but you don't really care for music do you?

It was Wednesday. Wednesday meant “wellness meetings”, the once a week session of sunshine being shoved into our lives whether we could handle it or not. Worse yet there were visitors for this particular wellness meeting. Two young men and a young woman. They had been hanging around for the last couple of weeks and were soon to be leaving no doubt. People like them never stick around for too long.

I had seen them before. Smiling and glad-handing the others who were infected just like I was. They would insist on talking, always talking. Asking everyone how they were doing. We’re dying, that’s how we’re doing. Dying alone at that, so kindly take your crocodile tears and remarks about the heat and the rain back to wherever you came from. You aren’t going to get to me. I’m nobody’s fool and I’m certainly not your fool.

It’s not that I don’t think they can’t help. It’s that I know that they can’t help me. I see how Glori has taken a shine to them. They’ve even got to Mark. Yesterday I walked by them playing cards and laughing. “We got some card players here! Yes sa’, some card playin boys from Chicago!” Mark would exclaim. They would sheepishly grin and spot Glori and Mark 50 cents to keep playing after they cleaned them out. The girl was sitting off to the side of them, fingers pecking at her guitar strings and smiling.

I heard there was a secret chord / that David played and it pleased the Lord

“Hey there Mr. Michael,” Gloria said to me.

“Hi Glori,” is all I could muster as a response I walked into House #4. The House for the people who weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. I needed to lie down. I slept the rest of the day until dinner. After dinner I went back to bed and didn’t wake up until Mr. Nathan woke me up for the wellness meeting the next day.

“Get up sleepy head,” he said, his thick lisp in full effect on the “s” of sleepy. From the first time I heard him speak it was no secret to me how he had ended up here.

The wellness meeting was to run for an hour. A lot of sharing and expressing and talking about our feelings. It was good for some of them I’m sure. Most of us just sat off to the side and didn’t participate and looked out the window. We didn’t have to participate in the activities if we didn’t want to. Doing things you didn’t want to do was contrary to the spirit of wellness meetings. I walked in a little late. Metal chairs shuffled across the floor as my fellow victims cleared a spot for me.

“Hi Mr. Michael, how are we feeling today?” Bonnie asked, her silver hair blending in with her white tunic at the shoulders.

“My back hurts, but other than that I’m grand,” I said with a wry smile.

Bonnie was a mouse of a woman. She was all bones and hard angles. Thin enough to be one of us. Bonnie’s background was in health services. She loved helping people. That’s why she came here once a week to lead us in arts and crafts and finger painting or group bongo sessions. She was soft spoken and inaccessibly polite.

“Well lets get you a pillow for that boney butt of yours,” she said with a smile. “Could someone get a pillow for Mr. Michael?”

Someone did and I wedged it between that boney butt of mine and the hard metal of the chair. “Much better, thanks a million,” I said.

Well your faith was strong but you needed proof / you saw her bathing on the roof / her beauty and her moonlight overthrew you

Bonnie introduced the three of them- the two young men and the one young woman. She said that they would be sitting in on the meeting if that was okay with everyone else and that if anyone had any problems with them being there that they would understand and leave.

“Oh no they can stay,” said Mr. Nathan, shoveling popcorn into his mouth. Grease and butter caked his fingers.

“Shoot, I like them more than I like most of y’all,” said Charles. Charles thought of himself as the elder statesman of all the patients. He certainly had been here a long time, but he didn’t command a lot respect. Even so, with Charles’ blessing, they were allowed to stay.

She really was quite stunning, I have to admit. She walked in behind the two boys, her guitar slung over her soft shoulders. Everything about her seemed soft. Her hair was dyed wonderfully so I would never know its true color. She kept her hair short and tussled; there was white band that rested amongst the soft curls. She had piercing blue eyes, eyes that could save a man if she would let them. She wore a ring in her nose and beads of every color around her neck. A low cut blouse hinted at her breasts. Everywhere she went it was lighter.

The wellness meeting went as they always did. Bonnie spoke softly about different things we do when we feel sad, who we turn to for support, things like that. I propped my head up on my hand and looked at the floor. There were stock answers from the room. Talk to friends, go for a walk, listen to music. Who cares? I closed my eyes but couldn’t sleep.

Baby I’ve been here before / I’ve seen this room and I’ve walked this floor / I used to live alone before I knew you

Bonnie, keenly sensing that she was loosing the room to apathy, decided to incorporate our guests into the discussion.

“So what have you guys gotten out of this experience? Being down here and meeting these people?” Bonnie asked.

More stock answers. “The people are amazing. I’ve never done anything like this before and it’s been really rewarding. Really cool to meet all of you.”

“Yeah, I mean, this has really been eye-opening you know? I’m definitely going to remember this for the rest of my life.”

“Definitely, you guys are all awesome and I feel so blessed that I got to spend some time with all of you.”

I couldn’t help myself. That was too much for me. I lifted my head from my hand. “Look, we’ve done this before. We’ve all been here and groups and people like you come down and we meet you and we like you.”

They smiled at this.

“But,” I continued, “it’s hard for us. We get attached and get to really like you and then you leave us and we’re left here alone. It’s really lonely,” I said, trying to keep my voice from trembling.

“I…” I started but gave up and shook my head. They had been looking at me but now they turned their eyes to the floor. They may have been earnest and well intentioned but that didn’t make it right and I wanted them to know it.

“You just come into our lives and leave,” I said. Shit, I thought. I’m in my 60s, I have AIDS, my friends and family are all gone and the best these kids can come up with is, really cool to meet all of you?

