tom travel

Some times you might think that everything goes wrong.  Like the car breaks down on the way to Spain, the rental cars windows get smashed in, or you run all out of money in the middle of a foreign city.  Some things I have had, I don,t remember how I lost them.

I ate a meal for the price of a juice in a little bar advertizing Free Walks and Flamenco.  I ate and the European town swirled around me.  I stepped outside for air, and walked down one of those tiny Barcelonian alleys with my ukulele out.  Careful, the people had warned, that the police dont see you playing that, or they will take your instrument.  But I was not busking, only walking.  There is a girl singing along, a song I don't recognize.  There is a guy with headphones on, smiling, asking where I am from.  I am Travis, and I tell him where from.  'Travis Travel' he says, smiling good naturedly.  Are you hungry?

I told him I wasn't, that I had just eaten a meal for the price of a juice at a little bar with Free Walks and Flamenco, but a few minutes later, Tom (you hav never had tapas?) and I were drinking and laughing and eating tapas at a fine little diner at 10 on a Thursday night.

Tom is tall, his english sounds to me like UK English but it wears a thick Belgian accent on it, which makes it jovial and blunted, like a young boy jumping over things.  Tom has scruff on his face, not shaved in a day or two, and a smile even when hes a bit ticked off.  He is simply spoken and honest and I liked him right off. 

He knew I was on my last few euros, but I told him my whole story of coming to Barcelona with some friends and how I had a ride back and money in France, if I survived the city long enough to see it.  He said I could sleep at his hotel with him for this night and the next but then his girlfriend was coming from Belgium and I would have to find another place.  I had a room at the hostel that night; but I would take him up on his offer on Friday.

I shall not soon forget that night and that tapas.  The food is not so important to me (wild mushrooms on garlic bread, cheese in a thing, soft calamari, risotto) or the drinks that I want to remember (beer beer beer irish-coffee cava cava) it was the freeness that I felt with that new friend of mine.  To be honest and feel like this guy really cared for me like a person compassionate and undertanding cares for another person, but to be treated as a genuine equal regardless of nationality or status or anything.  Not that I haven't felt that before, but Tom is one of these guys that just helps a person feel that way, and he put me right at ease.

We talked about 'the Good Semaritan' story, he played me a song he had created on the computer, I gave him a Fugatives cd which the house played a track from.  We laughed and felt grand and I thought to myself: "my oh my, a person can be in 'dire straights' (bad news), but if he has a friend, he knows he's alright."

And we were all right and just fine and we carreened out of the tapas bar, not feeling all drunk, only elated to be friendful and free.  Around the corner we went; out came the ukelele and we started to sing, making up songs with three Danish guys that came out of a bar.  Not a minute went by before the police were on us (what for singing and playing a ukulele) and they off with my (sisters) ukulele and off with my passport and into a car these things went, the car drove off then, and I am sure if not for the seasoned Europeans around me I would have been quite out of luck.

My new friends, Tom, and one of the Danish fellows called Michael, were trying to talk and reason with the Spanish police; who wrote us a ticket with no price on it, no name on it, and a scribbled hand written address of where to go in the morning if we wanted to bail out the ukulele.  Sign here, he said to me, and the Dane and Tom both go 'ah no you dont! first give him back his passport'.  It was a very interesting experience to be there for.  Hello, foreign police.

Every day there is protests in Barcelona.  One day the SpanAir crew was 100 strong (more maybe) outside of a big government building.  One night I passed the same government building to a line of people being silent for peace.  Over a quarter of the population of Spain is unemployed, I hear.  I don't know how our issues are related, America, but maybe we can help each other.

Next day I met Tom, he was the only guy on the street with shorts and sandles.  His story is, he worked from 17 to now he's in his early 30s, spending but saving enough money to see him around the world now, if he wants.  He leans back in his chair by the beach, smiles through his sunglasses.  "I could sit here all day", and he could, but our mission is to get the ukulele back, so we walk all over town.

How Tom and I walk all over town is this: after three blocks we have to pee, and to use the bathrooms we have to buy something.  Tom will say "I've already told you, I drink too much. That's true." and order us a beer.  We drink the beer, wlk three blocks, and have to pee.  One time we had to walk 4 blocks then take the metro.  We had to pee really bad after that, so we stopped for a beer and a tapas.

