A Sunny Day

Dear Blog,

Wonderful news! The sun is out! Wait, f this, I'm not gonna right a blog right now. What was I thinking?

Blog,
Josh

Goddamn the noise! (you know who you are)

Dear Blog,

How are u? I'm been pretty fine pretty much all of the time most lately. I'm thinking because we have such pretty wether this week, but cold. I have been playing with the cats many times. The furry one is like a mixed cat and possum. He is afraid of pretty much mostly everthing. The other one is normaler but whines too much if you don't hold him. Today I held him while dancing to song I wrote:

I've got a whoooooole ca-at in my arms
I've got a whoooooole ca-at in my arms
I've got a whoooooole ca-at in my arms
I've got a whole cat in my arms.

The cat didn't like it very many.

Otherways, my mom breaking her arm at the ice skating in Seattle not many days much before the hodidays, but she isn't too sad to have it on with a red cast on, but not to let us sign it becuase she is saying that it would be looking too messy. I help her now with the bird feeders because she is not much able to hold many things. The bird feeders bring many kinds of birds to the windows. Three kinds, two kinds are both different kinds of chikadees and the other is a nuthatch. Otherways, I went bowling with Emily and did bad, though that Emily did many much better. We took fruit and carrot to the deer at the house futher down on the road and fed them. The lamas were there to be looking at but didn't want no food.

Blog,

Josh

It's All Right. That is, What Can You Do?

October 15, 2010
San Carlos, Mexico

Dear Blog,

There is a damsal fly with glittering eyes on a window pane. She is inviting me to dance with her, but I decline. I'm too shy. She is out of my league. Somewhere, unseen and silent, a cockroach gives birth and ponders the miracle. "It is good," she decides, and her brood scatters in all directions like bomb blast. My guardian spider, the patient sentry behind my toilet, is pressed flat against the wall like a polydactly hand. She is waiting, waiting to destroy a part of that goodness begat by old mother cockroach. She is murderous. She is a murderess. Outside the crickets sing happy songs in hard times, impaled on a scropion's sting. The stars shimmer because they have to. "O well!" they laugh and wink. The fan above my bed revolves grudgingly. It grumbles. Grrrrr. Grrrrr. Grrrrr. I thank it for the soft feathers of wind it dumps on me, but we do not speak the same language. Somwhere in Canada, I think, a maniac is chopping the feet off of women, above the ankles. He paints the toenails the color of damsal fly eyes, then carefully slips a pink sock over the seavered foot, nexting tossing it into the sea with a dramatic flourish from the top of a bluff, socked in itself by fog. It is message in a bottle that reads, "Shit is fucked up, isn't it?"

In such a horrible, wonderful way.

Be good, Blog, if you can.

Josh

Extraordinary Health News Within

January 9, 2010
Seattle, WA

Dear Blog,

I’ve been feeling pretty bad lately. Sick and tired, depressed and deflated. Thick blooded. I went to the mirror and had a good, long look. “You look positively toxic, buddy,” I remember saying to myself. Then I got angry. I hate being called buddy. So I calmed myself down with a strong pot of coffee and a few mouthfuls of dry saccharine (see notes).

When the painful spasms in my legs and back were infrequent enough to support me in a sitting position, I merged carefully onto the information superhighway, with all the doors locked. Next thing I know a drunk bag-lady in a lab coat is rattling the door handles, screaming at me in a Kansan accent, “Are you toxic?!”

I answered emotionally, “Yes, I am so toxic, Doctor, please help me!” And I let her in.

“Toxins surround us” she whispered conspiratorially, “and most people who have not detoxified themselves will be approaching the toxics levels.”

Naturally I was alarmed by such a dangerously meaningless sentence, so I urged her to tell me more, and to take as much of my time as she would.

Thus the drunken bag-lady continued: “If you live near new construction, there is outgassings from the paint, glues from the floor, and various other chemicals and benzenes that can affect you.”

“O Lord no!” I cried.

