Qualia

Minutes ago I was one of many

listening to the voodoo woman,

until an airplane ripped a gash

across the belly of the sky.

Honey yellow, tangerine orange, crocus purple poured.

Stretched smiles furrow anchored lines into taut

marmalade inflection, harboring the only certainty

experience could impart besides rhythm’s [inhale/exhale].

The voice I’m listening to…

I want to marry the voice.

Wait!

Now it sounds motherly-

now grandmotherly-

A divinity ingrained in fibers of the birch,

carried on wispy nimbus through evergreen nestles.

Overhead, the crocus chases fleeting bluebird

towards a thirsty moon who ebbs saltwater off the rocks,

a comforter pulled over the toes of drowsy sea-floor.

The muddy bottom of the Sound awakes,

canvas for a cosmic light show.

Reeds groove at the hip,

spinning bell bottom ankles

to music from gregarious strings.

Perched atop the sea wall,

we inhale for the first time in years.

Nearby a vendor has meditators

lying in metal octagons,

the ones from your playground.

Tickled gongs

send waves to lap

the sands of our scaffolding.

Motley garb strewn on hippies.

A gust sails tapestries in the bazaar.

Bells on gypsies pinch the ears.

                                                                Barefoot Pandemonium.

Paprika’s Journey Through Time & Taste and The Zen of Chicken Paprikash

 

(Written for a Hungarian Culture Class– culture through cuisine was my thinking. I may have welcomed a tangent or two along the way)

It’s 9 in the morning and I’ve just woken groggily from a late night studying cognitive this and metaphysical that. No doubt the brain is in a state of disrepair and could use some nourishing. I feel a rapping on my abdomen and hear the faint tumult of what sounds like a fox and a badger in a bar room brawl. I soon discover my brain isn’t the only bodily organ that needs attention. My stomach is practically jumping out of my throat screaming for anything that might tempt its ravenous thirst for substance. “Anything…just anything I beg you. Please! That slice of American cheese, mom’s one-week-old lasagna, your brother’s bag lunch—I don’t care! I’ll eat anything that puts an end to my hunger” – – -yells the stomach as stomachs do. Just before I reach absentmindedly into the depths of the fridge, like a two-year old playing the claw game at the local arcade, and yank from its frigid terrain anything that falls under the vague category ‘edible’ to appease my stomach, I stop myself.

 

Cursing my weakness of will I remember my heritage, my family values—the epicurean palate that runs a deep stitch in these genes, my dad’s appreciation for foods of the world and the stories they hold, flavors inspired by history and history inspired by flavors. I remember how much I’ve learned in travel from the dishes off the local menus—the salty musings of pickled herring in Denmark, the passionate kiss of a spicy tapa in Seville, the long and spaghetified history of the noodles’ journey from the from exotic east to Italy…ALL of this flooding my still half-asleep head now at 9:05 in the morning, mind you. Yet with whatever gusto my morning self has salvaged, I turn in on my stomach and say, “Hey man, I wasn’t raised to eat the first thing that jumped out of the fridge in the morning. Let’s understand this Hungarian culture in the best way you and I can agree on…the food”.

 

And with that, the stomach and I board the 47 tram and embark on our journey towards the market hall excited to better understand what exactly makes Hungarian food, well…Hungarian.

 

 

Paprika’s Voyage Through Time and Taste

 

First sprouting from the hot soils of Southern Mexico thousands of years ago, the bell-shaped pepper, now the beloved flavoring of Hungarian cuisine has not always been lucky enough to call its faithful Hungarian chefs “mom and dad”. Boarding Christopher Columbus’s ship and finding itself the slave captive to a spice route between the new and old worlds with gluttonous mouths foaming at either end of the route eager to taste the invigorating powder, it is speculated that paprika was brought to continental Europe between the late 15^th century—early 16^th. The red powder now dusted more ubiquitously over Hungarian dishes than snow over the Rockies did not make its first appearance in Magyarország until the middle of the 18^th century.

During paprika’s voyage across the Atlantic and into the spice route, the pepper was traded a thousand times over—from Italian vendors dressed in Venetian leather to Turkish merchants in the Ottoman, from Byzantine peddlers to Macedonian magi, Albanian importers to Croats in coats, and from Bulgarian distributors to Serbian cooks who first tasted the exotic powder under a plump moon, blue and swollen, lighting the back alleys of Beograd. Finally, exhausted from the transatlantic voyage spent cooped in the damp storage of the Italian galleons and the long, arduous path up the belly of the Ottoman empire, paprika plunked down in Szeged, Hungary—the date is 1748. Little did paprika know, but it was here, stranded on the Southern Great Plain that the powdery red seasoning would begin its rise from nebulous dust floating along homeless in a distant quadrant of the spice route, to supernova stardom in the gastronomic galaxy of spices.

