I've begun self-catering, which provides a much needed break from tagines and fills my pockets with some extra dough. I got a pair of babouches the other day--traditional leather shoes. They're yellow and a little too small for my feet, but they're supposed to be worn with the back of the shoe bent under your heel, so they fit fine. I also went to a nearby hammam, public bath, with some other travellers a few days back. It is cold up here in the mountains, and after coming out of the hammam my core temperature must have risen a few degrees, and I was warm for nearly the remainder of the night. I think it was that same night I attempted to play the card game Mao (from Reed and Hyde Park, where you don't tell anybody the rules, they just have to figure them out as you keep making up new ones) and met with just less than mild success. Haven't played since.

I took a rare excursion from working on the writing and the translating to hike up to the destroyed Spanish mosque about 20 or 30 mintutes out of the medina with a Quebecoise girl named Laurence. She's been travelling for I think half a year and welcomed by fortunate circumstances at nearly every turn; the world is conspiring with her as it is wont to do with people up to the bobbing and thrashing and occasional inhaling of water of going with the flow. From the mosque tower expansive view of the rolling hills and mountains dotted with villages and dappled with sunlight breaking through cloudbeds as if pointing to hidden treasures, wind watering the eyes, and a connection with a human. Then back to my hovel to pound out Whitman and move words from notebooks to other notebooks, books to notebooks, mp3 players to notebooks. Notebook notebook sore back bending over notebook notebook eyes failing notebook.

Next day Farid's wife offered me heroin. I said no thanks and told Farid and he got upset at her and told me how giving someone heroin is like shooting them, only they die little by little instead of all at once. I noticed how thin his face was, how much skin he had, points of sincerity coming out of his contracted pupils. I went and got some Amlou, which is almond butter with argan oil--the closest thing to peanut butter I could get. A few days later I mixed it with nutella and now I'm a golden being of transdimensional properties.

Laurence got to meet Farid before she left, which was good to have someone who I thought would get the situation and his idiosyncracies just be able to witness it, him. I am still waiting for Farid to reimburse me. Bea told me he has a slip of paper laying around the house that says he has to pay 600 dirham or go to jail which he may or may not be planning to show me when he sees I'm not lending him anymore money. What a weird tangle they are and we are. I'm disappointed in Farid's supposed plot, but I shouldn't expect much else. It doesn't mean we can't be buddies (I hate that word, but friends wouldn't do) if he doesn't get pissy when I don't give him anything. It's been on my mind.

Other things I've done this week:

Hanging out with the Ahmed, Mohammed, and Abdulmalik at the restaurant and waiting on Farid. Ahmed is the owner, Mohammed the waiter, and Abdulmalik the large joyously retarded uncle of Ahmed. They told me they took me for 25-28, which came as a pleasant surprise following years of my face looking younger than its years.

Reading Ulysses and my thesis adviser's The Logic of Culture while pilfering unscrupulously from each and more. I've been more concerned with moving ideas than incorporating them, working in preparation for that work and wondering whether preparing is the thing to do.

Playing with the Tao and putting it down--picking up, out, and apart. Trying to loosen my grip on the rudder and life vest while clutching ever more firmly to soaking and dissolving pages of books I can barely read anymore, my eyes blurring strained splashed blinking.

I'm in Morocco working on writing, translating poetry, meeting people. Surviving ain't that hard.

Yeehaw.


Also, Happy Birthday Baloo! I love you times a million.

What My Parents Probably Shouldn't Read About What I've Learned About Pain, Ideation, And Paying Attention This Week

As violent a gesture the call to prayer may be, I'm beginning to enjoy it as a reminder of the wonder of being, as a catalyst to reflect on this more frequently (5 times a day the call to prayer is sounded out from PA systems mounted onto the mosque towers where the call was once called from human vocal cords).

I was eating one night and a guy named Abdelmajid came and sat next to me. He said something about us being brothers, as opposed to the people outside of this little dining room in which we were seated, and so he could talk frankly with me. And did he talk. He gestured wildly in his speech; his voice, its pitch, volume, and origin within his body, modulated just as forcefully. The light on him and the shadow projected onto the wall, a wall covered in a pattern in which I cannot help but see a row of mexican wrestlers or ninjas, by the single candle threw me into a mild revery; it was as if these monologues for which I have been playing audience with some bizarre frequency have been saturated with godliness or something of the sort. Like when I was in Rome, the world is playing itself out and I am watching as it plays me out. I am understanding more what Daniel was talking about in Paris, how unreal everything seems when you understand everything is being and coming into its right place.


There is one hash peddler who has taken a strong dislike to me and comes off threateningly. Gives me the creeps, this guy. I've made friends with some locals, though, plus my tourist status is a deterrent, so I'm just staying out of his way, and he should be staying out of mine. One of the "friends" started out by conning me out of an embarrassing but not unliveable amount of money. He said his kid was sick, I gave him a little money. He came back for more, I said I want to see the kid. He was sweating from what I took to be worry for the kid. He came out of his house with the child wrapped in a blanket, actually looking like he could be sick, so I gave him some more money which he promised to pay back the next day. Next day came and he asked for more money for his wife to buy a phone card to call her parents in Spain to wire them money. No money. At this point, I considered the loss a loss. I talked with his wife who knew nothing about this con, she brought me to their house, he was caught. Only thing is he didn't have the money anymore, so I played hardass, saying I don't want problems, but I'll deal with them if I've got problems. He's paying me back over time now, which means I spend a lot of time with him waiting for him to give me more of my money back and running around with him to collect from people who owe or will lend him money. Again, weirdly enough, I've begun to enjoy running around with him, he is a good guy in some respects, and he is more of a person with me than I would have expected. Also, when he's around, he'll shoo away any hash dealers or scroungers easily where I would have a difficult time--not because I don't say no and mean it, but because they are more persistent here than in the other towns I've visited. Farid is his name. I've talked to his twice with boogers hanging a quarter out of my nose and he tells me with what seems to me a compulsion for cleanliness or seriousness or the appearance of such. It could also be read as a friendly or protective gesture, but I wouldn't assume him to be conscious of it. Still, I'm on my toes.

I'm realizing I need to revise my stubborn projection that everyone is trying to be good for every- or anyone; sure, this doesn't mean I need to appear otherwise, just to take things in with more attention to what they may be rather than what I want or care for them to be, which goes for all interactions, not just those in which I'm worried about deception.

PAIN. All of the sudden I'm doubled over on my bed for no reason I can call up. Pain unlike anything I've felt, it hurts to breathe even shallow breaths. Pain to even lay down flat. Wow, pain. I was thinking testicular torsion, I was thinking kidney stone, I was thinking caught nerve, wildcat running through my organs, appendicitis, wildcat, my mind must be malfunctioning, wildcat. I tried to stay with the pain, not push it out, bend it into a sense of the overwhelming intensity of life, no meditation. Was this childbirth? At ten or fifteen minutes in, I took an ibuprofen and got myself together enough to lie back and rub the pain, expand my slight breaths little by little. Just the other night I was thinking about writing about pain and my relative inexperience with it, that I should know what it is better before throwing it around. I got that wish. Considering how little confidence I have in doctors in the States, I was not keen on seeing the inside of a Moroccan hospital. The pain subsided after around three quarters of an hour and I was coming into the intensity of comfort to which I am so accustomed, riding on this for about as long as I was writhing in pain. Apparently the herbal tea I drank in the morning has this effect sometimes if you aren't used to it, and my digestive system has been working slowly lately, so I couldn't recognize it immediately for what it was. I'm okay now. It's like the only relationship advise my dad has given me "stay away from the crazy ones," which I also had to realize for myself with darling Edie Darling. Wow.

And Happy Birthday Ruth. 20. How did this happen? Happy Birthday, I love you.

Vomit!