“But we really love having you,” Glori said. Saving them and probably saving me from being the villain. “Mr. Michael is right. But I’ve really enjoyed you guys. Julie, will you sing a song for us?”

“Yes,” Bonnie practically came out of her chair at the prospect of a song. Surely music would clear out the tension that was seeping from my chair into the rest of the room. “Would you mind terribly dear?”

“Sure. I would love to,” she said, strangely unaffected by the storm I had caused. She smiled and the room exhaled. She slung her guitar around her pretty shoulders and rested her guitar on her pretty thighs.

Well there was a time when you let me know / what was really going on below / but now you never show that to me do you

I couldn’t tell you what the first two songs she sung were. She took requests from the room and when the angel sung the room opened up. Slowly people started nodding and bobbing their heads. More and more they tapped their toes and whispered the words they knew. Mr. Nathan, never one to be bashful started singing along with her. People smiled and joined in on the verses they knew. When she finished the room around me clapped and fawned over her.

“See I told you!” Gloria said, slapping Mark on his bicep. “I told you she could sing!”

“That was beautiful,” said Mr. Nathan, popcorn still stuck in his teeth.

“Thanks for singing along with me,” she said as light came pouring from her eyes. “You guys want another one?”

People kicked around ideas for the next song. She sheepishly downplayed Charles’ praise that she was better than anyone on the radio.

“Remember the name,” said Mark. “You’re going to be a star. With those eyes and that voice. You’re going to make it baby girl.”

She smiled and her white wings started to spread.

“Do you guys know Hallelujah?” she asked.

But remember when I moved in you / and the holy dove was moving too / and every breath we drew was hallelujah

She started in on the song, slowly at first, gently toeing the water of her voice. Hinting at more and the room begged for it.

Well maybe there’s a god above

Her voice grew stronger and people closed their eyes and leaned back in their chairs, tossing their heads with the melody.

But all I ever learned from love

She was alone in the room now. The two young men and Bonnie and Charles and Mr. Nathan and Mark and Gloria and everyone else, they were all somewhere else. Their eyes were glassy with memories of the past.

Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you

Her voice, my God her voice. The veins in her neck strained but she kept going. Impossibly, she kept going. Her voice was all there was.

It’s not a cry that you hear at night

The room was filled with white as her pale wings wrapped around us.

It’s not somebody who has seen the light

She was taking them with her. Her white wings drying their wet eyes and lifting them up with her. She was going to take them all with her great pale wings and pretty hair and soft shoulders. They were all leaving me on the sound of her voice.

It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah

And I watched them go. Flying overhead, shrouded in angel wings and light. And I, I just put my head down on the table and started to cry.

Hallelujah

Working Title: NOLA

We were coming up from the bayou, but it felt more like we were coming back from the edge of the world. Three weeks earlier we had followed the twists and turns of Mississippi from St. Louis downstream to New Orleans. The closer we got to the Gulf the deeper the road beneath our Lexus sunk. It was a slow and exhilarating decline as water encroached on the shoulders of the road and funneled us down to the sea. Now we were resurfacing and I was having a hard time finding my breath.

I told people that I was going to down to volunteer, to re-paint houses, put roofs on wind blasted shacks, and see what was still there. I was a chivalrous product of Jesuit education. I was a man for others. Or that’s what I told people at least. Secretly, I had intended to make New Orleans the salvation of my summer. A cure-all for not finding work, the failing health of my grandfather, and the deep rut I had worked myself into. I would give back to New Orleans, New Orleans would give back to me.

And to my surprise, it worked. My roommate and I would arrive on work sites early in day when the heat was a slightly less oppressive. I would sweat out my troubles under the low hanging Louisiana sun and smile with my fellow volunteers during the day. We would come back to the bunk house in the evenings a jockey for the first shower. There would be big pots of jambalaya for dinner at the house or we could go out and inhale shrimp po’ boys or gumbo. During the weekends we would bar hop on Frenchman Street; beckoned into the next bar by a wailing trumpet or the raspy wail of heartbroken singer. Groups of volunteers would come and go. A group of fifteen would be replaced by a group seven by the end of the week. Days turned into weeks and we went from the wide-eyed newcomers to the elder statesmen of bunkhouse.

During that time I got to know New Orleans. I would stumble through the French Quarter, my drunken feet catching on the cobblestones. At the waterfront I would admire the same river that ran through my city some seven hundred miles to the north. I worked in the Ninth Ward and tried on a daily basis to decode what had been hit by a catastrophe of Mother Nature and what had just been ravaged by poverty.

One afternoon after work we went to the lower Ninth. Shielded behind a new levee were a dozen ultra modern, eco-friendly houses on stilts courtesy of Brad Pitt. Beat up Chevys and Cadillacs were parked underneath the six figure homes. The same poor people who lived in the lower Ninth before Katrina won a lottery and got to move back to where their houses once stood.

The Brad Pitt Houses overlooked both the river that crippled their city and the graveyard that Katrina left behind in the lower Ninth. While one side of the street gleamed with the generosity of a celebrity the other side told another story. Occasionally I could see brick and mortar of a foundation to a home that was no longer there. More often the scene was that of a broken sidewalk leading up to nothing but tall grass. Katrina had struck down the homes and now Mother Nature was growing up, over, and through the rubble she had left behind.

We drove slowly, squaring block after block of tall grass and loose brick. No one spoke. I couldn’t bring myself to take a picture. We all said we were going to come back another time, but none of us did. This too, was New Orleans, and this too I learned to love.