“Now for your cleaning materials…you wanna be sure…” here she closed her eyes and rolled her head, “…some cleaning products do not have natural subsinsins in them…to clean them…and they transfer through your skin to go into your blood stream…Natural cleaning products, HOWEVER, are safe on your skin AND to breath them. Keep in mine that food priserfitifs can affect you at a sillular level and become toxic in your system.”

She fell asleep and when she awoke she told me she could use a ride to the Best Western, where I understand she does the washing.

My encounter with this esteemed health professional sparked a change in my lifestyle that lasted nearly eight hours. I avoided sugar, alcohol, caffeine, and wheat. I drank three liters of water in five hours. By four pm I had the worst headache of my life and was pissing every 20 minutes. On top of that, my soul was wounded from the uniquely offensive training seminar I had been paid to attend. The critical message of the program, you should know, was “Be in the now!” with the many implications, ramifications, extrapolations, and abominations of the powerful aphorism spelled out in detail, alluded to in allegory, poeticized in metaphor, and tarted up for use in true-life examples:

“I was buying some jam and I went up to the cashier and was checking out, making small talk, and I said something about how I was going to have to pack the jam in a suitcase to fly home. ‘You’re gonna put this in a suitcase?’ she asked me.” Here the presenter paused for laughs, and here I was astounded to hear people laughing. “Next thing I know she’s run off to get me some bubble wrap! She really had to ‘be in the now’ to do that! And you know what, it may have saved me a suitcase full of Nordstrom’s clothes! Could you imagine? Everybody, ‘BE IN THE NOW!!!!’”

My Vietnamese colleague sighed during the lunch break, “I think this is the last time I’ll work for white people.”

My headache reached a terrible crescendo after work as I attempted to bike up the hill on 45th. I don’t remember the rest of the ride home, but here I sit, many hours later, and still in my work clothes. I took a serious dousing of black coffee, ate half a baguette and a candy bar. My headache is nearly gone. I haven’t been to the toilet in over an hour.

So happy to be re-toxing.

Blog,


Josh

Note: Saccharine is banned in Canada
Note: Canada is America’s largest oil supplier.
Bonus Question: How many bones in a giraffe’s neck? How many in a dove’s?
Answer: The giraffe has 7. The dove has 13. Isn’t that wild?!

March 11, 2009
Kathmandu, Nepal

Dear Blog,

It’s been a while. A good long while. Much has happened, much has been seen, done, tasted, felt and heard. And if this were some kind of journal in which was recounted the true remembrances of actual occurrences, the long gap between event and recall would surely prove plenty to have rotten the memories to gross exaggeration and stinking lies.

Such is the effect of time on the mind.

So, my Dear Blog, if you can forgive me for not bestirring the flies that lie laying on my tales of past adventure, I begin today’s story with today:

I woke up for the third time at 7:58am, the two earlier rejections having been 5:59 and 6:45. Reasonable hours. At nearly 8 I was being lazy. I could hear Charrisa and Laura, the two Dutch volunteers, already outside washing sheets. It seems Subash wet the bed again: the seventh time this week.

“How do we learn him not to do it anymore?” Laura asked Charissa.

“Well, he went to the toilette twice last night, and he even still did it again in his bed, so I don’t know.”

I threw back the covers and sat halfway up. I keep a bag of beaten rice on the table by my bed and I eat a handful every morning like a drunk eats aspirin. What to do about Subash? I don’t know either. The two loudest voices in my head say, with uncaring commonality, “Rub his face in it!” and “He makes his bed, let him lie in it!” but these rude thoughts don’t rattle my vocal chords. He is, after all, only three.

