Days of waiting have added up to weeks now. It’s been a cold so bitter and biting that I’m pretty sure my next reflection will show me that my nose is, in fact, no longer present. I suspect the northerly that blows so consistently these days sank its icy teeth and ripped it off sometime last night but without any feeling left in my face, I’m left to speculate. Oh well.
With the nights colder and the days getting shorter, it takes a little more determination to do the things one must do to survive this life of uncertainty and constant travel with no end in sight. Music, exercise, socializing — life. You know.
It takes real effort when the sky is grey and flies drop like weighted-down clumps of lint from the sudden loss of temperature. Sitting down at a desk next to a window to write means taking off gloves, something I’m averse to in an ice age apartment littered with the corpses of frozen mosquitoes. And writing like this takes more than inspiration; it takes determination, a combination of will power beating up on creativity. It takes balls. Also, it takes something I lack at the moment, and that is a space heater.
But discipline is a very valuable thing, and it’s malleable, since you can pound the hell out of it and eventually get results. Creativity, though, is a much larger bitch altogether and you can’t beat her to death with a stick - like a woman that’s worth having, she comes when she wants to, not when she’s called.
But discipline is what’s important and if you beat it for long enough, creativity tends to come out - not as a general rule but statistically the odds are there. Even Mark Twain had to write copy to pay the bills, and HST wrote a lot of shit that would’ve found a more comfortable home in a recycle bin than on the pages of Rolling Stone magazine. And these things are worth remembering in times like this. It builds character and gets you through the troughs. Fortunately, whiskey also works well enough and my friend Jameson always goes to bat for me in the face of desperation.
–
It seems only weeks ago that I moved to Europe and became stuck in a holding pattern, waiting for my employer to figure out where to send me. Days and days went by with nothing produced but the paycheck stubs…they were rolling in on schedule and as planned, and thank God for that, since it’s all that justified my continued existence for a while.
What amounted to weeks of time went towards facebook, writing blogs for an audience of unknown size or demographic, and planning the end of the year party. Sometimes they blamed it on the commitment from the sales folk but whatever the reasons, there were those who noticed and took the time to describe my life as some kind of fantasy camp of doing nothing, receiving a steady paycheck and being told that you’ll travel next week. Sounds great, right?
Sure. But if doing nothing persists and next week never comes, the situation slowly becomes toxic. All kinds of pestilent and toxic things fester in stagnant, standing and idle waters. When no winds blow to dis-branch the leaves and ruffle the feathers, to ripple the waves and spread tourist trash, deadly things build up, and so it is with men. Like a frog in boiled water, it’s easy to adjust to what’s killing you, so long as you’re ignoring it. I almost got stuck in that trap once.
But these people know nothing of boiling frogs. Doing nothing for extended periods of time is an endurance trial; it’s the most exhausting and physically draining activity you can engage in, next to cab driving or soccer.
So I try to endure. Remain dour and steadfast - hold out. Man is a beast of very few actual needs; an incredibly stalwart and resilient animal. Man can survive on astoundingly low quantities of food and water, comfort and shelter; he can push the limits of rest where sleep is concerned, intoxicate his body beyond reason and even watch entire marathons of Kirsten Dunst movies, if it came to that. But he needs validation; he needs purpose. Without it he goes insane with ennui, and that’s just the best case scenario. Sometimes a man will snap, and that’s when you get things like serial killers, tractor pulls and Miss America pageants, and eventually, in extreme cases, Scientology.
I was on the verge of crossing this line.
Yet now, as I continue to observe the city, its people and its tourists, I am reminded that I am not one of them. I may walk among them now, but I am not one of them no matter how much I want to be. And so the old question burns me more than ever.
I no longer wonder whether to move abroad, of course - it’s a little late in the game for that kind of hesitation. I’ve already peaced-out, closed accounts and paid foreign taxes. It’s not about moving because that’s just logistics. And when it’s on the company dime, I eat logistics for breakfast. After all, here I am, sitting canal-side, watching boats go by with “Amsterdam” written on their aft, and admiring myself for having taken the game even this far. But where does it stop? When do you go back?
