RQ#!


(P.s. No, dad, he isn't actually my Italian boyfriend. It was just a catchy title.)

Matrimony in the Old Country

Ladies and gentlemen, friends and family, we are gathered here today to celebrate the union of two dear friends. They have decided to proclaim before God and everyone that they are to be wed – to live their lives together, united in holy matrimony until death do they part.
A wedding is a beautiful event you will remember forever, a memory to last a lifetime, a party to end all parties, and a pain in the ass to plan. Having never been part of a wedding before this one, I’d no idea how much work went into it. There’s the table arrangements, coordinating with the venue, making sure the invitations get sent out, the music for the ceremony, the DJ for the reception, the bartenders, the photographer, the friends visiting from faraway places. To top it off, here we have an Albanian groom, an American bride, in an Italian country in which neither are citizens, with family and friends visiting from both home countries in the midst of all this mayhem.
From the moment I arrived, it was all wedding all the time. I must commend Amanda here. I’ve watched my fair amount of reality TV, and because of this, I assumed that at some point she would lose her cool in some capacity and Bridezilla would rear her ugly head. But she never once faltered –even through the fiasco of having to replace a bridesmaid who was deep in the throes of depression and thus unable to perform her duties of, well, friendship….

The wedding was held at a villa about 10 minutes away from Amanda and Zeno’s house. For those of you who, like myself, find the term ‘villa’ to be vague and nondescript, allow me to fill you in. A villa is basically a small time palace that once belonged to an important person from a previous century. Think celebrity mansion in the Hollywood hills circa 16th century. This one in particular belonged to an old duke. It featured 20 foot ceilings, an elaborate dining hall, a grand mahogany wood staircase, marble floors galore, an epic veranda overlooking the city of Florence, a garden with a giant fountain. It’s the type of place you imagine only celebrities can afford to get married at. However, in a package deal to rival many a late-night infomercial, they rented the venue for the entire evening, all the tables they needed with place settings and décor, bartenders, chairs for the ceremony, appetizers under a giant willow tree, set up and tear down for one low, easy payment of 1,400 Euro. It was insane.
The day before the big show, we had a little rehearsal. With basically only about ten people in the wedding, you’d think that would have taken all of 5 minutes. You’d be wrong. Consider if you will the prospect of trying to organize a group of people who don’t all share a common language. We finally got it figured out though after a couple run-throughs and some wild gesticulating.
To get to the aisle, we all had to conquer this giant decaying stone staircase – something akin to those you find at the temples in Tibet. The mothers of the bride and groom clung tightly to each other as they made their way carefully down the during the rehearsal, and pretty much everyone but me expressed some degree of concern for this obstacle on the road to matrimony. Didn’t seem like a problem to me. I walk up and down stairs all the time – why should this be any different?
The day of the ceremony, we were divided into two camps – bride and groom. Now here I must momentarily refute my previous claim of weddings being lots of work. While use ladies spent the day primping, making sure all affairs were in order, making sure the bride keeps her cool, the groom’s duties are much simpler. Take a shower. Brush his hair. Drink scotch with his future father-in-law. Maybe I’d like to go gay just so I can one day be a groom.
So there all the ladies are, at the hair salon. We’re getting our hair done, we’re getting our makeup done. The moms are first, and they look stunning! Amanda’s looking like a babe of course. She has the advantage of being able to explain to the stylists in their native language what she wants to look like, and this is reflected in the finished product. For the two lucky American bridesmaids-of-the-hour however, a different fate awaited us.
She came at me indirectly, tweezers in hand, like the relentless mosquitos that haunt me each night as I sleep. By the time I knew what was happening, I might as well have been missing half an eyebrow. In fact, maybe I was. “This one is more long than this.” She said, marginalizing my once-majestic monument-to-mother-earth of a brow line. “But, is ok. Is better, like this.”
Wait, what? My eyebrows are uneven but it’s ok? I must have misunderstood. Where I come from symmetry is pretty high on our list of attractive qualities – especially in the face. I looked at her funny, but she had already moved on to the next order of business, lip-liner in hand.
I glanced over at Samantha, the other bridesmaid. She was in a hot seat all her own, and she looked worried. At this point, they’d taken her long naturally curly hair and sprayed it down with mouse, and there were two women with curling irons diligently working to reincarnate Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. We were helpless.
My make up ended how you would have imagined. Allow me to describe the end result. You know those latin ‘whose-got-talent’ type of TV shows from the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s that are generally hosted by a fake-breasted scantily clad Selena look-alike and can still be seen playing on a TV in the corner in many a taqueria across the southern United States? The eye shadow was blue. We’re talking AQUAMARINE. It extended all the way up to my uneven eyebrows, which were enhanced with eyebrow pencil. The color she chose for my base powder was an impressive shade of “Memoirs of a Geisha,” and my lip color? Pearl pink bordering on lavender, of course. Complete with burgundy lip-liner. Did I mentione she’d curled my hair Shirley Temple style?
Samantha’s outcome wasn’t much better. The ladies with the curling irons had reached their intended goal with her hair, and they went with a bronze/burgundy/gold color scheme on the face – metallic lipstick an all. She couldn’t stop looking at me with this worried, eyebrows raised look as if to say “Oh my god, I hope no one sees me,” which was of course exactly what I was thinking. We kept reassuring each other that it wasn’t as bad as we’d imagined, but we knew better.
Once in the car, we were scrambling to at least wipe off the lipstick. Amanda was looking gorgeous and perfect at this point, natural, stunning. Samantha and I were expressing our shock and awe at the amount of paper towels it was taking to get all the lipstick off. Amanda was laughing so hard that her alleged waterproof mascara started running down her face.
Cut to the ceremony – everyone was finally looking fabulous and ready to go. We lined up at the top of the Tibetan staircase and waited for the cellist to signal our march down the aisle. First the family members were led to their seats – each mother gliding effortlessly down on the arm of a groomsman. Then it was Erion (Zeno’s brother) and Samantha, who had missed the rehearsal and was thus extra concerned with how this staircase thing was going to go. Of course they were fine. Then it was Driti (Zeno’s other brother) and my turn. We made it all the way to the last step like trained professionals. Made for this job. And then I lost my footing and nearly took a nose dive into the gravel. Right there, in front of God and everyone. Thank god and everyone, Driti was there to stabilize me.
I think I laughed the whole rest of the way down the aisle, as did many of the guests. The rest of the ceremony unfolded with effortless grace and had every last member of the wedding party and half the audience shedding a few tears. It was perfect. Durng the vows, Zeno began by calling Amanda “My princess” in Italian. That was all I needed to start the waterworks. I know, I know. I’m such a sap.
To further drive the point of my haplessness home, Providence deemed it fair to have me trip yet another time while walking to collect the groom’s ring during the ceremony.