I stand up, a few pieces of beaten rice fall from my chest and find friends on the floor. I dress in my least dusty looking pair of clothes, a pair of brown shorts and a green hoodie, and fill a pocket with more beaten rice. It’s a holiday today; breakfast will be later than usual. It was a holiday yesterday, too. In fact, the last six days were holidays. Nepal is a country of Festivals and off-days. Out of the years 52 weeks, over 23 are National Holidays. Yesterday the entire city threw bags of red colored water at each other. It was fun for about an hour. But by the end of the day I was ready for a throw down with the next bag-throwing jerk. A few weeks ago Shiva Ratri was celebrated by children blocking roads with ropes and charging traffic, pedestrian and vehicular, one rupee to pass. The adults celebrated by smoking hashish. That one was fun…

I bend down to pull the cloth out from underneath my door. Since I began stuffing it there I haven’t had to share my room with anymore noisy, nighttime mice. Deep breath, I open the door to another bright sunny day in Kathmandu, Sad City of Dust…

I step into my shoes outside. I keep them there convinced that there are, per square foot, fewer spiders outside my room that may choose to seek seclusion at the toe of my sneaker (remind me to remove the egg sacks from the rafters or I’ll have even more roommates in a few weeks). And there is no threat of rain. In fact there has been no significant rainfall here for over 8 months. The drought is worrisome, the dust is thick, the leaded gas fumes from the heavy traffic color the air pale cigar smoke blue. Disconcerting to actually see the air you’re breathing. A heavy rain would clear it, but it may still be several months coming.

We have electricity this morning and the water pump is running. If our tanks fill completely, we get maybe 2000 liters a week. With 10 children in the house, and between 4 and 5 adults, all drinking, cooking, bathing, washing, cleaning…It goes quickly, and there never seems to be enough. Ali ali paani, they say. Little little water. And the shortage is only going to get worse without rain. But today the pumps run for too long. The tanks fill and we have to use buckets to catch the overflow. We all do our laundry, we clean the toilet and shower. The extra water feels like a gift, a luxurious, extravagant gift.

I’ve had a cough since Morocco. That was a month and a half ago. It’s like a smoker’s hack, but way less cool. I go into an obnoxious fit then wander over to Ramesh at the tap, brushing his teeth. “Hi, Ramesh,” I say, “I’m dying.” He takes the toothbrush out of his mouth, and through the foam he asks “Why shouting then?” I didn’t think I had raised my voice.

At 10:30 I eat breakfast. Which is distinguishable from dinner only by time of day. It’s always and only Dhalbhat: an intimidating and often overcooked mush-pile of rice covered in lentil soup with a small amount of vegetable curry, all served on a cold metal plate without company of cutlery. Spoons and forks add no flavor and you’d just have to wash them besides. I eat in 7 minutes – I’ve really gotten good with my hands – then I’m out the door. I’ve got a summer job interview, via skype, at noon. If anything comes of it, I’ll give more details. I pay a microbus 20 cents to take me into town. During rush hour the buses are just as slow as walking and more uncomfortable. The Nepalese know how to cram into a van. I usually walk anyway because somehow 20 cents has come to seem like a lot of money.

In town the rickshaw drivers and mumbling drug dealers give their regular sales pitches (Hey you! Rickshaw? Richshaw? Hashish? Hey!), but today I am uncommonly rude to them. I find a cyber shop and the interview goes fine. Indifference is an ace up the sleeve.

No hurry now, just me, the rest of the day, and the two miles of bad, broken, dusty road back home. Slowly Josh, it’s not really home. I stop at a shop and, due to my spectacular whiteness, am and offered assistance beyond what any non-quadriplegic could possibly need. I look over a bag of beaten rice. Beautiful white flakes. My assistant takes a different bag from the shelf. It’s more than double the price, and the rice is dirty brown. “Better?” I ask, skeptically. “Anh, better.” she says and takes the bag of beautiful rice from my hand and puts it back on the shelf. Okaaaaay. So I buy it, along with a bottle of water, a package of cookies and some noodle soup. A man can’t live on dhalbhat alone. I open the rice outside and taste it. Merde, if you’ll pardon my French, pure merde. Moving your unsaleable stock on an unsuspecting white fool, eh? Hmmm…well…If I’ve learned anything ever, I’ve learned a fool is the best we born idiots can ever hope to be. Ladies and Gentlemen, it seems I’ve arrived.

