A Blog

Unsent Letter I

2011-01-14T17:24:00.002-06:00

Dear Nonrecipient,

Horizons seduce me. Their siren hints of new kinds of living are, the way teenagers talk about music, more than just sound and words. It is a feeling that vibrates the air. I must go.

It's all or nothing.

Twenty-four years of unsatisfied longing have proven one thing: that I am not made to live the normal, consistent life of a pond. Ponds are simple. They have their job and they have their home and while these details may change, their safe consistency does not. The adventurous may call a pond stagnant but I call it content. I think it would be wonderful to be a pond, if I could do so and be happy about it.

Twenty-four years of missed opportunities have taught me one thing: that I cannot river. Rivers are cool and brave and usually popular (especially with the opposite sex), and they will probably spend a semester in Europe or spend spring break in Mexico. They have times for being wide and calm but their lives are always changing and soon enough, just around the next bend in fact, the rocks will jut up and the banks will narrow and adventurous whitewater will wash out the boredom. The rivers always stay inside their lines. They always flow in the same direction as every other river. They join together sometimes, for a while. They must fit in and they must always be working towards something better. Rivers are movement and they will go on fun vacations but they will care more about having active social lives and achieving success at work.

Twenty-four years of thinking the small steps were always too small has shown me one thing: that I am waves. I break and crash, thundering onto the earth and spraying salty mist in your face. But sometimes I must recede. I pull back and leave your wet feet exposed to the cold air and don't work or leave the house for months. Soon enough, though, I'll swell and go to live in Thailand indefinitely or circumnavigate the world in a sail boat. I have no consistency because each wave, large or small, is a different thing from the last. And I have no direction because each wave crashes right where the last one receded. There is nowhere to get to. I live everywhere. There is no progress. The world spins and I am excellent.

I will set foot on all seven of the earth's continents before I am thirty years old. My life will be a poem that will impress everyone who sees it and make the ones who read carefully think deeply. Long before I am his age, mature and gray, I will be The Most Interesting Man In The World in real life.

You have to make your choices and live your life. I hope you don't regret it. You are a river, and you will do exciting things and meet interesting people. But their greatest moments will be a fraction of a shadow of one of my more mundane and forgettable stories. I have always seen the world differently than you, and everyone you know. I don't go where you go. I don't stand where you do. From over here, everything looks much less political and much more meaningful. I can't blame you for not understanding me, but I have long since stopped blaming myself for the fact that you could not accept me. That was your loss. I will always give you one more chance than you deserve. I'm afraid the opportunity is about to pass you up, though, and you seem willing to let it, but that's a mistake and I want what's best for you.

I am the most amazing person you will ever meet. In the future you will misleadingly tell people about "your friend Ryan," but when they ask why they never got to meet him you will have to lie. I don't want you to have to lie. I've tried so hard to make you see, but it seems only your hindsight can read this: All of the meaningful beliefs, all of the unique ideas, all of the interesting things your river and pond friends ever impress you with, they will repeat from a movie they saw or a song they heard or a book they read that was written by or about someone like me.

Ryan

Time Exists

2010-12-23T17:07:00.003-06:00

Time exists. That's why every kiss you've ever kissed will always linger on your tongue.

Most people would agree that just because something isn't happening right here doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. There are starving children in Africa who exist, and there are devious machinators in Washington D.C. who exist, and there are a million wannabe musicians in Nashville who exist. Everyone seems to agree about that. In the same way, just because something isn't happening right now doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

We draw lines on maps and clocks and calendars, to try to help us understand the world around us, and to try to help us deal with it's complexity and size. But time isn't like the blocks on a calendar. It's like a river. Sure, we can build bridges over the river. We can say, "When we cross under this next bridge, that's where yesterday ends. After that, it's today. Until we get to the next bridge after that, where today ends and tomorrow begins." But the river doesn't know that. The river doesn't start and then stop again beneath the bridge. It just keeps going. There is no difference between yesterday and today and tomorrow. Whatever was put into the river ten thousand years ago is still in it. Diluted, maybe. The same water that fell on the top of the mountain a dozen yesterdays ago is the water that reflects my face "today" as I lean over the bridge.

The past is everything. I'm sitting at my desk as I type this. This desk was bought back when my family lived in Virginia Beach, VA. When we moved, we took the desk apart and loaded it into the truck, and when we got here I picked out where I wanted it to go and we put it back together, here in the corner of my room. That decision in still here. And, sure, I could decide to move the desk if I wanted it to be somewhere different in "the future." But that decision- to put the desk here in this corner- would still be present in that I would have to move the desk from where it is now and put it where I want it to be. The same thing is true for more than just the desk. Everything on it, and everything in my room, and even the house that I'm in, down to the very foundation, is a decision that someone made and a hard day's work. Everything that we call "the present" is the accumulation of the entire history existence. If you add up everything from the Big Bang to the last step I took before sitting down, the result is me in this house in this chair.

A light-year is about 5,878,625,373,183.608 miles (9,460,730,472,580.8 km). Even the very closest stars to ours are light-years away, and other galaxies are millions and billions of light-years from Earth. When you look up into the night sky, you don't see stars. You see the past. The light that hits your eye was given off dozens, or thousands, or millions of years ago. Even the present- this very instant- is really the very recent past. Your eye cannot see an object. Eyes are passive. They don't reach out from your head and touch the thing. They only see the light that is reflected off of it. No matter how close you are to something- a streetlight two blocks away, a hand an inch in front of your face, or a galaxy a billion light years from ours- it takes time for light to travel from that object to your eye. Your ears can't hear a thing. You ears can't hear a gun. Your ears can only hear the sound waves given off by the gun, that travel through the air and into them. Rivers of light and sound and scent drift into you, but you can only see what's carried downstream. You can't see it jumping in.

But, you can reach your hand out and actually touch something right now, can't you? Of course not. Even traveling at the speed of light it would still take time for signals to travel from your fingers to your brain (just like the light from the hand in front of your face, or the screen on which you're reading this). I read an article on Wired.com about "free will." At least, that's what the writer of the article was concerned with. The article was about an experiment done by some scientists. They strapped some electrodes to somebody's head, and then sat the person down. In front of the person were two buttons. Blue and green, or right and left, or whatever. The person then picked a button and pushed it. According to the article, the scientists were able to tell that the subject's brain actually made the decision about which button to press seven full seconds before the subject was consciously aware of which button they had chosen. Not seven seconds before pushing the button. Not seven seconds before saying aloud "I pick the red button." Seven seconds before their brain realized that it was choosing red, it chose red. Obviously this raises questions about the nature of free will and choice. Are our brains just machines, like computers, following a program and computing the "correct" decision. Is our consciousness an illusion? Interesting questions, but that will be for a different time. What I noticed in that article was that it was about we live in the past. In your brain, you think I am going to open the refrigerator or I am hungry. But in reality, your brain already thought that thought seven seconds ago.

You throw a rock into the air a hundred times, and each time it falls back into your hand. You do not know what will happen the hundred-and-first time. You can guess. And, if I told you "You do not know what will happen the hundred-and-first time" you would say "Of course I do. It will fall back into my hand again." And, when you throw it again, it falls into your hand again. You say, "I told you so." And so do I. "Only now do you know what happened on the hundred-and-first throw. Only now, that it has already happened." Of course, it is perfectly rational to make such assumptions. In fact, that's exactly what reason is. And it is absolutely necessary to make assumptions about the future in order to live our lives on a daily basis. But no matter how many times we guess right, it doesn't change the fact that we can't see anything until after it happens. So fragile is our comprehension, and so narrow is this one tiny sliver of reality that we have the ability to perceive. We are always one step behind. We are the dust kicked up by some comic dance, floating about everyone's ankles and swept this way and that by their graceful movements. We are the tail of a comet.

Who wants to go camping?

2010-09-29T21:26:00.005-05:00

Dear The Hypothetical Future Mrs. Bailey

2010-08-29T02:19:00.005-05:00

Back in May, Lea told me that she thought it would be a good idea for me to write a letter like this one. So, I gave it a shot. Now, since I don't have anything to write about at the moment, I'm posting the letter I wrote in May.

Dear My Future Wife,

Do you exist? I want so badly to believe in you, but I often doubt. I don’t know if I can be convinced without my hands in yours.

This letter is not going to be a daydream about what our house will look like or what our lives will be like, because I cannot know those things now, and because those are not the things that will make me happy.

I hope I am confident for you. I hope I know that you love me, and that you are not subjected to my constant doubts and low self-esteem. I hope I am better when I meet you than I am now. And if I am not, and you love me anyway, then I want to say thank you. I cannot say that I think about you often. I am too much of a daydreamer. I think of the specific girls I already know, and I imagine my potential futures with them. I do not often imagine some idealized perfection. I know that, whoever you are, you are not idealized or perfect.

You are real, whoever you are. You have hair that I probably love, eyes that I probably love, and a nose that I’m sure I love. Doesn’t your smile cause mine? I hope it does. That’s my favorite kind.

Do you bring out the best in me? Or do you accept the worst in me? Do you like my sarcastic sense of humor? Do you let me mostly say things that shouldn’t be taken seriously? Do you also like to talk about deep or “real” things? Are you able to laugh at yourself? Do you make me able to laugh at myself?

I don’t care much what you look like. What you do for a living doesn’t define you. What you believe about God doesn’t define you. All of these things add up to something, certainly, but there are so many pieces that I could never put you together myself. You are the way you are, and I love you for that.

What if I meet you, but we don’t get married? What if I am a terrible boyfriend, or just a terrible date, and I miss out on the chance to be happy? This is the side of me I hope I have improved upon before I meet you. Or, this is the side of me I most hope you are able to love. I need you to love my worst parts, my weakness and my fear. Without those, I am not me. Without loving those, you do not love me.

Do you love me?

Do I love you?

One day, I hope to find out.

Love,

Your Future Husband

Some Thoughts

2010-06-29T14:20:00.004-05:00

Arkansas has the best clouds. Purple Ice is not the stuff invented by Dr. Felix Hoenikker. Unions are generally a waste of money. The bus' fuel gauge is broken. Garrison Creek sure looks a lot like a set of train tracks. Oklahoma makes me think of Lea. They ran all the white people out of Zimbabwe, but now they want them to come back. The United States imported some great big tens-or-hundreds-of-thousands number of goats for meat last year. Chris only has a couple thousand dollars in this bus. Crows kill more ducks every year than all the hunters combined. Grey had the line of the day, which was "My lips are sweaty." For all I know, Duane (or Dwayne?) didn't even sleep last night. "Everybody loves the Batman Bus!" because Batman's never done anything wrong. Nashville got 4G two weeks ago, and nobody even knew about it. There is lots of sky in Oklahoma because it's so flat. We aren't going near Tulsa, Broken Arrow, or the Wrestling Hall of Fame. The green couch sticks to me, or I stick to it, but it's the most comfortable place for me to sit. There is such a thing as a black grasshopper with red stripes. The heat index in Memphis was one hundred and seven degrees. Our compass might be working after all.

And that's just about everything that I learned during the first day or two of my trip across the country. I spent four days driving (riding) from Nashville to San Diego on a handicapped school bus that had been painted black and said "Gotham City Schools" on the side. Then, we went down and spent five days in Mexico, where the guy who took me with him on this trip was racing a truck 250 miles off-road from Ensenada to San Felipe. I will be writing more about this trip, but for now here is a random collection of notes I wrote.

- "Rllapeedo! Rllapeedo!"

- Chris showed up, and he brought the race with him.

- The average person will spend 20,000 hours kissing.

- Chris says that life is very, VERY forgiving.

- I'm more in my element in an elementary school day care surrounded by old women and young children than I am here. Or discussing lightsabers, magic spells, and superpowers, than all these tools and metal bars and shock absorbers and welding. My arms look like theirs looked when they were twelve.

- "Yay! I spent all my money!"

- LEA.

- Remember that the trucks have no windshields.

- The dangling strap. The one he showed me two days before.

- I'll never be Luke Calvert, and I'll always think she would rather be with him if she could.

- It's surprisingly easy to clear your mind and forget your problems when you walk into the middle of a conversation about viagra and goat farming, and the possibility of combining the two.

- Lea.