And so I smiled. I met new people. I did good work, explored, drank, and ate. I was happy again. New Orleans saved my summer and maybe more, it was exactly what I needed it to be. So it was no surprise that as we sped northward towards St. Louis my stomach churned. I was leaving an answer, a solution to a problem I didn’t really understand.

As we plunged back towards real life I felt like I had to bear the same carry-on luggage of melancholy that came with me on my flight back from my semester in Spain and my move from my home in Colorado to Ohio as a high school student. I was leaving something real and good, to place that only had questions. Senior year, graduation, real life, worry all built up like dangerous clouds in the north. The horizon sucked me back towards my life, and from the passenger seat there was no brake pedal in reach.

The Hour of the Seasons

I was sitting on the arm of my couch looking out my window watching the sun bleed out across the horizon when it happened. It was overpowering and swift when it came and it hit me in a way that I had no choice but to sit still at my window. Fall, without warning or explanation or apology had just arrived, and it was my duty to bear witness to it.

That morning it had been summer, with green grass and dreams that had no choice but coming true. Sunlight had wrapped us all up for so long that we had forgotten its golden blanket was there. It was a part of us now; we wore it like a cloak over our shoulders and it tanned our backs and chests. Bare bodies paid homage to this gift of warmth and promise and there were smiles smeared across our red faces. There were eternal days at the pool and epic evenings around a fire pit. It was summer and we were young and invincible and beautiful.

But now, right in front of my face, it was fall. Yellow had crept into the trees and it shimmered and multiplied like gray hairs. The air was heavy with hopes and dreams gone unfulfilled and the wind bit with their bitterness. I was suddenly conscious of the stillness of everything, and of the quiet. The earth’s heartbeat had begun to slow and I could feel it with a firmer ground underfoot. Shots of life and color would come less abundantly but more profoundly in the coming days. The red of the sun dying on the horizon yielded faint promise of an Indian Summer.

The twinkling of city lights flashed me the message that the moment was over. My time on the arm of my couch watching the sun set on summer, like the summer itself, had slipped away, and I felt connected to the weight of the moment. Catherine’s younger brother Stevie had died yesterday. I thought about this as I watched the sun bleed out and heard the earth slow down. I thought about Stevie and Catherine and all the fleeting promises of summer that were setting with the sun. A gust of wind blew in through my window and cold air flooded my apartment and with that fall took root in me.

Grounding Out

The day was an early one or an early one for me at least. I met a friend of mine outside a building I used to live in and he drove us to a friend of his where we were going to work. It was 11:30 and it was hot, probably just below 90 when we got there. Our task was to move and reassemble 13 filing cabinets from a garage to an office building. It was soupy humid and the sun promised more heat in the afternoon. I was sweating before we loaded a single cabinet. I wouldn’t be dry until I rubbed my tennis ball green towel over my body at 7 that night.

The work itself wasn’t too bad. Manual labor isn’t too bad in general, I think. The only time I’ve felt God was in manual labor. I didn’t see God on this day. It was the hottest day of the summer. When my friend dropped me off in front of the building I now live in I had 100 dollars in my previously lonesome wallet, a soaked through t-shirt, tired arms and back, and that sense of accomplishment that you can only get after working on days like this. I also had a ticket to see the Cardinals that night. I had planned on going back to Ohio instead of the baseball game.

I wanted to be home for father’s day and to be with my mom. She had just gotten back from a trip to see her dying father. My grandfather, the man I’m named after. I needed to be home. But not tonight. I wouldn’t get back there until 2 or 3 in the morning and I was utterly worn out. Baseball would be my treat. Baseball would be my cure. Dying grandfathers, grieving mothers, father’s day obligations, joblessness, homelessness, and an unshakable feeling of being out of place- they would all wait for tomorrow. Baseball tonight.

We got there late. The Tigers hung 4 on the birds in the first inning that we missed. We were delayed at the bar before hand waiting on the fourth person of our party to turn up. Eventually she showed up and she, my roommate, his cousin, I went downtown to the ballpark. She was a cute student from a neighboring state school. We each had a beer that cut through the heat of what was becoming the hottest night of the year, laid a foundation of small talk, and then I turned it on.

It didn’t really matter that there wasn’t any real future for us past the end of the game. I wasn’t interested in hooking up with her, or dating her, or even seeing her the next time she came out. She was a pretty face sitting next to me at a baseball game and that was all I really needed her to be.

I would tell a story and she would smile. I would make a joke and she would laugh. I would pull on my beer and grin as it coolly snaked through my body. The Cards cut into the Detroit lead. The sun set, I ate a bratwurst and watched how her cheeks pulled up her lips to put her teeth on display.

Two home runs in the Detroit half of the eighth and the ball park thermometer reading in the high eighties prompted my roommate and his cousin to pitch the idea of leaving. It wasn’t so much that I thought the Cardinals were going to come back, or that I wanted more time to seal the deal with her, or any other specific reason, I just didn’t want to go. I convinced them to stay.

Two scoreless half innings later I turned to her in the bottom of the ninth, “If this guy reaches base, we’re winning this game.” I grinned and raised my eyebrows at her after ball four. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. The aura of the bottom of the ninth stirred deep inside of me and for the first time in a long, long time I was happy. More than being happy, I was excited. Something was happening, there were signs of life here in the bottom of the ninth and in her pretty face and in me.

It was 6-3 with a runner on first base when Albert Pujols, the best baseball player on the planet, a man who I had earlier described to her twinkling eyes as “better at his job than I ever will be at any job I ever do,” flied out to left field. But whatever air left the stadium when the left fielder squeezed Pujols’ fly ball not only came back but multiplied after a wild pitch and two walks loaded the bases for Rick Ankiel.