The after party was delightful. The Albanians were a riot – once drunk they danced and sang Albanian songs at the top of their lungs. Over the course of my stay here, they became incredibly fond of ‘Stolichnaya’ and insisted that I play it for them again at the wedding to kick off the celebration. Then of course there was red wine, and white wine, and scotch, and prosecco, and whiskey, and rum, and vodka… and Beyonce, and Michael Jackson. And pretty soon I was napping on a couch in a dark corner, then downing Tylenol in case of hangover, and returning to the party only to steal a tablecloth off an unused table, which I then used as a superhero cape. The usual drunken antics. . .
[There are a lot more things I could throw in here about the wedding after party – what with the face-slap war I got in on with Emilio and Angelo, the drunken photo shoot with Angelo and Elis that I somehow ended up in on a trip to the bathroom, the other bridesmaid and one of the groomsmen making out from time to time after a few drinks on the dance floor, the covert garden doobie sesh, the bride and groom’s attempt to hook up their corresponding best friends with one another in the days leading up to the wedding, the Italian guy who was really into metal but was somehow also really spectacular at leading a dance (only in Italy), the conga line I lead to a heavily synthesized Albanian song, singing “I’ve been working on the railroad” at the top of our lungs to prove that we do actually have songs in the states that everybody knows, the bartender doing that open bar thing where a “shot” somehow amounts to several ounces of straight liquor. I think that about covers it. Good times were had by all.]

"Play Freebird!"

When I arrived on the plane in Rome, it was morning. It felt good to be back on foreign soil again, surrounded by people speaking a beautiful if imperceptible language. It’s high time I had a new adventure.
Took the train into Termini (the main train station in downtown Rome) and when I arrived, I made my way down to the ticket counter and purchased a ticket on the next train to Florence.

Try as I might, I had the hardest time navigating the train platforms. Not to mention I was dragging about 50 lbs of crap around with me, and I was getting thirsty. First I had to figure out how to get to the train platforms.