We made it to the police station place at 4, they closed at 2.  You'll have to come back tomorrow.

Tom, sayz I, I just don't feel welcome here.  This place wont allow me to play my music, I don't have any money, and if it weren't for you, I wouldn't have any friends.  I keep thinking I should have stayed in Paris and gone slowly, maybe gone to visit my friend Guisane whos got horses in the country, I really like horses, and I like Paris and Guisane and Matilda, and the cold isn't even that bad.

And Tom said to me that it wasn't about the money or anything, that I just had to know what I wanted to do and then do it.  I asked him then to loan me the money for a train to Paris, and I was going to get a different guitar and tell Kim and Joe just to meet me there.  And Tom did it, you know.  He loaned me all the money I needed, I to get it back to him somehow, and we had our last round at the train station.

I think I'm having second thoughts now; I told him (can you picture me, all indesisive as usual).  He said 'its because of the money, now you think you've got options.   But you can't think like that.  The money is not what's important (the bike is not whats important, the ukuleles not whats important).  No, its knowing what you really want to do, and then doing it.

Well I want to go slow(er).

I want to visit Europe, and meet the people, and that might take forever.

I got to Mathilde's this morning, and she wasn't home, but Ankara looked at me, let me in.  She doesn't speak much english and my French is pitiful, but here I am, in her home, eating with people who are so much like my friends and yet so different, and wonderful to know.  I spent the whole afternoon (all of it from noon to dark), with Patrique, who has sons my age and a beard, who told me in his 100 English words some of the finest things I have ever heard.  He said, and I'll leave you with it.

"it is not important to run; because in the end there is death."

found france

I was wandering around Rue de Republic, passed the Avenue de le Revolucion to Gambetta street, looking for Gulia's house for the party.  Found the address but there was only an alley and a garage door with a paper page taped on that said something French with "Lunatic" written there.  In France, where I am who I am, vwee pronunce dhees: Lunateek.  Vwee pronunce everysing a bit deeferent, see.

If I wasn't minding my pees and q's; as they say; I would tell you all about it (I am typing so slow, to get used to the foreign placing of letters on the keyboard).  This was a "French Expression Theme Party" and the people were all dressed fine in french expressions that need to be explained.  J'suis barrè; I am crazy.  A piè e poi liès. my hands and feet are tied together.  I was quickly saturated in allegorical maxims I did not speak and could hardly understand.

But the people are so kind and accomadating.  I have many French proffessors, now, and everyone can help me:

An Old Goal: Find a universal purpose:  Then you have a reason to talk to everyone.

A Universal Purpose: I wish to learn your language, World.

The party lasts until six in the morning.  There are toasts to the birthday girl; food spread and shared on the table; sofas for sitting and talking and napping; blankets for going under; a computer which plays songs for dancing: an ever occupied dance floor.

Joe tells me later; when we are walking on the rue; à le foret, how in France, at parties, they have few expectations, and that makes all the difference.

There is a certain lightness about everything I have found here; maybe it is the cheese; but it seems to run deep.  There is a long enjoyment (how to say this?) a deep breathing.  In New York I felt like if I stopped to take a breath, it might run away from me.  Here, it is easier to see: Breathe as much as you will, we won't run.  Perhaps too, this is just the feeling of getting older and seeing how much I can take my time;

At 6 30 we walk home to Mathilde and Anka's house, laughing in the streets and subways; singing in French qnd English qnd Spanish (the a's I am used to are q's, qs you cqn see).  When we camboreened off the final subway into Mathilde's district the snow was falling, tiny flakes.

The next morning my friend Gizan took me to the train station to rumble down to Vendome to meet up with Kim and Joe.  She is little and speaks the best of Anglais and French.  Goodbye Paris, you are as lovely as everyone says.

In my little book I am writing "Aha, I have found France", while the moon rises bigger and bigger every night.

Each morning I wake up with cheese in my nose, frommage dans moi nez.