- In Mexico, many places have no room 13, 113, 13th floor, etc. People here are superstitious.

- Sometimes an upside-down umbrella is just an upside-down umbrella. Sometimes, though, it's something completely different. Like a right-side-up umbrella. But it rains on everyone who stands underneath the clouds.

- Lea.

My Last Day In Europe

2010-05-22T09:42:00.001-05:00

I went to Auschwitz today. I didn't take any pictures. I probably should have, but the weather has been so bad here that I have pretty much turned off "camera-mode" in myself. It rained so much that they actually had to close the Auschwitz Museum for a few days earlier in the week. Lea and I had tried to go before, but when we got off the bus (after two hours!) we found the doors chained and the museum closed.

But the weather has improved lately. Yesterday was the most beautiful day I've had in a while. I spent the whole day just walking around the city, particularly this one little park alongside the river (don't ask me it's name (the park OR the river)). Very beautiful. It was so warm I actually had to take off my jacket, which hasn't happened since I was in Paris nearly a month ago.

The weather was nice for most of the morning today, too. In fact, right after our tour guide said, "Thank you," meaning that we were done, God cried a cry soap actors are be jealous of. The raindrops felt and sounded like they were the size of golf balls, splatting loudly on windshields and pavement and my face. I regretted not wearing my size-too-small TOMS that actually covered my toes, but I have gotten used to wearing my flip-flops all the time and I had to get up so early this morning to catch the two-hour-long-bus that I didn't even think about it.

Tomorrow, I'm getting up even earlier because I have to walk to the train station and take a short ride to the airport. My flight leaves at 10:00 AM. Nineteen hours later, I will land in Nashville, at 10:30 PM. That's right. I am going to travel through time. I will live seven more hours than you tomorrow. I will spend the rest of my life seven hours older than the clock and calendar think I am. I will be from the future.

I hope there's someone at the airport to pick me up at 10:30 on a Sunday night.

Meet Lea

2010-05-19T11:50:00.004-05:00

This is Lea. Or at least part of the outside part of her. She is pretty and skinny, and since you can't see her teeth in this pictures you'll just have to take my word for it that they are very bright and nice. They were one of the first things I noticed about her. Weird, right? She was a cheerleader in high school and was in a sorority at OU. So don't tell her that I'm not cool, okay guys?

You can read her blog and see how much more amazing her adventure around the world has been than my trip-to-five-cities-in-Europe. Her blog is leasoutthere.com.

I Wish I Could Take a Picture of My Insides

2010-05-19T09:49:00.003-05:00

It would look so beautifully broken. I like those kinds of pictures. But that's what words are for, I suppose. Lea doesn't like words so much. They're too limited. She would be much more satisfied with a system of communication that allows for melting two brains together into one, without making too much of a mess. But she likes country music, so what does she know?

I have almost exactly enough money in the bank to guy a plane ticket from Krakow to Nashville, but only if I buy it on certain days, and long enough in advance. I was not very financially responsible on this trip, but then I don't particularly like money anyway.

I have felt miserable all day. Lea and I slept in and then had a way-too-big pizza for lunch and we talked and we laughed but we were both a little less enthusiastic than normal. I walked with her to the bus station and I was on the verge of tears as I walked away. She bought me a bottle of wine that has the same name as her. I think I am going to cry for a long time tonight when I drink it.

She cried a little bit when she first told me that she wanted to go to Budapest alone, and then she cried a lot more last night. Our last night together. There's no way I can not visit her in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma sometime.

What am I going to do now?

Like a Circle, or Something

2010-05-18T11:23:00.003-05:00

Beginnings are endings, ya know? And the other way around is the same.

Lea is going on without me, which is going to be what's best for us both even though I don't want it to happen because I will miss her a lot more than she will miss me. I've already spent too much money, though, and I need things to change. I need to not be traveling because when you're traveling you're just constantly spending money, whether it's a lot or a little at a time. I think I have a few different options available to me. I could try to find a place to work at here. "Here" doesn't mean Poland, just Europe.

I would love to stay in some more exotic place for a while. Some place where my money would last much longer than it will in Europe. But getting there from here would probably be too expensive. I have found myself browsing websites with job postings for hostels in places like South Africa and Rio de Janiero and a few places in Southeast Asia. I don't think I'll actually do that, but I may send an inquiring email or two just to see what's up.

I am seriously considering flying home, but not to stay and not because I'm "done." One of the first things I realized during this trip was how little of the United States I've actually seen. Every time I meet someone with some connection to the U.S. ("My sister lives in..." "I spent a semester at..." "I've been to..."), I find myself saying, "I've never been there." Granted, "Murrca" is much larger than any country in Europe, and there are probably lots of twenty-three-year-olds who haven't seen the whole thing. But I would like to. I need to save up some more money before my next adventure, though. Whatever it may be.

I suppose this means I'm pretty much done with Europe? I didn't decide that. I realized it. Maybe it's more like Europe is done with me. Maybe it's more like I found what I was looking for, or it found me, or the reason why I needed to take this trip has been fulfilled. I don't think I'm a different person. I think I'm the same person, but now I have experiences that I didn't before, and those experiences are important.

And tomorrow or the next day everything could change, for all I know.

I also wish I had more time to write.

After Days 1 and 2 In Amsterdam

2010-05-07T06:57:00.016-05:00

I think this is the eye of the storm.

Can you say that? I think when you're in a storm, you always know when you're in the eye. You're certain of it. There's nothing else it could be. So, this may not be the eye of the storm. It may just be a lull between gusts and waves and roars. Roars of laugher. Waves of euphoric happiness. Gusts of intuition.

The devil is in the details, they say. I want none of that. God is in the feeling.

Amsterdam was my favorite city, I decided, after spending a week at a less-than-award-winning hostel for 5 days and loving it. But that wasn't the storm. It was a cloudy morning. It was a foreshadowing.

After 5 days at the first hostel, I had to leave. So, I went to the train station and realized that I had missed that day's train to Berlin. With nothing else to do, I walked to the nearest hostel and booked a room. In my room there was an angry Egyptian man. He made a list for me of all the things that make him angry. When I came back from lunch the Egyptian was making a new list, for two new roommates, a pair of thirty-year-old guys from Kentucky. Like me they had been staying at one hostel and found themselves without a room, so they wandered over to this one. But, they said, they had met a lot of really cool people, and were planning to go back to their hostel to pary tonight. I was welcome to come hang out, I mean, if I wanted to.

In a roundabout way, we got to their hostel. In the smoke room, which is a drug who seduces you at the bar and then you wake up in a cheap motel by the interstate, without your kidney. Except the smoke room doesn't want your kidney. I just wants you. To stay. And you do. Because it is the smoke room.

There was a girl in the smoke room. There were many girls in the smoke room, and many more in Amsterdam, and there are very many girls in the world. But there just happened to be this one particular girl in the smoke room at the same time I walked it. And there just happened to be a seat right next to her, which I sat in.

The devil is in the details, but I liked Lea a whole lot and she seemed to like me, too. We had a great time together, the two of us, and also as a part of a large group. It was quite the party. It might have been the greatest night of my life. It certainly has been the most fun so far. I cried at 6 AM the next morning when we left the smoke room and Lea decided not to come with us. And I cried when we got back to our hostel and I laid in bed and couldn't fall asleep because I was lost in a forest and every time I finished looking at one tree and turned to try and leave, another tree appeared before me which required examination. These trees were memories of the night before.

And I cried when I woke up in the afternoon and wrote a half-page long note/letter to Kentucky, which would later make them say "Dude, I think we just totally changed that kid's life last night" in either a sarcastic or humbling way, but I don't know which because I haven't heard from them and I don't particularly expect to, at least not anytime soon.

I got on a train and it took me to Hilversum. I got on another train and it took me to Berlin, and then I checked in to a hostel there and wrote Lea an email. By the time I finished writing it, it was twice as long as it was when it was born. She sent me a reply and it turned out she did actually remember me and she was still in the smoke room and if I was in Amsterdam I should come. That was exactly what I was thinking. I didn't really want to be in Berlin. Berlin was a very nice hostel, especially considering the price, but it made me cry to leave Amsterdam because I didn't want to leave Amsterdam. And if I didn't want to leave Amsterdam, then why should I leave?

So I came back two days later and Lea was still here, even though she wasn't waiting specifically for me. As before, she didn't have a bed to sleep in so I offered her mine in a gentlemanly way.

Lea and I have been in the smoke room holding hands and cuddling for the last several days. What day is it? What date? What time?

Lea is the only girl I've ever kissed.

Lea is leaving. She is going to Poland. She is taking the night train tonight. Sometimes, though, she is taking the night train tomorrow night. Just like yesterday.

Now, she calls me babe and sweetheart and sometimes people are a little surprised at first when we tell them that we weren't traveling together. But now we might be traveling together because we're staying together in Amsterdam and she invited me to come to Poland, and maybe even farther than that, with her. But sometimes she doesn't want this and she is very nervous and worried about traveling with me. It is a completely different experience than traveling alone, and she is the kind of person who needs to feel freedom at least as badly as she needs to feel affection or closeness (maybe more), and that is sometimes a difficult balance to reach when she is with someone.

What if I change my mind in two weeks, and don't want to travel with you anymore?

What if she changes her mind in two weeks, and doesn't want to travel with me anymore?

Every time I think about it, like a season changing, I day closer and closer to the realization or discovery or memory that I didn't really come back to Amsterdam for Amsterdam, despite the fact that it is my favorite city. I came back for her. And if I go to Poland, I won't be in Poland because I want to be in Poland. I will be in Poland because I want to be with Lea and Lea wants to be in Poland. I do no know if that is okay with her. I also do not know if that is right for me.

But we are going to Poland together. We're getting ready to book a train ticket right now. For tomorrow night.

What day is it?

A Conundrum Pickled in a Jar of Indecision

2010-05-03T07:59:00.003-05:00

I know I haven't written about the rest of my time in Amsterdam yet. For now, I'm skipping ahead. Just know that it was amazing and I didn't want to leave.

And that's my problem. I think I found that place. When people ask me how long I'm going to be traveling for, I usually answer, "Until I run out of money. Or until I find a place where I feel like I belong, and want to stay."

I think I found that place. I am in Berlin now, and I was supposed to get on a train to Poland today, and arrive in St. Petersburg in the morning on the 5th. But I don't know if I want to do that. My friend in Russia specifically told me not to go there just to see her, and I think that is really the only motivation I have to go to Russia now. I really do want to meet her, though. Before Amsterdam, the thing that excited me about traveling was seeing new places and putting as much distance behind me as I possibly could. I wanted to go around the world. But when I was in Amsterdam, I wasn't thinking about Russia or Asia or moving on. I enjoyed myself there.

I want to live in Amsterdam. I don't imagine it would be easy to find a job there. Especially since I have very little work experience and no college degree.

The reason it's such a dilemma, though, is that if I do go to Russia and then come back to Amsterdam, I'll be dangerously close to running out of money. But if I just turn around now and go back there, I could possibly rent a short-term apartment for a month while I look for a job and figure out what to do.

If I do decide to keep going, then I'm going to see lots of cool places, and go to Asia, and then eventually run out of money and have to fly back home. If I do that, I'll basically be in the exact same position (jobless, educationless, etc.) I'd be in if I went to Amsterdam, except I'd be in that position in Nashville, which I don't like as much as Amsterdam.

I could also spend some time writing if I stayed in one place for a while. The growed-ups who read my blog have been asking me what I want to "do" with my writing, and saying they want to "get it to someone" and stuff like that. That would definitely be an ideal way for me to make money.

So, that's my pickle. I know there are just a few people who read my blog almost daily. Any thoughts?

Amsterdam - Days 1 and 2

2010-04-28T07:03:00.010-05:00

I'm in Amsterdam. There's lots of things that happened in Paris that I haven't had the time to write about yet. Like how beautfiul Paris looks from on top of the Eiffel Tower, or how I encountered The Most Beautiful Woman In The World and fell madly in love with her for about 5 minutes while she went on not knowing I existed. Or how delicious the falafels from the A'ls du Falafel in the Jewish Quarter are. Maybe I'll come back to that later.