Rome is a big city, Termini a big station, everything is clearly labeled – even in English sometimes. However, and maybe this was somehow my user error, I found myself following a bunch of signs and arrows supposedly guiding me to train platforms, that in reality eventually just dead-ended at entrances to train platforms that were closed and under construction. Sweet. Ok. I’ll turn around and go back where I started.
To make a long story short, I walked around for an hour, got thirstier, and more annoyed, until my shoulders started hurting from the luggage. Eventually I found myself on what I thought was platform nine, where my ticket said the train would be leaving from in 15 minutes.
I sat there for awhile on my bag, waiting. Alone.
It was kind of curious to me that I seemed to be the only person in all of Rome that needed to go to Florence, Bologna, or Milan (three of Italy’s largest cities) on a week day at 11am. I should mention also that there was no train on this alleged platform nine. In fact, there weren’t any workers either – not for maybe one-hundred feet in any given direction.

It’s funny how when you find yourself in an unfamiliar environment, you sometimes manage to convince yourself that maybe everybody else just knows something you don’t. Like maybe at 5 minutes before departure, the train is just going to come flying in, 500 people are going to show up and dive in the doors without heavy bags or children or anyone checking their tickets and it’s going to go down like clockwork. Yes that must be the case, especially since NOTHING happens on time or follows a schedule in Italy and EVERYTHING seems to take considerably more time than it should. But it says platform 9 on my ticket, and it says platform 9 on the wall, and my bag is really comfortable to sit on after walking all that time. I must be in the right place. Never mind all of this overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The train must be coming right to me because God couldn’t possibly want me to inconvenience me anymore today…

I got curious and walked over to look at the timetable on the wall. It listed the departing platform for my train to Florence as 12. I looked over at platform 12. There was a train. There were people getting on it. There were uniformed men stamping tickets. I looked at the clock – 2 minutes to departure. I looked back at my bag, and my purse, and my guitar, all alone on the desolate platform nine. A tumble weed blew by.

I took a deep breath and started running. I threw my bags on my shoulders and ran like a foolish amateur in a faraway land who was late for a very expensive train.

When I arrived at the platform, sweating, panting, unable to swallow due to a mounting dehydration, I showed my ticket to a station worker. He indicated that I was in the right place, quickly grabbed two of my bags and showed me to my seat. He even insisted on putting the bags up on the racks above the chairs for me.
‘What a nice guy!’ I thought. Then he turned around and with a big ole grin, stuck out his hand and promptly demanded a tip. Damn gypsy. I looked him up and down to check and see if he was even wearing a uniform. (He was.)

Reluctantly, I pulled out a one-Euro coin. As I began to present it to him, he wagged a finger at me and said “No, no. Ten Euros.” I choked a little as I began to laugh, then didn’t even look at him as I, channeling my father, put the one euro coin back into my wallet, and put my wallet back into my bag. “Keep dreaming, buddy” I said, knowing full well he had no idea what I said, but understood exactly what I meant.
Suddenly the coin was looking pretty spiffy to him, and he let me know.
‘Oh yea sure, now you want it, don’t you?’ I glared at him and handed him the coin. He left, satisfied. Asshole.

Turns out, the jackass robbed me of more than my one Euro coin. I found out 30 miles down the line that he’d helped carry my bags onto the wrong train going south toward Naples, not north to Florence. Thus, 2 hours after departing Rome, I was back at square one. Sitting on my bags in the Termini station, waiting on a train now without even a valid ticket. I cursed the fates. I cursed the language barrier, I cursed the ancient city and it’s impoverished train station employee who hadn’t bothered to look at my ticket’s Destination city as he plotted to rob me of my overpriced, newly exchanged currency. I needed a moment.

I bought an expensive bottle of water, found a corner to crumple into and disappear for a while in plain sight. I pulled out my guitar and strummed a bit. I started to play ‘Ain’t no sunshine,’ quietly. As I realized nobody was really paying attention, I started playing louder and singing. It was a nice release and I didn’t seem to be bothering anyone. I kept singing, and I closed my eyes for a bit. I started to feel better.

When I opened them again, there was a security guard standing in front of me, leaning over, waiting patiently in my line of sight for me to see him. He wagged one finger left and right, in the rude way Italians like to do “No is OK. No is OK.” I was mid-song, mid-verse, mid-line. I made that slow-down noise that record players make when you turn them off instead of picking up the needle to stop the sound. I looked up at him, defeated.
‘Grazie!” He chirped.
You’re welcome, Barney Fife. Don’t you get paid to do something other than destroy the tasteful ambiance that Bill Withers and I were just working so hard to create? Whatever. He looked kind of like the Italian equivalent of a Kid Rock fan, anyway. Like the type of guy who- if this were Texas and say, Ryan Adams happened to be playing a surprise show at some obscure dive bar in Fort Worth- would stumble out of the bathroom during the closing lines of ‘Come Pick Me Up’, and drunkenly, obnoxiously request some Skynard while waving his Budlight lime in the air, none-the-wiser to his own woeful inappropriateness.