Last night I slept in the dungeon of a castle which is Kim's house.  It is from there where I am writing you; on the ground floor (ha ha no, there is no ground floor) with the fireplace and the grand piano that is the same make and model of Chopin's piano that the crafty Detour's found at a garage sale.  The black cat is sleeping next to me; Jean Pierre is in his study, writing the script to next summer's play.  Kim and Joe and even Nancy are off siesta-ing after that irish stew we took for lunch.  I spent the morning sleeping and the mid morning sledding down the nezzy streets of this little town.

There is a tall church steeple in the middle of town. and there are no lights at all around here at night after 10 except the moon. 
Between the houses are gardens and above the town runs the train tracks I came on. 
This is a little town like I used to see in pictures of little towns in France. 
Kim's house has a stone tower that is 800 years old: 
The tobagon that we sledded on is all wood and ricketty as grammaz unused garage chairs. 
There are six inches of Nez on the ground. 

The town is full of caves.  It is a cave town.  We went to Suzie's for dinner last night and she said "please fetch a bottle of wine; its in the cave."  And it was.

notre dame; montmartre

At three in the morning I awoke again.  A vibrant dream about the Lady in Grey.  Mathilde and I were spelunking, with glowing symbols writ on our hands, to find a magic song to heal the princess.  I climbed out of bed after writing it down.  Broke fast and dressed and left the house at 6.  On the way out, I was looking for the hall light but instead I rang the doorbell.  Please go back to sleep, Kemi, I am sorry to wake you.

The cold was turned all the way up outside.  There were three of us at the gates of Notre Dame when it opened, mass began at 8.  It was a beautiful catholic mass, in French.  Simple and sweet, and my mind rolling over revelations.  The story of the creator who dressed himself like his creations, and his creation killed him.  And he loved them still, and conquered their killing, and came to them once more, patient and open.  "Look at me."

Stones.  Buildings like this will not burn.  I imagine our Quasimoto, fighting off the legions and denizons of France.  Fighting the underworld for a gypsy girl.  All of them talking in French.

I ate Nutella at the Lourve.  Danced beneath the Tour Eiffel.  Wandered along the Seine, stuffing my scarf around my face to keep the wind off.  My sox sweating.

Along the Siene was all the noise of traffic and the city.

Steps away, down an alley tight-packed with hundred year old houses it is quiet as a ville in the hille.  Garbage men ride bicicles.

Mathilde and I ate lunch slowly.  Crepes with cider.  The cider doesn't taste like store-bought-american-brand.  It tastes like aaron-pollit-home-brew (except light and barragy, like if Aaron was 200 years old and had quite perfected his elixer).  The place was so crowded we had to wait a while, but nobody complained and nobody seemed stressed.  All were in high spirits of lunch.  Bon appetit.

End the day on the mountain of martyrs, Montmartre, overlooking all of PaRy.  There is the Notre Dame, there is the Lourve, there is that boxy tower Mathilde was telling you about, sticking out like a block on a table top.  Makes me think...in America, our Cities of Towers.  That's all they are, yo.  Cities of Towers.  Sky Scraper is a fancy word for Big Fucking Tower.  Hmn.

paris

All night I sat half wake and half slept, pressing buttons on my computer and looking out the window.  We crossed the ocean in the dark, I never saw it.  When the light came back there was only a sea of clouds and under that sea was another sea.  We dove through them both, a silver sea bird.  Under that muddy sea was Paris, where the sun shows not her face, even this new morning.  The streets smell open, the voices are different.  It is smaller than New York, but there is more room.  The houses are smaller, but there is still more room.

I did, I spent the whole night tossing and turning, impatient to land. I kept worrying about the customs check, if they would turn me away, all sorts of things.  When I got in, all they said was "bonjour" and then STAMP and then "merci", not even 'welcome'.  Fine with me.  Mahtilde was there to pick me up, and I have my first very fine French lesson.  Train is 'train', although you say it like 'tre'.  Eggs are 'uf', but not 'oof', that's like oops.  Butter is 'bu', but not 'boo'.  Boo is mud.  In French, you don't ever prononce the last half of anything.  I dunno why that is.  Yet.

My life was subways and air ports.  But not any more.  Now my life is too much tea and too much bread.  I am so happy about this.  There is so much good food here I want to keep on eating it up.

