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Mar 18, 2012

Gute Fahrt

This morning, I woke up to Alpakawurst and a perfect cup of Italian-engineered coffee. Alpakawurst is exactly what it sounds like and I’ll explain how I got it later.

Two nights ago, I arrived in Basel at 23:55, where my host Stephen greeted me on the platform. He was waving his arms and shouting to me, but really, there was not a soul besides the two of us and the employees of the velobox (bicycle rentals) downstairs. I wondered if it’s possible that someone would rent a bicycle at midnight when it’s 15 below zero. If so, I would like to meet them. Stephen asked me if he could help me carry some things, but I felt like my adventure was not yet over somehow. There was an emotional inertia and I needed a cool-down exercise to come down from it.

It turns out that I have met Stephen before. He reminded me of this in a recent email, but what can I say? The people skills department of my brain is terribly mismanaged. I meet people, get their names, use their names, learn about their professions and families, and then I have to get in my mental smart car and I just don’t have enough room for all of them.

Stephen presented Jonathan Byrd and Dromedary in the cafeteria of a corporate building in Burgdorf, Switzerland in 2006. There were a few of his English students(not English, but Swiss learning English) there, who apparently still talk about the day, an unexpected and strange beauty in a modern, sterile facility. We had a question and answer session. When you almost outnumber the audience, you can skip the pretense and have a conversation.

As Stephen and I exited the train station, we came to two enormous, thick, sliding glass doors. Beside the doors, there was a card reader and Stephen slid his parking slip into it. The doors slid silently open. They must have weighed 300 pounds apiece. It was a kind of magic. We walked into the parking garage. I would have eaten off the floor. Above us there were two rows of round, opaque lights, perfect circles about five feet across. I was trying to think of what this reminded me of. It was like Blade Runner, but cleaner. Like Logan’s Run, but more modern.

We loaded the car, drove to the exit, and Stephen inserted his card. The machine said, “Gute Farht,” which I will get a kick out of until the day I die. It means “good driving,” or ‘drive cautiously,” but c’mon, that is funny. I don’t know a single 2-year-old who wouldn’t laugh at that. When you need an exit on the autobahn, just look for the ausfarht. “Aus” means “out,” and the monkeys in my brain are rolling on the floor and slapping each other every few miles. Kilometers. Sorry.

While we’re on the subject of bilingual puns, the German word for cockroach is Kakerlake, which is nearly indistinguishable from Cackalacka. Now that I’m in a German-speaking country, I finish a song and say, “That’s from my latest CD, Cockroach.”

We cruised the autobahn, Stephen holding a GPS tablet on his leg. When he drove too fast, it would moo at him, like a cow. Don’t speed in Switzerland, folks. They don’t bother with personal introductions. They just send you a ticket. Rob McMaken got one in the mail, in Athens, Georgia, after our tour in 2006.

Stephen said he had a GPS because he never drives here. The train system is so clean and dependable. Why would you drive to Basel?

It was -15 C. The highway was spotless and threaded the mountains through handsome tunnels, each one stenciled with the name of its region. Stephen told me that his wife used to go jogging in them before they were completed, so that she could sing inside as she ran. Stephen is a copywriter for the Omega watch company. He flies all over the world to hang with supermodels as the company creates their ads. Omega is the official timekeeper of the Olympics, so he has to go to those, too. That’s his work. His passion is acoustic music.

He tells me that I’ll be staying in the bottom two floors of their house. It’s not the style to which I am accustomed, but it will do. He tells me that the sound system we are using was designed by a Swiss man. It’s called Rundklang, or “round sound.” The speakers project sound in 360 degrees. He says that the man who designed the system will be at the show and it would be great to know what I think about it.

We arrive at the clean little village of Pieterlen and climb the narrow roads to their house. I hand Stephen my guitar and I lug my suitcase up the stairs. As far as I can tell, there are only two directions in Switzerland: up and down. The Swiss get a better workout going to the kitchen for a beer than most people do at the gym. There are apartments with outdoor elevators that travel diagonally up the mountain to your floor.

Monika is there to greet us and she becomes the tour guide for my house. There is a marvelous little coffee machine with dark, medium, light, and decaf. Here is the filtered water. This lamp beside your bed works by simply touching any part of it. This light switch does not do anything (It is actually labeled as such in German, and in the universal red “x.”) There is a metal shutter over my picture window that rolls down over the outside like another wall. I have rolled it down in the middle of the day and, were it not for a tiny bit of light at the top and bottom, I would think I was underground.