I put away my guitar, folded my arms, and leaned back against the wall, waiting for Providence to deliver unto me the divine scheme that would get me to Florence on an invalid train ticket and good old-fashioned wishful thinking.

Amanda and Zeno's backyard - BBQ!


Shoulda put a honey in the middle. Oh well, guess that's just how they do things in Europe.


This is what florence looks like outside the train station


View out the window


Me on the plane.

Well it’s been about a week, so I suppose that constitutes an update. Despite the fact that I flew on standby, everything went incredibly smooth on my initial journey to Rome. Planes were on time, I was on time, there was a seat for me by the window.
I had a layover in Chicago, and they were in the heart of a serious heatwave. I trekked across town via bus and train all the way to Nikki’s place. When I arrived, it was midnight and her apartment was something akin to an oven. The southerner in me asked if the AC was broken, and the Northerner in her politely reminded me about places where summer doesn’t warrant air conditioning because it isn’t 109 degrees for 2 solid months. People really shouldn’t live in Texas during July and August.
Thankfully Nikki had bought and outfitted her own room with an AC unit, making it a sort of desert oasis in which one could actually sleep…
We stayed up for a couple hours, girl-talking. You know the drill. Then we passed out around 2 and she left for work about 6am. My flight to Rome was at 5pm, which meant I needed to be at the airport around 1pm and it took about an hour to get to the airport. I thought about getting out of bed, perhaps venturing out in search of a fine slice of Chicago’s finest ‘za, but in the end, opted for 10 hours of straight snoozing, punctuated by a long cold shower.
Made it back to the airport on time, got a nice seat in coach next to the window. It was long. Boring. Accentuated by such mediocre cinematic selections as “The Adjustment Bureau” and “Ramona and Beazus.” I didn’t sleep.

8 hours later I was in Rome. It felt good to be on foreign soil again.
[Little did I know, I was about to be reminded in a big way how much Italian I had forgotten and never knew in the first place, and how problematic that can be when you’re trying to get around by yourself. But that’s a story for another day.]

I arrived in Florence (a 2 hour transit from the Rome airport) nearly 8 hours later.
I waited on the steps of Amanda’s flat for about 15 minutes until Zeno and his mother arrived and let me in. We greeted each other with cheek kisses and ‘hellos’.
Zeno had to run, so his mother – who is Albanian and speaks very little Italian and no English – and I tried to get to know each other until Amanda and Zeno returned. You’d think that would be impossible, but you’d be wrong. She’s an incredibly warm and genuine person, so she gave me some water, indicated that I should make myself comfortable and then there were a lot of hand gestures and facial expressions. And a good deal of giggles…

Once upon a time I went to a bar in Euless

To sum up, bars in Euless are pretty ... well, they're just as you'd expect bars in the suburbs to be. Everyone seeming a little stuffy, a little trashy, dressed like they just left the office. A bunch of men with crew cuts slowly, sadly sitting around watching the lines in their faces grow deeper as their bodies fade into useless flacidity.

As you can imagine, this is not a place I find myself in often, yet there I was late one Sunday night. My friend wanted to meet up with some folks he knew who were shooting pool, and he asked if I would like to join. I reluctantly agreed and decided I'd make the most of the experience.

Now this particular friend of mine, he's not always the best navigator of social situations and this was no exception. If you knew him, you'd forgive him for it, because you'd know that all that focus and attention he's not giving to the people around him is being used to compose epic symphonies in his head and analyze the tonal breakdown of the Rhianna song that's playing softly on the jukebox in the corner of the room. The one you were only vaguely aware of before he started humming along with the bass line as you were trying to ask him a question.

So he introduces me to his friends and then leaves to play pool, leaving me with a table full of new people. It's cool, I can get down on the awkward social dynamic no prob. We perform the 'how do you guys know each other/ what do you DO?" routine. Things are still a little stiff- a lot of purses on laps, and smartphone interaction. I need a drink.