The bus arrived at the Bus station, a little distance from the City Center, at 11:30 at night. I hadn't planned to arrive that late at night, but the earlier busses were all full when I got to the station to buy my ticket.

First, I searched the immediate area in vain for a tram that I was told would take me straight to Centraal Station, which is where the directions I had to get to the hostel started. Then, I tried to find a map of the metro system so I could figure out how to get where I needed to go that way, in case the Tram thing didn't work out. That took a very long time. Then, I got on the wrong Metro and it took me farter away from the City Center rather than closer to it. Then, I did that again.

I looked around for a way back, but the Metro seemed to only be running one way: away from where I was trying to go. Leaving the closed and completely deserted Metro station (as it was well after midnight by now), I eventually found my way to a bus stop with it's light turned on. It was literally the end of the line. The last stop on the bus's route. Or rather, the first one. The last one, all the way at the other end of the line, was Centraal Station which is where I was trying to go. By the time I got there, though, it was after 1am and the trams had stopped running. My directions told me to take the tram from Centraal Station. At first, I thought maybe a bus would take me there, and it probably would have, except that I couldn't find a map of either the bus system or the tram system. So I couldn't have known which bus to take or which stop to get off at. So I hailed a cab. I thought about walking. I could've just followed the tram tracks and I would've ended up right where the tram would've taken me. But my directions told me to get off at the 5th stop on that tram. That's an awful long way. It was nearly 2am, my feet and especially my back were already aching from lugging everything I had all the way across Paris from one side to the other, and then also all the way across Amsterdam from top to bottom, both in the same day.

So I hailed a cab. There is a flat fee of fifteen Eruo anywhere in the City Center. I told him that was fine. I had saved even more money than that by taking the bus from Paris instead of the train. It was still a net gain as far as I was concerned. I was never actually concerned for our safety or anyone else's, perhaps because I've seen what traffic is like in Europe so I knew what the expect, but I was nonetheless surprised by how fast he went. I understand why he was flying down streets that are narrower than most driveways in America, and covered with bikers, scooterers, and pedestrians, but I guess I wasn't expecting it.

The hostel, when I finally arrived there, didn't seem nearly as bad as it was made out to be in its hilarious ad campaign on its website (The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel, http://www.hans-brinker.net/). It says hotel in its name, but it's not. It's a hostel. There were two other guys in my six-bed room on the first two nights. They're from India. They're pretty cool. They paid a lot of money to have a man's name on their underwear and their jeans that aren't really old and ripped but are made to look like they are. The first night I introduced myself to them and then went to sleep.

The next day, I availed myself of the breakfast that was included in the price of bed. After downing my one slice of bread and half-sized cup of coffee, I headed out to explore the city, and it was beautiful.

Walking along a canal in the center of Amsterdam with the cool breeze on my face and the complete absence of traffic noise in my ears, and the late morning sun lighting my way without overpowering me with warmth, I thought, I want to live here. Amsterdam is such a beautiful city.

I'm staying in the hostel for three nights, and then I'm staying with a Couch Surfer who lives a good ways (but a short train ride) outside the city.

A Blog about A Blog

2010-04-24T04:18:00.002-05:00

I can't know specifically who is reading my blog, but Google has several features that allow me to see where a visit comes from, or to see the average amount of time spent on my site per day. There isn't enough information for me to figure out exactly who is looking at what or for how long. And of course it doesn't reveal anyone's identity to me. I'm pretty sure it's designed more for blogs that make money, and have a great deal more traffic than mine, to give people a general idea about which areas of their site are most popular and which geographic locations their blog is most popular in.

However, I do find it interesting that my blog has been getting regular views lately from either one or several people who are in Virginia Beach. I can't help but wonder whether or not this is someone I know. I'd like to think it is, but either way I'm glad that someone from there is reading.

Also, not a single hit in the history of my website from Murfreesboro, TN.

I'll be leaving Paris tomorrow, and I'll probably just write one blog about the rest of my time here. The days have started to run together a little bit, to be honest. After Paris, I'm going to Amsterdam for a while. I can get in to Russia on May 1st.

My Camera in France

2010-04-22T04:11:00.009-05:00

The Rest of My Camera In Ireland

2010-04-22T03:55:00.005-05:00

Paris - Day 4

2010-04-21T04:35:00.001-05:00

Well, I suppose it was bound to happen. Today was not a bad day. Nonetheless it is a bit of a let down when compared with yesterday. But, it must be emphasized; I’m going to bed happy tonight.

This morning, Rachel woke up with a pounding headache and in a bad mood. We decided we would spend some time online this morning and then do a little shopping in the afternoon. Well, the WiFi wasn’t working at Starbucks, and we didn’t realize this until after we had already order some ridiculously overpriced food and beverages. Rachel was very frustrated and very upset by the whole situation and it was just not a great morning. I guess one has to expect a bit of a coming down after the amazing day we had yesterday. We went to a McDonald’s (which was nicer and more coffee-house-like than the Starbucks, ironically) and stole their WiFi without bothering to buy anything from them.

After spending some time online, we decided to go find a really neat (and tasty) falafel shop, which we had read about in a travel guidebook, in the Jewish Quarter. But it wasn’t there. In fact, we found the building with the exact address that the book attributes to the restaurant, and it is an office building. Or something. Actually, it was just a door with the number “34” over it. That didn’t exactly help the situation. I found myself being very laid back, but also understanding her frustration. If anything, though, I have to say that it was Rachel’s high-strung attitude and how easily it seems she gets angry and discouraged that really bothered and frustrated me. Also, she walks too fast.

However, things would look up.

Along with the falafel shop, we had set aside some time in the afternoon to walk through one of Paris’ larger flea markets. This, we found. The outer stalls were all hookahs and baggy designer jeans and trinkets. Rachel bargained with a man for a cool leather backpack. He was very friendly and I enjoyed meeting him, but unfortunately I’m too much of a jerk to be able to remember his name.

After a while, though, we found ourselves deep in the heart of the market, and this is where we really wanted to be. It was antiques. Lots of them. Old coins, old keys, old cameras, old chairs, old postcards (some written on, some not). We even found one rack full of old (and badly exposed) negatives. The pictures seemed like they were mostly family photos. It was strange and intriguing. I almost (almost) bought some. it would have been fun to try and print them (even if the quality wasn’t great) and then to try and figure out these people’s stories. I also almost bought a couple of extremely beautiful black-and-white postcards, but the ones with the best pictures on them had already been written in, and I don’t read French. I thought that it would be a great art project for someone to put together a whole book of antique postcards, written by strangers, decades ago.

It was a beautiful place, and if it wasn’t for the fact that the guidebook says it is closed Tuesdays through Fridays, we might have made plans to come back again another day.

We got lost on the way back, and not in a nice part of town. Rachel said it reminded her of Oakland. I didn’t think that as a very good thing. Eventually, though, we did find a Metro station. We got home at around 9 and went straight to bed. It was a long day, and hot. And we had no falafels.

Paris - Day 3

2010-04-21T04:34:00.002-05:00

Today was amazing. It was wonderful, and exciting, and beautiful, and amazing.

Having finally established a kind of home base, we were now ready to spend a day just exploring the city, with no particular goals or necessities in mind. We left the hotel- which we paid a lot of money all at once to rent for five days, but not nearly as much as most hotels in Paris cost; in fact, not really much more than a private room in a hostel would cost- at around 9:30. We started our day by strolling up Rue de Mouffetard, which is, in places, about as touristy as you can get (I think we passed about five stalls in the space of two or three city blocks that had the same Eiffel Tower trinkets, the same t-shirts, and the same postcards for the same price). But Rue de Mouffetard is also, at times, the most utterly Parisian street in Paris. We bought fresh fruit- strawberries and plums and other delights- from a vendor on the street. I call it a street, but it is really more like a path. Cars do drive down it occasionally, but in reality it is full of pedestrians. We also bought a small chicken, a piece of cheese, and a bottle of wine from humble little shops along this cobblestone road.

Feast in hand (minus the baguettes, which we would purchase later so that we didn’t have to carry it all day), we leisurely strolled north until we found the Seine. We went down the steps and walked alongside the river for a while before realizing we had actually already passed Notre Dame, so we went back to see it.

It is a beautiful building. Paris is full of them, and even so it still manages to stand out. We didn’t go inside (at least not today) because the lines were very long. We did circle around the outside of it, though, and along with a beautiful view of the building itself we also received our first taste of Paris’ gardens. Pristinely manicured and glowing with spring colors, the path around the outside of the cathedral probably nearly matches the beauty of the church itself inside. This was also the first time I got to see Rachel’s awesome 4x5 camera in action. It is old-fashioned, and while she was under the hood (yes, it’s one of those) more than a few people stopped and stared at her. I even took a picture, although looking at it now I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t get a better view of the camera itself.

After circling the church, we continued following the Seine west. As we strolled along and the hours slowly strolled by with us, we found that our eyes were often drawn towards the river (and why wouldn’t they be?). We decided to stop and rest for a moment on a bench, facing the river, and Rachel checked her map to see where we were.

“Oh! That’s The Louvre,” she said as she thrust her thumb back behind us.

I turned around to find a massive building, much of which seemed to be under construction.

“Cool,” is how I usually reply when I can’t find any specific thought to share.

We walked along, between the Seine River and The Louvre, for a while, until we found an opening into the central area of the Musée du Louvre, which looked more like a park than a museum, from where I was standing. It, too, was neatly and immaculately beautiful. Words can hardly to it justice. I cannot remember the last time I was in a place with such a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere. There were both Parisians and tourists sitting down for picnics (although Rachel and I were determined to have ours underneath the Eiffel Tower), sunbathing, playing hide-and-go-seek among the bushes and ancient statues with their children. It seemed that the unwritten rule of the lawn was that immediately upon sitting down, one must take their shoes off. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and several men took their shirts off and fell asleep (none of the women did). We stayed there for something like an hour or two. Rachel fell asleep while I just leaned back and tried my very best to fully experience every moment, to take in as much of this atmosphere- this feeling- as I could, and bring it with me.

Eventually we did get up. As we strolled through the rest of the statues and manicured garden, we found a fountain in the middle of it all that revealed a beautiful truth to us: You could see from the Louvre all the way to the Arc de Triomphe. The lines at the Louvre were also extremely long, so we just walked around. Today wasn’t supposed to be our go-into-the-museums day. It was our enjoy-being-in-Paris day. And we did.

After leaving the Louvre, we could see the Eiffel Tower. We followed the Seine a while longer before finally being enticed across by the ever-taller sight of it. After nearly getting lost cutting through some back streets, and finally finding a bakery to buy some bread, we quite suddenly found ourselves in the park with the Eiffel Tower dominating the foreground. It was crowded, and by that I mean extremely, but that didn’t make it any less beautiful. We weren’t exactly the only people there, but we were there. We found a good spot to sit down- one with a few trees in front of us, but with a view that can hardly be rivaled- and laid out our picnic. In two or three different attempts, Rachel ended up spending something like half-an-hour looking for a bathroom, and she beat me embarrassingly at backgammon, but the food was delicious and we had a wonderful time. After we had eaten and then laid town for a nap (and consequently gotten ourselves a little pink with sunburn), we realized that we needed to back up in order for Rachel’s camera to be able to get all of the Tour Eiffel in the frame. So, we packed everything up and moved ourselves a few hundred feet back into the park and she set up her tripod. Her vision, which she had explained to me back when we had first met on the ferry, was to expose half of the frame, the bottom half, during the day, and the other half, the top half, at night. She ended up taking several pictures of the Tower, including the one she was hoping to get, with the bottom of the Tower in daylight and the top of it lit up in the night. I think it will look beautiful when it is printed.

To complete this artistic endeavor, we would have to set up before the sun starting setting, and then leave the camera in the exact same place for several hours, until dark. If the camera were to be moved even slightly, the resulting image would be blurry and our mission would be a failure. Needless to say, Rachel scared off a few running-and-playing children, the sterness of her voice and hand gestures more than enough to overcome the language barrier. A German (or at least German-speaking) couple was sitting next to us at location number two. They had had a bottle of wine or two and were enjoying themselves a great deal. They were laughing and were in good spirits, and their positive energy made its way over to us. We talked with them for a moment or two. Rachel’s camera got even more attention here than it had at Notre Dame, with several people and couples coming up and asking her about it, as well as asking to take its picture. I could tell that she enjoyed the attention.