The town used to be called Chaouen, meaning The Hills, but now it is known as Chefchaouen: Look At The Hills. I sat up on the terrace at the Hotel Andaluz looking at the mountains the other day and noticed a harmony between the silhouette of the mountains and the curving crest of rooftops. I began writing and quickly became overwhelmed by more and more ideas, flooding me, not letting me actually do anything. It was both marvelous and terrifying in how potent and impotent it made me feel.

Over the same mountain, I saw a white bird and a black bird flying together and at first mistook the black one for the white one's shadow. I saw a black cat and a white cat walk up to me the other night. I cut my finger on a fresh notebook I'm using for this larger piece I'm about to start on. It drew blood, and I'm taking this as either a very good or a very bad sign. Once again, I am surrounded by omens, only I haven't been feeling their strength as gutturally as when I was in Italy.

've met several travellers, spoken several languages, and have found one or two people compelling enough to talk to for more than half an hour. Worked on a poem for a good 4 or 5 days, finished it and promptly got food poisoning. I threw up for the first time in over 11 years. Just like riding a rollercoaster--not as bad as the anticipation of it. My fever cut immediately and I woke up in the middle of the night thinking to myself, "I fell like Jesus' son." Don't ask me.

Trying to get my feet under me today. Just thought to say hello.

Fés and The Adventures of Jacques Braun

So I hopped on a bus to Fés, feeling more capable with each passing hour. The bus ride itself was a horror--11 hours in a box into which has been leaking a certain not negligable amount of headache-inducing exhaust. I got into Fés two hours after sundown and walked past a graveyard to the medina gate through which I was to find my hostel. In Marrakesh I had experienced the awkwardness of being caught in a lie, telling some faux guide I was Italian and I couldn't understand him and then him speaking better Italian than I, what with French sinking in as my functional language. Here, I was Canadian to anyone concerned. Thoughtlessly, this is what I told the hotel until I showed my passport and pardoned myself embarrassedly, following with a few derisive comments about the US government. Funny enough, I pulled the same thing when I got to the next hotel, in Chefchaouen, but maintained that I live in Canada, just born in the US and was studying and living there when I got my passport. I know, what's the point? Part of me wants very much to be as honest as I can wrap my head around in all speech and action, but another part desires to train the ability to make shit up and be okay with deception. Jacques Braun in a deceiver. With a constantly shifting backstory, Jacques consistently calls himself a Canadian Christian who is not religious, but believes God is everywhere. His lineage is French, but the family has been of Canada for three or four generations by now. If pressed, his parents now live in the US, unfortunately. Not that he thinks Canada is so great, because he just loves Morocco--yes, you have a beautiful country and yes, Morocco has a place in my heart, thanks for asking.

I've begun writing down my dreams in the morning. I wondered why I am always quasi-within myself in these dreams when an "I" isn't necessary to action, mood, environment. The next night, a dream without myself. What can I say.

I met an actual Canadian (well, a Quebécer) and told him I was Canadian, too. I did not do this because I had some unconscious wish to be found out (or, at least, not just because of this), but we were in a place with people who I had told two or three days previous how I was from Vancourver, BC. Turns out this guy, Lillian, has family in Surrey, is it? What is that big suburb right by Vancouver called again? Um, I don't know, I don't get out of the house that much. Hm, that's strange, because I think this suburb is, like, bigger than Vancouver itself--Surry or Currey. Well, actually I was just born in Canada and lived there until I was three or four, then my family moved down to the States. Haven't really been back since. I feel strange, removed, worried for the rest of the conversation, but Lillian seems to have ignored or not understood or accepted my whole schtick and for the next two days he does, infact, refer to me as a Canadian--to others and to me. I am left bewildered as to what actually happened here.

All the week, I've been taking Arabic "lessons" from Mohalled, the dude who owns a restaurant just next to my hotel. I got the alphabet and sounds after three days, and could more or less sound out words written wherever. When we got to sentence construction I learned why there are accredited institutions of learning. I spent a quarter of our time waiting of Mohammed to work with me, a quarter telling him I understood something as he was flogging the horse post-mortem (i.e., ten minutes on "min" means "from"), and half of the time trying to direct his scattered "teachings". Regardless, I ate nearly every meal at Mohammed's place, though he never gave me the slightest break on prices and the food wasn't that great. I sort of made myself a presence there, to get a feel of the workers and build a familiarity of which I was either feeling in need or just curious to try out. Here is a picture of Djellal, a worker there, and the restaurant. My "course" took place on the upper shelf.

Also, one night Djellal brought by a hooker. I was confused if she was supposed to be for me or for him, saying, "Non, non. Mais, allez-vous si vous voulez". The hooker seemed to be confused, too; maybe because her pimp's client was saying no after the pimp was assuming a yes. I later learned how Djellal is a pimp who pimps girls even as young as thirteen. The boy from whom I heard this is too old for his age.

I gave up on the Arabic with two days left in Fés after Mohammed had spent the first half-hour of what was supposed to be lesson-time talking at me about Islam being the last and best and only true religion as I stonewalled him, giving the occaisional affectless "je comprends" or "oui".

Here is a beautiful sunset. The tourists all hit the roofs to take photos, not simply digging on it and in it, but making pathetic attempts to bottle it.

Here it is:

The five calls to prayer per diem are broadcast over PAs from the mosques. It sounds like I imagine bomb drills in 50s America sounded, it sounds like some sort of hell. There is a definite oppressive and aggressive aspect to the call to prayer, just as there is to the ringing of the hours by chuch bells.

I'm still reading Infinite Jest, which got me going on the idea of irony as a means to absolve onself of the sin of feeling or being/having been attached to something; valued something. Irony is a mechanism by which the knowing separate themselves from the ignorant, but there is a small frightened empathy in the brief identification with ignorance needed to assert ignorance and knowledge. I think I am beginning to smell a little like franks and beans, and my feet definitely smell like cheese popcorn. Anyway, in this fashion, irony can be understood as an extended branch of Enlightenment thinking in its will to knowledge and progress, though it modestly undermines the productivity so much aligned with this progress.

Leaving Fés, I say goodbye to the guys at the restaurant. One of the kids is playing soccer in the alley. I'm told he is an orphan and homeless. I say goodbye to him and he gives me one of the strongest smiles I've seen since my sister was a kid. Happy, honest, good-willed, vulnerable. Sheer honest smile. This smile wraps itself around me and says, "yes, this is the feeling you love and miss when you remember you don't have it. This is being home, but not too home. This is having friends without having the recognition of the third-party called the relationship, which makes for the awareness of power fluctuations. This is a realized love." A homeless orphan, and what could I give him that would make him any happier or more beautiful than he was just then.

On the bus to Chefchaouen I talked with a very nice man who invited me to stay in his home if I came to his town in my travels and who bought me a yogurt drink when he went to get one for himself. I felt a little bad about lying to him about myself and I gave him a fake e-mail address that jived with my story. When I arrived in Chefchaouen, I made this fake address into a real one out of some guilt and maybe good-will? The mountains remind me of Elba, as do the snaky Escher-like passageways and building-gestalt. The medina is painted all in blue/violet and white, which makes the place feel unreal or surreal or wonderfully real depending on your mood.

When you meet someone on a bus/train/plane or in a bar/party/other social setting and talk and then there is sileznce, is the silence shared or is it a retreat into individual silences?

I bought a rug already. I know, you don't need to say anything. It is made out of cactus fiber, though. It is light and pretty. Yeah, I know. What's done is done. It is pretty, though.