Hmm.
I’m starting to suspect that it doesn’t stop; that I don’t go back. It’ll go on until I collapse or do something stupid like get married again. And we can’t have that, can we?
No, no we can’t. And now we know better.
I guess the itch, the question in question was never so much about Can it be done but rather: Can I see this through? Can I make this work? Friends, on this side of the pond permanently now, I am that much closer to something that I can describe as redemption & validation at the same time. Stay tuned for a more finalized judgment. But know that Europe and I — we’re working.
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Unthinkable that I’m writing this here. It’s not ready.
I don’t quite understand it yet, but it’s been too long and you people give me no rest when I ignore this place. Rejoice, readers, for I come back to you, if only temporarily, for a teaser. Don’t worry - I’ll impart the details as they become appropriate.
Many things have passed since last I was here. Bear in mind that that last entry didn’t count because I was literally on the run and that story needed to be told in mid-chase or it would’ve lost all sense of priority and urgency. Nevermind that I wrote it in a hotel lobby… it needed to be done. Things like that don’t need a reason. Lot’s of things can happen when you’re out in the wild without a notebook or any other sort of connection to the office. Sometimes you feel like you’re being chased by wild bureaucrats through all kinds of colored streets in the dead of night, and for weeks on end. So there may be a reason after all for those animals not to keep me in touch with the rest of the world, but they certainly didn’t tell me why.
With my electronic notebook in a state of semi-functionality and only pseudo-ability to be useful for more than 60 seconds at a time, I have been left stranded in the isles of no internet and hand-written notes and journal entries. This is not necessarily bad, but it’s certainly inconvenient and puts a damper on my ability to post as often as you’d like me to. So settle down and get a grip. And besides, I’ve had company lately, so you need to know that I’m not ALL yours, you understand?
But rest assured, I’ll catch you up soon. There are tales in the works, real stories that have been my adventures and will soon be your fantasies. There are happenings that were as fun as they were unexpected and may even have been slightly illegal… we’ll find out soon enough. Roughly, I expect, after I post them. And that will come soon. Just give me some time.
Aloha. Yes.
Mahalo.
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At the moment I am on my 37th hour of perpetual consciousness following an all-nighter of every museum in Amsterdam and then a red-eye to Madrid. I am sitting at the tiny hotel desk scribbling this note frantically while outside the night is slowly turning to dawn. It’s 5:10 in the morning and decent people are not awake, which is why I am still writing and not running to save my life. A shit storm is about to blow the windows of this room.
I want to get this down fast because I don’t have a lot of time before I have to get out of here. It won’t take long to pack, since all I have on me are the clothes on my back a couple of notebooks, a novel I’ve already read and a violin case with a cheap Chinese fiddle inside. I don’t know why I’m bothering with the violin; it’s not like I play the damn thing. But it’s a perfectly good fiddle and it did cost someone about a hundred euros. My laptop broke down a couple days ago so I didn’t bother dragging it out to Madrid. They lost the rest of my luggage somewhere between Amsterdam and Munich so at least it’s their problem now. I won’t have to carry anything and will just have to figure out how to find it later. With any luck I can get them to ship it straight to me, though not at this hotel… not anymore.
What I could use right now is a little more time and some clarity - I need to think. But I can do that on my way out of here, I guess, which needs to be soon. I could also use a map of the city marking police stations and cheap hotels and perhaps some deodorant. All of these items are, by the way, in my lost bag which is in the capable hands of the Lufthansa ground staff at the Munich regional airport for some inexplicable reason.
The issue of the moment is that they’ve messed up my hotel reservations here and I’ll have to be leaving a day earlier than I’d planned, which is a hassle and and normally they would be forcing me out of the hotel this morning to make room for another paying guest. Normally I’d also get until 10 or 11 am before I had to leave; the typical check out time. But not now.