When the sun started to go down, the lights came on. Rachel and I both agreed that it was a much more beautiful sight at night. We were surprised, however (as was everyone else, it seemed) by a dazzling light show that took place once every hour, at least while we were there and while it was dark, the entire tower would sparkle. It was like the reverse of kickoff at the Super Bowl. Instead of thousands of flashbulbs looking down on one spot, these were a thousand flashes of light coming from the Tower itself. It was beautiful, and I’m glad I got some video of it.

So, I spent several hours lying in the grass, looking up at the Eiffel Tower tonight, after spending all afternoon strolling through Paris and lounging at both the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. It was a beautiful, amazing day.

It was worth it.

Paris - Days 1 and 2

2010-04-21T04:32:00.002-05:00

Paris is a supermodel. Paris is a rock star. Paris is big and flashy and beautiful while also being crowded and noisy and a bit pretentious. I’ve been on the receiving end of more than one “you don’t belong here, do you?” look in the last two days. Here’s how those days went:

Rachel is good at maps and directions. She is the navigator of our week in Paris. I usually know where we’re going while we’re going there, but I’m not the one who figures out how to get there while we’re taking a break at a coffee shop. She has a map of the Paris metro system, and also has an application on her iPod that is an interactive map of the entire city. My job is just to follow her around and look good.

My very first moments in Paris went this way: We were on the train from Cherbourg, sitting in seats that faced opposite each other. I was facing the front of the train. As we began to see more and more buildings and less and less green grass, I began to get excited. My legs wouldn’t stay still. We passed through a few other train stations on the outskirts of the city before reaching our destination. During this time, about five minutes or so before our train stopped, I saw the Eiffel Tower. I only glimpsed it for a second, in between two other buildings. I had felt relatively comfortable talking to Rachel during most of the trip, despite the fact that we were surrounded by other people, mostly because none of them could understand what I was saying any more than I could understand what came between “Madams & Misseurs…” and “… Merci.” from the loudspeakers. But they would understand “Eiffel Tower” if I said it. And, being who I am and coming from where I come from, my natural instinct was to assume that as soon as I said “I just saw the Eiffel Tower!” there would be a snicker or chuckle from a nearby passenger indirectly informing me that what I had though was the Eiffel Tower was actually not. So, I whispered it to her. I also beat her at Backgammon for the first time.

The first thing we did in Paris was ride the Metro. The train station we had come in to didn’t have storage lockers for our bags, so we rode over to one that did. It was a good bit of walking around to get from the train station to the metro station, and from the other metro station to the other train station. We didn’t realize it at the time, but that was just a warm up for Day 2. All the while- ever since the ferry, in fact- Rachel and I had been discussing where we thought we would like to stay in Paris. We had sent numerous requests to Couch Surfers, but hadn’t received any affirmative responses. Needing somewhere to stay, at least for one night, we thoroughly consulted my Lonely Planet book, and agreed on the Peace And Love Hostel (“This modern-day hippie hang out is a groovy but chronically crowded hostel…”). It was neither hippie nor groovy, according to my understanding of those words.

The Peace And Love Hostel is a bar hostel. The ground floor of the place is a tiny bar that plays bad pop music and has flashing laser lights and, during the night we were there, it was full of loud young Australian guys whose idea of “travel” is to act exactly as they would at home (that is, going out a night and getting plastered), but doing it somewhere else. But the hostel doesn’t just sit on top of a bar. Lots of hostels have cafes or bars. This hostel, though, caters to the bar crowd. In fact, it seemed to me that the hostel itself was just an afterthought; a place for the bar’s drunken patrons to crash when they couldn’t make it back to wherever they were staying. The only thing even a little “hippie” about the place was that they painted the walls purple. It was crowded and noisy, and while the service was friendly, the room itself wasn’t. It felt a lot more like the “Alpha Sigma Hostel” than the Peace And Love Hostel.

The next morning, we checked out and left our bags in the hostel’s storage room while we went out to find breakfast and a laundromat, which we did with little difficulty. By the time we had lugged our bags (which, in both my case and Rachel’s, are way to heavy to be carried for more than a few blocks, comfortably) there and finished our laundry, it was a little after 1pm. Then we began the journey that we had been just practicing for yesterday. We had decided on another hostel. It was in a good location, the prices weren’t bad (according to my Lonely Planet book, my printing of which was dated October 2009), and it had internet access, but it wasn’t very close to where we were. So we lugged. We carried, we walked, we shoved our way into ridiculously crowded Metro cars (it was Saturday afternoon, after all). And then, at a little after 3pm, we arrived at the Blue Planet Hostel. And Rachel was pissed. I was more disappointed than angry, but I was equally frustrated. The place cost something like €10 more per person than the book said, and the hostel itself , it would turn out, wasn’t worth half that. We asked if we could be allowed to see a room before booking, and we were. While we were at the counter, a French man approached, asking if either of us had a light. Rachel said she did, and then asked him for a cigarette. She went outside to smoke while I went upstairs to be disappointed by our room. Three beds, one sink. Toilet was down the hall. As was the shower, which looked like little more than a hose hanging down over a tiled floor. There wasn’t even a shower curtain. It was by far the least comfortable and least accommodating hostel I’ve seen, even though I’ve only seen a few. For anyone interested in my opinion, I would recommend the Four Courts Hostel in Dublin (which isn’t listed in the Lonely Planet book Europe On A Shoestring) over either the Peace and Love Hostel or the Blue Planet Hostel in Paris (both of which are in the book).

I went outside to tell Rachel this hostel wasn’t the one for us, despite the fact that we had spent all day trying to get here. While I had been upstairs looking at our room, she was talking to the most interesting man in Paris, and maybe all of France.

His name was Sebastian. He couldn’t have looked much more French. He was slightly unshaven, wearing all black including a long black coat, smoking a cigarette, and running his fingers through his hair. He, too, hated the hostel we were at. He said that his family had just left him there. He had been in the hospital the day before, having surgery on his leg. His family despised him, he said, for leaving France. He told us his story. I agreed with him that it would make a great movie.

Sebastian was born and raised in Paris, but he left when he was twenty-two. He spent eleven years living in Mexico, and considered himself Mexican just as much as he was French. Among the many anecdotes I heard while Rachel was outside smoking another cigarette were these.

While in Mexico, Sebastian’s car broke down while he was driving out in the middle of nowhere, and he was taken in by a group of indigenous people, with whom he would go on to live for an entire year.

Sebastian had been a history teacher in France before he left, but after he got back he got a job with the Department of the Interior, which he told me was just like America’s Department of Homeland Security. During the course of his work for the government, he somehow or other became involved with both the Dutch and Italian Mafia. I believe he said Italian, but he was talking fast and didn’t go in to much detail. He definitely said Dutch, though. They put a price on his head, and he was saved or protected by the cops. “The fucking Narcos saved my life, man! Can you believe that?!”

Then, the government dumped him in a psychiatric institution, “to punish me,” he said. They had recently let him out, cutting him loose, as it were. Dumping him. Kicking him to the curb. Which is basically what his family did to him, as well. He walked with a visible limp, and had trouble getting up the stairs. His family had put him in that piece of crap hostel and just left him there, he said, “like shit.” “The room in the psychiatric institution was better than this place.”

Sebastian does not love France. He told us not to worry too much about French people being pretentious or impolite. He said that most of them have a skewed perception of Americans “They are stupid. They don’t care to know the truth.” The line I will remember best:

They say: “Oh! America! Capitalism! Is terrible!” Well what the fuck do you think you are?

He is talking, of course, to the French people who say “Oh! America!”

When we left, I told Rachel that either everything he told us was true, or he had been put in that psychiatric institution for a good reason, but either way Sebastian is the most interesting guy in Paris, maybe all of France.

Sebastian recommended a few hostels to us, but we eventually chose a hotel that rented double rooms for the same price as a double at the hostel. We paid for five days. It was very expensive. I’m going to (have to?) try to stay with Couch Surfers if at all possible from here on out. Paris is going to take a lot more of my money than I wanted to give it.

After checking in to the hotel, Rachel and I went on a bagless walk down a street that made Rachel say, smiling for the first time in perhaps several hours, “This is the real Paris.”

Tomorrow, we are going to buy lots of food and spend the day walking through the city, stopping once or twice for picnics, and ending up at the Eiffel Tower, which is on the other side of the city from where we are. I am looking forward to it. It will be the first day in quite a while that we won’t have necessary or practical goals standing in the way of us just enjoying where we are.

My Camera In Ireland

2010-04-17T04:03:00.008-05:00

The Ocean and Cherbourg - Losing track of the days

2010-04-16T04:12:00.001-05:00

So, I woke up early in the morning on Wednesday, the 14^th, in Killarney, crossed the street to the bus station, and rode for most of the day across Ireland, taking pictures of the beautiful landscape and recuperating from my long weekend of walking all around Dublin. When I finally got to the harbour, I found myself mostly alone. There were a handful of other people who had arrived on the same bus as me, but the entire place was desertedly empty, for a while. It didn’t take long, though, for the atmosphere to turn itself around quicker than an outed sexaholic golfer. Not one, not two, but three entire busfulls of teenage french students arrived to ride the same ferry to Cherbourg that I was going to be on. The place went, in the span of about a minute, from feeling like the beginning of a zombie apocalypse movie to something more like lunchtime in a middle-school cafeteria.

I did my best to bury myself in Book #3 (Kafka On The Shore, by Haruki Murakami) even as immature hormonal chaos reigned all around me. A few minutes before we were going to board, though, the loud-talking, tight-pantsed, French-speaking sea parted and a young woman from across the way, who had also been trying to hide behind her book, came and sat down next to me.

“It seems safer over here,” she said in reference to the teenagery surrounding us.

“I’m not so sure,” I replied, as two girls a few seats down from me screamed, slapped each other, and then chased each other for about three steps before changing their mind and laughing.

Her name is Rachel. She had spent a semester studying in Scotland, and has spent the last two weeks or so traveling around there, and to Northern Ireland, eventually making her way down through Dublin and to Rosslare to catch the same ferry to France that I was taking.

Saying things like “catch” and “ride on” the ferry is misleading. You catch a bus. You ride on a plane. But you stay on a ferry. Like a hotel. Carpeted floors and bars and restaurants and television and internet access (but all of it for an exorbitant amount). It turns out that mine and Rachel’s seats were in the same room, which was nearly empty. Most people pay something like €20 more, at least, on their ticket and stay in a cabin with a bed, but neither of us had done so. Instead, we were in a room that looked like a movie theater, with about 20 chairs in all. There were only three or four other people in our room, and we left our stuff there for most of the day-long trip.

Rachel and I explored a bit of the ship and sat down in a lounge, where we would eventually spend the night (couches are much more comfortable than chairs with metal arms that only recline a few inches, after all.) She taught me how to play Backgammon, and then beat me at it a few times. In the course of our conversation (which was, it goes without saying, mostly just her talking and me listening), I found out that she was a Couch Surfer. I’m one too, but only in the constitutional-monarchy-way. I created a profile but by the time I started looking for people to contact, I had felt it was too soon before my trip. I do plan to try and stay with someone in Russia, though. Not speaking the language can make it difficult to get around on your own. So, after having a meal or two and sneaking in to two movies (there are movie theatres on ferries), we eventually-meaning-the-next-day got to France.

Things happen during a day, of course, and we didn’t just magically show up in Cherbourg, but there’s just no way to write about every single thing I do everything where I go, and everything I see there. Eventually, we basically we were going to spend a week together in Paris, even though we were parting ways after that.

She already had a Couch Surfer lined up for one night in Cherbourg, and he was willing to let me stay at his place, as well. His name is Alex, and he’s French. He is one of those Couch Surfers who is like the person at your high school who has way too many extra-curricular activities and runs all the clubs and is basically the one who decides what the homecoming theme will be all by themselves. He had Couch Surfing paraphernalia all about his apartment, and he was leaving the next evening (the evening of the 16^th, that is), to go on a Couch Surfing bike ride through the U.K. countryside, from Nottingham to Edinburg. It’s a long, multi-day bike ride. The kind of ride that makes you a “cyclist,” instead of just a guy on a bike.