We go back downstairs to my kitchen/living room suite and she asks if I’m hungry. I’m so hungry I could eat the curtains. We break out some deli meats, a spreadable cheese with horseradish, and some bread with pumpkins seeds that I might remember for the rest of my life. Stephen is a great conversationalist and we do know a couple of people in common, including Tim O’Brien. They are delighted to find out that Tim and I wrote the first song on his last CD together, “You Ate The Apple.”

Its after 1am and we’re all fading, so they leave the house to me. I go upstairs. There’s a great bath and I use it. I send one of the last Facebook updates, trying to spread out my crazy day so that you can all read them without getting overwhelmed. I save one for the morning. I try to imagine when the best time to post the stories is, when Europeans and Americans will all be awake and online. But it makes my head hurt.

I can’t sleep. Sneaky old jet lag has gotten into my bed somehow. I write. Play games. Read. Finally, at 5am, I fall asleep.

Posted at 6:50 PM

Mar 18, 2012

Connected To Everyone

I don’t know if I’m on the right train. I know that I am still in the Netherlands somewhere, but I don’t know where. I look everywhere for information that matches any number or letter than I have on my schedule, and there are many numbers and letters, but no matches.

Several people enter and exit the bathroom in front of me. To my right, there is a couple in love, making moonie eyes at each other and listening to one earbud each of an iPod.

Someone gets off and, before I can move, the drunkest teenager of all slides into the chair. The two guys who came out of the bathroom together come back and go into the bathroom together again. For a long time.

It was then that I looked down and saw a DKNY bag that I remembered from the interminable, freezing wait in Utrecht for the confounded bus. Maybe the bag wasn’t unique, but the tall black man carrying the bag, and nothing else, was.

“Do you speak English?”

Yes. He did speak English and I was on the train to Dusseldorf. He was gentle and had a quiet laugh. We chatted until a seat came empty. I had to sit down.

When I sat down, I looked up at the ceiling and there it was, a decalled train map all the way from Venlo to Hamm. Dusseldorf sat bold in the middle. When I looked down again, Tobias was sitting across the train from me, smiling. I live a charmed life.

He said, “Are you writing in your journal?” I was indeed holding my phone and writing about him. Maybe writing is conjuring, after all. I had confessed to him earlier that he was going to end up on my facebook page. He grinned then, and now.

He checked my info against the bahn.de site on his cell phone, to make sure I got where I was going. Then he turned his head and looked away from me, to give me permission to keep writing. Yes, I have written every letter of this on my phone.

In Dusseldorf, Tobias and I said our goodbyes and good-lucks. The only thing I had eaten since two eggs and two toasts at 9am (while my Dutch host watched me and chatted and did not eat a bite) was a cookie from a package that Celine had given Tobias for the trip. “She involves herself with other people,” Tobias said, and he meant that she cares. He’s going to be all right. I have a feeling.

He offered one last time to help me carry my things down the stairs and I declined. “You have five minutes to meet your train. I have twenty.” He agreed and was gone.

I lugged my personal burdens down the stone stairs and up the stone stairs to what I thought might be my next platform. Teenagers smoked in the hallway between.

There was a blue and red tower that said “info” and had directions in German and English. I pushed the button, just to verify that I was in the right place. A voice spoke in German and English and I was a bit shocked with the fidelity. I looked at the tower just below eye level and it said, “Neumann.” The maker of the world’s best microphones made the info tower at the train station. If you want the best thing in the world, just look for “Made in Germany.”

A lost woman on the platform asked me a question and I asked if she spoke English. “No speak Englis.” I felt her pain.

I rambled up a ways and met another guy I’d seen in Utrecht, three trains and a bus ago. What are the odds? He said he was headed to Frankfurt and would probably miss his flight to Brazil. This train arrived 30 minutes before his scheduled takeoff. He said he hoped the flights were delayed too or it would cost him the ticket. I told him I thought he’d make it, that in the absence of empirical evidence, I had faith that he would make the flight. He said something about coffee and damn that sounded great. 50 p from the machine 12 feet away. And it was good. How do they do that?!

The train pulled up as I got my coffee and I realized I couldn’t get my stuff on the train without help. My new companion helped me lug. This train had nice shelves at the door, so I didn’t have to hold all my stuff around me in the seat, legs draped over suitcase, bag in lap, guitar under three people’s feet.