Naive Melody II

It's been a while, hasn't it. I left Abruzzo happily, having gotten past most niceties as the charm of the place became a drag with one foot in a bear-trap. I got to the point in Italian when gli occhi no longer meant eyes or the eyes, but gli occhi. Entering another language is beginning an other world, each thing with different connotations and denotations, moods and places. Translation can be an atempt to compensate for loss or it can be a refiguring both closer to and further from its point of departure. In my departure for Florence, I hopped a Eurostar train for which I didn't have the right ticket. I got on at Bologna, figuring the conductor wouldn't come through until the leg between Florence and Rome, as their passing through had seemed to occur consistently between the two largest cities in the journey. A gentle paranoia fell over me. I did not have the energy to fight it, and so I went to the bathroom, took all of my money except 5 euro out of my wallet and into my back pocket and returned to my seat thinking if I'm to get caught, I can show I only have 5 euro to pay any fine, Florence is the next stop anyway, and give a please-,-I'm-sorry-,-I'm-a-stupid-American-face. The gamble paid off and I was in Florence, out of the reach of the conductors.

Florence for Halloween with the Vettoris and they had a box full of old costumes. I was given the cannibal costume with a fake bone to which I attached an American flag, which nobody seemed to get, so I took it off. There is Dario to the left, Sophia at right, and me in the middle. We've been drinking awful tasting vin brulé. Earlier in the day I'd ascended the Duomo, not to be confused with lighting it on fire, as I proclaimed to Dario that I was going to go accendere il duomo.

Leaving Italy to meet my parents in London, I was pummeled by the cold until my primary function as an animate being seemed to be to produce and wipe and blow copious exaggerated lots and lots big time gross quantities buckets barrels boats buildings of snot. Dad had to do the auctions, and so mom and I walked and bitched about how the city has the aesthetic and kinetic essence of porridge and the people just about the same. This was a period of little thinking, as though living in English and no longer rambling along on my own dessicated my idea-energy, as though my idea-energy dissipated with each English word that left my mouth and every phrase received by my ears, the unthoughtfulness of native knowledge. It had been coming on throughout my time in Abruzzo and maybe even starting as I left Florence the first time, I can't tell. And walking around with mom and dad, I often felt as though I was on some mild hallucinogen, paying close attention to them and at the same moment fostering some kind of malignant uncare; every movement saturated with so much meaning as can only come from the blood--I was coming into a spirit realm or falling apart or both. We got to Paris and saw Daniel, which was a big improvement on London, though, still being a cranky bastard, I was still being a cranky bastard. My parents left. I was sad for the boy I once was and who he was for them and now where our past and present selves live in the same skins like apparitions of crowded bedrooms, where the shoulders rub and pass through one another, where there is no space and only space, where the door is not a door and the walls are not walls and ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space or buried.

Ma and Pa

I stayed in a turret apartment from which one can see both the Eiffel Tower and Sacre Coeur, courtesy of François and Agnes Champarnaud. Agnes and François are excellent. How else to describe them? Very excellent. Free and rambling again, I spent some time in the apartment to make it feel my own--I turned out the light, closed my eyes, and moved the space around me, which could have been miles or inches from the next object; I expanded and contracted it, becoming more comfortable in it, stretching and condensing it to fit me. I visited Osman in Rennes, danced a bit after taking some encouragement from David Byrne, hung out more with Danyo, ate some falafel and an impressive meal he made for us and the Champarnauds, made it to London, to the airport, and got a good 2 or 3 hours of sleep in front of the check-in booth. My head, at that point, was at "I am ready for Morocco and I know I'm not ready, but I'm ready". Got in yesterday morning, found a hotel, and wandered around, little by little, getting less intimidated by the place. The main place, Djemma el-Fna could have been Renn Fayre or Babylon. It feels very real, even as much show as it is, and maybe especially. I walked through the souks and lost them in my wandering only to find them again and again. I'm in the shit now.

The Ebb and Coming Tide

I found Rome, as a city, somewhat disappointing--even the Sistene Chapel was something of a let-down after being ushered and corraled through the infernally long and cramped corridor which seemed to have something to do with the Vatican's ventilation system. Nonetheless, I was feeling good, and even religious for a few days. I had been reading Ugo Foscolo's The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis, which was, by and large, pretty boring, but contained enough redeeming gems, like "Everywhere I look I see nothing but infinity absorbing me like an atom". And I felt this, and I started seeing this city filled with people as a mindscape where I was continually encountering myself or god or life itself, it is difficult to say exactly what was surrounding me and what was within me, but I was living in a more or less constant state of grace for those days. I visited many many monuments, but found myself more affected by the masses of people and scenes like a nun shopping for bras at a fleamarket stand which stood out alone on the street, than the monuments themselves. And how odd it seemed to me, a nun shopping for a bra, given that you can't walk into a church with exposed shoulders or knees, how repressed are breasts and markets within the papal policy while still playing such important roles as Mary is everywhere with the baby Jesus and the church has been a money-machine for centuries. And if two people started fucking in the middle of the church, would it tempt people to sway form thinking of God, or could it sanctify humanity? A boy with a broken keyboard slung around his neck walked from traincar to traincar, asking for money as the keyboard played "Ode to Joy" on demo mode. And I thought, what does he do when he isn't here? And, why the keyboard? Was it an insincere assertion of alliance with the goodness of song and energy or an attempt to create a more pathetic sight or the dumb habit of assuming the music can be exchanged as a goodwill good for alms? I cut the line to San Pietro's Basilica to see how I'd feel about it--no need to do it again; and in any case, waiting in a line can be seized upon as an opportunity to do any number of things--a free time of sorts.

I find myself walking into any bookstore I see and browsing the books greedily, wanting to read them all, to write them all. I met a guy in my hostel named Simon who was reading Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet, and immediately became anxious of finding someone closer to realizing my ideal self than I have come, but got over it quickly. All the same, allies or enemies, to build or to lay siege--these are the basic thoughts upon encountering someone with some sort of potential value to me. As I said, more or less constant state of grace. The next day I was back to god and found it most difficult to see it in deceitful or sad things, whereas understanding that which was manifest before me and within me as life itself, the world, or myself, was much easier, though it wants a degree of detachment when it doesn't come on its own. In the pregancy of things, I saw the deceit of shadows and staircases; I saw the greif of clothes waiting to be sold and clothes that had been sold; I saw the joy of these as well, and the greed, and the dying. There were men selling flowers in the Piazza del Popolo, and I found a bouquet hidden by a statue and was tempted to steal it and give it away, flower by flower, to people so that they could give a flower to someone--to give the gift of giving. I though better of it, though, and let the men sell their flowers, not wanting to take bread from their mouths, and I didn't buy any flowers because I was attempting to live off of 7 euros per day and would have put me out of at least two days of food.

My last night in Rome was not to be my last night in Rome. My farm wasn't contacting me back, and I was getting nervous about where I was to stay. I began contacting other farms, but none needed me for at least another week, if at all. Finally, I got an e-mail back from Stefania, the owner of the farm where I had originally planned on working. The buses to the town closest to her farm were not running for the day, and so I waited it out in Rome.

I arrived at the farm and it turned out to be a beautiful agritourism. That night I thought I had a revelation in my dreams about ideas and spacetime, but quickly lost it in waking, and there was something about Hansel and Gretel and the concepts of German and American overlapping, and then there was a cat somewhere in it, which made me a bit wary because before leaving, James had told me he had a dream where an evil cat came to him and told him he was going to "get your friend Jake when he least suspects it". A mosquito bit my upper lip and I looked like a fool for a few days, which I found alternately amusing and embarassing.

Ideas were flowing, but soon I became inattentive to conversation, less interested in the world around me, even when we went to buy a peacock. For however much I disparage habit and will continue to do so, I recognise that I need it to a certain degree, though I wish I didn't. I felt myself losing sensitivity, maybe from the energies spent by the constant movement since Elba. I began getting frustrated with myself for this ebb, and began stretching and playing with my mind as I had on Elba, trying to snap out of whatever funk I though I was entering. The beginning of the olive harvest didn't help my situation, as I was too tired to think; I had lots of complaints. All of a sudden, or so it seemed, I finished a song I had begun on Elba. And the next day I wrote a poem. The influx of idea energy was revitalizing, and they made the days labor easier to pull through until I understood how to pace the work and became habituated to the fact of it. Things are on the up and up now. I'm satisfied with the poem, though, paradoxically, as I grow more perceptive, I find it more difficult to tell good from bad--I see more variables, more logics, and lose the desire to follow any single guiding line--or to blow things into grand proportion, I lose sight of any one hegemonic ideology.