I’ve been a Rick Ankiel fan for as long as he’s been in the majors. He came up as a pitcher with a ton of promise. When he got called up to the show I already had four or five of his rookie cards and had been personally hyping his arrival for a year. Then Rick Ankiel had one of the biggest meltdowns of anyone I’ve ever heard of. He couldn’t find the plate with both hands, a map, and a compass and would routinely fire balls at the backstop. He lost all sense of command. It got so bad that he couldn’t play catch. Throwing the ball to a target was now the hardest thing in the world to someone who was on the verge of making millions for doing just that. Somewhere between his ears pitching stopped making sense and he was sent down. A few years ago he resurfaced with the Cardinals, not as a pitcher but an outfielder with a canon for an arm and a bat that had decent pop in it. My favorite player came back and hit a homerun in his debut.

And so my hero dug in with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth. I was on my feet encouraging him, occasionally throwing my head over my shoulder to smile at her and let her chide me for being so into the moment. At least half of the 41,000 and change that were on hand for the beginning of the game had left but the rest of us were standing. Ankiel took strike one and then looked at a ball. On the third pitch he put his bat on the ball. He took a change-up and hit it to Detroit’s shortstop who stepped on second and then threw out Ankiel at first.

After we dropped her off at her car I told her it was lovely to meet her. I tried to rally support for night swimming until I was informed that there was no was to access any of the three pools around us. I was dropped off at my building, my back and arms more sore now than they were hours ago. It was still hot outside. It was going to be hot in my apartment. I wouldn’t need a blanket to cover me when I went to sleep on the same couch I had been on for the last month. The next morning I was to drive for six hours to see my family. To celebrate father’s day. To be there for my mom. To explain my troubles in landing work. To keep being oddly unhappy and strangely stuck. To lie awake in my bed at night and think about Rick Ankiel grounding into a double play.

A Summer of Discontent

“Are you happy with who you are, right now?”

This is what I asked of my friend, anticipating the question to be reciprocated to me. I heard his answer. I heard his reasons why he was. I knew what my answer was, and I knew that it was true.

No.

The cliché is that you go abroad for a while, find yourself and come back a changed person. What no one ever warns you about is that when you come home, yes, you are some changed version of yourself, but you don’t know how to make sense of it. That’s where I am. A series of mild epiphanies and small truths abroad has culminated with an unnerving fact: I know I’m no longer who I once was, and I’m not sure who it is I’m looking at in the mirror any more.

When I left everything in my life was tangible and punctuated by the very present knowledge that my life- the people I loved and the person I was- had already been established. I loved my school. I loved my friends. I loved my now ex-girlfriend. I was going to go to Spain, have a semester of fun and discovery. I would come back with some stories to tell but everything would still be here waiting for me. I’m here now. My school is here now. My friends are here now. My ex is here now (to some degree), but the man that got on that plane 5 months ago isn’t here now. I was going to come back and graduate. She and I were going to work through the distance for a semester, she would graduate and move here to be with me until I graduated, and my life would grow from there. Instead I’m stumbling through a haze of questions and the only certain answer that I can come up with is that I’m not friendly with any aspect of who I am or what I’m doing.

I saw my life through a microscope. My future was present enough for me to rearrange it with a flick of a wrist or a twist of my fingers. She was the one. They were my best men. My life was at hand and it was just a matter of time before I put everything into place.

The things that were close to me then are now seen through a telescope that I’m looking through backwards. All the staples that were immovable and convenient are now so far away that I can only recognize them, no less manipulate them at my whims. Even worse than being apart from the things I once cared about and loved is the fact that I am inescapably aware of the distance. I’m freefalling and am completely sentient of it happening with resounding fear that I forgot my parachute. No cigarette, or drink, or joint, or night of laughter can rescue me from the fact that I know that I’m at the epicenter of my own confusion. The certainty of my being lost is rivaled only by my own awareness of being lost.

I’ve seen sunrises and the bottom of bottles, talked to my sages and reflected again and again. My only conclusion is this is just something I’m going to have to deal with. The answers aren’t out there, no matter how much I want someone to drop a road map on me. I wanted to come home, I wanted to reconnect. I wanted my life back. Trouble is, my roots are foreign. I cannot find my own feet in a world of obscure familiarity.

The issue isn’t that I don’t feel at home here, rather that I don’t feel at home anywhere. I know for certain that if I went back to Spain I wouldn’t be happier than I would be here or back in Colorado, or California, or any other place you can throw a dart at. I can’t blame her or them or America for not being what I want them to be. I can’t figure out what I want any of them to be. I want to be home again but I don’t know where to start looking for it. I want to stand firmly on something I can believe in. Goals like graduating and seeing my friends and being in love are as comforting as an addressed envelope without a letter inside.

I’m standing at the apex of loneliness and confusion but I can’t decide where to aim my first steps away from it. The best I can do is keep getting up in the morning and filling the hours until something rings true to me again. I’ve always struggled with the question “where are you from?” but this is the first time that I’ve ever felt homeless. I once couldn’t wait for my future to start. If I could have hit a fast forward button to get me to my marriage with her and the life I had so precisely planned I would have. I’m still looking for fast forward, just to get me out of being stuck. Truth is, the best I can do for now is just get out of bed. And that’s not much of a consolation.