 

First used as a cure for intermittent fever in Hungary the pepper was discovered for its health benefits. In fact, its no surprise to us today that Albert Szent-Györgyi who is known for discovering Vitamin C, first found the compound in paprika, along with a powerful dose of antioxidants that the pepper supplied. Hungary has been feverishly hungry for the spice ever since.

 

 

The Zen of Chicken Paprikash

 

Chicken Paprikash is a meal hallowed in the Hungarian halls of forever-time. It’s a dish that warms fingers and toes alike on snowy January mornings, a dish that picks up the low of spirit, a dish that pulls two high school teenagers closer on their first date, a dish that slows the manic business man down to enjoy time with his family, a dish that does all of this…but how?

 

For years, students of Zen sit alone in solitude searching the mountaintops of the Orient for peace of mind, a silencing of the incessant mind waves crashing on the sands of our consciousness. These students of the East looking for the Tao crave the very resonation that Chicken Paprikash emanates—its transcendental presence more powerful than the sting of the cold on the fingers, a taste powerful enough to provide a pick-me-up for Oscar the Grouch even, a sauce viscous and smooth enough to distract the highschooler of his awkward-but-developing social skills, all served over nokedli bedding comfortable enough to remind the business man what relaxation is. But how? How does one dish alone resonate at such sagacious frequencies to calm the world’s anxiety and set peace to minds and bellies alike?

 

My experience with Chicken Paprikash tells me it’s the cooking process that inscribes its divinity. A brief look into this meditative process might help elucidate.

 

First the onion—a harsh fellow with layers upon layers whereby he might burry the remnants of a friendly personality. The uncooked union is a biter, a nasty ghoul dressed in cape with sharp fangs, a scary thought brining tears to the eyes of those who come across its path—children and adults alike no doubt. But cook the onion yes, cook the onion until he adopts an opaque complexion and look as you begin to see those layers he’s put up as psychological safeguard dissolve….ah ha! Before even the star of the show chicken itself has gone into the pan, before paprika reveals its plot twist pizzazz, the paprikash cooking process exposes its soothing properties capable of taming even the formidable onion bloke, who for so long has terrorized our cutting boards and made people think other people were really crying…over something serious! (just the thought angers me).

 

But with glistening olive oil poured quietly over the chopped onion, reminding the student of Zen of a calm pond lapping effortlessly the sand around, the onion only requires heat to begin its transformation. Imagine that! How simple, how basic, yet how lovingly primal the thought—heat!, our primordial connection to life, love and movement. And the heat keeps its presence throughout the cooking process like the ‘Om’ that monks chant connecting oneself immortally with the universal frequency of the galaxy.

 

The chicken now, the tomato, the pepper—all come together like travelers meeting at the fork in the wood. Together with the now sage-like onion teaching of sacrificing the ego, the chicken learns to yield its tough protein integrity, the tomato turns gelatinous and eventually soupy discovering bodily-releasing transcendence, the bell pepper ditching its waxy coat and throwing socially constructed convention into the Om— how beautiful this gathering of delicious items, better than the Zen Panda Wok’s lunch time buffet on Tuesday afternoons, speaking of.

 

Time passes and the ingredients slowly become one. Now, time for the paprika and oh boy how graciously does the cook sprinkle the red powder in. Half the jar of paprika may be used on this dish but again, there’s a Tao to Chicken Paprikash and in the search of balance and harmony, material attachment is discovered to be a fallacy of small mind.

 

Hours pass, days might pass, maybe just 43 minutes—who knows! We’ve just about discovered eternity and complete Oneness now (let’s blame Gabor’s class for metaphysics reference here), but there is one final step in the cooking process drawing us closer and closer to unconditional peace. The nokedli. Shaped similar to its doppleganging cousin of the Tuscan hills, the gnocchi, but also resembling its pen-pal from Wisconsin, the cheese curd, nokedli is a Hungarian noodle (pasta? starch? Squishy thing?) that the Chicken Paprikash is ladled over. Steam rises now from the meeting of souls (no no—it’s not a promiscuous type interaction. This is Zen not the Kama Sutra for goodness sake), and the steam holds the attention of the onlooker solely on its undulating movement, its laconic billowing, the quiet plumes—all which enchant the dish below like finger beckoning one to bed (okay, that one way risqué).