I can’t pronounce his name, but it was something like Pelinõ. He asked if he could sit with me. I said, “Please,” and I meant it.

He was a lawyer in Brazil, in the middle of the country, along Paraguay and Bolivia. He said the summer was terrible, hot and rainy, so he saved up all his vacation time and put it together with the end-of-the-year holidays to make one 42-day chunk and he spent it in Europe in the winter. He said they were the second-largest producer of beef in the world and that the city he lived in was fueled by that industry. After that, he said, marijuana and cocaine smuggling were probably the biggest businesses. A woman came by and checked our tickets, the first time this whole day that I’d been asked. Isn’t that amazing? She understood why we were on the wrong train, the whole damn country is on the wrong train, and she kindly told me which platform my next train would be on.

He got off in Köln(Cologne) and I was puzzled as to why I was here at all. My friends from earlier in the day had split up to come here. I realized that I could have come here with them. We had definitely taken different trains. My head spun around the train-web of Europe for a moment, with times and numbers flashing in my head. Could I have gotten here sooner? Whatever. I got here. And it was a good story, as my first friend of this trip and I had agreed it would be.

I remembered that my hosts still thought they were picking me up at 9pm. I had written emails to them, but never found wifi to send them. So, I made one precious phone call. Stephen answered with an American accent and, bless my heart, I almost cried. He offered to pay for a hotel room in Basel, or that he and his wife would drive to Basel at midnight and pick me up. “About 87 kilometers” he said. Okay, if he’s American, then he’s been Swissified. Only the Swiss would say, “about” 87 kilometers. I look forward to meeting him.

I told Stephen that if I could wake up in his house, I would be a very happy man. It’s 11pm now and I only just realized I’d better purchase a bottle of water. The first water I’ve had all day. I guess it’s been nice not to need a public bathroom. I should probably use the one on this train before I leave the Germans behind again.

I hung up and looked out the window for the first time in a long time, and the lights of Köln flashed by me. In the apartments along the railway, each light was different, a lamp here, a chandelier in that one, a yellow window with its light hidden from view, a television, each one a racing snowflake, a fingerprint, as unique as the people who ate their supper by them, each one lit by the same fire, a power station somewhere in Köln, and I realized that I was burning the same fire in this train, burning through this great, lonely city, connected to no one. Connected to everyone.

I transferred in Mannheim to my final train, where I bought this bottle of water. The machine was another engineering feat that went up and cradled my water and brought it gently down to the opening. I walked around to the other side and a woman was cursing another machine that had just taken her money. It’s good to know that they are not perfect. Only very good. She hurled one last curse as we had to board the train.

I noticed that this train was beautiful and spacious, with leaning chairs and tables in between. Automatic glass doors. I looked down at the floor and it said, in a bright red strip, “1. Klasse.” There was no one in the car. I thought, what the hell, maybe they’ll ask me to move after I’ve had twenty minutes of luxury. A woman came immediately and offered me a chocolate cookie. You damn right I took it. I leaned my seat back and savored it as only an empty man can.

When another woman came to check my ticket, I showed her my Eurail pass and she said, “Thank you. I vish you a good chourney.” and she walked away.

I looked at the pass and realized for the first time that I HAVE A FIRST-CLASS TICKET. Had I known that, I never would have seen Tobias again or known his name. I never would have had my Brazilian companion. I never would have seen two men go into a train bathroom together – twice. I never would have seen beautiful old Muslim women and their silk flowers. And countless other things I haven’t even told you.

I think I have a first-class ticket through life. I was always on the right train. In 25 minutes, I will arrive in Basel, where my hosts will pick me up and drive another “about” 87 kilometers to take me home. I’m glad I chose the adventure. Thanks for hanging with me, alone there behind your liquid crystal spark of the fire. Maybe you feel like you’re connected to no one, but I want you to know: you are connected to everyone.

Goodnight.

Posted at 6:46 PM

Mar 18, 2012

Tobias

6. Tobias

My suitcase made it but I almost left it behind. I got off the bus at the station in den Bosch, like everyone. I looked for someone who might be going to Frankfurt, so that I could have a German-speaking ally there and I chose wisely. I chose him because of his glasses and jacket. Don’t ask me how. There’s a look.