I take a left to walk the long way down the none-too-scenic Balaju Industrial Zone. I pass the Coke bottling factory, the parked, parrot-colored trucks with such inspiring tailgate messages as “SEE YOU” and “HORN PLEASE”, Kathmandu Bank, the long stretches of rusted barbed wire separating one intolerably dusty place from another…I notice a group of school boys up ahead, one has a stick. As I pass they demand I give them my water. Psh! Mero ho! Its mine, punks! I just keep on walking. I rejoin the main road and pass an old prune of a woman selling peanuts. I used to buy from her everyday, but I lost my taste for her wares and now I feel only slightly guilty as she stares at me ignoring her stare as I head up the hill to the orphanage.

Five of the ten kids have final exams tomorrow. Most exhausting and futile endeavor, trying to make a child study. Children are like water, they spread out everywhere. And if they come in contact with some containing wall, say a nay-saying, go-study guardian, they pool together to probe everywhere for weaknesses. Unclear directions, lack of resolve, laxity or leniency in discipline…They know quicker than you do how deep the water’s going to be, and, to be honest, nobody’s getting more than a damp trouser leg stepping behind my dam. I have no real authority. After an afternoon arguing study location (Its too noisy in the boys’ room? Maybe the outhouse will be quieter…), proper study posture (sit with all four of the chair’s legs on the ground, Janga, look the book, and open it too…) and relevant study material (Ramesh, how do you think Suraj’s class 2 English Grammar is going to help you tomorrow on your class 3 math exam?), I finally got pissed, dragged one non-studier by the neck to his book, where he cried and cried, then went outside and pinched the bridge of my nose in the twighlight.

The stars over the Balaju neighborhood are intense during a blackout. If this country never develops due to the electrical shortage, at least they still have the night sky. I say that’s worth something.

After some time alone, tiny non-English speaking Ashmita shuffled out into the dark and whispered into my ear: “So many coconuts!”

That made me feel better.

That night, for a bedtime story, I improved upon Hemmingway’s “Old Man and the Sea.”

Once upon a time there was a simple old man with an unfortunate face like a dry lake bed. His cracks and scars and eyes like scattered rocks scared children, and repulsed women. As a youngster he had taken too much sun as a crew member on a slave ship harvesting from the plentiful Côte d’Ivoire and now he could find no form of gainful employment on shore, and was forced to spend his lonely days taking what he could from the sea. But for 84 days now, he hadn’t landed anything larger than a mackerel, and suffered a man-o-war sting pulling the line in to boot. But his simple way and hopeless optimism sailed him out to sea an 85^th time. On that day, he quickly hooked a baby dolphin and cheerfully clubbed it to death, sprinkling a little blood in the water for good luck. As the mast’s shadow shortened and the afternoon’s heat burned down on the top of his grizzled head, he felt a monstrous tug on the line. Something big had taken the hook, and was now traveling to the north! The old man held the line and let the fish pull the boat, slowly, slowly. Slowly the boat was pulled. The old man spends some time in thought. And tells his brain to stay clear. As the boat gets pulled. Slowly, slowly. Further and further from the lights of Havana. The fish pulls the boat. Slowly. It’s the farthest out he’s ever been. And still the fish pulls. Imagine! The fish pulls the boat for 80 pages! Incredible! But lo! After such a feat with nothing for food but the sweat sea water, the fish tires, and begins circling the boat. Closer to the surface…Closer to the boat…Closer… Close enough now, the Old Man drives his harpoon hard into the old heart of the beautiful marlin. The Old Man thinks about money while the fish labors under the burden of death. Soon the hush of oblivion takes him and reduces him to the silver center of a crimson stain spreading across the surface of the sea. The Old Man lashes the giant fish to the side of his boat, as it was too large to take onboard. But sharks are drawn by the blood in the water come to take what they can. They rip meat from the marlin carcass in 40lb chunks and knock the boat around so fiercely that the Old Man spills into the ocean where the sharks rip him to pieces simply because they are sharks. His empty skiff is found three days later by a cruise liner and curious tourists take photographs of the huge fish skeleton lashed portside.