 

The fork slides into the chicken effortlessly like the ju (gentle) do (way) mindset of the east. And now the taste. With eyes forced shut in complete bliss, a small smile wraps the cheeks mimicking the now-enlightened monk who has just discovered Satori—the state of discovering one’s true nature. Completely still in the mind, the eater experiences a rush of calming blue waves, transcendent reds and piercing bright whites and then suddenly the dish whips the eater right back into their seat. “Here! Now! Bliss!” the dish bellows like the giant stoic mountains of Japan. The eater opens their eyes—the business man smiles at his young daughter, the highschooler winks as confidentially-George Clooney-esque at his date as possible and the snowfall outside turns into light butterfly eyelashes flapping gently down onto a welcoming sidewalk. The fork cuts smoothly through the warm steam for another bite and its then that the eater feels themselves resonating universally in harmony with the entirety of the cosmos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Smile, Your on Vacation Now

Pink slabs of fat, skin and tissue push through the plastic-strap pool deck lounge chairs while tonight’s veal is pumped through the kitchen meat grinder, eagerly waiting to be served in the hotel’s four-and-a-half star dining room. Tómas carries a stack of plush pool towels en route to the sea of white recliners and fixes a grin worthy of his 8-dollar-an-hour wage, which as the hotel is quick to boast, on top of hourlies also serves its employees the magnanimous benefit of three tennis court reservations a year (on weekdays before 9 am) with one free on-the-job cola from the Beachside Bar a day.

 

Transient zephyrs taking the form of soft alternative music billow lightly from incognito stone speakers, kissing the laconic palms above ‘not native to this climate’ my grandmother points out— the zephyrs kissing mosaic waves sliding lazily over a floater’s arm in the stagnant Georgian heat—kissing the flesh-and-bone Prozac Pile slumped blithely as parabolas, each sack of sunburnt skinbag resembling the mathematical U-shapes from 9^th grade algebra laying in a plastic white-strap lounge chair of their own. The loungers have had their fair share of a similarly banal playlist from years past spent draped over similar strap chairs that line the beige and pink shell trim of their own backyard pools—similar, to the pink outline of the hotel’s eternally vacant pool.

 

Here the flick of a finger gets you a Blue Hawaiian, the raising of the brow a heaping pile of fry and rubber cheese, and a jejune disposition (signified commonly by a eyes at half-mass and pout-heavy lips) the undying attention of Tomás, our Eastern European expatriate who runs, as he must, the white soles of his uniform’s New Balances down into shredded bits dotting the pool deck like a breadcrumb trail. The starchy specks maps his indentured servitude of America’s aristocratic cheese-n-beef cubes sizzling now in the hot plastic-strap loungers bordering the lonely pool.

 

And since I haven’t yet spoken about the chairs—the plastic-stap loungers that a woman bemoans from behind me while not being able to find her ideal angle of relaxation—those gnarly teeth on the chair’s back not digging cannibalistically into its own body at the proper angle so as to provide a self- sacrificial offering of relaxation up to the fat posh self-proclaimed demigod who, by this point, should be roosting placid above, she pantomimes internally.

The plastic-strap loungers, the white ones—their sun seared straps slapped on abscess-covered backs, slippery and reeking of Panama Jack (SPF 50). Stretched tautly across the loungers’ backs, the straps juice oils from sweaty torsos until viscous discharge coats the chairs with a new shade of institutionalized white. Maybe its that white shade– – I can’t help but think of those straps over the front of the sunblock subjects lying rather in some probing psychoanalytic research of the late Freudian era…well that’s what goes on at any rate, Margaritas and obligatory psychoanalysis with the mother-in-law.

 

                                                            The dam gawdy things aren’t fit for the public’s eyes, the root of her stress you know.   

 

Or my favorite…

–and you’re dreaming that ‘cause of your mother’s infidelity towards her diet.

 

—The plastic-strap lounge chair, whose angular default settings positions the reader, now lazily poking through the latest Best-Seller, in either a torturous sun-glaring 52^o, where the white of the page tilted horizontally just so, bounces sun beams like knives through Ray Bans and into the corneas—or a knot-rutting 65^o tilt rather, that hammers painful braids in shoulder and neck ligament (which unfortunately will sit in place until this afternoon’s half-hour massage session with Isabel–another expatriate yet to reap the hotel’s free-cola gratuity provided for it’s employees).

The shade of the expatriate palms, hailing from someplace truly tropic lay unaccompanied on the pool deck, wondering what the deckgoers are doing singeing their eyes crispy brown in their 52^o tilt. The marble sand, an expatriate of the Bahamas lays lethargic on the beach, wondering what the deckgoers folded stiff in rigor mortis at a nearly-vertical 65^o angle (remember your 8^th grade geometry now) are doing etching cricks in their necks while the sand’s Grecian-white bedding of infinitesimally small and smooth pebbles lies unattended to.

 

And then there’s the ocean all alone hugging onto to the edges of the resort’s white sand so as to say I’m still here! But its expansive physical magnitude is blocked out by a pool deck cabana, its therapeutic sound dubbed null in waxy earbuds, its capricious force capable of turning any calculating man mystical in the presence of nature’s supernaturality is laughed away over an iPad-Netflilx session.