But as I walked beside him, almost to the entrance, I realized there was 69 pounds missing. I wheeled and trotted back to the bus, where the driver was keeping one hand on the suitcase. Somehow, he knew that an enormous orange suitcase did not belong to anyone he’d yet seen. Maybe he noticed me before, as he knocked me over into the crowd. Maybe it’s the hat.

I got the suitcase and ran back into the station to get in line at the information desk. The young student fell in right behind me. The man before us was going to Frankfurt as well, so I relayed the information and we ran for the train that was leaving that moment to Eindhoven. As I write this, I still don’t know where that is or where I am. I have faith.

There was an elevator but no time to wait. The young man asked me if he could carry my suitcase and I said, “You’d better not. Here, take my guitar.” We hustled down the stairs and arrived just in time to see the doors closing. Down the line, there was a shout, and we saw a worker blocking an open door on another car with his body and waving to us. We were on.

There were no seats. We ended up standing in the middle of an aisle, with my guitar and my big orange suitcase blocking the pathway. As we rolled, I found a way to create a path as people begged their way past. We were rolling to Eindhoven.

We chatted. Tobias was his name. Our other friend, back from Australia, was seated close by and seemed to know the schedule. He was going to Köln, which wasn’t Frankfurt, but it’s close and in the general direction.

I’m not really going to Frankfurt. I’m going to Basel, which is where the international train terminates and I have to take a local train to a little Swiss town called Grenchen. I make a mental note that Frankfurt is no longer important when asking directions.

Tobias is great. He’s going to school for math. To be an accountant, maybe work in banking. So we talk about me mostly. Which is how it goes. But I love what I do and I love talking about it.

I explain that I am known for my stories, but that sometimes there is no story, sometimes there is only a coyote crossing the river. But there are things that an artist can say that no one else can say, but we have it in our hearts, and when we hear it said by the only one who can say it, we agree and are joyous that we are not alone inside ourselves. Or we disagree and feel the passion of that, that we must not be alone in our disagreement. And those who disagree and those who agree will all agree that we care, that we may not have the same answer, but now we know the question and we know that the question lives inside others. And we are not alone. And that is why art is important.

Tobias says he has heard this explanation before and retells it from his experience. We have found a common passion. I ask what artists he likes and he pulls out his phone and shows me a painting of a man standing on a mountain, looking over a stunning alpine scene, the clouds roiling below him, each peak an island in a sea of vapor. He says to me, “The artist is very religious. I think these three distant peaks represent the three… I don’t know the word.”

“The Trinity?,” I offer.

“Yes, the Trinity. And these smaller hills, um… up to him?”

“Closer.”

“Yes. Closer. They are the people. The society, I think.”

You don’t have to wonder why I love this young man. We talk about psychology. Socialism. I offer that in America, we are all from different places, so we don’t stand together as a culture to help one another, whereas in Europe, the cultures are old and they stand together as countries, proud of their cultures. He counters, Yes, but not so much in Germany. And I ask why.

Tobias says that Germany is still ashamed of the war. That when Germany is strong, the world says shame on you. He says it is like a card that they hold, that whenever times are good, like now when Germany has weathered the recession better than any other European country, the world pulls the card and says, you should be ashamed of your success. You should help other countries. Tobias says that the recent World Cup win was the first time in his life that everyday Germans took to the streets with German flags and painted their faces with German colors and were proud to be Germans. And I don’t give a damn about sports, I never have, but I imagine what a day in heaven that must have been, to finally be proud to be German, to shed the greatest guilt that the world has perhaps ever known, the sins of their grandparents for God’s sake, just for a day. To feel, for a moment, like a worthy people. To climb the mountain and gaze upon God and not forget all that separates us, the roiling world below us to which we must return, but look! There is God!

I remember a similar scene in Naples, Italy when I was in the Navy. Italy had won the world cup and naked Italians danced on their cars in the world’s largest and most ecstatic traffic jam. And I note to myself, that’s why sports are important.