Fresh olive oil is toxic green as it is pressed and a little bitter. Go to The Euphemist if you want to read the little song or the poem. Go to www.mariadonata.it if you want to see the farm. Go to the stairs if you aren't being have.

Perhaps Nero Was On To Something

On the first part of my trainride to Verona, I thought I had found the solution to the problem of continuity I never fully addressed in my thesis. How does a person live if everything is in flux, discontinuous? Pattern recognition. The collagation of similarities gloss over the profound difference between moment and moment. As recognition requires a recognizer and recognized, it would seem as though there must be a stable subject to be formulating these similarities. This is not the case, however, as the subject is part and parcel of the pattern, subject and object are one, and this pattern recognition, this creation of the continuous, is the pattern's cognition, recognition, and re-recognitions of itself.

Also on this train, I saw beautiful landscapes, which appeared unreal, as if the window through which I saw was actually a movie screen. Perceived beauty can often provoke the collagation of disparate elements into scenes, which puts a thin film between subject and object. Aesthetic perception will do this, will create this distance. Beauty encourages aesthetic perception with the pleasure of its sight, but ugliness does this as well, evoking displeasure and asserting the pleasure of its "opposite"; habit, however, may creep over either and ensconse it in its invisibility.

In Verona, I was hosted by Anna, a girl I contacted through the couchsurfing collective. Anna is a loon, a little scary and rather dense. I ask her a basic question, and she responds to the question before, the question that leads up to it--I try again and get a confused elaboration on the first response. But this is okay, she is giving me a free bed on which to sleep, and a roof above it.

I felt as though I had walked into the city to find it in its pajamas.

I planned to go to Venice for at least one day, but was battling with an illness that had been with me since spending time with the 11 month old twins. I thought better of the trip, and stayed in Verona drinking juice and watching movies.

I left Verona with an incessant runny nose, and went to meet Jan and Ilse Strick, friends of the family, in Cremona. They had rented a room for themselves and one for me in an out of the way azienda agriturismo owned by a young man named Alessandro. Alessandro, somehow, took an intense liking to me almost immediately. It is strange, this lighting recognition is happening more frequently with me than ever. I wonder to what degree this has to do with my simply encountering more people, the attractiveness of this grand trip I tell people I am taking, from which they might infer traits in me which may or may not exist, but which also would take more time to realize in other circumstances, or perhaps I'm just a charismatic guy, though this I have always doubted. Jan and Ilse fed me with some of the best meals I have eaten in a very long time. At one point, we went out with some friends of Jan's and ate a lunch with white truffles generously sliced over both the antipasto and the primo piatto.

I then left for Pistoia, to stay with Andrea and Carlotta and their amazing kid, Lorenzo. I had met them at Orti di Mare and then again at the music festival with Vittorio. They remind me of my parents in a way, and so I felt very relaxed and happy to be staying with them. I walked around Pistoia, stopping in on any church with unlocked doors. I thought how stange it is that people moved their gods indoors, cleaving their love from nature and looking solely towards the man-made world, a world that still is not their own. The stained glass windows help translate the natural god into the human god, and the vaulted cielings replace the sky, asserting the relations with god as better when conducted on human territory (though still properly god's, but in which humans can share ownership). That is, unless the church was designed as an institution fabricated to socialize and make more manageable the populus, as results within most institutional settings. Ugo Foscolo writes, "...every individual is a born enemy of society, because society is of necessity hostile to individuals." The church steps, then, do their best to seperate the man-made house of god from the rest of the human world, giving it to the abstract and ideational. The fact of a church is unfortunate. I have been revelling in meeting the world as though god/life and I are addressing myself and I am addressing myself as them to them. This does not know the boundaries of church walls. To not be afraid of or for the world, because it is god, because it is the world.

Now I am in Rome, leaving tomorrow for my final farm in Italy--two weeks of olive picking. Rome itself is dirty and makes me want to drag sacks of garbage into the museums. They are protecting their culture from itself, and maybe they wouldn't have to if they let the city burn a while. Perhaps Nero was on to something. Or perhaps this would be a return to the Dark Ages, but haven't we arrived already?

It seems to me as though the Church must place the most experienced priests and nuns in the churches most frequented by tourists; I imagine other minds less trained to meditate on the glories of the Lord would quickly lose sight of the divine as the simulacra spins so ferociously in front of them like a flaming wheel and lion's head. It makes sense that there are so many pedophiles in the priesthood, they are such sinners that in penance they have no choice but to become priests and say their Hail Marys until they can look at the choir boys without lust.

Careening from monument to monument, I was set upon by a Colombian man speaking to me in Spanish. He was looking for a friend or he was hitting on me, it was difficult to tell. We walked the whole day. I could have lost him in any crowded place, but I didn't want to be rid of his enough to do this, so I waited and told him I was going back to my hostel. He asked me to call him, I said I would, turned around, and left. What kept me from leaving him earlier? Some mix of compassion, cowardice, and stupidity. Probably also my stoic/masochistic desire to experience and understand that which repels as compelling, especially when it presents itself directly to me.

i avoid hostel life. dip my foot in to see if it is worth a swim. mostly it is not.

How I Am Becoming Verbose, or Less Reductive Reduction. I Have So Much To Say. I Have So Much To Say. I Have So Much To Say. I Have So Much To Say. I

The last days at Orti di Mare felt similar to my last days in Delaware; the ghostly detachment and neurotic restlessness were in my bloodstream, only not so strong as before. The grape harvest was exhausting, but luckily I had a few chatty companions--there was Chris, the newly arrived Scottish WOOFer who generously gave his ear to my rambles and declarations, and there was Olga, a Moldavian woman in town for the work, who took a shine to me and talked like the sweetest gossip you've known. The day was difficult largely because of my aching headache from a few small glasses of grappa (read: moonshine) the night before.

The day I took off, I grabbed a bottle of wine, ate my breakfast, said goodbye to Chris and Ambroggio (the only two awake at the time), and headed for the bus stop. And waited. And waited. For two hours. The bus hours had changed with weather, and the next bus wouldn't come for another 5 hours, which would put me in Florence at around 8 that night if I was moderately lucky. I pulled on my pack, headed to a large road, and stuck out my thumb. An hour or so had passed without a bite under the Tuscan sun. I was wondering when my beginner's luck would kick in, when a German couple stopped for me. They were headed to the wrong city, and I needed to get to Portoferraio for the ferry to the mainland. I stood with my thumb out for a while longer, waving at cars with a smile as they passed, because at least sometimes I could get a smile back. I sang to the empty road, too, hoping to bring the cars to me like the Grecian ships to the sirens, though this didn't work so well. And then another German couple stopped and brought me directly to the ferry, which departed only a few mintutes after I boarded it.

I watched Elba shrink in my field of vision and thought of the limits of my sight, and my thought, my body, as reminders of the terrifying largeness and wonder of things and potentials--indirect signs of the infinite all around me, including me.

I hit the streets of Florence after missing my bus by mistaking the arrival time for the departure time and catching a train to the central station, Santa Maria Novella. On the way to my hostel smack in the center of the city, I passed the Duomo, overrun by tourists and all, and stood for some while looking at it with teary eyes. So large. So thick with intention. So sincere. In short, it was an imposing beauty. I tried to read some of the architecture's dense text--noted the circles (heaven/nature) within other circles, father, son, and holy ghost, the 3 circles within a larger circle which is the whole damned family; the almond-shaped vulva of Mary, by which God gives birth to himself; the spirals towards the heavens in the vertical and circular time of Vico and the others living in Medieval Europe. What's more, some of these cathedrals contain decorations that were hidden upon their creation within the walls or columns of the church, for the eyes of God only forevermore. There was a point in front of the main doors where the central firgures of Mary and baby Jesus are looking and pointing down at you, saints and popes surveying the land in all directions, and you are dwarfed. How dangerous art can be.