Maybe it’s the au natural of the unkempt body, insanitary and seething with the nefarious microscopic zooplanktons seen once in 7^th grade biology class—maybe it’s the ocean’s vastness reminding the deckgoers of life’s void-like properties in the absence of entertainment media, pop-culture mags and sit com humor—maybe it’s the ocean’s meager light blue complexion that couldn’t possibly compete aesthetically with the deep opal sheen of the pool( thanks to liberal doses of Sodium BiCarbonte)—whatever it may be, the ocean exists only beyond the perception of the bodies laying in the strap-chairs.

 

I wander out of the pool deck psyche ward and crisp the underbellies of my feet on the beach’s white sand. I wonder about the ironically authoritarian nature of the resort and its comforts—where one’s existential agency is a meager deposit for the day’s stack of plush deck towels and Tomás’ steadfast subordination—but hey, smile—you’re on vacation now.

 

Birds Over Belgrade: Fragments on Jazz, American Dating and a Feast of The Nationalities

It’s a smoky den, so smoky turns out Nikola’s older brother won’t even make it out to his packed cellar shows. Hipsters, bohemians and a couple intellectuals seem to be crowding the room all digging the three piece jam—oud, guitar and clarinet—Luca’s friend Nikola a virtuosic clarinetist wailing away down here, audible above ground even as we wandered the Serbian streets in a wide-eyed intrigue pushing through the gritting darkness towards the bar..…and now the Americans (us five ushered into a table front row before the band with beer already en- route to our table).

First stop on a roll through the Balkans is Beograd and it seems Luca’s connection (who he had met the summer back in Tokyo) is quite the host, more than a Skinny Gumbo-Hawkins clowning away on the old licorice stick. For the next three days Nikola took us around the city—up into the old Communist gray slab tenements and down through the city’s tunnel networks lined with children etching sad rhapsodies into their violins.

 

Nikola well traveled, spoke a quick English through his Balkan accent with manic hand movements and accessible wisdom. Deep in sentiment, his humorous radiation pouring out over warming beers and crumpled napkins had us creeping forward on forearms towards the oration–certainly a cat with a precocious disposition beyond his twenty-odd years—or ours for that matter.

 

Here there is no challenge, it’s my home stage. I play pieces by Serbian composers, concertos, jazz pieces too but I miss the challenge of competing for spots, holding spots. There’s lots of corruption here, no time for luxury—not that people don’t want it, intellectual audiences but the [concert] halls just aren’t full.

 

You know, people come up to me after a performance and take my hand in theirs, wide eyes—I’m an entertainer and if I don’t do that I’m not doing my job. I know it sounds cheesy as fuck but music really is the universal language. Luca and I had only hung out four times in Tokyo but look at us now—You connect on deep, deep levels when you jam like that, beyond words even but the connection is there no doubt, and that’s a beautiful thing.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

 

I got the clarinet on my back, suitcases here and as I pass through customs I cry man—I knew it’d be hard for my mom and family but it didn’t hit me until I arrived in Chicago…but it was good for me you know, that was my trade—to be able to travel around the world and win 1000 Euros at the age of fourteen. My brother was back in Serbia playing fútbol with kids his age, but I was able to hammer through my scales, my practices understanding where it’d take me—while kids my age were in the classroom taking tests I’d be in Croatia playing a fucking concert hall haha!

 

 

Claustrophobic metal darkness

and a bus jammed with arms—

we fly clean over the Sava

without tickets for the Night Train.

…Up out of the smoky underground

ushered into Whereabouts Unknown:

Tonight you’re going to see

things you’d never expect….

 

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

 

NATO dropped bombs on this very spot in 1988, two skyscrapers reduced to rubble—Nikola being 7 remembering the sirens everyday for months, in and out of their holiday season. The fight was over Kosovo, now a partially recognized country south of Serbia, once part of both Yugoslavia then Serbia. Nikola divulging his culture, his passions and us Americans—the five recipients of his hospitality now staring upwards at the wreckage—all we seem to offer in this moment is stone gazes—solemn, quiet and sober now as we swallow our nationality—a taste of a grandpa’s cough syrup dripping down the hatch, the youth finding as they have throughout the cycle of history their involuntary reception of grandpa’s sidewalk luggage–kicked, bagged and slapped towards another young Valet. Nikola’s forgiving though with a shrug and smile loosening anxious knots arched into our necks by the sight and sudden disappearance of something to say–anything! He knows of infinite headaches bureaucracy carries having dwelt his twenty-three years under a government of his own he’s quick to censure.