SB09 Italy Part IV: Roma

Rome was just fun. It's really that simple. Milan was disjointed, Venice was a dream, Florence was a tactile fantasy, and Rome was just a really, really good time. Brandon and I arrived in the afternoon and checked into our uber trendy youth hostel, The Yellow, and napped. The hostel was geared toward young globe trotters like the two of us and was adorned with ultra Generation Y decor like stencils of Chuck Norris and Planet of the Apes, digital numbers outside the doors, tinted lights, etc. Our roommates were a down on his luck Englishman, a quiet Swede, a stunning Australian, and a very sleepy Israeli. It could have just been the pricing and location, or maybe the attached bar, or the young and fun staff or the combination of all of those but The Yellow was a hip place that clearly had a license to print money.
We left our hostel and took the street, tourist map in hand, on the prowl for monuments. We came to learn that Rome, by comparison to Madrid especially, is tiny. Our first, no more than 10 minutes from the hostel, was the Spanish Steps. Brandon bought a hat, I snapped a few pictures and we decided that since finding the Steps was so easy, we might as well carry on the Trevi Fountains, which, while crowded, were absolutely gorgeous on the clear, warm night. The ease of navigating the city and the gorgeous payoff of each monument inspired us to find the Pantheon. We stopped for a coffee and wound our way through the city. Ultimately we missed in our search for the Pantheon but ended up finding the National Monument of Victor Emmanuel II, which was absolutely stunning and probably my favorite building in Rome. While walking I essentially tripped over ancient Roman Ruins that gleamed in the moonlight. We had been walking for about an hour and I already had to pick my jaw up on several occasions, it was a gorgeous night and Rome sparkled under the moon.
It was about this time that we realized that we were walking directly towards the Colosseum. It's hard to believe a building that big and that famous can sneak up on you, but that is exactly what happened. There was a small hill across the street from the Colosseum and I walked up it to try to get above the street lights for a few photos. It was here that the strangest, most wonderfully bizarre event of my trip took place. We had made it to the top and I was grimacing over how poorly my photos were turning out when an Indian man approached us speaking Italian. We told him that we don't speak Italian and he asked if we spoke English. After running through the where are you from, what's your name conversation and he got down to business. "Do you know yoga?" Yes. "Ah good. I need to open my Chakra. To open my Chakra I need to be very tired. So I walk up and down this hill." OK. "I need to be very tired. Would you like to go for a ride on my shoulders?" I wish there was a picture of what our faces looked like. This squat little Indian-Italian man named Sandro just asked us if we wanted to ride on his shoulders while he walked up and down a hill. With smiles on our faces Brandon shrugged his shoulders, why not?
The pictures I took didn't turn out very well, as I had a hard time holding the camera steady because I was too busy laughing watching my 6'4" roommate take a seat on top of Sandro's shoulders and be carried down the hill and then back up towards me. Sandro returned, with cargo intact and dropped Brandon off. They shook hands. There were smiles all around and I thought the exchange was over. Sandro, sweat beading on his brow looked to me and asked, "would you like to go for a ride?" How could I say no? I gave Brandon my bag and the camera and positioned myself on Sandro's shoulders. He straightened up, centered himself and started walking down the hill.

For those of you who haven't been on another person's shoulders since you were a kid let me tell you something, it is a hell of a lot harder to balance when you're not 5 years old. The trip was uneven and wobbly but I never fell. He could feel me rocking back and forth on his shoulders and asked me, "are you in comfort?" Was I in comfort? Not really. It had been a long time since riding on my father's shoulders, but the "little donkey ride" was going OK and I told him through a smile that I was doing fine. I didn't know what the protocol was as far as communicating with the guy who is bearing all of your weight around his neck, is it rude to make him talk to you? Is small talk acceptable? Would the silence be more uncomfortable? I erred on the side of small talk and admitted to him that I like Italy quite a bit and asked him what he thought of the city. When he said that he liked it much more than his home in India, I asked him what he did for a living. He told me that he was a masseur, specializing in feet. Cool, I said. By now he had made the turn and I had run out of material. We came back up the hill in silence. When he let me down I shook his hand and thanked him for the ride. He thanked us for helping him with his yoga, the sweat running down his face now. Then, the man who was just a human mule for two complete strangers dropped a bomb on us: "would you like a foot massage?"

Brandon hadn't asked him what his job was, and as nice as Sandro seemed, getting a foot massage was a little too sexual deviant-esque for him. I declined as well, not because I really thought that he was a molester, but because I really felt like this man had done enough for us. Anything more would be gluttonous. I'm convinced that Sandro was MLK, Gandhi, and Oprah Winfrey all rolled into one portly package. We had just met a saint and he had taken us on his shoulders and the offered to rub our feet. We shook hands again, and Brandon and I went down the hill under our own power this time while Sandro disappeared into the night. We were so blown away with the events that had just occurred that we had walked the remainder of the way to the Colosseum and circled it without even really taking notice of it. It wasn't until we had passed it that we realized, again, that the Colosseum had sneaked up on us. Sandro, at that point in the night, and maybe still now, was bigger than the Colosseum. We doubled back and took some appreciative time with it.