I amble to the bar, browse the selection. The bartender is a girl whose older brother was in my Kindergarten class. Ugh. Livin' the dream in my hometown. [Big bro just got out of the army. Got way too excited about the recent assassination of Osama Bin Laden and expressed it via obsessive facebook status updates which flooded my newsfeed for days. And were really annoying. Because they involved Toby Keith quotes.] I inquire about the limited beer selection and thankfully, she doesn't seem to recognize me as she rambles off the domestics -which include neither Lone Star nor Real Ale. I politely request a pint of their finest Bud Light.

I'm leaning against the bar sandwiched between two pretty morose looking humans. Drunk fratty dude on my left, and 30-something hates-his-day-job guy on my right. Day Job's on a stool, elbows on the bar, looking tipsy and bored. Nobody's really talking to him and he's kind of slumped.
Between us on the bar is someone's mostly-eaten plate of food seemingly in transit back to the kitchen. There's maybe one bite of hamburger left, a couple fries, and then there's this delicate pile of lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickles in a remote corner of the plate. Much to my delight, these items look virtually untouched. In particular - those pickles.

I'm giving it the once over, the twice over. You guys know how I feel about uneaten food -especially when it's on someone else's plate. I feel a familiar sensation in my mouth as it begins to tingle with desire for those salty little morsels. I must have them - I must make them mine, my precious...

I pick up one slice of pickle and toss it in my mouth. Yum. Success.

Then it happens. Day Job turns to look at the plate. He studies it, looks up at me. Meekly he begins,
"Um, did you just eat my pickle?"

I look at the plate. I'd had no idea it belonged to him. It looked so abandoned there on the bar. I'm still chewing. It's still delicious.
I look him in the eye as I swallow, "Yep."
He's already caught me. Might as well drive it home.

He studies the plate a little more, "You just ate it right off my plate?"

I look away, unfazed.
"Didn't look like you were gonna eat it," I shrug, as the bartender hands me my beer.

Day Job straightens up and sorta half smiles, "So...You here with anybody?"

I almost choke on my first sip of beer as I swallow my laughter and retort
"No, dude, it's not like that. I just wanted your pickle."

He glazes over and slumps back into his previous boredom pose. I leave him there like that - one pickle down, two to go. I like to think he still had a couple more chances at a good night.

"Don't wait until you know who you are to make things"

I have a friend. He told me to make something every day. It was good advice.
So is this:
(I can't get the link to show up the way it's supposed to, but if you copy and paste, I think you'll really dig it)

http://www.austinkleon.com/2011/03/30/how-to-steal-like-an-artist-and-9-other-things-nobody-told-me/

You and your quarterlife crisis.

If you're in your mid 20s and you're feeling lost, chances are you're familiar already with the term "Quarterlife Crisis". If not, wikipedia it quick so you can find out what it is and stop having one before you completely lose touch with reality.

I read this today. I think some of you need to hear it:

"...If identity is going to come only from doing that right special something, then the something becomes the everything. When identity comes from the doing, the something becomes secondary. Baking bread is as glorious as planting flowers, as doing a cardiac bypass, as teaching a child to read.

The moral of this story is to not get stuck in looking for the right thing to do, the outstanding thing that will make you special. It is the process of doing, of committing yourself to something that makes the difference in your enjoyment of life and your satisfaction with self."


I was neck deep in the QLC for a while, but I feel I am now making great strides. At the breaking point, I felt certain that I needed to seek practical advice in the form of self-help literature and through the guidance of a therapist. I needed lists and instructions on what to do to figure things out in a practical way.

However, what I discovered was that the simplest answer was essentially the philosophical one.

If you're confused about the meaning of your life, create. Create something every single day, even if it's just breakfast, make something. Do something and do it to the end. You'll be surprised what you'll learn from yourself by just following ONE of your hair-brained ideas. It doesn't have to be the "best" one (besides -you've been trying to figure out what that is this whole time so just give up that nonsense), you just have to pick one. Newton's laws of physics apply also to the human psyche and I promise you that once you're in motion you will stay in motion.

I hope y'all don't think I'm some kind of sap for posting this. I just think there's a few souls out there that could use the encouragement.

"Dune"

She sings.

A gentle melody escapes this tiny mouth
Something
from somewhere
...Soulful Sojourn...

and you can't do anything but
fixate, mesmerized.
Delicate bloom
in Autumn's open window
petals shuttering, breakable

The strength of 1,000 men
is no match
for her breath contains the titanic swell
of an angry sea.
On the inhale - Does she know?
The tide is low
The sun is high
Her song is in the wind
We wait for it to blow us away.