The tourists seemed so ugly and unappreciative, which we are, but not only. I got to the hostel, sweating like a pig who has also climbed six flights of stairs with a pack one third its body weight. My bed had all the charm of a plastic bag, and the room had seven other occupants to whom I was forcefully indifferent, and happily so. I was in Florence. I went off in search of dinner, bouncing down the street with no weight on my back other than my shirt, walking around for a good long time and finally found a calzone for 3 euro. I squatted in front of the Duomo again and ate my calzone, thinking of Pound's banking conspiracies and Perec's commerce as culture as art. I walked more, not tired yet and wanting to more of the lay of the land, maybe find some cheap eats for the days following; and my eyes led my feet from restaurant to restaurant, consumed by the insatiable hunger of expected hunger. The streets at night are filled with Africans hocking sunglasses and purses. As the cops roll by, the Africans "hide" their wares, but there are no secrets, just farcical nicities and tenuous relationships. I commented to one of the vendors that they had a good system in place, he laughed.

The next day, I gave a half-eaten gelato to a man asking for money. He had come to me and I knew what he wanted when he stood in front of me and moved his hand out and began speaking. I said that I didn't understand, saying French or English? and this was perhaps a demand for further supplication. I gave him the cone of chocolate and strawberry gelato, my favorite part being the cone and gelato together in each bite. And I gave this to him after he balked a few times and then he asked for money again. I began habitually digging in my pockets for coins and accidentally pulled out a 2 euro piece. He saw it, I saw it, and I put it back. "Too much," he said--"Troppo," and I said yes, I only have 10 euro for each day. This to a man who may have a fifth of this to survive on, though I rather think he does well enough for himself with all the tourists around. I gave him 4 cents, the only other coins I had and he walks away, maybe muttering a vague "grazie." I feel cheated, angry, and then I think this must not have been generosity if I wanted something in return--I wanted to have him act as though I were a good person in exchange for my ice cream, and good will 4 cents of a euro. And giving my gelato, even, was a quirky manifestation of this--I didn't care whether or not I ate the rest of it, but I expected something in return for the gesture at the least. And was his action wrong? No. He asks and takes what is given; the interactions are that simple, "are you going to give?", it does not matter why, why should it? Actions are what create the social character, but these are opaque. The only reasons to give other than in exchange for some other thing, nebulous or immediately tangible, are the desire to give itself or indifference. I felt as though I was beginning to understand what my parents mean when they tell me my openness is wonderful, but to be aware that some people will try to take advantage of this, only it is not that I should be aware of being taken advantage of, but rather that I should be aware of why I am giving, what I expect in return, and the reality of this return. Karma or other religious figurations of debt and credit are cold comforts because of the dogmatic rule of them, though the release from immediacy is potent.

It is amazing how many people look at my notebook while I'm sitting and writing, as if they want to see what is important enough to record that they are not taking down themselves. And how many will look into your eyes without quickly averting their gaze, without passing it as a mere glance? I want to look at you, you are specific, and can I know you? You are surely a fount of interest, but can I see in this fascination something meaningful? The quickness of action, thought, and reaction is difficult to maintain, to smile or not to smile, to look away or fix the gaze.

I have the habit of seeing differences strongly--a woman is more a woman to me than a man is a man, a black person is more black than a white person white. I do not value these differences as less or worse than similarities, but I do see them more fixedly. This is how it has been, but I am feeling different, myself, and we are similar in being different. In this, I am not finding myself less fixed upon differences, but blurring the distinctions between differences and similarities, between my self and other selves in the mode of Rimbaud's "I is an other." There is something in this similarity in difference like the infinite in the limited, that which we cannot see being present in the horizon of all we do see--a wall, a face.

I wandered the labyrinthine streets without much trying to remember my way. The streets forgetting themselves behind me; and every return is thrown into a new light...

...Frescoes with center action, and secondary and tertiary action further from the physical center, but no wholly decentered scenes that I have come across so far. And the thought behind all of the characters' expressions, dress, orientation, action, is overwhelming--whole conceptions and schemes of the world and beyond on a square yard of canvas or building.

Calvino says, "the city appears to you as a whole where no desire is lost and of which you are a part, and since it enjoys everything you do not enjoy, you can do nothing but inhabit the desire and be content...your labor which gives form to desire takes from desire its form [and you believe you enjoy it wholly when you are only its slave]." There is not enough time for desire to die. Instead of being ruled by this desire to rule and kill?, desire, I think I prefer "there is enough time" for desire to be desired, to feel and be felt. Still, there is not enough time to satisfy desire, and there never will be.

I got into contact with a family of Violin makers in Florence, the Vettori family. They took me in, fed me, gave me company, and housed me with such generosity that I could not imagine what I could give in return. I spent most of my time with Dario, who reminds me of James, a friend from Portland, in the way he laughs with his whole body, the little happy stubbornnesses, and the appearance, at times, of being at once completely entrenched and removed from social situations. These things endear him to me even more than his confounding generosity.

My last night at the hostel before ditching it for Dario's, I was talking with some boys and girls from America and some young women from New Zealand, finding myself very much apart. One boy began talking about terrorists and the so-called war on terror and his desire to "fight dirty" by killing indiscriminately. Nobody said anything. Was this happening? I began to respond and the room began emptying. The monologue had become a dialogue, and what is so boring and so sensitive as politics? It is understood as polite and couth to sweep the gorilla under the carpet and pretend it doesn't fart.

A kid on a motorbike with a sticker of the Italian flag on it brought to mind the force through which desire manifests itself in discourse--the discourses of cool, identity, exoticism (insofar as a sticker is an adornment), as well as others, I'm sure, give coordinates (vague enough), or rather loci, for where they can affirm and reassert themselves; that is, desire finds expression in these things which propagate further discourse and desire--and it is only through desire that discourse is propelled, both from within and from without.

The Florentines have curses for God, such as "Di'ane," which is a slur of "Dio" and "Cane," literally god-dog. Also there is the word questo for this, quello for that, and then there is the word codesto for this thing between us. Marvelous.

I walked around the outside of the Pitti Palace and the Uffizi Gallery, and remembered waiting for ages in that line to the Uffizi the first time I came to Italy with my family. It seemed as though everybody milling around just wanted to take a photo and leave--to "collect" the "experience", which taken in this light means less than shit. I imagine a renowned rock floating in space being visited by men in straw hats and hawaiian shirts and the American atomic family of the 50s in an old Chevy with fins on the back fenders and all; they travel miles, lightyears maybe, to see this rock which is so popular that at this point it is popular for being popular, regardless of its other qualities, even if it played an influential role in the way their people ordered their calendar or conceptions of beauty. A snapshot and they turn around and take off in the typical cloud of smoke towards home or the next spot to be recorded and verified. Recording in this case means buying and cataloging. I want to see how my writing is different from this, because I feel that it is. In writing my experience, recording it, it is incorporated further into myself in my expansion upon and evaluation of it. It becomes more by this kind of recording--a sort of interest on the moment. Usura (interest, as Pound refers to it in his cantos as he is working out his conceptions of banking, Medicis, art, and, conspiracy) is a retrograde entropy, whereby the world is becoming more than itself. But becoming more, or as entropy would claim, less, is impossible in the logic infinite infinities, differing differences.