No, Christmas will come much sooner this year for the strong-armed Spanish bell boys of the NH hotel in Madrid. Those kids will have to do more than just carry luggage today. When they come to check me out of the hotel they’ll be wanting more than just my credit card and signature and if I’m still here I am not going to enjoy it.
God, it’s going to be messy: when they walk into the reception area today and see the bar reduced to shattered martini glasses and peanuts strewn with the shards all over the floor they’re going to have a suspect on their minds and that suspect is going to bear a very strong resemblance to the man in room 403.
I am that man.
There will be a lot of explanations requested and reimbursement required and I want no part in either. I’m a busy man and become very frustrated by having to explain why the bar is destroyed with peanuts on a Tuesday morning, especially this early. And that may be just the best-case scenario, the civilized scenario - and I’m not counting on it. This is, after all, Spain, a nation of hard-headed Catholics, Moorish-Visigoths who run with bulls and stomp on wood. They are people who see ripping the necks off of geese and using the sinewy toughness to slide down a foxline over a lake as a constructive way to pass the time on a Sunday. What they will do with me here, I can’t imagine.
–
I couldn’t sleep last night after 4 am. It happens often, especially in my line of work and it’s not altogether a healthy thing, but what the hell? I didn’t decide to be what they call a road warrior for the health of it. I had wandered downstairs, hoping to sneak into the breakfast buffet and get some carbohydrates in me while I read from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slapstick. When I found the place locked and not a soul in the reception to help, I sat at the bar in the hall between the breakfast buffet and the reception desk. The bar was relatively small, mirrored and had several shelves of glasses and only a few with bottles.
The peanut jar was open so without thinking, I grabbed a handful and lined them up on the bar. I started flicking them at the mirror for no reason other than that’s what seemed like the right thing to do to peanuts that are lined up. Like anxious foot soldiers they stood at attention on a bar at four in the morning. I would aim at the bottles that jumped out at me, the blue Bombay Sapphire, the green Tanqueray, the yellow label on the Cutty Sark, and whatever marketing splash Absolut recently dreamed up.
When I hit the first glass and knocked it off the shelf, it very naturally smashed on the floor into a thousand little pieces. I was certain it would have awoken half of the hotel or at least someone who would care enough to storm into that hallway to find out what animal had gotten into the bar and chase it away with a mop. I was sure they’d be shocked but I was also paranoid - as I said, I haven’t slept much in the last two days.
I didn’t hear loud and fast footsteps headed towards me right away with Spanish calls of “what the hell are you doing, you fiend?”, but I grabbed a bottle of Contreau just the same, reasoning that it would do some good damage with it’s hard angles and rectangular corners, should it come to that. I waited by the desk at the reception, crouched below eyesight and thought up all kinds of stories I could use before I had to get violent.
But nothing happened. Nobody had been disturbed by the shattering and I started thinking of pushing my luck. After a short time I went back and lined up a whole slew of them on the bar, my troops ready and willing. At first I flicked them indiscriminately, more out of anger and spite, content in my knowledge that I had time to flick the peanuts and surprised by my own impulse and unwavering hate, bent on lashing out at a hotel bar in a very dark part of the night. But then I started getting efficient, choosing more solid peanuts, kernels with both halves or else the ones with a slight curve underneath so that I could get my finger under it and provide enough lift to hit the top shelf.
Before long I had improved my aim down to bottle caps and just above the center of gravity of the martini glasses. I was mindlessly destroying the place. It only took about 10 minutes of fun to lay it all to waste. Not complete destruction, mind you, but certainly beyond cheap repair. I’m normally not a violent person but this morning I was pushed over some line for some reason; the feeling was genuine. It lacked a plan, a coherent line of thought, but not enjoyment. This was a truly twisted act that would cause someone a lot of work, a lot of grief, some debt and perhaps some anger, and the worst part about the whole affair is how much I liked it.