While we were waiting at McDonald’s (using their free WiFi) for him to pick us up, we sent messages to a few Couch Surfers in Paris to see if they had room for the two of us to stay with them. If not, there are only about a thousand hostels in Paris and we can always stay in one for a night or two before finding a CS host, or even just stay in a hostel the whole week.

After we got to Alex’s place, he fixed us some drinks and we watched Saving Private Ryan, dubbed in French. It was interesting and fun, especially since Rachel knows parts of the movie almost word-for-word and was saying them along with the French voice actors. As the night went on, Alex told us all about Cherbourg and northern France, and also let us know how disappointed he was that we were going straight to Paris.

“It would be like visiting the United States and only seeing New York and L.A.” He speaks very good English, but you would never mistake his accent for one from Boston.

“Yeah, but there are lots of people who do just that.” Rachel replied.

She had wanted to see a few places before heading to Paris, anyway, but she couldn’t find a CS host to take her in. So, passing on the D-Day beaches and Mon St Michel, she decided to just come to Paris like I was doing.

Right now, we’re on the train from Cherbourg to Paris. I guess the closest thing I have to a “plan” is to spend about a week in Paris and then about another week in Amsterdam and then head on over to Russia. My visa is only good for the month of May, so there’s no reason why to dilly-dally around. I either go to Russia in May or I don’t go. As far as what happens in Russia, I haven’t the slightest clue. I don’t even technically know where I’m going to sleep tonight.

I wish I could write more about the feeling of traveling instead of just the facts, but at the moment I’m too busy feeling them to understand them well enough to write eloquently about them. I will tell you this, traveling with someone is completely different than traveling alone, and staying in the home of a local person is completely different than staying in a hostel. I like both of the former better. After Paris, Rachel is heading to the south of France and then eventually on to Italy and Greece. I don’t really have time to head in that direction even though I would like to.

Here’s a feeling for you: My shoulder could fall off at any given moment. There was no bus to take us from the harbor to the city center in Cherbourg, so we walked all the way into town with all of our stuff, and this morning Alex went to work after giving us directions to get to a nice park or a Natural History Museum in Cherbourg (he really wants us to enjoy the France that is outside of Paris), so we walked to the train station with all of our stuff.

I almost forgot to mention that Rachel is a photographer. she has a tripod and an really cool old camera that uses 4x5 film. I haven’t seen her use it yet, but hopefully I will while we’re in Paris. She was very excited to hear about my 35mm camera, and immediately told me how frustrated she gets with people when they talk about how much faster, easier, and better digital is compared to film.

Killarney - Day 5 - Abbreviated

2010-04-14T05:00:00.003-05:00

Not much time to write at the moment, but I will come back to this post and include more details when I have more time to do so.

I'm in Killarney, at the bus station. Because of the bus schedule, I didn't have time to go horseback riding. But, as I realized this morning and also just shared with my mom in an email, my time in Ireland has defintely been beneficial. Yes, it's true that I just spend all afternoon yesterday riding a bus out here from Dublin, and now I'm getting right back on one today and leaving. But it was worth the trip just to see how beautiful this place is. I've seen the place most people create in their heads when they here someone talking about "Ireland." The grass here is greener than spring. It's Irish. I'll try to take some pictures on the bus.

I'll be getting of the bus tonight with just about exactly enough time to get on the ferry that will take me to France. Now that Ireland has taught me how to live in a hostel and how to get from one place to another by bus or train, and (sort of) how to find my way around a foreign city, I think I'm ready for France. I think it's going to be even better than Ireland.

Dublin - Day 4

2010-04-12T12:27:00.001-05:00

One of the French girls left this morning. She was the same girl who, also this morning, suddenly jumped up, very loudly, around the time everyone else was just starting to get ready for the day, and I was just starting to lie in bed and wait while they get ready. But the jumping wasn’t that big of a deal. She didn’t shake the whole room and she didn’t scream. She was naked. Or she seemed to be. She slept in the bunk beneath mine, so when she jumped up all I could see was the back of her head and an inch or two of shoulder. And shoulder is what I saw. Uncomfortable wasn’t exactly the right word to describe it. I guess I just found it kind of interesting, like when someone at a museum says that something you always thought was true actually isn’t. Or maybe the curator of the Four Courts Hostel was telling me that what I had been told actually was true. French people are naked a lot more often than American people. I don’t know. But it was an experience, so I thought I’d write about it. So there is that.

Externally, not much happened today. Today was a day for planning and for doing laundry and for taking a few pictures, as I was asked to do. I don’t take pictures for myself. I’m not a picture-taker. But I know that there are people who would like to see pictures, so I tried taking some today. I didn’t take very many, partly because I’m relatively knew at tourist-picture-taking. The things I want to take pictures of aren’t the things people who will be seeing my pictures want to see. On my first day here, I saw a tree that had a crack in the bottom of its trunk. And in the crack had grown two little knobs of wood that looked like faces. I didn’t take a picture of that because I was in hell that day and I didn’t have the energy. Today, while I was taking pictures with my camcorder (because it takes digital pictures) of an old church, I took out my 35mm and took a few pictures of some holes in the wall in the back of an alley behind the church. There’s nothing cool or European about that. But that’s the kind of thing my camera is for; for my pictures. My camcorder is for pictures that are for other people, and I’m still just learning how to take those.

The other reason I didn’t take very many pictures is because I couldn’t find very many of the places I had been on day one during the walking tour I joined. But I did take pictures.

I’m leaving Dublin tomorrow. I’m taking a bus to a place called Killarney. It’s a very tourist-y place, but it’s in the country and is beautiful. At least that what it says in a book I read. I’m going to try and go horseback riding there. We’ll see how that works out. Maybe I’ll just go hiking for a little while or something. I’ve gotten pretty good at walking. The point is that Killarney National Park is there and I want to see it.

That will be the 13^th. On the 14^th, I’m leaving Ireland. I’ll take a bus or train from Killarney down to Rosslare Harbour where I will ride on a ferry called Oscar Wilde to Cherbourg, France. It’s an all-day ferry ride, and it leaves pretty late at night, so I can’t imagine I’ll have much to say about that day.

Dublin - Day 3

2010-04-12T12:15:00.002-05:00

Sunday began slowly. The girls, whispering their deep and throaty French words to each other, woke up around the same time as me. Partly to show how polite I was, and partly to show how shy I was, I decided to lie in bed until they had all showered and readied themselves and left. I missed breakfast downstairs because for some reason it ends at 9:30 in the morning. Hungry but showered and feeling good, I left the hostel around ten or eleven or so, determined to find the restaurant I couldn’t find the day before. I wandered the streets for a while, but I did eventually find it. It was a great, cozy little place where the tables were tiny and the chairs were tinier. I liked it a lot. I was very “lived-in.” The chairs were all creaky and while one wall was covered in posters for bands and shows, the others were mostly bare, except for a few pieces of art that looked very familiar. I hadn’t seen those particular pieces before, of course, but I might as well have. They looked exactly like the stuff I saw people doing at Watkins.

I ordered a “Full Irish Breakfast with Tea and Toast. The tea burned my tongue, but it tasted good, as did the bacon, sausage, egg and mushrooms. I couldn’t finish all of it, but I did my best because I don’t like wasting either food or money.

Then, I wasted €30 or so on things I don’t even remotely need in a couple of different little shops. But mostly the things weren’t for me, anyway. It’s nice to buy things for people when you travel, to let them know that you’re thinking of them.

It also gave me the chance to have my first conversation with a stranger in quite a while. He was the Asian guy who ran- or at least worked behind the counter at- a little Asian tourist shop with so many things that nearly half their inventory was buried behind the other half. I browsed overpriced knick-knacks for almost an hour just because the guy was so friendly. He asked me about my trip and where I had been and where I was going, and told me all about Dublin. Places to go. Places to avoid. While we were talking, a customer came in who was apparently a regular. They knew each other’s name but only talked the business of little Asian shops and didn’t seem to be personal friends. Asian Tourist Shop Worker (that’s the nickname I gave him because we’re such good friends) told me that usually Dublin is a safe and friendly place. But don’t be out after ten o’clock. And make sure to avoid the Romanians. Them and the Nigerians, apparently, are the ones you have to watch out for. ATSW even told me that part of the reason he has a dog in the shop, and part of the reason the has a guy who doesn’t smile standing at the door, is to keep “them” out. The dog, who wore no collar and who’s name and gender are unknown, was small and white, with a snub tail and just enough spots to make it look whatever the opposite of albino is. When I had finally picked out my one-too-many knick-knacks and decided to pay for them, Asian Tourist Shop Worker’s Little White Dog became a cashier. My new friend told me that he didn’t want my money. She (apparently it was a she) wanted it, instead. Folding the two bills together, I knelt down and offered them. She took them ever-so-lightly in her mouth (so lightly, in fact, that she dropped them on our first attempted transaction) and walked around behind the counter. The Worker then took them and gave the dog back my change, and she carried it back to me. We talked for another moment or two, me and the Worker and the Dog, and then he wished me well on my trip and I left with almost no doubt in my mind that he was being genuine and not just repeating the same things over and over again that he told everyone else who came in there.

Later that night, after more walking around and sightseeing and this time being lost on purpose, I decided to have dinner in a little diner. It was literally a diner, like the coffee shop in Seinfeld, red booth seats and all. When I entered, there was a black man in a very fancy suit who could not possibly have looked more out-of-place if he had tried. Was he a receptionist/host? I don’t think so, considering that he just stood there and told people they could sit wherever they liked. A bouncer? In an American-themed diner at eight o’clock on a Sunday night? I took the seat I had chosen for myself (wondering all the while whether or not I was doing the black guy’s job for him, especially since he spent most of his time on his phone, and occasionally completely ignored customers who entered the diner), and was served by a waiter whose nationality was somewhere in the middle-east. It was this diner that reminded me of something that I had been noticing off-and-on my entire visit. Dublin is hardly Ireland. I mean, it’s definitely in Ireland. But, like New York or LA, it is an international city. Good luck finding a “traditional” Irish restaurant. They exist, but they are heavily outnumbered by Indian, Lebanese and Chinese restaurants, and one American-style burger joint. I have done my best to avoid the foreign-food restaurants for exactly the same reason that I was slightly disappointed and slightly more intrigued by the diner I was eating in. This wasn’t American food. The burger I ordered was, on the menu, exactly like any burger you can get on any corner of anywhere in America, but the food I was served was nothing like that at all. It is difficult to describe. It wasn’t worse, really. It was just different. It wasn’t an American burger. It was an Irish American Burger. It wasn’t Irish-American, of course, but it was an American Burger in Ireland.

My fries were served in a bowl.

When I got back to the hostel, I was pretty tired (as I have been every night), so I decided to try to do a little bit of reading and then go to sleep.

I have not had enough time to read. This disappoints me, a great deal, for several reasons. First, I like the book I’m reading and I want to keep reading it. Second, I was reading at a speed of approximately two-and-a-half books a week during my last days in Tennessee. Third, I want to get rid of these books! In hindsight, I should’ve brought just one. Instead, I brought no less than 5 (five!) novels.

Dublin - Day 2

2010-04-12T04:47:00.002-05:00

I woke up once or twice in the night, but I did sleep fairly well considering that there was an awful lot of street noise yelling at me from the other side of the window. I woke up for good around eight. After an unsuccessful attempt to pack my bag in such a way as to magically make several pounds disappear, taking a shower, and once again burning the specific route I wanted from the map to my head, I checked out at noon. It was awfully warm out. I wished I wasn’t wearing such a thick jacket, but I had little choice as my bags were already overstuffed and I couldn’t just forget the jacket because it would eventually be needed, in another city at another time.

I went out the front of the hotel and immediately walked around a corner, trying to find the place I had seen from my window. That, I had burned into my mind, was the starting point of my path to the hostel. But, it turns out that my window in my hotel room wasn’t looking out the front of the building, but rather the side of it. By the time I realized this, I had already been turned around a bit and was essentially lost. It took less than five minutes.