 

 

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

 

Okay no, I’ll tell you…I feel like you’re my people and I can open myself to you—

 

Oh yeah no go ahead man, go for it…

 

She’s the first girl/woman that I’ve met in my life that I see easily being the mother of my children and its scaring me

 

Oh shit, yeah

 

When I’m with her I don’t notice other girls…when I’m with these girls like its nice, you know we talk, hold hands all cool but I see still other things…when I’m with her I don’t. And—she has me here, you know its not even the physical connection that much, its really up here that she really like…..she’s eight years older than me, which is another problem. If I was thirty and she was twenty-three than its chill, but she’s thirty and you know like, looking to settle down—like we haven’t talked about it but I can see, don’t have to tell me man. I know she wants a family, I know she wants to settle down and if she wasn’t into me so much I know she wouldn’t fuck around with a boy from Serbia. So its been like shoooooooo—

 

Ahhhhhh, no man that’s crazy

 

Did you tell her that you love her?

 

No, no man…this thing “ I love you” no, I show it—this I learned from my father. They have been together for 32 years, my dad with my mother more than half his life. Since I was two or three years I remember, I never once heard my dad raise his voice on my mother—they think, they breathe, they are one person. But he never told her I love you—he shows it.

 

…you know this idea of American dating, I cant’ understand it, so many different phases. You know first its like all secret, hooking up but nobody knows—then its like dating, you’re best friend knows and you’re going on a date but you’re not really together, you can’t hold hands in public or some shit like that…and then after that it’s The Relationship and its official

 

—-and Facebook!

 

Yeah what the fuck is that!? What’s the difference man, so for me this was difficult in the States.

 

 ~~Looking out now at the corn fields rolling monotonously past, the guys last night laughing over tea at the dystopian rail systems in the Serbian state—(better sixty years ago than they are now)—chunck-a-chunck last night’s soothsayers learned a priori they must’ve been cause they were right. I could better hop out and run faster than these tired wheels. Gabe’s dozing wisps through his beard and Kerouac’s dotting my page threefold faster than our train car, his pen rhapsodic and manic beating us on our travels up the Balkans towards a Halloween in Slovenia~~

I think the train’s lost.

How could a train be lost? It’s on tracks.

(Darjeeling Limited)

 

 

 

Humor’s a Cold-Nosed Bum Under Mt. Kekés

{See also Idiot’s Guide to Nearly Becoming Homeless in Hungarian Mountain Towns}

(20 minutes till sundown)—I look down into the valley where Sirok lies off in the distance, shadows stretching as they do over the forest sprawling further and deeper between the town—The Town with our ride outta this country and Us—Us standing there now cold-nosed on the rocky outcrop 2,000 feet up off the valley floor and 5 kilometers to go before sundown- – – which now as my inner narration is quick to remind is in 19 minutes….

Gabe, Luca and I are keen on movement, putting boots to the ground and churning out the last 3 miles in a breathy haste but Lorand’s girlfriend’s had bum knee since the last peak and we can only move as fast as our translator—Gabe, Luca and I the Americans speaking a combined total of 60 words in Hungarian—us three thus relying on Lorand and his girlfriend to get us home, both of whom were nursing the steeps hand-in-hand over our shoulders.

Fifteen minutes until sundown—the woods already a murky charcoal through slanted birch shadows. Spirits were still high- – – high but dwindling, the quips back and forth now rolling off the tongue artificial—plastic-like and distant, each echoing throughout the stalagmite forest as we trumped through on thin nails.

 Only for the record did our trail mix make it this far, sandwiches gone and bananas now like ephemeral delights, dopey daydream memories of that sweet yellow energy goop eaten hours back. On the precipice the waters bottomed out and through jaded yellow eyes we spy Sirok way out, out-out lingering in front of that bugger forest floor.

 

[13 minutes….but dark already under the looming Oak so whose counting now]

 

– – – -Lorand get out that headlamp!- – – –

 

We’ve all got a our flashlight apps on, running around like headless Y-generation homebodies clutching Apple product bricks with white-knuckles and chewing our bum-faced gums in the ominous dark—Lorand with his headlamp now and we’re bouncing manic from tree to tree looking for the blue and white trail markers. We’ve been off the trail for ten minutes at this point, lost and following what we hope to be car sounds but what I fear to be running water carving the mountain floor incognito not far off into the darkness ahead.

 Shit man, last almond (Gabe with a tired crunch)

 I’ve got one more layer in my pack—we cover with leaves we might be able to sleep through the night. Luca’s gonna be freezing with just that sweater though, think it’ll drop below freezing?

 Skip that talk, lets bounce—move move move!

 

Lorand now with his girl on his back slips on wet leaves and they tumble into briars, Gabe running sideways to the rescue and me cursing the darkness. Stepping out of the forest somehow finally we make out the vague silhouettes of a house—deserted it turns out, but hugging the road that minutes ago seemed only an auditory hallucination to the helpless paranoia. Next objective’s catching the last bus outta this town back to Budapest and we’ve got a half hour to get down these steep curves into town—town now an island lit up warm not far down the road but a long way for our tired boots, our dumb backs and moaning stomachs—the town surrounded warm aglow but sad amongst a dark sea of tangled junk forest around.