–
I think that I could explain where the desire for hopeless violence came from, especially given their attitude towards kicking me out when the mistake was theirs. I could rationalize it with the fact that I resented being kicked out of their hotel before I was good and ready to leave. But I couldn’t justify the destruction of their bar. That was an act of irresponsible malice that normally should have no business in a civilized society and anyone crazy enough to actually do such a thing should probably be locked up and guarded by rottweilers.
Wait. Whoops. Did I say that?
Well - in any case. It sure felt good.
But as I said, I don’t have a lot of time and soon some poor Peruvian woman will walk into the hotel to vacuum and dust and sweep before the actual staff arrives. Her usual routine will be torn when she sees the disaster this place is in and begins to fear the attackers are still on the premises, which I hope to God that I’m not. She will be filled with confusion, make the motion of the cross on her chest and mumble out a prayer of some kind. But with any luck she’ll snap out of it and start with the vacuuming, getting most of the peanuts, thereby erasing the evidence of my presence down to shards of glass, perhaps seen as a common break-in. They won’t discover that there’s nothing missing but the broken glasses for at least a couple of hours and by then I think I can be at another hotel across town where these guys will give up on me. Madrid is a very large place.
There an obvious lesson in this, but it applies more to them than to me. That lesson is to never leave the bar open with the peanuts out. I’m pretty sure it can be metaphorically applied to a great many situations.
Madrid, Spain — November 2007
Alberto Aguillera NH, Room 403
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The message came in much earlier, sometime around 22:00 last night but I was somewhere else, maybe watching LOST in Spanish or at a bar, or something. Yeah, that’s it - when her message came in I was at a bar in the casco viejo of Madrid.
The bar was all dark wood, carved by the hands of artists. And I don’t mean just the bar either, like, just a plank of hand-sculpted wood on which to serve drinks. No. The whole establishment was one large cave of mahogany or something. If you farted or your cell phone vibrated, I’m sure the whole place would feel it. I didn’t really realize it until my eyes got used to the dim lights and the Buena Vista Social Club started playing loud Cuban music out of the jukebox. The rusty metal signs were hand-made for sure, bent with pliers and cut with hack saws. Sangria and olive oil was kept consistently within arm’s reach of everybody, probably for good measure, and a smoked leg of ham stood propped on the bar on some home-made stand with its hoof out, like a dog ready to shake paws. It was almost carved to the bone but there were still another couple of hours worth of raw meat from that pork.
But the rafters of the place; they really did me in. I like old rafters the way older men like Buicks and Cadillacs and, in some cases, Volkswagens. The beam was supported by a strange thing indeed, a shape which both terrified me and captivated my eyes and my fantasies. My attention was ensnared and I couldn’t look away. It was, on closer inspection, a wooden sculpture of a sinewy human form, deathless for eons and sickly thin. Like a slave sailor on an old Spanish Galleon, it was positioned hunched over with its feet on the wall about 2 meters up, with the rafter over its shoulders, as if supporting the falling mast of a ship. If the wall had been the floor instead and the ceiling, the figure might have been sitting against a tree trunk with its knees bent, its arms grabbing the tree behind its head. Dark visions clouded my thoughts and it called into being all kinds of pictures of angel and images of vampires, pale mariners in the dark and the punished souls of demons. And in a place that full of sangria, it scared the ever-loving shit right out of me.
On the hand-painted walls, poor stucco jobs half-covered images of pistol-toting Mexican mermaids with conch shells covering their tits and dangling from their ears. The stucco was spattered, which had the effect of muffling the shouts of “cerveza” or “sangria: aqui.” On the walls where there weren’t images of flamenco-dancing beauties, lonely Guernikan nights, ancient masts for rafters or Bauhaus-twisted iron you saw things like rusting knights’ helmets, tastefully chosen warm Spanish colors and lots, and lots of vino.