A walk that should’ve taken me about fifteen minutes instead took about an hour. I was so completely lost that I can confidently say there is no way I would have found the hostel on the second day, either, if not for the fact that it was located on the bank of The River Liffey, and the fact that I had some vague idea of my location relative to The Liffey. Keeping in mind the fact that my feet were already blistered, my legs were already stiff and sore, and my shoulders were already bruised from the weight of my bags, it will not be a surprise for you to learn that I was quite literally drenched in sweat when I arrived at the Four Courts Hostel. The guy at the desk was friendly, and assigned me a bed straight away, since he could see that I was “wilting right before [his] eyes.” I went up to the third floor, and found an empty room. No, it was person-less. It wasn’t empty. Six beds, all six of them with stuff on them. All six of them with woman-stuff on them. I didn’t want to sound too weird or immature or uncultured, so when I went back down to the desk I simply told the guy that I think the room he assigned me to was full. I didn’t accurately express my entire problem, which was that it was full of girls. He walked back upstairs with me, and showed me which bed was mind. Someone had just laid a pair of jeans on the rail. There were only five women.

Five French women. Five very attractive French girls. They weren’t around at first, but they did come into the room, sometimes one at a time and sometimes all at once. It seemed to me that they were all together. They knew each other. I, on the other hand, just laid in my top bunk trying to make up my mind between reading a book or taking a nap, and never fully accomplishing either. They smiled, made eye contact, and said “Hi” and “Bye” when they came and went. They were friendly, but spoke entirely with each other in French. It went on like that for most of the afternoon, until I realized that my stomach was about to suck my body up and turn me inside out if I didn’t satisfy it with some food soon. I found two different restaurants I thought would suffice in my Lonely Planet book, located them specifically and accurately on the map, and after double and triple checking their locations and the route needed to get me there, I headed out.

I found neither of them. But I was never really lost. I always knew where I was in relation to The Liffey, and therefore to my hostel. It was an improvement. I walked up and down more streets than I can remember even though I am writing this at midnight that same night. I also cannot remember the number of bars, coffee houses, and restaurants I walked past without going into them. Why? I have never fully understood this about myself. I eventually (around 8:30) did find the courage to walk into a completely arbitrary door. It was a coffee shop and the only food they really served was scones and coffee. I ordered one of both, and after I had sat down and the guy had already begun preparing my “dinner,” he informed me casually that the place was closing in about ten minutes. I ate quickly, paid, and went directly back to the hostel to spend several more hours lying in bed. My stomach was no longer threatening to commit foul acts against my insides, but I was far from full. Day two was not a defeat, per se, but it wasn’t a victory either. I had failed to accomplish the thing that was perhaps, I now realize, the very goal of this entire adventure: to be able to walk into a new place, full of strangers, if a foreign city, and behave as though I actually belonged there. No, that’s not exactly it. It’s not really about behavior. It’s more like: to walk into a place and feel like I deserved to be there. I don’t think I have ever felt this before.

Progress? Just enough for me to feel neutral. Not depressed. No crying. Cautiously optimistic and at the same time apprehensive about tomorrow. I still don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow. Shower, help myself to the free breakfast, probably extend my stay here for another day or two. Try and find something that seems fun to do around here. Something that doesn’t involve walking around the city looking at old buildings all afternoon and then going clubbing all night, which is what the typical young-person-backpacking-through-Europe experience is apparently supposed to be. I could do that every day in Nashville. What a waste of money, if that was all I was going to do! I think I would like to go horseback riding out in the countryside. I’ll probably look into that tomorrow, although that will probably mean I won’t be able to do it until Day 4. I would also like to find something like a coffee shop where I can relax and read. And also perhaps find a bookstore where I can sell the books I have that have already been read. Disaster will certainly occur if I don’t find some way to shed some weight.

Dublin - Day 1

2010-04-12T04:44:00.002-05:00

Hell.

Or something like it. Of course, everything is relative and subjective. So if these occurrences don’t seem to conform to your idea of misery, then that is because you and I interpret and experience the world differently.

Leaving the country, and for that matter home, for the first time can be an emotional experience for both the leaver and the leaved. In my case, the emotions didn’t really hit me until I had boarded my second flight, from Chicago to Dublin. I cried; pretty openly. I was sitting by myself and I’m fairly certain nobody could see me, but that’s really not the point. I cried. I don’t know why I cried then, and not when I was hugging my family goodbye, or when I was sitting alone in Chicago’s O’Hare airport waiting for my flight. I don’t know that I was thinking of anything specific, or that there was any moment or event that sparked an emotional response. I suppose it just took that long for it to set it.

Like any good hell or cursed place, Dublin was at first deceptive. Teenagers bounced and giggled around the cabin, and cute old couples leaned their heads on each other’s shoulders. Pretty, blonde-haired flight attendants smiled at me and gave me more food that I was expecting an airline meal to have. And the clouds. God, the clouds!

I was on a plane before, but I was very young and I really don’t remember it. For all practical purposes, this was my first flight. Actually, the cramped, crowded Express flight from Nashville to Chicago was my first flight. The flight to Dublin was less beautiful for several reasons. On the one hand, most of the flight happened at night. On the other hand, I had just previously experienced a flight and so I knew what to expect. On another hand (yes, three hands), my seat was in between two windows so that I had to either lean back or forward an inordinate amount in order to see clearly out the window, and even then my view through one window was blocked by the plane’s shamrock-tipped wing.

That first flight, though, was arguably the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced. I put my hand on a girl’s naked leg once (only the leg was naked, not the girl), and I held my sister in my nine-year-old arms when she was only a few moments old. This experience is right up there with those. First, I was excited. Then, I was nervous. Then, I simply decided that it was really not so different at all from riding in a car, and even though the pit in my stomach remained, I wasn’t emotionally experiencing any fear. I could feel myself being pulled back into the seat, and I could see the world outside the window passing by with greater and greater speed. Then, quite suddenly, I found myself being pulled down as well as back! It seemed to be quite sudden. Were we really already going fast enough to take off? And what happened next literally took my breath away. I don’t mean literally the way a fourteen-year-old girl would use it, who repeats certain words for emphasis in order to make sure you understand how important what she’s saying really is. I mean that I was breathing fast and had to make a concerted effort to catch my breath. The plane, having taken off into the air, proceeded to climb and climb and climb, very high, very quickly. All at once, it seemed we were so high that cars and even entire buildings seemed to be no bigger than the size of a grain of sand that’s stuck between your toes after a day at the beach.

This is so amazing, I thought. This is unnatural. Humans aren’t meant to be up here.

Taking a quick glance around the ridiculously narrow and crowded cabin (not too long, I didn’t want to miss a second of the beautiful moment happening outside the window), I noticed that many people were reading, checking their phones (even though they said you weren’t supposed to do that during take-off), or just staring straight ahead, studying the back of the seat in front of them.

How could they not be transfixed? I thought, as I returned my gaze, and locked it, to the world that was very quickly diminishing below me. How can they take something so extraordinary for granted? How could they not realize how rare and lucky an experience they were currently experiencing? Well, whatever their reasons; fear, jadedness, or just the casualness and loss of sensitivity that comes naturally along with regular exposure to anything, extraordinary or otherwise, I was going to take in the full experience.

But it gets even better. As I was fulfilling my vow to never miss a second of my flight, looking at crumb-sized baseball diamonds and roads that looked like cracks in pavement from three stories up, something happened that I hadn’t been expecting. It was like someone was taking an MS Paint eraser to my window. At first, for a brief instant, I was afraid. Don’t go away! I thought. But it was a worthwhile trade in the end. In fact, I would argue that I got the better end of the deal by far. After a moment or two of general fogginess, my window passed through the clouds and came out the other side.

I was on another planet. Surely, this was not the earth I had been born on, spent twenty-three years meandering upon by foot and shoe and wheel. No place on earth looked like this. We wasn’t on Earth. We were elsewhere. I was now living in a world composed entirely of moisture. In places, the clouds looked like something softer than the softest softness. Like a world of whipped cream, or some other soft white food, but not really like food at all. Even food is still food, and not evaporated water. There was nothing truly like this. Ever. I had no frame of reference to experience or accurately describe it. It was unreal, but was also reality. It was impossible, but was extant. It was a dream, but I was awake. In the end, it was simply this: Beautiful.

But that was before Dublin happened. I guess technically it was Day Zero. Day one, in Dublin, was not beautiful. It was hell.

It started this way: After not sleeping at all on the plane, I arrived at the airport and my first encounter with really the city of Dublin was the customs official. It did not go well. In retrospect, I’m fairly certain he would have turned me away if not for the fact that I had a visa in my passport that would allow me to enter Russia during the month of May. I did not have specific answers to questions like, “What are you in Ireland for?” or “How long are you planning to stay?” Or “Where/how/when are you leaving?” I was vague, and he didn’t think that was acceptable. I told him the only plan I had was to be relatively spontaneous, and he scoffed angrily at that, as his face continued to get more and more red, and said that was all well and good, but these days you can’t just be completely spontaneous all the time. Eventually, he started talking so fast that I really couldn’t understand him at all, except for when I heard the word “ass” and, looking into his eyes, saw that he was (in the harshest way possible without being unprofessional) unleashing some serious anger and frustration on me. He stamped my passport and wrote on it that I was allowed to stay in Ireland until the 14^th. My flight had arrived on the morning of the 9^th. That was less than a week, but also seemed like plenty of time to me.

I can understand where he was coming from, and from now on I plan to answer customs officials with very specific answers even if those answers do not ultimately reflect the truth of what happens or where I go or where I stay or for how long. Still, it was hardly a warm welcome, and didn’t put me in a very hopeful mood.

After retrieving my backpack and wandering without aim around the airport for a while, I became discouraged. It seemed things weren’t as easy as on the planes. I couldn’t just sit still and let the adventure happen to me. Confused, lost, distraught, I found my way to the Tourist Information Desk, and spoke to a guy there whose tone with me could only be described as full of pity. I couldn’t blame him, though, as I had felt what he had heard: my voice, quivering and quavering. I was nearly in tears when I told him. “Hi, I need a place to stay tonight and I don’t have a clue how to find one.” He was compassionate to an extent that made me feel even worse than I already did. But after he handed me a very detailed map of Dublin and marked by hand the locations of four different hostels, I felt much better. I lied to him and told him that I had planned to stay with a friend, and it hadn’t worked out.

Oblivious and lost as ever, I wandered onto a bus that cost €2 more than the other bus right next to it, that went to the exact same location by the exact same route and at the exact same speed. I rode until I thought I was at the stop that was closest to the hostel I was looking for. It was close, but I had no way of knowing that seeing as how I was completely unaware of where I was in relation to the hostel, or where the hostel was in relation to the rest of the city, or anything else at all except that I was in Dublin and I had packed way too much shit.

Fast-forward basically the entire day. Go ahead, you won’t miss anything. All I do is walk around Dublin by myself for a few hours, and then sit down in a little square that just happens to be the meeting and starting place for a free walking tour of the city, which I decide to join, since I have nothing else to do and nowhere else to go. Now, after the tour, I am not more lost than before. How could I possibly be? Instead, I am just exactly the same amount of lost that I was before. I saw a few cool old buildings, and I felt ostracized from “the group” by virtue of the fact that everybody thought it was weird and suspicious that I was carrying an entire house on my back. Anyway, the tour is over now and I’m wandering around alone with my shoulders aching severely and my feet aching even worse and my mind plagued by a persistent paranoia that my satchel was about to burst and disintegrate at any moment. Eventually, I just couldn’t take it anymore. It was around four or five or six in the evening, and I happened upon a hotel. I walked in and asked if they had a room available. The guy working at the desk said no, and the woman who seemed to be in charge quickly and authoritatively informed me that the hotel up the street about a block was selling rooms. She said it in a way that sounded more like an order than a helpful tidbit of information. Her tone made me feel as though I had better get to that other hotel and be asleep in five minutes, or else. Maybe she could see my desperation? When I arrived in my hotel room later, I could see it. My face was somehow both pale and red, and my eyes were bloodshot. Removing my shoes, I found three blisters. This was expected, but seeing them with my eyes made them hurt more. I also found that it was nearly impossible for me to move my arms at the shoulder. At all. So sore was I that I struggled to even take off my shirt when it came time for that later. There was supposedly free Wi-Fi in the hotel, but I found no such thing with my computer, and I wasn’t about to pay €20 more for an afternoon of browsing the internet for information I really already had. Besides, the thing I needed more than anything else was exactly what I got: water and a bed. I unpacked some things, determined to repack the next day is such a way as to make my stuff bearable to carry. I studied my map very carefully, and burned the most direct route from my hotel to the hostel I wanted into my brain. I stared out the window for a while, trying to figure which side of the street I was on, and whether I should go right or left after checking out. Based on my studies of the map, it seemed to me that it would be clear. In one direction, the road dead-ended fairly shortly. The other direction curved around and kept going. I did not want that way.