Flashlights on the upturned thumbs now looking to score a quick ride down into town…but these folks want nothing to do with ten darting eyes, dirty packs looming above with sweat and madness on the faces.

 They will have to pick us up, it is not like Hungarians out here to not accept hitchhikers.

 I don’t know man—not looking good, that last one was the only car big enough to get us all down

 Time to run, I ain’t sleeping out here tonight…

 

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Turns out Lorand had one more sandwich and we pass it around ceremoniously breathing heavy in the bus stop but with five minutes to spare… made it to the stop on a mad dash down the mountain road and now sliding back into the shadows we sit sore, solid as stone on the stop’s wooden bench, and just as we think we had it made……………Fu@king shit man, F*%& F#@% F^&*!!!!

 

[Lorand kicking the metal out of the bus stop’s metal railing].

 Those f*&king assholes! That was the last bus, we’re stuck here [Lorand nearly in tears, red and his girlfriend with a head in the hands. The bus blew past the bus stop not seeing us five reclined in the shadows…..I’m looking up at the peak we just descended from–Mt.Kekés, its observatory tower red aglow, demonic way up—The Red Eye of Stalin, so I smile while shaking my head—shall we hike back up? (sometimes I can only find humor when the Unbearable Suckiness of Being manifests, a state of existence I’ll create to describe solely this trip and this trip alone—no metaphysics here just ironic pessimism…..sorry, I digress.)

To bop through the streets wouldn’t be the right idea, but we’re certainly moving frantic looking for a bus, taxi, hell a Sherpa at this point—anyone willing to carry five backpackers 200 km to Budapest late on this Sunday night, but for the right price right?      

 

Mayor have car yes, find his house next to bus stop. He take you home.

 Our Hungarian friend now heeds a passerby townfolk’s suggestion to call the mayor of the town (pop. 2000) as he’s the only one with a car large enough to get us five outta here—the rest of us huddling the meanwhile building shoulder/torso kindling, the only additional layers being an arm-to-back lock juicing one another as Heat Fruit. Laughing down the chills we’re thinking of Gabe clowning the steeps a couple hours back shuffling the leaves mad This Way::That, like a mountain goat—[Pan being his Special Ops name anyhow].

 

Hey hey now, no worries–Lorand’s found us a cab mate…cheers!

Egeshegetekra!!

 

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Sinking back into a head crunchy pillow with verb-y guitar licks blaring on the taxi’s speakers, I slip into sleep—home, or home enough with American rock n’ roll on the stereo and the warmth of the cab’s backseat. Luca’s knocked up front and Gabe deep into his headphone house grooves, tranced-tired-and at peace…back to Buda we go, no cold park benches for these folk tonight. Hey….Let’s hike back up tomorrow—-Alan Watts once said something to the playful nature of being, a dance it all was? [Laughter mediation].

 

Crimson Synesthesia & Turtle Shell Pollocks

There’s boiling water in the closet and egg shells on the rug, come out from behind that coat rack—out here, yeah into the guitar and choose the right cushion, heat up your insides on those plush burners. You’re a tea pot, wanna boil but not overflow. Personally I’m a pot of ginseng, bubbling green and happy—have a sip, good for the soul right?

Oh yeah, over in that corner we used to hang pictures of travels—now we just play jazz until bop riffs turn the walls an artsy goop, something fuzzy maybe dripping blue juice bits like Cookie Monster fuzz. By the way, should the floor fall out from under your nose, look the elephant in the eye and tell him its tea time—sips for the soul, everyone now and dig this guitar while you’re at it.

Bamboo mats and eggshell-spillage, make a soup out of the yolk, feed a tiger, pop third eye spinach…Hey, eggplants where the Nikes should be!—and does a zucchini sing alone in the garden?

Synesthesia Salomon, Synesthesia Saag they might call us—words running crimson through your cortex, no? How about these sweaters, little hot in the summer night heat, but rippling brass-blue steel and carving out frost bud nips the eardrum tundras…f sharp yes?

Weird how that works, sitting here crossed legged all day, suspended animation above bamboo mats, static vibration spilling out my fingers into cracked dead jelly yolk muck, into dainty white shell fields sprinkling the Turkish throw (dam that’s my favorite carpet too!)—sitting here just breathing and listening to verbose zucchini’s growing all day/all night outside, and I can’t keep my senses straight, no not no how! I like it though, no need for experimental paintings costing an arm, leg and banana-bow. No, instead my jazz’ll paint turtle shell Pollocks on the walls—free art is the best art [here, have a sip—on the house]

 

“There are eggshells on the floor therefore I never touch the ground”

– – – That old black hole

 

By the way, if you’re gonna smoke those eyes, keep it outside…away from the zucchini garden too—sorry, we don’t like charcoal in the house, happy vibes in here only, remember the guitar? And when you’re out there, so you know, the pinwheels in the tanglebeds are really just buffering wheels, like the ones from a Mac (except not as colorful)—yeah….oh, yell at them for me if you could, tell ‘em “this Time there is no Time!” or ya know, something abstract to that extent.