…and I got mixed up in that Basque wine, half French, half Spanish with no identity to speak of and barely an identifiable language with which to associate. But I was under control, which is rare these days. I knew where I was, as I recognized that place from a few months earlier when I had spent a grand total of 16 hours in this city, 4 of which were spent on finding the hotel, 8 of which were spent on much needed sleep after careening around Europe for the last 2 weeks, 2 of them were spent in a movie, leaving another 2 to walk the streets of Madrid. And I recognized it immediately: Plaza Santa Ana. That was where we’d walked, had a Spanish tortilla, where it had all ended for them and started for me.
That’s also where, this time around, I decided that I was done with Madrid, at least for the time being. Having come to Madrid two weeks before, I’d already had my share of adventures and women and drink here. From the bar explosions to the distant clients, from the large city and its smog to the German Mädchen of fresh scents in the Tarifa adventure, I’d had too many fast times in that place. I needed rest.
So long, sucker - I have no more use for you. And all that.
It was off to the hotel in a fast cab, straight past the flirtatious reception girls that I would later take out on a few dates. But not tonight. Tonight was smack into my unfamiliar bed. FLOP! SLAM! Buenas noches.
–
Right. And here I am again, the sheets tossed around like an angry badger had it’s way with the place, and I’m no closer to sleep than Arnold is to the presidency. It worries me a little, by the way, that he’s even mentioned it, and a lot more that imbeciles talk about it like there was any fact or depth to that story at all. But that’s not what is troubling me tonight. No.
She had sent me a text message, a flirty kind of quick poke, a soft hello. An “I’m here, come and get me” scheme that rolled me out of bed and kept me there for far too long, reminiscing of kisses stolen on narrow streets in the dark, of windy lands far from here, of fast times since past.
It was Jana, the temptress from Tarifa, the sweet-smelling German girl who couldn’t stop saying my name in that weekend that I managed to escape from Madrid to Morocco. In her German accent, I would’ve been fine with hearing it until the sun came up. Now, in the silence of my hotel room, all I had of her was a little SMS icon blinking on my phone screen.
Granted, she was thinking of me, or at least that she had thought of me long enough to invest in some coordinated thumb-punching activities for a few minutes to let me know about it. That’s a sign kids; write it down.
And don’t get me wrong; I’m all for German babes with hot smiles and fast kisses thinking of me when I’m not around, and I was really into this chick. But she hadn’t responded to a message I’d left her 4 days earlier and I’d written her off as another great story and a memory that, while it would take longer to fade than others, would still fade nonetheless. Then that message went unanswered for 5 hours on a train ride through southwestern Spain. Then a day. Then 2. I’d been focused on obtuse clients and maddeningly bureaucratic business processes for the last two days -and now this
Where was the discipline? Where was the commitment to the dour principles of self-discovery, preservation and improvement? Where was the notion that I resent the very concept of girlfriends while my trek is underway? Where was the “Nooosssssssir, no anchors for me, thanks” - and all that?
Well. It almost went to pieces.
Yeah, I responded, and even proofread before I sent the thing. Yes, I sent an SMS back because the girl made me that jittery. I did almost lose my nerve and suggest that we meet up again since Germany isn’t all that far away from The Netherlands and I did have an episode of insomnia over the whole thing and yes, that’s why my sheets looked like a family of possums just had a lot of fun wrestling on my bed.
But I said “almost”. Did you forget who you’re dealing with here? I’m better now, and when I get done writing this, I’ll actually go to sleep, I think.
And why not? I loved it, babe, and you were special in those series of moments. That I was anything at all to you is sunshine on my heart; I never expected even that much. It was all for me at the time, and it was all I could get; there were no calculated risks, no saving anything for later. It was all out there - the way I roll. There was no pacing myself, giving some and taking a sustainable amount. What I saw was for the taking was pillaged and plundered, and I never looked back.
And don’t forget the rum, eh?