I was confident, if exhausted and slightly overwhelmed. I went to sleep when it was still light out. Having not slept at all on the flight from Chicago, I needed it.

"How could God do this?" - Rainn Wilson

2010-01-16T02:47:00.002-06:00

Once upon a time,
A man rode on a horse.
For those who walked on feet
He had so little remorse!

Whenever Rainn came down
His umbrella-dry head
Avoided, easily, the mud,
And, chin-up proud, he said:

"You never know what you can do
Until you give it a go."
The feet-walker beside him said:
"I have no horse, though."

The horseman flabbergastedly
Shitted one coin his way.
"Work hard and save your money,
And you'll too ride one day."

Charitably satisfied at this,
The rich one trotted on,
Reaching the next town by dusk,
Waking to news at dawn:

"Your brother never made it.
In the night: a flash flood."
He, enraged, to the stable
And drained his horse of blood.

"Strong, swift, well-trained beast!
You could've saved the man!!!"
The horse's final words were these:
"The reigns were in your hand."

Revelations

2009-12-09T14:08:00.006-06:00

Not the book in the Bible. I had one earlier this week. I don't know if these things can be put simply into words, but it sounded something like, "I don't have to go to school." I wrote the following email to my new friend, Allison-with-plenty-of-Ls-to-share-with-me. She was very excited and encouraging. I also received a great deal of encouragement and advice from my friends at SoulPancake.com, who- despite technically being strangers- know me better than my roommates and are perhaps the biggest reason I'm not still spiraling downward into a Sylvia Plath-style depression.

I promise to actually let you reply to one of my emails before sending you a second one someday... just not this time.

I'm doing it. I've pretty much already ruined my chances at not failing some of my classes this semester. It's finals week here, and there are things I'm not doing that I should be. I think it's been clear all along that I was never going to finish college. I've always been a bad student; it's just that the public school system is so terrifyingly broken that my mildly above average level of intelligence was enough to make up for the fact that I didn't care and wasn't trying.

I was just afraid of not knowing what else I was supposed to do besides college. I've been to three VERY different schools and haven't found what I'm looking for at any of them. But I'm afraid of moving back in with my parents and going back to my job at the elementary school and never doing anything, so I want to DO something.

I want to buy a video camera, and a van to live in the back of, and drive across the country pretending to look for something, but I know that what I'm really looking for is a meaningful connection with someone who can make me feel like I'm not alone, and the motivation to act on the ideas and dreams I have. Will I really be able to form meaningful relationships by constantly traveling from one place to another?

Maybe I should just move to a different city or something and try to "start over" there?

Maybe I should travel for a while and then find a place to stay?

Maybe I should travel until I find the right place?

Maybe I should follow you to Russia?

Maybe I don't have this quite as figured out as I thought, but I need to figure it out because this is happening. There is no more someday. I refuse to live in the "someday" and "if only" mindset, anymore. If only I just graduate from high school, then I'll be in college with new people and new opportunities and I'll finally get to do what I want. If only I just get my degree, then doors will open to me and I'll finally be free to reach for my dreams. If only I get a good, stable job, then I'll have enough money to really do what I want to do. If only I work for a few more years and save up enough, then when I retire I'll be able to do all the things I've always wanted to do.

Well, I'm not waiting until I'm 60.

I'm sure I've told you that I lived at home (for free) and worked, and didn't go to school, for about three years. Well, as a result, I have several thousand dollars saved up, which I was planning to basically live off of during school, so that I didn't have to work and be in school at the same time. But that plan will just leave me with a Bachelor's Degree and no money, and about three years closer to the end of my life. Maybe I'm being naive and reckless, or maybe I'm being ambitious and adventurous, or maybe they're the same thing. I'm just so tired of feeling like I'm wasting my life, and like the whole point of what I'm doing now is just to prepare me for some mysterious thing called "someday" that people twice my age are also still waiting for. I'm making today someday.

I'll post a couple of additional comments I made during the discussion I had about this on SP.

You're right on about the future. It never seems to come, you know? Every single time I wake up thinking it's tomorrow, it never is. It's always today. So, I think it's time to start living IN today instead of living FOR tomorrow. Tomorrow will demand a lot, and then never show up.

And

You don't have to worry about me trusting too many people. I don't make friends. This is part of why I want to just LEAVE. I want to be outside of my comfort zone. I want to abolish it. I want to force myself into a new kind of lifestyle, because staying the course hasn't worked so far.

And

@PopeSkippyXVI " It is astounding how quickly things tie you down." Yes. Thank you. Great advice, that gets right to the heart of what I want to run away from. I'm so terrified of waking up one morning and realizing that I've spent all my time just trying to MAINTAIN.

"But I have traveled, got to work a little in some movies, I've been published three or four times, got to see plays I've written play to full houses," YES.

"been propositioned more times than I can count, taken 'em up more times than I should have," I doubt I'll have to worry about that.

"and have become quite competent in a handfuls of disciplines. Might have made more money the other way, but not only would I not trade it," I want to be able to say that when I'm your age (and I don't even know how old you are).

And

@seedeypete Not maybe. That's why I'm trying to change the way I live my life; to stop hiding in my room. Granted, maybe hanging out with roommates would be a logical first step, but I just can't take the small steps because I'm too scared. Every time I dip my toe in, it sends chills up my spine and I run away. So it's time to jump in.

I've been considering where to go, and my only answer so far is "everywhere" or "anywhere." I definitely want to go to Europe, and to travel all across the U.S. Like I said in the email, I'm still figuring things out.

Now, how the hell am I going to tell my parents?

"But I REALLY have to go!"

2009-11-25T00:00:00.003-06:00

I'm Gonna Jump!

2009-11-24T23:56:00.001-06:00

Not An Entrance

2009-11-24T23:47:00.000-06:00

Three Dimensions

2009-11-24T23:46:00.000-06:00

Toned Abandonment

2009-11-24T23:31:00.001-06:00

Standing Out

2009-11-24T23:28:00.002-06:00

Travel Plans Fall Through

2009-11-24T23:21:00.002-06:00

Descent

2009-11-24T23:11:00.001-06:00

A Need

2009-11-21T16:40:00.003-06:00

I've got a burning, inside. Not the kind one might get after a one night stand in a seedy motel. And not the kind that is a desire. It's a need.

I want to go to New York, and from there travel west across the country, and then continue west, across the entire world, until I eventually find myself back in New York. I've never stayed at a school for more than semester, and I doubt I'll stay at this one long enough to graduate. It's expensive to travel, but I have lots of money saved up from all the time I worked in between going to school.

The problem, though, as is perpetually the problem in my life, is that I am by myself. I don't want to travel by myself. That, for me, would defeat the purpose. I do not have some romantic notion about changing the entire world. I just want to live in it. All my life, in everything I've ever done- I've done it by myself. This, though, would be too much for me to undertake alone.

Wouldn't it?

Retreat

2009-10-18T23:34:00.002-05:00

A hermit hunchback, alone
Looked down on the city
Saw one who’d shown
Even him graceful pity

He climbed down from the roof
To get closer to her
And found certain proof
She wanted him to show her

The scarred half-smile
He hid under his hood
They talked quite a while
And he felt understood

She beckoned him outside
Of the hole in which he lived
He stepped out to find
She had even more to give

She reached her hand up to his face
And, looking into her beautiful eyes
He knew that next to her was the place
He wanted to stay until he died

She said “LOVE” when he would miss her
And “I want all of you”
But when he leaned in, trying to kiss her
She gasped and quickly withdrew

But she cares! And they’re friends!
And he’ll meet someone someday!
The conversation ended
With him walking away

His hood pulled over his head
To hide his crooked, lopsided face
And the tears that he shed
Which fell with quickening pace

“So it’s back to the belfry,
Or the hole in the mud.
If even she won’t have me
Then how could anyone?”

Three Magic Words

2009-10-18T23:31:00.001-05:00

The creation of the "hot pink dove" metaphor.

Bench-dwelling
Cold, shaking
Piss-smelling
Heartbreaking

His roof is the stars
His bed is the dirt
He has fallen far
Has hurt and been hurt

Hope, suddenly
In the form of
A heavenly
And hot pink dove

His dry, cracked lips
Whisper, “Hello.”
As the dove dips
And dives down low

Hot pink dove shit
Falls at his feet
He touches it
Naught else to eat

The dove flies away
Leaving behind death
As he tries to say
With his final breath:

“I love you.”

Well...

2009-10-16T05:56:00.002-05:00

... I think I just spammed the United States Senate. I sent every Senator the following, via email:

Steel-faced Lady Liberty sheds a tear

Which falls heavy on the paper Hancock signed

As we celebrate our 233rd year

Others are twice that far behind

You bicker; endless politicking

It is time to put semantics aside

Voice, the hangman's clock is ticking!

Soon seven innocent will unjustly die

Stepping down from high horses makes feet dirty

But if you look men in the eye

You will see that they, too, are worthy

Wether Christian, Muslim, Jew, or Baha'i

Her tears beg, admonish, order you

This injustice wounds Her noble heart

YOU WILL DO WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO

THEY ARE NOT A WORLD APART

Reach out a hand in friendship, or fist

The only way the message will be sent

That we will not stand for this

Is for us to stand against

Light Liberty's torch up high!

Let it bake her tears all dry

Bright up the darkness of those who are blind

Let us not miss this chance to shine

Mahvash Sabet

Fariba Kamalabadi

Jamaloddin Khanjani

Afif Naeimi

Saeid Rezaie

Behrouz Tavakkoli

Vahid Tizfahm

My Own Little World

2009-10-13T17:17:00.001-05:00

Alex vs. Me, or Life vs. Unlife

2009-10-13T17:14:00.001-05:00

Me

2009-10-13T17:13:00.000-05:00

Alex

2009-10-13T17:11:00.003-05:00

"Light breaks where no sun shines" - Dylan Thomas

2009-10-01T17:12:00.003-05:00

Life and Death

2009-10-01T17:07:00.006-05:00

The Fear of Falling In

2009-10-01T17:01:00.001-05:00

When I Look Up...

2009-10-01T16:33:00.001-05:00

Trapped in this Photograph

2009-09-29T22:34:00.003-05:00

Photo by Alison Ford

The winter thaws,
And Spring longs to press its
Green letters up through the dirt,
Spelling out “R-E-S-U-R-R-E-C-T-I-O-N.”
The pale, yellowed stalks of still death
That are crunched beneath my feet, as
The line of sickly skeleton-trees I leave behind me,
And the soft grey of the sky, all amount to nothing
More than “R. I. P.”

Meanwhile, the sun sets.
Unless it is the beginning.
I have no sense of life or time,
For I am frozen in this moment.
Trapped in this photograph.

I know only now, and even this is obscured.

Opaque and flameless hands
Reach for me, but cannot grasp
That which is hidden. I breathe deeply.
The smell of security is stale and nauseating.
This black hole necessarily binds my individuality,
Saving my life and killing me.
The absence permits no light or time
Or personality to escape.
Identity is distorted; destroyed.
And the worst part is I cannot
Know if safety is worth the cost.

Who am I?

I am not my past. I do not remember
The trees’ naked branches.
I am not my future. Drowned
By a fallen cloud, I cannot see where I am going.

Who am I?

Things I'll Never Say

2009-09-28T12:03:00.004-05:00

Remember when I gave you this? You probably thought all the stuff about "goodbye" was foolish, but look where we are now. Even though I tried to hold on to it, I always knew I was going to lose the only friendship I have ever known.

You will surely wonder what this is; my reply:
This is what I keep secret every single day;
What I’m thinking about when I stare off, quiet.
This poem is full of all the things I’ll never say.