Okay, now here’s one for ya. Hop off that cushion while I spill this story, you’re bubbling—I’ll take a sip in five. Last spring, hiking around Evergreen Colorado in a pokey March breeze, bluebird day & sunny haze, the four of us trudging through tired February snow pillows out of the forest into a warm clearing, we found a rabbit in a tree.

The rabbit fell in love with the tree, Rema was her name and he was quick to introduce us to her, us looking amiable–jovial souls smiling bug-eyed at the sight of the rabbit in the evergreen ship, moss-covered and sailing winds that howled up from below the gap in the Rockies. Evergreen, CO we were, just outside the town, up/up on a trail perched between two mountains—

An hour passed and we parted ways, laughing at the rabbit’s stories, checkin’ the group synergy and marveling at the green carpet mountain town below. Nestled into the paper-mache field, gold in the new spring sun, we hadn’t walked as far as we thought, not out of earshot from the rabbit and Rema. We got to talking, split some sausage over hummus, pita and Colorado Ale and then out of the forest we heard a bellowing—-“There is no great convention”

 

The Rabbit was talking to us, no the mountain was talking to us we decided, the rabbit being simply the nearest vessel of communication the mountain could fill.

:::booming in thunder, omniscience, wisdom…unlike what you’d expect from small fuzzy creatures, yet it rocked us to our cores. Cobweb dynamos did drop from the eyelids, face and hands. Any icy book frozen asleep on the white cap peaks above us now in that moment sloothed down through my lungs—inhale, inhale, inhale! Now let it breath, calm, and a laugh. There I thought, legs sprawled on the paper-mache meadow, that’s right, no convention—I’ll make the notions up only to dissolve them minutes later, bath the Banal in movement, soup soup soup—we’re all in it and ya might as well learn to bubble, the burners are down there where the ham likes to sink anyhow. Tune into that molecular jive fumbling around, dramatic Einsteinium overtures, you could say Mama Earth’s quite the conductor.

 

Weird huh? That was before even the episodes of synesthesia, me and Saag—woulda been too much to process if so. What kind of tea did you say you were again?