Now, I ask the kids, where is my Nobel Prize?

They are quiet for a moment before they realize that I’ve finished the story, and then begin whining:

“Ahh, that’s it, so quick? Come now, Sir, tell another!”

No, no, children, that’s one of the treasures of western literature, be silent and ponder it a little longer.

“Come now Sir! Tell another!”

I won’t. You children sleep now.

“We won’t.”

You will, because you are children, and as such your life is directed by the unexplainably malevolent whims of adults who can’t possibly remember what its like to be a child. Now shut your eyes, good night dears.

I turn off the flash lights and go to my room. Rajendra gave me a mosquito net which I hung dangerously close to my candle’s flame. Someday I’ll carelessly move the net into the fire and my whole room will burn. I can’t wait to tell that story.

I read a few pages of Don Quixote in the yellow light, pull a louse from my hair, then blow the candle out.

Good night dears.

Blog,

Josh

PS: It’s now March 22 and the rain is here. So much for my pessimistic prediction that “it may still be several months coming.” The air smells so sweet now. I celebrated by smoking a cigar I brought from France. Then smoked three more out of boredom. Nothing to do in all this rain…

In other news of wetness Subash stopped wetting the bed. But he started wetting his pants. Three times a day. And he cares not whether he be standing or sitting on your lap. All I have to say to Subash these days is “Toilet jau!” Go to the toilet, you…

A Cold Place to Be

Dec 16, 2008
Lille, France

Dear Blog,

Last Thursday I took the tram into Lille at 4 o'clock. Michelle's train was scheduled to come in at ten. I wanted to give myself plenty of time. Six hours seemed like enough. But what to do...I couldn't just hang out outside; Northern France is a cold place to be in December. Wondering, I took the second right from Lille Flandres to a sandwich shop I knew. I wanted to solicit the advice of the man who shaves the Kebab meat. He suggested that I buy a sandwich. Who's he working for? I wondered. But I didn't have time to figure it out before my sandwich was ready. I poked at it a few times with a tiny fork, and discovering no new ideas between the bread, I ate it. With mathematical precision, too: For every four parts kebab that went in my mouth, 6 parts smeared onto my hands or face. And that diabolical sandwich man only gave me one napkin. Not enough, Monsieur! Thinking unnaturally fast, I went to a book shop and handled the paperbacks until my hands were covered in only a thin layer of sauce. By this time I was in the Books in English section, so I picked up a couple and found a chair next to an olive skinned man with a closely shaved head. I noticed he was reading a Cartesian treatise. I gave him a fat stare and he pretended not to notice. He knew the game, this one. I sat down and began reading something about a professor sleeping in a pile of leaves. Surely You're Joking! I thought. And then I'm so clever, which was just patently untrue, so I laughed. The man next to me looked up, studied me and my book, and then asked what I was reading. It's about a physicist. And it's funny? I shrugged. He was a funny guy. Monsieur then decided my face was familiar. Hadn't he and I had met before? Yes. He was sure of it. You're from London, he explained, on holiday in Lille for three months. O. Right. Well. He was only a previous meeting, an ocean, and a month away from the truth, within a reasonable margin of error, so I let it slide. We talked a while longer, awkwardly, until the bookstore closed and I bade my new old friend au revoir.

Outside the clock on the Commerce Tower hung like an unripe fruit. Only 7:30? If anyone would have been there I would have complained. But lesson learned. You don't need to be six hours early to pick up a girl from a train station. I looked around. The moon shone down through the clouds like a phosphorescent pupil in a black iris, the universe a giant cyclops, me a pawn in a particularly long and drawn out game of chess. Your move, the cyclops universe seemed to whisper. Pawn to giant supermarket! I loitered in the isles, poked at the soft breads, pinched at the hard, and established an intellectual rapport with a 75 Euro crayfish. I left the store with a bag of peanuts and a bottle of water. I picked up a newspaper and walked to the train station. I found a corner, sat on the floor, pulled out the peanuts, the water, spread the newspaper over my lap to read, and shrunk into my coat. A train station in Northern France is a cold place to be on a December evening.