The night's weirdness had peaked with Sandro, but wasn't over yet. We left the Colosseum, again looking for the Pantheon, and were walking down a side street when we heard a drunken choir of men singing the baseline to the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army." The commotion was coming from a bar called Shamrock Rugby Temple. I had walked by it without giving much thought but Brandon slowed and then asked me if I had seen the guy in the Bobby hat standing on top of the table. We turned back and poked into the bar. It was full of drunk, elated rugby fans, many of whom were standing and dancing on top of tables and everyone was singing. Some of the men were wearing rugby jerseys, the man wearing the Bobby hat had accessorized with a pink scarf, some were shirtless, and others were wearing lingerie. I'm sure you can figure out what is going on here. Brandon and I stood by the bar for a minute or two, not saying anything, just smiling and taking it all in. Eventually I leaned over to him and got started with stating the obvious, "Do you realize that there are no women in here?" Yeah. "I think this is a gay bar." Yeah. "Do you wanna get a drink?" Yeah, he said with a smile. We tried to get the bartender's attention in a normal fashion, without taking off any clothes or letting any winks fly. We probably should have because the bartender didn't give us a second look, even with a 20 Euro note in my hand I couldn't get his attention. None of the men there thought us worthy of buying a drink, I guess they knew we wouldn't put out and we left the bar, satisfied with the story, if not by any vittles.

We made our way back to the hostel, completely satisfied with the night. Reeling from it all: the monuments, the ruins, the Sandro, the Shamrock Rugby Temple. It was an unbelievable night, I don't know if I've ever smiled that much in one 4 hour span. We dropped by the Yellow bar, ordered a drink and made broken English small talk with a guy from Chile and his friend (who looked a lot like Cheech). We had a few drinks, made a few jokes and then went upstairs.

The next day we went to the Vatican. I saw St. Peter's, which is probably the most impressive single building I've ever been in. It was a bizarre experience being there at the center of Catholicism. There were so many people that were having a serious spiritual experience and I felt like a fraud, as I was just there to take pretty pictures. Michelangelo's Pieta was incredible. We did the Vatican Museum later. Good Will Hunting is one of my favorite movies of all time, and there is a scene where Robin Williams tells Matt Damon that he doesn't know what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. I went to the Sistine Chapel and you want to know what it smells like? It smells like whatever perfume the woman 2 feet from you smells like. Or, if you're lucky, whatever variation of Old Spice deodorant the man who is taking pictures next to you is wearing. Don't get me wrong it is an absolutely beautiful ceiling, a truly incredible scene, it just wasn't what I expected. To begin with, it was much smaller than I thought it would be. Secondly, as I already mentioned, it was crowded. I had been in Italy for 9 days and had down some super touristy things but the Vatican, and the Sistine Chapel in particular, was crawling with tourists. There was no elbow room. It was beautiful, but not what I had pictured.

The Chapel was at the end of the museum, we had been serious and admiring art for a good 3 hours by the time we got out of the Chapel and when we did we were in serious need of a good giggle. We found our inspiration in one of the last rooms of the museum, it was some Papal relic, but it looked like a jewel encrusted trowel or a cake server. Next to it was a Papal gavel or something like that. We went off. The Papal trowel was evidence of the Pope's secret love of spelunking, which was further evidenced by the Papal rock hammer lying next to it. We would pretend to be the Pope's secretary and say in a strange accent, "Ze Pope ez in ze cave, he cannot be reached." Things grew from there and we got more imaginative with excuses why the Pope couldn't be reached including scuba diving with Robert De Niro and performing a one act play with Robert Downey Jr.

It was our last night in Italy and we went on a pub crawl put together by the hostel. Everything that we had learned, all the culture and art that we had taken in over the last 9 days we completely blew out in a night of heavy drinking and even heavier debauchery. There were so many students from so many different places. Leaving the 2nd bar there were people staggering, by the time we left the 3rd bar it was a full blown shit show. I left earlier than most, getting lucky on taking a bus. I can't speak to the rest of my compatriots, some of them probably ended up in the cave with the Pope. The next day we got to the airport and came back to Madrid. We were both worn out and it was good to be back, even if it meant dealing with Cristina's senile act again.

SB09 Italy Part III: Florence

Venice has its charms and they did quite a number on me. But for all the tangible romance and allure of the canals and bridges I actually enjoyed Florence more. Venice, despite being more accessible than Milan, seemed almost too serene to be real. This otherworldly quality that Venice has makes it an easy city to fall in love with, but it is too fragile live in. You find yourself walking around a dream, not a city. Florence has its own magic too, but it is magic that is grounded. Venice is a liquid dream flowing from the Grand Canal to the back of your mind, Florence has roots that run deep, and take hold with more permanence. They did with me.

Tuscany is gorgeous. The Arno is green and alive. The Ponte Veccio is as romantic as any gondola. The city is easy to learn. Brandon had skipped Venice and forged ahead and when I met up with him in Florence he had made himself quite cozy at a humble hostel. We arranged my move in and established a home base. The days were easy and filled with sun, small restaurants with cheap sandwiches and attempts to soak in the Florentine art. The thing about Florence is yes, there is the Uffizi with incredible Renaissance works (including my personal favorite, Titian's "Venus of Urbino" which I had trouble pulling myself away from) and the Academia with the David (which I actually didn't get to see) and monuments and statues around seemingly every corner, but the real gem is the city itself. It's not one piece, or one work, or one building, it's the composition of the city. Even the clouds in Florence have a kind of grandeur and presence that impress.

It is important that I come back to the Uffizi though, it really is a remarkable museum. I love Renaissance art. I love the perfection of it, the beauty of the human form. Yet the depictions of men and women and their impossible beauty has dual effect. In their nudity you can find yourself and relate to the anatomy and to the emotion, but in their perfection you feel as if they are as strange as they are familiar. No real man has looked like Michelangelo's David and no real woman has looked like Titian's Venus. I mused over humanity's glory while standing in front of the beautiful bodies portrayed on the canvasses I thought that humanity was indeed wonderful...until I had to fight my way through the hoards of flesh into the next room. The museum was packed, mostly with Asians, which was convenient for me since I could see over the top of all them.