Among the things I will never say:
“I’m sorry,” that I couldn’t tell you
“Thank you,” for being my friend, anyway,
And “Goodbye” because I will surely blink soon.

But first, I write you these words I could never say.
I’ve more thoughts than there are stars on high.
My feelings outnumber the ocean’s perpetual waves,
But less words to share them than Suns in the sky.

A frightened bee instinctively stings. It’s my nature, I suppose,
To hide myself from you, like a secret or mystery.
You won’t know I care unless I say it, so here goes...
My secretest secret of all: You mean everything to me.

A philosophical robot musing on humanity
Has his heart and breath stolen by a soaring, singing bird.
Her presence is the answer, her absence insanity.
When gone in blue, her pretty song still painfully heard.

It is not enough for me, this momentary glimpse.
I examine dazzling knives, then they’re shoved in my eyes.
You remind me that people need meaningful relationships.
Isolation doesn’t hurt so much, but it neither satisfies.

I was a man born blind, led down to the shore.
An angel’s voice commanded me, “Blink one time.”
My eyes opened filled with tears, for they’d never seen before,
And now a miraculous and spiritually beautiful sight was mine.

Before me the angel, her pretty smile shone.
Infectious, her laughter, like out of breath, silent.
Beneath, soft sand like silk settled between my toes.
Behind her, the ocean played its waves beautifully violent.

Beyond that, the sun was just rising in the sky,
Making clouds burning embers: purple, blue, orange, red.
They call this “the heavens,” and I finally know why.
I could never have fathomed such a sight in my head.

How could a smile so affect the heart of a man?
Or the miracle of dawn so touch my soul?
Such power in a shared joke in the concession stand?
Suddenly: “Soon the glimpse’s brevity takes its toll.”

She warns, “Its over when you blink your eyes again.”
My eyelids are heavy, and the darkness surrounds.
Dawn becomes starless dusk, and the world grows dim.
Engulfed by ending black. No more sight. Only sound.

And the sound is not of waves but of weeping and wails.
Fresh tears from my eyes are the heralds of deep hurt.
When glorious glimpses end, grim isolation prevails.
Alison, you go on, but to my loneliness I return.

I don’t blame vague “society” for my predicament at all.
I dug this hole, brought this isolation on myself.
Nobody locked me up. I silently stonemasoned this wall,
Behind which I hoard my secrets like some treasure or wealth.

But this wealth is empty, worthless, I can’t give it away,
Like the barren frozen tundra of my ungiveable heart.
Between the bricks, one narrow crack: You, the light of my day.
You are unique in my world, special to me, set apart.

Darkness is heavy at the bottom of a pit this deep,
Daylight is a pinhole, one star in my lonely sky.
Eyes strained, a brief glimpse of the world above, and I weep,
For joy (I saw you!); in pain (you left). I break when you pass by.

A feeling needn’t be romantic to be powerful.
This is [still] not a love poem. You are my only and best friend
Which makes it hard to share how unbearably miserable
I am that it’s a matter of time until it comes to an end.

Trust me, it will, although I do not want it to.
For a secret keeper like me who digs holes and falls in,
Losing my rare friends by burning bridges is just what I do.
I’ll also never say that you’ve committed no sin.

You’ve done nothing wrong. I wouldn’t change a single thing;
Not one moment or word, except all those not said by me.
After all, I have finally found something worth saying:
Your friendship opened my eyes. Alison, you set me free.

R.I.P.

2009-09-28T12:01:00.001-05:00

“A poem, torn to pieces
Is a nightmare and a tragedy,”
I think, as my hand releases
Shards of shattered word-beauty.

“But,” the poem speaks to me
From its grave; from the trash,
“I am not ink on paper, merely
Torn up or burned to ash.

Poems cannot be contained.
Once you make me, I am free.
Born of you, but sustained
By the Spirit of Creativity.

Now I sail across the ocean blue,
And brave the dark of space.
I no longer belong to you,
Though you once saw my face.”

My poem told me all these things
In the most heavenly voice,
And, upon white angel’s wings,
Took flight and did rejoice.

But I, alone, cried a tear
For, overcome with shame
And puppet-mastered by my fear,
I had believed my poem lame.

“To my own poem I did treachery!
Can this ever be forgiven?”
Then my poem returned to me,
Said, “Yes,” and flew again.

Now I write this “R.I.P.”
For “Rejoice, Innocent Poem.” So
To remember one destroyed by me,
That stays with me everywhere I go.

Restless Legs Syndrome!

2009-09-28T11:56:00.000-05:00

The room was dark and it smelled like various flowers
Our family had been talking, crying, praying for hours
Finally, the mounting tension snapped like a board
First a knock, then it opened and Doctor walked in the door

He was nervous, aware of over a dozen eyes fixated on him
As he glanced down at the chart, his face turned pale- grim
Tears welling up in his eyes, he met mine, then quickly looked away
His voice thin and cracking, so that we barely heard him say:

You have Restless Legs Syndrome!
There is no cure!
Yes, we ran the test twice,
just to be sure.

The treatment is deadly poison rampaging through my veins
In what was once my bed, only a thin and ghostly thing remains
I am eaten away by side effects: Insomnia, dry mouth, mood swings,
Headache, indigestion, loss of appetite, and other terrible things

Seeing my deterioration, they send in the first line of defense:
Grief Counselor tells me lots of kind things that don't make sense
Wave two, in the form of Father Priest, I send old man packing
It's not God or peace, I tell him, it's a miracle I'm lacking.

I have Restless Legs Syndrome!
There is no cure!
Why would God do this? Father Priest
can't be sure.

Miraculously I struggle through, and next year becomes a real thing.
“It’s not as easy as it looks,” I tell them, “It’s really tiring.”
I keep a journal of my doubts and all of my prayers.
I think mine is a great story, and one that needs to be shared.

My book becomes a bestseller. They make a movie about it and all.
I conveniently forget that thing which comes before the fall.
A meek and frail looking woman approaches at the red carpet premiere.
We talk a while, and eventually she shyly tells me why she’s here:

I have Restless Legs Syndrome.
There is no cure.
Please, tell me what it takes
to endure.

Smiling back, I repeat the lines that I wrote and rewrote tenfold.
I think she’s hearing the greatest story anyone’s ever been told.
I tell her how strong I was, to never lose hope in the face of it.
It beats some people, but not me. I think she should be satisfied, and yet...

She looks right into my eyes with hers, which are a piercing blue,
says: “Sir, you may be healed, but I will continue to pray for you.”
I ask why and she explains that she knows exactly what healing is.
God saves her life, though her body fails, and with goodbye she says:

You had Restless Legs Syndrome,
and found a cure.
You’re dying anyway, hooked
by Pride’s lure.

A Love Story

2009-09-24T17:07:00.003-05:00

Broken Open, Empty Inside

2009-09-24T16:38:00.004-05:00

A Holocaust

2009-09-24T01:23:00.006-05:00

Open Your Eyes!

2009-09-24T00:25:00.002-05:00

They lure seductively: “Open your eyes! Open your eyes!
Listen close children, for you must realize
There are things you will be expected to sacrifice
To survive in this world of savage, selfish vice.
You must seek wealth. You must be prepared.
You must look out for yourself, and always be scared.”

You scream rebelliously: “Open your eyes! Open your eyes!
I will torch your towers! Better say your goodbyes.
You live for yourself and so destroy the Earth.
These things you can’t take with you, how much are they worth?
Are they worth starving masses? Are they worth acid rain?
When your time here passes, the damage you’ve done will remain!”

I beg desperately: “Open your eyes! Open your eyes!
For if you open them wide (Open them wide!) You will see mine.
And, seeing my eye, you will find yourself there, inside,
And an image of me in your reflection’s eye,
Until, falling endlessly into each other, we realize
We are not separate but united. We are we, not you and I.”

Accepting My Fate

2009-09-24T00:20:00.002-05:00

Screaming with all my might
But I’m muted by the rain pouring down.
Drifting, lost, in complete absence of light.
It’s hopeless. I know I’m going to drown.

Kicking my legs and flailing my arms
As the sea hungrily laps at my face.
Ironically, I know it means me no harm.
I do not belong in this place.

I exhaust myself, to no avail.
Though ever, and longingly, I look
I see no ship. I see no sail.
I’ve reached the unnecessary blank page at the end of my book.

Just close your eyes, inhale, relax.
Let the ocean fill your lungs.
At first you will struggle. Involuntary gasp.
Then relief in the darkness, as death finally comes.

Fall

2009-09-24T00:13:00.004-05:00

Facial hair accelerates
Because month alliterates
Armor jacket protection
From deadly convection
Single slight breeze
Unprotected face freezes
Flip-flops questionable
Logic is undetectable

Can’t feel feet
Crunching corpses beneath
Skeletons standing bare
I become aware
Sky minus sun
Grey victory won
Nature appears defeated
Happiness meets it

Joy here deceased
River tears released
Spirit flung low
Life missing glow
Hope dies aground
Amidst rustling sound
Leaves lose shades
Heart shrivels fades

Teary eyes detect
Above their head
Precision fowl soar
Toward locations warm
Resemble marching column
It is autumn
Most rightfully call
This season Fall

Life is Good and Life Sucks

2009-09-22T02:12:00.002-05:00

I’ve lost my focus.
Like a camera’s cracked lens,
I can’t see clearly.
Perspective was sand in my fist,
but you the breeze came for just
a moment (because that is all the time
it takes for you to affect me), and
it was lost between my fingers.
Clarity and contentment had visited
me like an angel in a dream,
but it took the form of a
quirky driver’s yellow jeep and
the spare tire cover on the back,
which read, in the giggly bubble letters
of a seventh-grade love note:
“Life is good.”
I took a long, happy sigh, noticed
the beauty and color of new spring and
the sound of good music embracing me
like eager lovers do, and agreed.
Until, that is, I glimpsed you once again
(for it is just a glimpse between the time
you walk in the door and when you “Bye, Ryan!” out again).
Such glimpses are only and just long
enough to remind me how much better
my life could be with more of
you in it.
And when, like a child walking past
the toy aisle, or a cripple rolling
by a gym, I realize I’ll never
have that, I can only conclude:
“Life sucks.”

Friendship

2009-09-22T02:10:00.002-05:00

The infinity after my death,
The second before the Big Bang,
The soft kiss of a girl who loves me,
But, the mightiest mane is
Friendship, the Alpha Mystery of life.

Metaphysical and holy, or
Like a morning fog,
Lacking definition and boundary,
Defying gravity like rain rising up,
This thing escapes logic and is
Beyond the reach of mathematics.

This mystery, like most, takes the form of a question:

“Are you and I friends?”

Even if I could split the atom or
Accidentally create penicillin,
Every discovery leads to a thousand more questions.
Friendship would still be a complete mystery,
And still more confusing than
A funny accent talking too fast.

Do I owe you more, like a government does a minority?
Should I let you in? Because,
If you’re the starving homeless, and I the wealthy elite,
I so desperately want to share.
Like a shaken soda can, I’m ready to burst
With thoughts and feelings and fears,
And like a funnel or a laser light
The secrets that spill out of me, focused,
Will find their way into your ear
Because you are my umbrella in the rain
And the eye of my hurricane.
You are my only respite.

But, my God! What if I drown you?
I’m a pretty screwed up guy and
There’s a chance I’ve been looking at
This whole situation through the
Fun house mirror of my own loneliness.
What if you’re the rich one, and I need
You to listen, and you couldn’t care less?
What if the thing I suspect of being friendship
Is really just the spare change you tossed at me
While you passed by on the street?

So, if you’re a sleeping baby
Or a hibernating bear, I’m terrified
Of disturbing you with my concerns
That are none of yours.
But I’m a lonely guy, with
Things on my chest that weigh me down,
And I just wish I knew
Whether or not you want me
To talk to you.

Cities

2009-09-22T02:08:00.001-05:00

How easy not to believe
In the empty blackness overhead
Like an empty, desert-dry sea
Surely, Heaven does look dead

Lost in a forest man-made of steel
Loneliness stings in this swarm of faces
Streetlights are blindfolds that conceal
So we must find God in the dark places