It wasn't long before I noticed a man in gray clothes and pink skin looking at me. I kept reading my paper. It wasn't much longer before I noticed he was walking towards me. I kept staring at the newspaper. In fact, it seemed quite sudden that he was standing over me. I looked up.

"Vous endormez ici? Are you sleeping here?" He asked.
What? No. I'm waiting for someone.
"D'accord. Alright." He didn't look convinced. He held out a package of hot dogs "Les voulez-vous? Do you want these?"
My brows furrowed. Non. Merci.

Then he walked away. What just happened? I wondered. But in my heart, I knew. I had just been mistaken for a bum. I wasn't sure how to feel, so I responded with bemused amusement; I laughed. But lesson learned. With a wrinkled wardrobe, a home-job haircut, and such an informal demeanor as mine, you shouldn't blanket yourself in newspaper, lest you suffer by the inferences of others.

I stood up in what I hoped would be a dignified manner, though it seems Dignity is too haughty a sophisticate to be seen fraternizing with a man of my posture and profile. I slouched over to a nearby McDonalds. It was my last resort. In France, as in America, McDonald's is a seething hub of degeneracy, idiocy, and high decibel garrulousness. I merely wanted to trade a Euro for a coffee and a warm place to sit, but the true price was much higher: a possibly fatal exposure to the most virulent collection of pockmarked humanity in the city. In my haste to leave, I dropped a pen under a table. A man succumbing to the toxic effluvia of the crowd gasped and pointed to where it fell, but in retreat you let the dead lie where they fall. It wasn't my pen, anyway.

Not long after, Michelle's train arrived. Finally! I walked down the platform, scanning faces. I saw the one love, but its lips were moving. She was talking! With a man! What's going on here? I wondered. I put my detective's face on and let them walk past. I tailed them for a few steps, but didn't learn anything interesting. Bored, I slipped up abreast with Michelle then slipped my arm around her shoulder. She was surprised. She said au revoir to the mysterious man, and suddenly we were alone, together. She excitedly explained that she had just held a conversation, all in French, for an entire hour, and it had come easily. She was as happy as a song bird on a spring morning, her gold plumage radiating brilliantly in the cold, dreary terminal. I took her back to my cage.

The night passed.
Dawn came.
Dawn went.
Morning took her
back to the train.

But I was there too, with my feet propped up on the seat in front of me. Brussels is just half an hour from Lille by train. And I'd been hearing good things about the waffles in Belgium. Michelle and I were deep in some horribly interesting conversation about French grammar when all of a sudden a conductor appeared out of nowhere. He told me to move my feet and demanded to see our tickets. Fine. There, jerk. He rubbed a wand over our tickets which nullified them at Brussels-Midi Station, so that's where we got off.

It was only a short walk to the hotel, so as a lengthener, we started off in the wrong direction. After a while a map was consulted, the landmarks pondered, and 180 degrees turned. In our new direction the wind was at our backs, good time was made, affording us a stop to admire a large, brass horn near a busy street. I sang Patsy Cline's greatest hit through it for the pleasure of the other pedestrians, indeed the Bruxellois at large, though it was largely ignored or considered annoying.

The hotel was fine. Unremarkable, really. Well, remarkable enough to say that it was unremarkable. A place to set our bags down. I wanted to fill the ashtray with peanuts to make it feel more like a party, but the bag ripped and the nuts spilled into the bed, all over the floor, and into Michelle's bag. More of mess than a party. So we left. To Grand Place, the town square. A nativity scene-cum-pigeon roost wasn't attracting much attention, hidden behind the giant Christmas tree. Even the tree was boring. I mean, it was a fine tree and well trimmed, but it had to compete with the large number of glowing, growling, hooting sticks planted around the square. They looked like giant, stiff grass stalks with rectangular tips of glowing wheat berries, and they were all belching the sounds of the Amazon: bird calls and monkey howls. I…What…Uh…huh… We thought, then walked away.