I have angels in every continent.  Mathilde I wrote of, Odelia I wrote of.  Kemi, I will write of.  Kemi is a friend of Ana Carolina de Lima (God Bless you 10000 Blessings, Little Ana).  Kemi has me bunked in a quaint little room of her apartment and is feeding me the cream of Paris, breads and teas like I told you.  I've just a had quiche con trois frommage, un clementine, un croissant, un bagghette, dried tomatos and jam.  And tea.  I had tea last night and woke up at 3.  I've been writing and stretching since then, dreaming mad French dreams.

In Color:
The French in white trench coats are the Federali, they want me to go to customs. They are experimenting with brain psyonics and psykicks.  The French in Purple are busty.  The French in Black are young kids, they are posting fliers around a 'poets toilet'.  A Poet's Toilet is a place where a poet goes pee when he thinks of a great poem.  He doesn't write that poem down, he just thinks of it while he's pissing and the toilet records it and posts it up with all the other poet's poems who've pissed in that particular toilet.  Christina Dibbs is there (she is another angel I met on a walk in Brooklyn) dressed up in Saera Burn's Squirrel suit, running around.  A sad french in a Blue trench is ducking his head and ashamed of some thing he won't say.  Finally, Kemi is there, dressed as a bright orange chicken, running around joyfullike.

On Angels:
I mustn't leave off my other angels: Carwil, Sophie, and the Meerkats.  Eric Kincaid kept let me stay comfortable in his flat in Washington Heights, I spent the evening with the Melendez's, his finest neighbors.  Little Miss Rose was particularly entertaining.  She can sing and dance.  She is a 1 million year old Goddess Dog.  Did you know?
And before I got on the plane, the Foxx's picked me up and fed me twice as much as I could eat of great italian food.  Bless all and Bon Matin.

trains and subways

"Mom, I don't have a place yet.  All my contacts have fallen through.  The world is GOING UNDER!" I yell over the roar of the Burning Train, as all hell breaks loose.  'Stay calm,' says the motherly operator on the other end.  A half-eaten train conductor flies by the window, screaming.  "Your Father and I are calling everyone we know in New York.  Just hang in there a little longer."  Then the line goes dead.

Shite.  I collapse back into my Amtrak seat.  Twenty minutes to the City and I don't have a place to stay.  "Here Odelia, thanks for letting me use your phone".  She takes it and puts it in her pocket.  "They have WyFy at Penn Station; you can use my i-phone if you want."  Odelia never says a thing she doesn't have to say, in all the hours I've known her (since yesterday at 4am).  She is short and to the point, with curly reddish hair and black gloves that haven't any fingers.  She leads me from the train, to a little restaurant in Penn Station. 

The Station is Big.  It looks like a market place, as I've seen market places look in Seattle or ChinaTown.  There are a few Benches, but everything else is Hallways, Stairs, Signs, and People.  There is more people here than anyplace.  They are all going some where, except a couple of them are sitting, strangly positioned, in the hallways.  One covers its head with its hands, another is surrounded by papers and signs and leans diagonally in his scarves.  There are men in coats, women with purses, old ladies with luggage.  I keep a close eye on Odelia, afraid I might loose her in the throng.

We go upstairs, and I phone home again while she has a smoke.  Someone asks us if we would like him to buy us two sandwiches.  After he goes, Odelia tells me he's obviously not from around here.  I am living in a whirlwind, I didn't notice, everyone here looks homeless.

Mom comes through, again, she always does.  I've got a place to stay with her college friend's son (Jake Stevens).  I tell Odelia where, and she says that's close to her place.  So again, I am in the happy position of having a guide through the labyrinth of Subway tunnels and trains under the City.  She makes short, direct work of it, and we are on our way in no time.  The trains roar coming in, they roar going out.  It is the most delightful music.  They click and whine and siiiing.  Rythm, but a sad rythm, and an irregular rythm, that I would catch and understand had I time to sit through a few rounds....

The E bus, the F bus, finally, we find our Subway and take it over the bridge into Brooklyn.  I watch out the window, astounded by the amount of people.  I look in every open, lighted window.  There is a lady making a bed, there is another looking intently at something on a table.  They go by so quickly, the train slows and speeds and slows.  Odelia leaves me with her number and a warning.  It isn't the Best neighborhood, be careful, and I will be.