I helped Dario with a speech he's going to give as an introduction to a conference or concert by Yo-yo Ma before taking off for Milan with an exquisite lunch he prepared for me just before we made a mad dash to the train station. Got to Milan and Monica picked me up at the station. There are waves of connection like we've known each other for years, and then waves of jarring alienation. Her father looks at her with such obvious pride, but she tells me this is too much to bear, too heavy to be the vessel for all of his joy--nobody wants to be loved that much. We get to her uncle's summer cabin in the mountains and you can hear the cows grazing, the sound of tubular bells as they move. Every thing in the mountains has a bell attached to it--cows, goats, dogs, churches. Monica had a guitar, which felt so good to get my hands on at first, and it gradually became more of an instrument in my hands, more of a vehicle than a toy, which made me more reticent to play in company.

At the top of every mountain was a cross, an attempt to anchor the heavens to the earth. I was seeing many signs, many omens--operating very much in the symbolic realm, which feels in tune and yet might be complete delusion. I don't think it was the altitide. Monica tells me about a man who is like a wall and a woman who is like a wall, and how they are like two walls facing, and I see the city filled with these stubborn lovers. She is blinded by her pain and says she hopes I will not encounter such pain. I do not want to believe that pain must be blinding.

We went to a museum and I acted the tourist, exhausting myself by not opening myself to the exchange of energies with the art. There were weapons decorated so that you can battle with Beauty on your side. We went to Milan's Duomo in all white stone and stained glass windows that were conceptually disjointed--one window was new and had the insignia of the bank that sponsored it at the bottom of the window, also in stained glass. There were local parishoners there, too, who lines up for the confessionals which were set up like bank tellers' booths. I asked why gargoyle and other monsters should adorn a house of God, but couldn't get an answer. Monica abhors the superficiality of Milan, but I tried to convince her that you can see depth in superficiality, and that depth itself is only a complex surface, but I don't know if it got through. We hiked up a mountain with her friend and her friend's twin girls in their stroller over Roman stone paths. It didn't seem like a brilliant idea to me at the time, either, but I was assured that it was much easier than carrying the kids, which later became evident as pattently wrong.

Vittorio picked me up from the town where we were hiking, and the two of us headed off to an Italian Folk music festival, which was not so impressive. I spent the entire night talking to two guys who had come in for the festival on a lark and didn't care too much for it either. The next day I caught the train for Verona and bumped into some people I had met at Orti di Mare. More on Verona soon...

Back to the Backpack

So I picked up a few cactus fruits with my bare hands yesterday, which was not the smartest thing I've ever done. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that. They looked as though all of their needles had fallen off or been removed, but there were plenty of very small ones--so many and so small that I didn't bother picking them out of my hands; by this morning, I think most all of them had fallen out.

Monica left yesterday, and I may go up to Milan to visit her, but her father is sickand the situation may be too strained for a visit. Otherwise, I'm off to Florence and Rome for theten days between this Wednesday, when I leave Elba, and the first of October, when I'm set to begin working the olive harvest in Abruzzo. Yesterday also marked the arrival of Chris, a WOOFer from Scotland. We spoke in Italian for most of the night, which was comical, but significant insofar as weboth wanted to work through the language--simpler communication, but more saturated with the gesture and the choice of what to pursue communicating and what to leave be. He's 34, very open and sincere, very approachable. As a general rule, I'm often intimidated by new people; and so I couldn't tell if it was him or changes in myself or our common struggle with the language or some combination of these which put me at ease with him immediately. Later we talked in English, and I found myself gushing out thoughts to Chris; being able to express myself in English to someone so immediately present must have opened a valve. Take this blog and condense it into two or three conversations, and that is what Chris got, more or less. I apologized later for the bombardment, but he seemed to appreciate talking, or at least me talking at him. I asked him about ways he has travelled on a budget and on his own, and he said "find good people who are willing to help you," and I think this is good.

My head has been very practical lately, with the arrangements for Florence, Rome, the next two farms, and thinking on the next big leg of the trip. I've decided not to go to Tunisia, and to spend the whole six month North Africa chunk before summer 2007 in Morocco. I though harder about why I wanted to go to Tunisia, and it was pretty much because I wanted to live in a troglodyte home in the desert for a couple of months. As Sarah said to me later, "you can dig a hole anywhereand live in it."

Also, I designed a new label for the wine here, which Vittorio totally digs, and if everything works out, it'll be on shelves by the next vintage.

PS- Yay Sarah for the Story Corps gig!

...and when this ship goes down, it will become apparent that there was no captain, only the mad sea. (journal excerpts)

--When people ask how I am enjoying Italy or what Italy is like, I don't have much to say. I am in summer, a farm near the sea, a small room to myself, but rarely am I in Italy. Customs and cultural differences bring me there once or twice a day at most. The people are less Italian than anybody new. What most significantly makes Italy italian is Italian. And what can I say of the language that would mean much of anything in the way of an answer? I cannot speak of Italy, but only of travel, which is to say, of myself. I don't believe in Italy or America or Israel, but in place; there is no happiness, anger, relief, grief, guilt, but feeling; no green, red, blue, but these colors I see. I am discovering the New World far older than the Old World and already discovered and explored many times over. What is bed but that upon which my sleeping body rests? I am going to bed, and it is the stomach of a giant reptile. There is no touch but feel, no sight but see, and no I but symphonic life. I do not ask for this to last, because that would be Old World; I simply receive as I am given.

--No to see but see and seeing, no to feel but feel and feeling, no to be but be and being. The infinitive is an undead lie; undead because it never lives, and so can never die.

--When I was working in the fields this morning, I saw spider-webs all across the field, connecting the world to itself, and there were ants through which living lives anf moving moves. I understod that the logic expressed in yesterday's journal entry is only one logic, which is wonderful when you live in it, but there is more and there is always more. I saw the ants and saw that there is also the infinitive and the genrund and the noun--to live lives through me, living lives through me, life lives through me--I am a sieve and a vehicle as well as that atomic or monadic explorer. Sense is the easiest thing to make for a fool--the logics are so abundant that sense is most completely nonsense. Of course, most completely is not completely complete--in fact, within most logics, sense makes sens and not nonsense. And then there is this logic of logics, where nonsense makes sense and sense is nonsense. What is logic? It is modality. This is construction near the ground floor, the pneumatic psychic floor which is more pervasive than floor, it is thought in the brain or music in the air.

--What is meant, then, by the scar? or the wound? The wound is the event (that is to say, the mark of difference) which, instead of healing, takes on other shapes. The scar is the presence of the wound in its various shapes. And the tattoo is the desired scar, the scar that is sought after. Narrative life is synonymous with the growth of scar tissue, the memory of which molfds it into new shapes, as does the growth of one scar push on all the rest and they bend with one another like points in an energy field. The acceptance of the wound and of the scar is an acceptance of life--the appreciation of difficulties and so-called wrongs can be the submission to sublime Grace. What then of scars that oppose themselves to this mode of thought, such as the fear of conflict or the addiction to overcoming addiction? We here are all addicts, whether we answer to attention, approval, the mere presence of others, habit, love, ideas, mastery of self, of others, movement, progress, magic, self, making others happy, making yourself happy, the new, fear, or something else entirely. And when the acceptance meets non-acceptance, we are thrown from our high transcendental horse into the horseshit of better and worse, of progress and regress, more and less--horseshit that smells so pungent and addictive, so good and bad and neither. There is no solution to this save perhaps its dissolution. Multiform and manifold life with its endless modalities will not stand for the Either-Or; it is and, or, neither--accepting, denying, appearing, disappearing, progressing, regressing, none of the above. What of scars that will not submit to divine Grace? They will arrive and may be molded into new shapes that in turn submit, resist, disappear, grow, etc. as will the tattoos and scars that do bow to Grace. Nothing, something, somethings, everything--the flux of fields--the and, the or, the neither. So let it be, don't let it be, let it not be, don't let it not be, and so on and so forth, Amen.