I confess to him that I just read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and I know I’m taking a chance here. But Tobias doesn’t miss a beat. We talk about psychology, mass consciousness, how people will agree with a wrong thing if they feel outnumbered or informed by a supposed expert. And I talk about how playing to 5,000 people is like playing to one person, or even 20 people in a room that bursts at the seams with the bulk of 20 people. But every empty seat is like a hole I have to fill and the space between them makes them five different people again. And I have, in this time, given him a CD, and we have since arrived in Eindhoven where he went to check information and I watched his bag, and I went for a coffee while he watched nearly $8,000 worth of my things, and the coffee was free because “it is cold and the trains are delayed,” and we have gotten on a train to Venlo, and now we are walking off of that train and Tobias says, “Yes, the empty seats are questions that make people wonder how good you are, even if you are great.” And we laugh when we realize we finally know a common story, the famous and brilliant violinist who plays in the subway in Washington, DC and is ignored, even avoided, by thousands.

Now we’re standing on the platform and I’m not sure I want to go to Köln, as these guys are doing. I grab my things without asking Tobias to look after them, I don’t know why, and I go into information to get a reality check.

The man tells me that to go to Frankfurt is not on my way, that I should go to Dusseldorf, then Mannheim, and then on to Basel. I can be there by 23:55. Midnight. He shrugs his shoulders to say, “That’s the best you can do.” He points out the window and I think what that means is that my train is leaving. I don’t know for sure but if I want to catch that train, there is no more time for discussion.

I hump like a mad Marine back out to the platform and, for some odd reason, the train has not pulled all the way up. Everyone is running to get on the train, a hundred yards down. I don’t see Tobias, so I refuse the first door and keep going to the third car. I can’t go farther without missing the train, so I jump on.

The train is stuffed full as a sausage. I stand in the doorway and stack my belongings around my feet. It stinks. I realize the bathroom is right in front of me. There’s a pissed-off looking man in a German Army jacket, waiting his turn. I look for Tobias. Damn.

I try to ascertain whether I am on the right train, having lost my friend and interpreter who also had a cellular Internet connection that didn’t cost $20 per megabyte, as mine does here. The pissed-off man is standing in front of a screen with information and I ask him to move. He moves, glaring at me, and I compare the schedule the information guy gave me with the info on the screen. Nothing matches. The army jacket guy knocks loudly on the door of the bathroom. A voice murmurs inside.

I ask around for English speakers, but most people are German or immigrants. I point to the floor and say, “Dusseldorf?” and everyone just shrugs.

The pissed-off guy finally walks off in a huff and several drunk teenagers take his place. They all crack fresh Heinekens and drunk-dial their friends. The bathroom door opens and two men come out together. One is sniffing loudly. They ignore everyone and talk excitedly to each other as they walk toward the front of the train.

I still don’t know if I’m on the right train. And I wish I’d said goodbye to Tobias.

Posted at 6:45 PM

Feb 18, 2012

The Better Story

A few centimeters of snow has turned into a natural disaster in the Netherlands today. My train from The Hague to Utrecht stopped just short of the station and idled. I had to catch a train to Frankfurt at 12:10. As noon rolled around on our stalled chariot, I knew I would not make the train. It was in fact 12:30 before we finally pulled about 100 yards forward, into the station.

I looked for the ticket desk and pressed my way through thousands with my guitar, a backpack, and a suitcase that I know for a fact weighs 69 pounds. I found a line and stood in it until a lady announced, in three languages, “If you are going to Germany, go outside all the way to the left. There will be a bus that will take you to a station from which you can catch a train to Germany.” Practically the entire mass of people emptied out through a quarter mile of corridors, down a flight of stairs, past a compressor-powered hurdy-gurdy where people collected donations for something I never figured out, and out onto the bus platforms. The first bus filled up before I could get on. I waited 30 minutes for another bus and it became clear to me that, because I had a suitcase that had to be loaded before I could get on, I would never get on in the crush of people. I went back to the ticket counter to see if I could get to Switzerland through Brussels and Luxembourg. Transfer through France.

The escalator wasn’t working and I had to lug everything up a flight of slushy stairs. Blocking my way to the office, a security guard entertained a crowd at the door. He had a great smile and was obviously trying to protect the ladies inside from a riot. As I got close, he leaned into me and asked what I needed. I said I needed to get to Switzerland, but maybe I could go a different route and avoid Germany altogether. He said, “Yeah, but you’ll never get out of here. You, you, and you, FOLLOW ME.” He spoke in the language of confidence and everyone understood.

We followed him like the pied piper as he told us about the new station they were building and joked that he was now a tour guide. He led us back out to the buses and said, “Everyone going to Germany, go to the last platform.” In English first, then Dutch, then bad German. I can only assume that if you want the most people to understand you among Germans and Dutch, you speak English. Another man supplied a megaphone and our friend from security became an entertainer for hundreds, answering questions, repeating directions, cracking jokes. He never lost his smile or his cool.