My love affair with Florence came to head on my last day there. I thought that getting some pictures from the top Brunelleschi's dome at sunset would be a worthwhile endeavor. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I can't be sure how many steps I had to climb up and I haven't been that claustrophobic since I was a kid (15th century Italians, apparently, were much smaller than 21st century Americans) but when I emerged onto the roof I was breathless from neither stair nor tight space. The sun was setting over Tuscany, storm clouds were churning over the mountains, and the city shimmered under the sun, first yellow, then gold, then red.

It took me awhile to find my feet; once I did I took my photos in vain. I knew there was no way to capture what I was seeing and what I was feeling. That sun, that city, those clouds, the whole scene was unlike anything I had every seen. I lived in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains for more than a decade, I've been to Big Sur and driven some of Highway 1 along California's West coast, I've felt the end of the world effect at the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, and then I saw the sun set over Florence. I never got tired of looking at the city and stayed until the sun had bled out. It was a remarkable view and there was a bit of comic relief as everyone who emerged from the staircase, be they English, Australian, French, American, Chinese or otherwise had the universal response when they saw the scene in front of them, "wow."

That night Brandon and I had a bottle of wine and bought one for the road. We stopped on the Ponte Veccio and talked about the locks. It is a tradition that when you love someone you take a lock and attach it somewhere on the Ponte Veccio and throw the key into the Arno. There are actually fewer locks there than one might think, but enough for you to feel the significance of the gesture. I didn't add to the collection.

We crossed the bridge and walked up a bit of a hill. The wine was doing its job and to disguise that we were American tourists we spoke in Spanish (and Brandon in French from time to time) as we crossed paths with others. We were drunk and loud and the conversation hinged on how old we thought our host mother back in Madrid was. We made it to the top of the hill and admired Florence from the other side of the Arno. There were some other people there, Spaniards too if I recall correctly, and we chatted with them for a while, mostly about the gorgeous city winking back at us. The next day we left for Rome.

SB09 Italy Part II: Train from Venice to Florence

Similar to my post about the train from Milan to Venice, this is me trying (and failing) to capture just how wonderful it is to watch Italy roll by through a train window. I wrote, I listened to music, I looked out the window and Italy became more entrenched in my heart. Another video and a few stills.

SB09 Italy Part II: Venice

When you walk out of the train station in Venice you are dumped right next to the Grand Canal and it hits you immediately: you are some place completely different than anywhere you've ever been. The nine of us poured out of the train station and immediately took off our top layer as the sun in Venice was warm and generous. I say the nine of us because Brandon didn’t make it Venice. He had a rough one the night before and when we left the hostel at o’dark hundred that morning he woke up long enough to say, “I’ll meet you in Florence,” and rolled back over, again submitting to the will of the Universe.

We took a water taxi from the train station to our hostel area. The trip there was absolutely incredible, the bright sun, the shimmering green water and the pale paint of buildings with wet front porches crept along with us as we stole pictures of the beauty. 5 minutes and probably 15 pictures into of the taxi ride I confessed to my friend Steve, who was also taking picture after, "this whole city is a photo." It really is, it's hard to take bad photos in this city. Does it smell? a little in some spots. Is it efficient? not even a little bit. Is it simply a drop dread gorgeous city? Without question.

Venice was really quite lovely and as much as I enjoy my good friend Brandon Curry, having him not make the trip let me get out on my own without the group and explore at my own pace. I wandered over canals and through the tight, winding streets, stopping to take pictures and duck into art galleries. Including this one tobiarava.com. I bought a poster of a blue wood comprised of numbers. In my wanderings I also found a museum that brought the sketches of Leonardo Da Vinci to life with interactive models aka a nerd's paradise. I also dropped into a bookstore with English books and bought called Venitian Stories by Jane Turner Rylands, a fun little book which is even more fun when you're actually in Venice. The opening story was set on the same street as our hostel, molta bella.

All in all Venice was just remarkably pleasant. It is a small city with a laid back attitude and while Milan had unapproachable high fashion, the artsy scene in Venice was considerably more pedestrian and accommodating. I saw St. Mark's and was blown away by the gold mosaics, I was stunned grandeur and enormity of the Doge's Palace, I shopped on the Rialto, and but mostly I watched languidly as gondoliers slid noiselessly through the maze of the canals. Images of a much older, much wealthier me living in Venice crossed my mind over and over again. It is a true testament to how much I enjoyed Venice to have a fantasy of buying a house in a city that is yielding to the ocean everyday. I've lived in growing cities, dying cities, and cities on life support, but none of them are anything like the city that is sinking.

SB09 Italy Part I: Train from Milano to Venice

Most of the caravan used the early train to Venice as a chance to sleep, and while that had been my original intention the northern Italian landscape was too beautiful to take my eyes from. My love affair with the Italian countryside deepened as the hills and mountains past from left to right and I was reminded of Colorado. I wrote a little bit in a notebook I bought in Milan about an Italian fantasy. Merely idle dreams, but perhaps something more one day.

I tried to capture just how pretty the trip was by taking snaps out the window with mixed results. Then I got smart and took a video. That’s right dear reader, you weren’t far from my mind over spring break! Well, sorta. Anyway, here’s the video and a few stills of the trip.