--I am afraid of Writing and of attempting to write Writing. I know what craft is and what artifice is, but not art. When I try to Write, I am overwhelmed by artifice. I think art is a happening; and I saturate this Writing with artifice in the attempt to realize the art of it, to happen upon beauty and profundity. When I Write I try to realize an idea or ideas in the medium in which I am working. Content and form do not make art, though art manifests itself through them. Art is the imagination of life. How confusingly natural it all is--for the stars to be eyes and stretching legs to be a journey around the world to be change to be death to be birth. Life imagines art, which, in turn, imagines life; and in imagining life, art realizes and adds to it. I feel there will be a time I will throw away my books and go for a walk.

--Just got touched by a jellyfish. It felt like an electric shock on the skin. Then I peed on my arm and pressed it against hot rocks, which didn't do much, but it didn't hurt either. I've been taking off my glasses more often, giving myself new sight; and there are the sunglasses and the combinations I can make. I've become more tactile through this, and I've been trying to feel thought as a sense through with this expanded sense of touch. I feel as though I've intellectualized myself to a higher pain threshold. I also feel more playful. The past few days I've experienced a rush of memories and writing. I remember painful memories best; I'd like to believe these memories stick out because I did and do generally feel good, and so I think on things past not as the good old days, but the old days, and the memories of pain are sweetened as they remind me of myself and my selves. One memory examined for a brief time, intead of being touched upon and disregarded, leads into the labyrinth of memory, an endless body. It began with a random thought of Mr. Nemeth, my high school drama teacher, and exploded from there. I am letting emotions, intuitions, ambiences, and energies play a larger role in my daily experiences. I am also remembering how I experienced as a child--living in my head and out in space, looking out of the side window of the car instead of the windshield, entering conversation when I feel like it and exiting just as easily. This rediscovery has been greatly aided by the fact of the language hurdle. I sometimes look around and laugh as these people are talking and where are we? and isn't it all so strange and bewildering? so hilarious and spacious. There you are, but who are you? Everyone is some certain someone, and it is miraculous. Everyone is anyone and people are all people. I was close to touching the sublimity of humans the other day, just standing or walking around the border, looking out onto the sublime. Looking at Vittorio or Monica or Chinzia, it was the same--"who are you?" "How strange it is to be anything at all."

--On the boat to the island of Montechristo, Monica says that the island seems unreal. I think it is a rock in the middle of the sea like Chicago is or anything else. What does seem real? The only thing I can come up with is the unexamined habit.

--The infinite as that beyond which one cannot see...this is also inside rocks or behind any vision, whether it be chair, star, thought, past, or future.

--I had another good conversation with Vittorio today. I told him how I expected a resurgence of some mutation of feudalism as the de-centered, polymorphous philosophy of the post-modern and post-structural germinates in the blood and behind the eyes of the populus. He said he expected hedonism, and that is was good and pragmatic--that hedonism is a pragmatic ideology insofar as the subject is forced to decide what he or she wants, to think about the worlds available and to act according to these descisions instead of habitually and unthinkingly submitting to popular and hand-me-down ideologies. I think that's not such a bad idea, especially given that the ideological structures such as the state or the school already function hedonistically, that is to say, they seek their own good--and to be suckered into their good is to submit to an agenda not necessarily your own.

--My compliments to the Romans.

Curses and Curtains

Fast as it is, feels like soft lava carrying me down to sea and dissolving the flesh and vestigial bones. What a solipsist! An egoist! And? And too democratic a soul, or else a coward. A rambling sidestep, pointing towards, but not at. It is maybe time to dismantle this perverse communication. I know too well the manipulation of rhetoric and sincerity which makes things too easy and overwhelmingly frightening. Some serpentine monster stretched through my intestines, lungs, heart, nose, eyes, brain, woven through the teeth; I fear the bellybutton scar and all it means with me and with us. Listen, I know this is obtuse and how it could be and how it could very well be the only way to where I am.

There are plenty of domesticated human stories that do not interest me enough to go on about now or maybe ever. A wet dog walks into a bar and is given water. No, I get too much from this performance to stop, even and especially as I take on the aspect of this snakeish thing which is born of the umbilical scar you can feel the beginning worm of which just behind the navel. Melt the vestigial bones, the tonsils, the appendices! Cold blood and hot electric current. Declarative navigation with loose rudder! Dogs playing poker! Drinking water! Swinging a hammer! Drinking sulfuric acid! Taking off the glasses before going to sleep!

Can't sleep. Bed's on fire.

Naive Melody

This morning my mind has been calm, but not slow. It has been the kind of day where, if someone were to stick a gun to my back, I feel as though I could handle the situation with ease, thanks to some self-assurance almost certainly misplaced.

I think my Italian is actually getting worse--my enthusiasm has been waning and I've been paying a lot less attention to conversation; it requires a lot of energy to understand or intuit meaning, and fatigue has set in. There is something more pragmatic about Italian than English--a more redundant vocabulary and more transparent roots to the words. The Italian for "fun" is "divertimento," as in "to divert your attention from the festering obscene horror, here's a puppet show." I went to a puppet show with Monica and Serio the other night, and instead of listening I mostly watched the children's reactions, their free expression. At the end of the show music started playing and two of the puppets danced with each other and nearly every kid got up and began to dance, too. At one point, a moth flew in front of a stage light and I imagined thousands of moths flooding the lights, the amusement being overwhelmed and overthrown by this immediacy.

I'm about to begin "L'Isola di Arturo," a novel Monica gave me. I'm hoping I'll retain the willpower to keep flapping back and forth through the dictionary--should help my Italian. The first few days this past week I went to beaches with Vittorio and Monica, and was very content just being at the sea with the sun and the wind and textures of rocks and sand under my sandals. I've been slipping into and out of bad moods and too-much-in-my-head moods even though I've been out of my head more this week than in the past two weeks. Everything is swimming for the most part. Swimmingly. Monica is pretty much my main source for interpersonal communication, and with my language fatigue lately, I've been feeling more like a receptacle than anything else; so, sweet and well-meaning as she is, Monica's desire to communicate has been wearing on me.

I've been here for three weeks now and it feels good to be at the halfway point for this farm--to have more time here, but to also have this mild anticipation for the next leg. The farm in Sicily that was supposed to host me for October has not been responding to my e-mails, so I'm looking for another farm. Unfortunately, none of the farms I've heard back from so far have any need for WOOFers until the 15th of October, which leaves me with 25 days of unscheduled and unfunded Italy. Not sure what to do yet, still hoping I can find a farm to host me from the 1st of October until I meet my folks in London on the !st of November.

Last night I went to Port'Azurro with Monica and Chinzia. And Chinzia asked me if Jews believe Jesus is or was the son of God. The place was popping and crumy with tourists, but not in an overtly disgusting way--actually, it probably was, but I was so wrapped up in the the sights and smells, it didn't register very strongly. The architecture was right out of Escher, but not with that self-negating evenness; it was full of crooked stairways and intersecting halls built with from haphazard necessities. I walked around and loved the labrynthine feel of the place; I should have had 360 degree vision. And the smells of noasted nuts, fish or clams or mussels, strawberry bubblegum, flowers, I inhaled deeply and wanted to continue for the rest of the night inhaling without rest, but my lungs would not take in the whole night's air, so it was in and out and in. There was a church with doors that portrayed Creation and The Fall, and other scenes from the good book, in bronze. On the steps of the church, little boys and girls were selling plastic toys that they must have grown tired of; and the girls had a sign for bracelets for good fortune, 1 Euro (the bracelets were single strands of lanyard plastic they intended to tie around your wrist)--I passed it up this time.