In fact, another bus came, but people flooded into the street and rushed it full before it even made it to the platform. I fell in with a few young people on their way to Frankfurt and they all complained that we were too nice and we might never get a bus standing here. One guy had just come back from Australia and was not prepared for negative temperatures. He said, “I’m speaking English because my lips are too cold to speak Dutch.” He was a brilliant guy and kept going around to people, asking questions while I watched his suitcase. He wondered out loud whether he should catch a bus back home and take a car to Frankfurt, or wait here possibly for hours in the cold to catch the bus to the train.

I said, “Which one will be a better story?”

He said, “You’re right.” And we shook hands on it. The other two were a beautiful young couple, a young German student and his Dutch girlfriend. She was only waiting with him to hold on to love to the last minute. He was going back to Frankfurt for school. “I don’t think you’re going to make it tonight,” my new buddy said.

A new bus came, commandeered from some other route, and the security guy made sure it made it to the platform. The crush began. I threw myself into the human funnel with burdens that nearly outweighed me. The security guy stepped into the doorway, allowed passengers to disembark, and held back the masses with that smile. He forced the driver to close the back door, lest the dam break back there before anyone could board up front. He boarded people one by one, and the driver squeezed by us to open the luggage compartment. He actually had to push me over to get there. I had nowhere to go and fell against the pressure of the crowd. I got upright again and shoved my big suitcase back toward him. The girl from the young couple shouted, “Hand it to me! I’m not going.” I pushed as far as I could reach along the icy curb and she grabbed it. I turned forward and wedged my guitar in front of me. I haven’t seen my suitcase since, but I didn’t see it on the curb as we pulled away, either. But who knows? There must have been another hundred people on the platform and I couldn’t see everything. I have no empirical evidence until we get to den Bosch, but I have faith.

Faith is not evidence. Faith is not believing against all evidence. Faith is believing when there is no evidence. I believed in that girl, whose name I later found out was Chelline.

Anyway, the security guy grabbed my arm, blocked the crowd with his body, and said, “Get on.” I don’t know why me. Maybe it’s the hat. Maybe it’s because I told him earlier that I appreciated his help and that I didn’t want his job today. But I’m on the bus. Possibly with 69 pounds of CDs and long underwear. I definitely have my guitar, most of my clothes, and my electronic devices. Oh, and a fantastic toothbrush.

The bus is jolly. Everyone is laughing like old friends. I think the happiest people in the world are the ones who have just survived a disaster.

Posted at 12:06 AM

Feb 18, 2012

Breakfast

I’d like to take Europeans out to breakfast. All of you. It’s a great meal; perhaps you’ve heard of it. An egg or two. Perhaps some meat. You don’t have to get crazy like the English and have every part of all your domestic animals in one meal, but it is possible to make it to lunch without feeling faint.

Just after I got to The Hague last night, the trains shut down. The snow and cold had frozen the relays, the joints where trains switch off from one track to another. In such a tight system, many trains use the same tracks. The locals were indignant, saying they had promised that this wouldn’t happen again this year, that they had fixed the problem.

Imagine the subway shutting down in New York City. It’s how they get around. Still, when people start complaining, my eyes glaze over. I’m just so damned grateful to be alive and here we are with a guitar and a case of beer; whatever will we do?

The trains are running again today. I have to get to Switzerland. It’s eastern North Dakota-flat here, a snowy pool table, but the Dutch fields are gorgeous, laced with canals, dotted with fat sheep, the picture of efficiency. In a land with so little room, rural land is sacred. There are little subdivisions of cottages in places, organized communities of gardens for people who live in apartments in the city. The plots are cheap and people use them well, growing flowers and vegetables and keeping the garden sheds loved. What a singular joy it must be to dig in the good earth when you live in a closet. To trade the songs of birds for the flushing of your neighbors’ toilets.

We just passed through the largest greenhouse complex I’ve ever seen. Square miles of them, centrally heated. I could see the beating heart in the middle, a small silo, an office, and a plume of steam.

I had a nice tour of The Hague this morning on the way to the train station. We passed the International Court of Justice, where countries can take each other to court to settle fishing rights, borders, and other sticky issues, in a civilized fashion. My host said, “There are 9 judges. They are paid an enormous amount of money and they work about three months out of the year.” When I first saw it, I thought it was a cathedral. Stunning.