But I suspect that you too know something of fleeting moments. In that way we’re both folk of the road; we’ve both shared intimacy with others for extended, almost obscene amounts of time (in many senses of the word) and know that the term “one size fits all” never applied to us anyway. It’s not our bag, kid.
So I feel revived now. I’m glad this has all happened as it has and I think I’ll get a nap in before the next round of storms clears the horizon, or at least enough sleep to hold me off until my flight out of here tomorrow. But rest assured that “honey, I’m home” is far from anything I’ll ever say again without bursting into either gut-wrenching heaves, side-splitting laughter or desperate sobs of woe and fear of what I’ve allowed myself to become.
I’ve still got it.
Madrid, Spain — November, 2007
Alberto Aguilera NH, Room 403
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I did what I could for them and frankly reader, it was amazing stuff. For them, at least. I’ve seen shit like that a dozen times before but they were verily impressed. What can I say?
Now, I know I’ve said this other times and I reiterate: I will not write about work here… perhaps work-related experiences, but not work. Now that you believe me and trust me, let me tell you about the evening:
So there I was, sitting with my thoughts, sobriety and not a drink in sight. The office lights would occasionally go out since I was the only one still there. And dammit — I was working. Sometimes I don’t move for long periods of time when I’m that focused and at that point the light sensors lose me and out it all goes.
I was working on issues not all that small. In fact, I would venture to say that it was important. But it was work, so it won’t be mentioned here. Suffice to say that it was not trivial and I was goddamn kicking ass at it. Dammit, that’s just how I roll. I am. You think I’d be here if I didn’t rock the hell out of the system? I am, after all, a professional.
Anyways, I was at the terminal, working my innocent little butt off when my Austian host stepped into the dark room and said, “that’s enough real work for today, Pei-dro. We go now and get a bier and some dinner, yeah?”
Could you, reader, say no to that? I couldn’t.
We left that floor and headed downstairs. He was guiding me to the place that is normally the canteen. But when the glass doors opened it was like wandering into some foreign version of Mary Had a Little Lamb, what with all the costumes and strange behaviors. The beats were up-beat, the beer was flowing, and the sausages were wrapped in bacon.
Bacon!
This was Oktoberfest, jack. I’d made it after all. Munich’s Oktoberfest has been an elusive travel target for me for years and this year I’d missed it again, this time due to a combination of work-related excuses, lack of support and enthusiasm for the chase from my closer brethren and backstabbing acquaintances that went without so much as a facebook status alert.
I mean, it’s not like you can go to this thing alone.
But there I was, hundreds of miles from Munich in my own employer’s canteen 5 days late and yet… Oktoberfest.
I won’t tell you who paid for it all ’cause, really, who cares? Suffice to say that it wasn’t me, and that made it all the more jolly. It took me a few beers, and a few rounds of wettnaglen but I eventually skiddadled onto the dance floor and grabbed whatever pretty and large busted Austrian girl that was willing to dance. Mate, let me tell you, these girls may have a lot to learn about dancing but they are willing! That kind of attitude goes a long way with a guy like me.
Not that it matters; it was enchanting nonetheless. Boyfriends be damned, and I’m sure they were there that night; I just didn’t give a shit - know what I mean?
Wettnaglen, by the way, is the best, the coolest, the most primordial drinking game I’ve seen in my travels, far outweighing the strange goose-slaughtering customs in the Basque regions of Spain. What they do is find a stump about the height of a bar stool and then get themselves a hammer that has, at the tail end, a straight point, non curving. This is is important so that you can get some angle onto the nail. Then, as they drink their Oktober ales and brews, they hammer away at the nails into the stump with the thin back of the hammer (one swing each). The first one to get the nail beyond “flush” with the stump wins something (gingerbread heart the size of a football) and the loser has to buy the round.
It’s inventive, to say the least, and American children could learn a thing or two from this practice, if for no other reason than that they might learn how to properly uproot a tree stump. And that’s worth knowing whether or not you have a college education.
Vienna, Austria — October, 2007
Marriott Renaissance, Montana Room
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