Michelle likes to experience a city through its Christmas Markets, so we wandered through several, or maybe it was just one that we kept stumbling on from different directions. In between the booths of one (the?) market, a man accepting donations for the Salvation Army tugged the heartstrings of my Michelle, so she forced me to make a donation, which put me on both sides of charity in less than twenty four hours. At some point we wandered into the Asian District. Michelle found brown sugar at a Chinese market. A store worker explained: "This is sugar. You can mix it in your tea or coffee. It's good." You learn something new every day!

Night had come, bringing with it an uncomfortable frigidity, so we pointed ourselves back toward Grand Place and an Oriental pastry shop I wanted to sit in. But ho! Things were a bit different in Grand Place the second time around. The growling light sticks weren't growling anymore, they were dancing! Pulsing and changing colors to the rhythm of Christmas Carols, we learned that these were the Electrabelle Nights. When the dance ended, a horde of bubbles was unleashed upon the crowd of dazzled spectators.

We could have watched it all night. And we certainly took enough pictures to make it seem as if we had. But I was adamant that we visit that pastry shop. It wasn't far away. We ordered two expensive pots of tea, a white, moon-shaped, sugared-covered something, and a hookah. We sat, drinking, eating, and smoking peach flavored charcoal, completely content with our lot in life as we watched the train of shivering people steam past the window. Who knows what we talked about or how we made the decision to go to Amsterdam the next day.

We stayed long enough the next morning to take advantage of the hotel’s complimentary breakfast, to pack our bags, and to stomp to bits the last of the remaining peanuts on the floor. Then we put ourselves on the 11:15 to Amsterdam! What a picture that place is. Surreal. It’s so beautiful you don't believe it. And the Dutch, well, they're a genial bunch. We found a sketchy hostel with the same price, Michelle observed, as a stereo. It was downtown, just to the west of the Red Light District. An interesting place. It’s got a vibe like something from the distant past, the distant future, and Saigon all mixed together. A place where women in bikinis shake their fleshy wares in windows, and if you like what you see, well, it’s yours for a fee. A place where men on the street offer you cocaine and ecstasy while the police patrol disinterestedly only a few yards away.

Fortunately the Red Light District is only a very tiny portion of Amsterdam. Unfortunately it attracts and excites idiots, who make problems and create a buzz. The rest of Amsterdam seemed a peaceful, sporty place. The Dutch ride their bikes everywhere, keep big beautiful parks, and enjoy peanut butter and coffee creamer. Michelle stocked up.

Amsterdam is home to many fine museums and attractions. The Van Gogh Museum, Anne Frank’s house, the Rijksmuseum (exhibiting a fantastic collection of diamond encrusted human skulls), the Heineken Brewery. All of which we wished we would have been willing to pay to go into. But we weren’t. So Amsterdam’s art and culture and beer tours were left for our less stingy cohorts and Amsterdam, for us, was all shop hopping to get in from the outside. Holland is a cold place to be in December.

On the train home I told Michelle stories about my friends. George once saved a beached whale. Jerry had been delivering mail for Newman but got caught because he did too good a job. Elaine became the president of a company and bought George an $8000 hat, which he hid behind the couch cushion of a girl he’d just had a particularly bad date with. Kramer befriended a wig master working on Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat. Michelle napped. I stared out the window and wondered what Jerry was up to now. We were back in no time.

It was a good weekend. And now this is my last week in Lille. I move on to Paris Friday evening until Christmas, and then Michelle and I'll be hopping around Europe for the following three weeks. If we survive the planes, trains, and vagaries of each other's moods, we'll be back in Paris by Jan 19. Then I leave Europe on Jan 27. I'm heading back to Asia for four months. Nepal this time. You see, as a child, I never had the opportunity to spend much time in an orphanage.

So I'm going to make up for that now.

Blog,

Josh