Later, we rounded the corner and she said, “These are the royal stables.” A stately city block, with double wooden doors two stories tall. “Of course, they keep cars in there now. Not the queen’s personal car, but the official ones.”

“This is one of the royal lanes in The Hague. At the end there is the Escher museum.” There was a large, famous piece rendered large outside, the one where a flock of geese become farm fields. “The balcony there is actually gold leaf.” Which was obvious. She didn’t have to tell me that.

And then the parliament building. “The oldest part, where you see the towers, dates back to the 11th century.”

We turned left and there was an enormous concrete block, six stories tall, with narrow windows and no visible door. The front entrance was shuttered with metal armor. Around it, there was a high metal fence, surrounded by a moat, surrounded by another high metal fence. I said, “That must be the prison.” She said, “That’s the American embassy.” I laughed out loud, not because it was funny, but because it hurt so much.

I think that building could be converted to a diner, and the Dutch could be converted to breakfast eaters. Six stories of hash browns, scattered, smothered, and covered. First, we take The Netherlands. From there, we can dominate the continent with beautiful calories. We’d have to give up our terrible coffee, though. That’s where the partnership is formed. Our food, their coffee. We can make history. Or at least breakfast.

Posted at 12:06 AM

Feb 18, 2012

The Magic Pocket

Over here, credit cards have chips in them. Mine doesn’t have a chip and mostly is not accepted, regardless of the company knowing I’m over here. But check it out: problem solved. I just played my first Dutch gig! I spent every last pfennig of my pocket money to get to this door and now my pocket is full of money again. It’s a magic pocket!

Big thanks to Joanna Serraris for feeding me big cheesy pasta, giving me two eiderdowns because I’m a southern boy, and bringing the crowd. One guy bought seven CDs; I only have five titles with me. Someone videotaped and got my set lists. What fans! How much fun to teach you about NASCAR, the War of 1812, big trucks, chicken wire, wild ponies, and white oak. How riveting to see my country reflected in your eyes, to be amazed again at the Great Experiment, the wild bucking castaways of Spanish ships and failed religions, the almighty More is More. So great to get you singing, “If you got it, a big truck brought it.” Wow.

The room I’m sleeping in has a copy of Bill AND Hillary Clinton’s biographies. Quick show of hands from the Americans: anybody have two biographies of contemporary Dutch political figures? Yeah. Me neither. I suspect that it’s not because we’re more awesome. Quick: who is the prime minister of Canada? Ah ah ah, no googling. Does anyone really believe that Americans are receiving a competitive education? There’s nothing like visiting the neighbors to jerk the curtain back on your own Oz.

Tomorrow, to Switzerland on a train. What kind of fool am I? I gotta get a different currency again. But I’m gonna yodel in Switzerland! What kind of cool am I? To hell with credit cards and ATM machines. I got a Lone Star boot full of Old World loot!

I’ll be the one not wearing black.

Posted at 12:06 AM

Feb 18, 2012

London Heathrow

London Heathrow. Met a couple of Australian dudes and it took me a minute to figure out they were speaking English. God help you if you’re sensitive to fragrances over here. I think I’m the only person in this whole airport not wearing black. Or navy, to be fair. Anyone who thinks that the Native Americans are gone needs only to come to Europe and see what white people actually look like. The bathrooms are incredible. As if they were built yesterday.

On the plane, seated next to me, a young man who was far too tall for his seat spooned muesli from a plastic bag. Later, he read a mass of photocopied pages from Antonio Barcelona’s ‘Clarifying and Applying Metaphor and Metonymy.’ It was, as far as I could tell, a big heap of deconstructionist bullshit designed to keep Mr. Barcelona employed at a university. I’m not judging the book by its cover, but by a few photocopied inner pages. My apologies to Antonio.

The pilot came on and said that we were in a queue, and that there were five planes ahead of us, and that one took off every minute so that we were five minutes from take-off. On the inside of the young man’s left wrist was written “Oxfam,” in ballpoint pen. He scribbled “pilot” on his right hand, for no reason I could find on the photocopied pages.

As we rose over London, de-icer swirled on and poured from the wing outside my window, blue-green as a swimming pool. I wondered how much glycol rained on London and where, once a minute, all day. Throughout the flight, it glistened across the broad silver plain of the wing and pooled excitedly in any crevasse it could find.