When she is gone, I find my stop and hop through the chilly winter air, under the subway now, on the street.  Graffitti of the city, shops and news papers blowing past, the grime of the gutter, black tar scraped onto the curbsides.  Metal and Rock and Glass.  People go by, a motercycle idles behind a chain fence.  Bars on the windows.  A mural says 'we have a right to film police officers'.  I knock on the door of Jake's place and am Safe unto my Dreams.

Bardsong Preliminaries (I re aquaint myself with journaling)

Dear Dire E.  Have left Bloomington after two weeks of 'leaving' Bloomington.  Everybody was awesome.  I mean awe full, they were nice.  That last night in the town was fine.  My teachers always said not to use describing worbages like nice and fine because they're bland.  Anyway, Here I am in Cincinnati.

That last night in Bloomington was the last night in Bloomington.  Andrew invited me into Roots with all my baggage to play some parting music on the ukelele, and I played that song that Rachel taught me when Joshua was getting arrested about the 'arting glass' (that's parting glass with a p).  Then we sat and sang in the base ment of the Runciple Spoon.  Kati was there, and Leroy painting a picture of a woman. "I guess I'll give her eyes tonight" he said "before I go" and I remembered how when Geppetto gave Pinochio his eyes they started to look all around the place.

(please excuse my rambling story telling intro, it has been a long time since I wrote you, or any one, I am still getting my writing hat all sorted out)

Evelyn and I woke up early for breakfast and tea.  her ice scraper broke at the blade, so we walked to the gas station to find another one.  The whole world was ice.  Luckily, I had on my ice booties.  They are these chains that cover my feet like road tire chains for those artic farmers who really needd them.  Ev and I partnered up arm in arm, like a horse, but sideways, and we walked over there and got the ice scraper.  It was the last one they had.

Then, now, we are off across Indiana, I slept for a while.  We ate lunch in the slushy grey afternoon of downtown Cincinnati.  Maesyn showed me how to make this meal, it's a good one.  Slice apples on a suchi flat, add kale and cheese and anything else you have around.  Soy sauce, cumin, salt, oils.  Then eat it.  That's my meal for the next few weeks.

Ev leaves me with my bags.  a big back pack with clothes and books (a french dictionary, a french poetry anthologie, the mormon book of, demian, and two sketch bookis) a ukelele case with papers for transcribing into my sketch books, and a bag of food like the food I have already mentioned.  No need to be exact about anything.

I wait four hours in a coffee shop for my friend Serenity.  Mean while I put all the french things I had written on scraps of paper into my sketch books.  Then all the spanish things in there too.  I drank a tea and watched people.

Serenity, when that kind creature came, took me in the car to the purple people bridge and we walked across it 16 times.  We ate dinner at her parent's house in the city, they are so kind.  Her father played with us the music, and we gospel'd and warbled aand maked up some new songs into the wee hours of the Grandmother morning, when we finally had to go.  I stayed the night at Ren's Friend's house, a kindest of souls named Saam.  Slept like a little king baby on  a couch, ate the good food of Saam in the morning.  Oats and nuts and an orange.  He walked me to the bus station.

Evelyn, God bless her, called her friends Marc and Claire, that's where I am now, at their house.  Marc and Abe and Colby are sleeping on the floor by the fire, and all but Marc of those is a dog.  The meal we ate was pfarm pork in a stew and corn bread, the work we did was hauling 16 barrels of nice looking produce from the grocer to the chicken house.  Oh those chickens.  Perchin like that in the rafters.  Creepy and cute at the same time.  Mosnter birds. 

The weather is windy, the people are FINE.  The folks on the city bus helped me to find this place.  I said  i thought it was a Farm.  They said " in the middle of the city?  a farm?" and you probly wouldn't be lieve it.  But here I am.  On a  200 acre farm inthe mid of the city.  T'morrow we're posting hole posters.

Loading up the Old Milk Wagon

Travis is starting a journey.  A mind and soul journey.  To the Un Known.  Okay, testing the instruments.  In good order for travel ling?  Yes...testing...