SB09 Italy Part I: Milano, Duomo, Gelato

OK the long awaited Spring Break 2009 Tour de Italia blog entries! I will preface my posts with a few things: first off, sorry this took so long to put up, I’ve been back in Madrid for a week now and just getting to it. Thank you for bearing with me and continuing to check back in. Secondly, the structure of my trip was fabulous, flying into Milan then taking trains to Venice, Florence, and Rome and then flying out of Rome. I enjoyed each city more than the one before and it kept the trip exciting and fun. Lastly, a disclaimer for people who want to go to Italy: if you have even a moderately significant other (or in my case a formerly significant other) and you go to Italy without them you are going to see and experience things that will make you hurt to some degree. It’s just the nature of the beast. It’s a splendid country and wonderful place to be, but a tough place to be alone. This will be the only reference to the sad moments of my trip; in truth there were only a few and a fun story is more enjoyable for me to write about and certainly more enjoyable for you to read. So here we go.

Milano

Brandon and I arrived at Madrid Barajas International Airport with luggage on our backs, a one way ticket to Milan in our hands, and vague idea of being back in Madrid ten days later. That was it. No return ticket, no hostels booked, no copies of Rick Steves’ Italy, nothing. This was spawned from the fact that Brandon refuses to book things or make plans and that philosophy is growing on me. There is charm in being spontaneous and not knowing where you’re going to sleep that night but it has obvious drawbacks. Part of this school of thought is embracing the notion that the Universe will take care of you, and then having it happen. With this being our mantra we found our gate and waiting for the same flight to Milan as us were 8 SLU students with the same itinerary as us: Milan, Venice, Florence, and Rome. All of them were more than agreeable people and they had booked hostels with two other people that backed out, leaving them to pay for the two extra beds. Universe looking out for us: Check.

The flight was painless, actually Lufthansa is very pleasant little airline, and when we got into Milan and took a bus for 30 minutes from the Malpensa airport into Milan proper. The bus had at least 3 male models or at least want-to-be male models, this is Milan after all. Since it was my first trip to Italy I was wide eyed and hungry to take everything in. Once we got into the city you could feel a different rhythm than in Madrid. The pace was different, the city was dirtier, English more prevalent, but mostly there was a different feel. The distinction is difficult to describe but was absolutely palpable. I was in tune to it and curious to learn more.

And learn I did. I learned that our hostel (yes, I will refer to it as “our” hostel even though I played no role in finding or booking the hostel) had overbooked and moved us to a different hostel. A few buses later we arrived at our hostel and discovered that we were essentially out of the city. Milan’s public transportation, and indeed all public transportation in Italy, is grossly inferior to the metro system in Madrid. I knew that Madrid was efficient by comparison to US cities, I didn’t realize the dominance extended over Europe as well. The metro in Milan, along with other problems, looked (and ran) like it was from the 1940s. It fit in better with an Edward Hopper painting than the sterile, streamlined briskness of 2009 Madrid.

Despite metro deficiencies I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Milan is a really cool city for about 2 square miles, maybe even less than that. The downtown area with the Duomo (the third largest Cathedral in Europe), art museums, and the famous high fashion district is really a lovely spectacle. Outside of that area is very okay. We spent the day walking around downtown, visiting museums (including one with Raphael's sketch of the School of Athens and original pages from Leonardo’s sketch book, both of which were absolutely stunning) and gelato stands along the way. Side Note: I had 3 servings of gelato in Milan and a microscopic portion in Florence.

I think some of my friends got gelato with crack in it the first time because they were making an average of 3-4 gelato stops a day, everyday. Insane. It was good, but not that good. I think my spiked gelato theory has some merit. After the latest gelato binge we had a tremendous dinner and Brandon and I split a fabulous bottle of wine. I had warm feelings towards Milan and Italy by the end of the meal and the magnificence of downtown Milan at night cracked the door of my heart to Italy.

The next day my compatriots went to see Leonardo’s Last Supper, I tagged along to see if they had any walk up tickets. They didn’t, I wasn’t surprised and waited in a small piazza while they went into the church to see the painting. While I was waiting I saw a different sort of art. The scene I’m about to describe has lingered with me and I’m still not really sure how to categorize it or what sense I can actually make of it. My friends had just paid their money to go into this church to see the painting; I was sitting on a bench outside of the church when a hearse backed up to the door of the church. Shortly there after the doors opened and a few people walked out and the casket and its pallbearers followed. The casket was loaded into the back of the hearse leaving a melancholy handful of people standing outside the church. While all of this is happening text message notifications were going off on the cell phones of my fellow piazza dwellers, British tourists were asking for directions, and young Italian boys are playing, running, and throwing dirt at each other. This is the one of the boys playing; in the background is the hearse with the casket and in it.

My mind fizzled watching this. Youth, death, tourism, the Last Supper, and text messages. I still have no explanation for what I saw or what it made me feel. I don’t think it was simple as some sort of Lion King “Circle of Life” BS, or maybe Lion King “Circle of Life” BS has a lot more to it than I originally thought. I don’t know. I just have these pictures.

Later that afternoon we climbed to the top of the Duomo and had an incredible view of the Alps. Seeing all those mountains made me miss Colorado. It’s strange but after 5 years, Ohio, St. Louis, Ireland, Spain, and now Italy I can say with certainly that Colorado is home. I’m usually flaky when people ask me where I’m from, giving them the rundown from Marin Country to St. Louis U, but I think from this point on I can just say Colorado and be content with that. That night a few of us ate at a local pizzeria, had a few bottles of wine and rubbed elbows with the employees there. Elliot ordered a second pizza, it came back in the shape of heart. All the employees were male. I think this was more Platonic love, or love or the American tourist’s money, or maybe he just thought Elliot was dreamy. At some point when we were in Milan we were on our way back to the main square we crossed paths with a rally, and I think it was pro-communism, I can’t be sure since I don’t speak Italian and I’m too lazy to look up what the signs said online.