Paul, the young man, was working on his PhD, something like “Hidden Implications in Political Speech.” Metonymy, by the way is calling something by something else intimately related to the thing you’re actually talking about, like “he has a good head for numbers” or “Washington vetoed Kyoto today.” There’s a more specific force at work in the city of Washington. It’s so sneaky, we don’t think about it much.

A sign read “toilet at rear.” I like to think that, on British Airways, they knew what they were doing when they made that sign.

Paul had just returned from two weeks in Ghana. Vacation. He lives in Berlin, but had booked the return flight from Amsterdam. Paul said he had friends in Amsterdam, but they were all out of town and he had not contacted them until he’d landed in London this morning. “It’s okay. I will get very stoned and then take the train back to Berlin. It’s a good place to kill two hours.”

Immigration was barely there. Everyone spoke perfect English. Security rode bikes. Outside baggage claim, a place called Juggle Juice had a “smoke cabin,” a glass closet that fit about four people standing. A slight hint of reefer hit me. I didn’t really expect it in the airport. American airports are basically military installations at this point.

At about this time, I realized that I’d drunk several glasses and bottles of water, two orange juices, two coffees and a tea and hadn’t peed since 6pm last night. I tried. I really did, but I think all that moisture just humidified the cabin.

I tried to buy a train ticket. My credit cards didn’t work. My ATM card didn’t work. I changed 53 bucks to thirty-some Euro and spent about eight on a train to The Hague. I hope I have enough for the cab to my hosts house, cause it’s too cold to walk. The snow is gorgeous, falling thick and even, brightening up this flat, wintry land. Everywhere looks great with a fresh snow.

Let’s hope I don’t have to busk for cab fare. At least I recognize the English language here. In Holland.

Hey! There’s a trailer park. That makes a brother feel at home. Boy the snow is great. Even the trailer park looks cozy.

Posted at 12:05 AM

Feb 18, 2012

Starting Over

A few weeks ago, my 2006 mac started acting strange. Of course I have it backed up. It finally shut down entirely. I haven’t had a day in one place to get it fixed, so I bought a hard drive yesterday and youtubed the repair on my kitchen table. The backup will not restore. I’m flying to Amsterdam aware that I may have lost everything. Hundreds of thousands of words of a novel I’m working on. Journals.

It’s okay. Creativity abhors security. The forest needs a fire. I’m good with it. I know how the book goes.

I bought a suitcase and stuffed it with 220 CDs and all my clothes. My carry-on has a winter coat, gloves, boots, scarf, and the offending backup drive, in hopes that it will work after I threaten to flush it at 40,000 feet over Greenland.

At 11 today, we went to the fire station. It was awesome. The guys gave us a first class show, spraying water, extending the ladder on the truck, and dressing Mary up in all the gear. Rowan was scared and crying at first, and then finally crawling into places he shouldn’t oughta go. On the way home, all he could say was, “T(r)uck.”

At the airport. The suitcase was 4 pounds overweight. I somehow got three pairs of corduroys and two microphones in my carry-on and made weight. $60. Cheaper than shipping 220 CDs.

Rowan and Mary and I took the same elevator and escalators until we were all worn out. Okay, Rowan could have kept going. In security, my section of the belt looked like an assembly line at Foxconn. They tested my credit cards for bomb dust. They are dangerous, but not like that. The man behind lusted after my boots out loud. He had an unfamiliar accent and tortoiseshell glasses.

My favorite things about RDU are 1)even the TSA is friendly and 2)there’s a used bookstore. How genius is that? I bought Cat’s Cradle and Steppenwolf, and sold three of their Cormac McCarthy books to other customers. I sold All The Pretty Horses to the cashier, reading the “nation and ghost of nation” section to everyone in the bookstore out loud. It’s not like me to be quite so outspoken, but she said she didn’t like Cormac and I had to say to hell you don’t, listen to this. She smiled when she knew she’d been beat.

I’m homesick already. Honestly, I spent the last two days terrified. Sick to my stomach. I can recreate the novel. Rowan will never be two again. I love you, buddy. I’ll send you some songs after I redownload Audacity.

Posted at 12:04 AM

Nov 06, 2011

Alberta/Yukon 2011-11

Posted at 9:16 PM

Nov 06, 2011

Alberta/Yukon 2011-10

Posted at 9:15 PM