Listening to the music and seeing the advertisements for this and that, it seems to me that there is a more naive aesthetic, commercially at least, in this country. There appears to be much less marketing of angst and cynicism than in the States, and half of the stores you enter have a picture of the pope hanging next to the cash register. Italy is not as inundated as the US with homogenizing mass culture, save perhaps the religious homogeneity. And though the angst sold in America is just as flat and surface level as the mush in both countries, one hopes that it at least provides a counterpoint by which a dialectical deepeining is possible.

There are no pennies from grandpa in Italy--less omens I am accustomed to reading; so, I am trying to learn the language of this geography, figuring how to navigate by this new star. Continually. In any case, I've got a jar of peanut butter now, so that's something.

Where Is My Cosmogony Gone?

This is perhaps one of the most frightening things to do, to pull away the curtain of habitual stability and look directly into the bloody beating mess of character. To shed the false skin and walk naked to the face of conflict. To slip from the constriction of fear and hammer the skull to shards and bone dust. It requires and returns the active valuing of life, and you can feel the blood rushing to your head and movement slows as the adrenaline throws fits in your veins and you exit your body just so much to get out the words or acts that were crammed so tight in your head and now sound like thunder and look like the tsunami, like something natural and terrifying. I am trying to keep the curtains parted and my eyes fixed and tongue-pen electric. I continue to say I'm trying because I am continuing to try; and without marked goals--live in flux, not limbo.

Each day is still different than the others. I am generally feeling pleased, relaxed, focused, unfocused, voracious, directed, content, structured enough to feel free. Yesterday was my birthday and like all other days, only I felt more loved (imagination or not, I felt it). After dinner we had an apple cake Monica made, and champagne Serio brought. They added candles to blow out, gave me a bottle of sweet wine and a special foccaccia in light blue wrapping paper. It was overwhelming, the care and the smiles which meant, "this is good. we are glad for you and with you. you are not with your loved ones, so we will try to act as substitute. we want you to be happy; this day especially should be happy." I was a stranger on my birthday, and at the dinner table I began to cry.

Today has been a restful day. I finished lyrics for a song for Angel Band, saw off Diego, Sara, Giacomina, and Vittorio's mother, and had an interesting conversation with Vittorio about the Italian government, judiciary, feudal mindset, and the pragmatism and efficiency of the USA--all in Italian (he did most of the talking). Vittorio has already become more talkative and animated now that only he, Monica, and I remain at Orti di Mare, which is encouraging. Tonight or maybe tomorrow we'll bake bread. I'm still working on weeding the strawberry patch, and will probably be at it for the rest of the week. Here are some pictures:

The Petrie Dish

Each day I feel differently about where I am and what I'm doing. I've been reading a lot and writing a bit. I keep pebbles in my shoes to keep me aware of the fact that I'm on my feet--that I intend to be on my feet. Been doing other experiments and stretches, but no practices as of yet. Trying to individuate and juggle the various and constant sense impressions, forge a working definition of love, read omens, imagine scents without visual cues, closing my eyes to see what shapes and colors and scenes manifest themselves, etc. (etc., what a cop-out that is)

Working in the fields, between patches of vegetables and with the sky on top of me, I often feel as though I'm in an atrium or a snow-globe without the snow. The light is eerie in the morning and overwhelming by mid-day. A pony was born last night and it has longlong legs and is incredibly sweet. If I could understand the computer in Italian, I might have a chance at posting some pictures, but right now that'll have to wait.

I found myself thinking in Italian the other day when I was pulling weeds. I'm understanding conversations much more, and can speak without great pauses. My mind often runs away to the future, and I'm trying to rein it in. Yesterday, I climbed a fig tree to pick figs and then made a mitt from a dead cactus leaf and picked cactus fruit. Diego, the main laborer and work boss, is getting on my nerves, but he'll be leaving on Saturday. My pee smells like tomatoes. Or the tomatoes smell like my pee?

There are other things, too.

What Alice Found

Oh my.

I've been in Italy for 4 days now, and have decided that if one desires to speak Italian, it is best to pretend to battle a wasp inside your mouth. If you have a real wasp, all the better. As you progress, close your lips little by little, so as to not let the wasp out-- this is how the natives speak, and the one with the least amount of room between his or her lips while talking is allowed to talk the most.

The farm where I am working is called Orti Di Mare, which means Something By or On or For or From the Sea. The day is two days-- We wake up, eat, and work for 5 or so hours (3 of which are under the oppressive Tuscan sun) and then I usually go to sleep for the next two hours; the next day today consists of reading or writing or going to the beach, working in the fields again for around 2 hours as the weather becomes more hospitable, eating too much, and then going back to sleep.

I am the only WOOFer here, and the only person under 30-- though most everybody is 40, 50, 60, 70, or 80. Very very little English is spoken, so I am making my best attempts to master the Italian language with a poor excuse for an English-Italian dictionary. Luckily, I can speak French with two of the workers. I will post pictures sometime soon, if I can figure out how to do that--I only just found the apostrophe key today.

Strangely, I was not overwhelmed by the beauty of the countryside as I was expecting. It is beautiful, but does not affect me in any tangible way. I am in a state of neither happiness nor despair, more neutral feeling than anything...strange. Vedo una strada lunga avanti.

Down the Rabbit Hole

I leave for Italy in 12 hours and I'm convinced my stomach is beginning to eat itself. The past week in Delaware I've felt like a ghost-- my thoughts and eyes seem not to focus, my body feels numbly. Not a mode I want to last, but good enough to have lived in it.

Donald once asked me what it feels like when something makes sense; that is to say, what is the sensation when a square peg suddenly fits a round hole (by one accomodating the other or some mutual movement)? I think that it must feel something like familiarity, if that is not a tautology. It is a relaxation of the tension created by the self's recognition of the other, relaxing in the assimilation of the other. What this means to me right now is that the tensions, the anxieties, concerning leaving the familiar/the self have twisted me into this ghostly thing that owns little sense of its lived life. The good news? At some point, the closer one comes to the unfamiliar, the closer it comes to being familiar--as my plane flies to Italy, I take the train to the coast, the ferry to Elba, the bus to Lacona, and walk to the farm, I should gradually regain my sense of connectedness to the world.

Although I do find that I enjoy myself most when performing for myself, this blog is not intended as drama, but as the expression, organization, and attempted understanding of my consciousness. I am most truthful when I have many or no eyes watching, when there is no external expectation or there is enough imagined and various that it overwhelms any sense of being able to meet all interested parties (actual or not).

I'm off

The Sky is What I Was Trying to Tell You About

Some things bear repeating. Consensus requires this, and change requires consensus. And sometimes it is just good to be reminded.

I am an avid planner. Lately, my time in school has taken on the aspect of a boy balancing on his chair, shifting his weight back in increments of years; the approximate distance to the breaking point, and then to the ground, measured and re-measured continuously. It is apparent, with my back now on the floor, that the gravity plotting the straight path to the earth was imagined, and there is no equal and opposite force to lift the chair and myself upright just as naturally. In other words, no greater purpose can present itself to me with such institutional certainty as I will know how or where to measure an end.

So?

So, paradoxical as it is, I am planning to unlearn planning, or at least wrestle the force of habit into some position subordinate to the present moment (the true residence of potential, mysterious and wonderful)-- to let the statue of my-self be worn to sand by the sands surrounding, and to be taken by the wind.

From Person to Personality

I've chosen a strange moment to begin this journal. Unsure of why or how to write, I decided to divine an answer from google (where else?) and found this quote:

How else can one write but of those things which one doesn't know, or knows badly? It is precisely there that we imagine having something to say. We write only at the frontiers of our knowledge, at the border which seperates our knowledge from our ignorance and transforms the one into the other. Only in this manner are we resolved to write. To satisfy ignorance is to put off writing until tomorrow - or rather, to make it impossible. -Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition)

I distrust this blog, being the public quasi-confession booth that it is, and I hope that any readers will do this too. And so I begin, where I do not know how to begin; I am doing it as best I can.