 

~~~Wrote this by the way under an intense period of chalkdust torture///someone was carving away theoretical jargon on the classroom’s green slate, trying to make too much sense out of peas and carrots and boom, all of the sudden we’re off floating above bamboo mats, broken eggs and talking ‘a mad Dada off-canvas~~~

((Between the diddle however, part the fuzz, skip the bop but for the sounds bouncing happy off lips and there’s actually something in there I might teach….))

 

Axioms in the shrubs

I’d say.

Heyo anyway, have another sip of tea.

 

Romanian Eyes in the Orange Terra-Cotta: Someone Ask Them What’s Going On

The bar was open till 4:30 but the flies were bugging and the group was already nodding into the wall. I didn’t care much for the flashing red and green martini glass either- -a slow epileptic narcosis of mind, through the prefrontal, into the pineal gland and out through the motor cortex, alternating colors moving the writhing tissue-eating parasite deeper and deeper—out, out of the bar we ran! Cool Romanian night air on the forehead, Peace and the lightness of being, ahhh.

The train ride was a paper-finishing frenzy from the day’s lecture, followed by hummus and pita, five bottles of white between us and a sock hop through the dining car. Arabic music from the cab’s bartender had our fingers snapping and soon we were off bribing the ticketer for a sleeping car (a normal matter of business in these Eastern European over-nighters actually). There was no chance we were gonna catch a wink those 12 hours forcing our spines into some church-going L-shape.

 

 ….—25….?

Euro…Forint?

…..—this is all we got

Okay yes, 14 yes

 Paid the man in three currencies, a hodgepodge galaxy of coins, papers and colors slapped into his hand with pieces spilling down from his upturned palm. He looked like a gluttonous  Shiva in that moment, smiling as the deity too.

We awoke in darkness, silently coasting into Alba Iulia under a mysterious Romanian night sky, mountains printing onto the car’s window as shape-shifting silhouettes—into existence, then back out, dark Etch-A-Sketch machinery on the foggy glass. What exactly are we doing? [an unspoken theme of the trip]. Where are we? [ an increasingly valid theme as well]

Hopping off the still-moving train, I kick Carolyn’s luggage with a leap and Huzzah! The group’s in a fit of hysteria filling the 6 am soundscape and now, with laughter subduing our eyes shift between the gaps in the station’s pillars, eyeing up the gypsies and tired folk lurking around the stone. Ignorance and insensitivity yes, but I’m wired, vigilant despite the sleep and I hangout with the girls while Gabe goes off on a reconnaissance bop through the industrial city- – billowing white plumes from obscure smokestacks and buses wandering aimlessly around uninhabited sidewalks like feral dogs.

 

General sketchiness, sidewalks and a sleepy town, found a porta-potty…

 We don’t know though, again our two-hour stint in this town just a perceptive veil- -keyhole subjectivity we might call it. The sights of gypsy garb slumped amongst station pillars, men with fixed igneous grimaces stuffing hands into leather pockets, and peaking stars as dynamo above a carcinogenic atmosphere- – the nature of travel sometimes lends itself to such pessimism, ignorance stemming from limited mobility and a general lack of wherewithal.

All that I can really know, dig, understand in this moment (which seems to always be the ultimate purpose, the enlightened notion) is the flow of scribbles running a mad river through my notebook and laughter split with the girls frightened by the Transylvanian organ music piped omnisciently throughout the station loudspeakers. We kept to ourselves, holed up in the cold stone corner of the station- – one hour/two…and we’re off to the medieval town of Sibiu in quickened haste (none of us foretelling the Curse of the Gypsy—waiting for us, lurking within the creamy railway shadows)

Oh well, we can know movement, and in movement is knowledge:::like an On The Road parable setting fire to our tracks, burning youth vessels careening towards a peaking morning sun searing orange now just over the gothic Romanian mountains.

 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Sibiu, Romania ~ 3am

[Cal’s got her head stuck in the concrete….on the concre……Cal’s stuck]

I’m smiling up at an owl perched on the ivory rooftops and between tea tokes Alex is pouring into the group ears’ about artwork in places we don’t know. We ran into a painter quick to brag about his spot in the Guinness Book of World Records and his progeny of artwork dwelling on walls in the Nordic countries. On the whole a humbled man though, with philosophies that Carolyn has taken keen to it would seem from my spot across the table. I’m over here in the shadows still devising a way to spatula Cal’s head off the concrete, give that egg a flip and bring her back to this Here & Now (Sunny Side Up of course).

 

Before the Native American names were dealt, before the hip-to-elbow jives past the dj, before even a late-night bacon plate with 12 greasy fingers- – -before all that was the Bloodsucker, a tourist trap for the Americans, taking the form of a fourteen ounce opaque spook, liquefied and cool to our chapped lips. I’ll take two please as the guy next to me throws back another gin, the shot glass retuning to a graveyard of glassy apparitions recently drained of their own liquescent existence. He slaps me across the shoulder blades while chopping up his English and inquiring about Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and American films like Pulp Fiction–anything starring Samuel L. really.

Back outside, up the Bohemian Flow’s staircase and into a brickyard corner, Alex is begging us to come checkout the artwork at his place. We decide otherwise, not knowing what oddities and cultural peculiarities await us at this cat’s house around 3 am, not wanting to lead three girls and a cartwheeling Gabe down dark alleys in a city we know nothing about. Plus our heads’ aint right at this hour- – rain check it is.

Walking back to the hostel Carolyn sticks her head into a bridal shop, the dresses illuminated a ghastly violate in the black light with fluorescent green tags where the eyes should be. A cool breeze nips at our backs while we peer in with cupped hands, laughing nervously at the eerie sight. Just then [3:17 am] the bell in the city’s clock tower rings twice and our gazes dart quickly upwards, Gabe howlin’ about a shifty figure lurking way up in the brick tower, all of us white and goose-bumped with the supernatural episode.

Yiiieeeeeeeee, I’m outta here!

run-churn-cut, peace turkey!

 We jam the key into the hostel lock and run screaming-disoriented for our rooms, laughing now and tackling Gabe with a body pile waking up a snoring roommate we don’t know.

 

Limbo, Space & Time in The Peach Nimbus

I plunk down on the Turkish designs and toss my bags through the wisps, the luggage landing on either side of my company, an Iraqi teenager named Ibram whose English is broken but conversable and a dark Turkish woman smiling shyly into her nargila hose. I’ve got hours before an 11 o’clock to Budapest. Billowing away in the milky nimbus I scratch weekend tales into smoky yellow papers while testing out limited Arabic on my new Iraqi friend.

Oriental designs drape laconically over the store’s interior; browns and yellows slide down the stone pillars, reds and deep green tiles line the curvy Middle Eastern font. Outside, the pokey German streets alive and wet in an afternoon rain, funnel towards the city’s gray slab station—rickshaws, taxis, buses and drunken festival-goers, all a locomotive barreling towards the unassuming bums lining station walls who first, looking down into their pilsners float reptilian gazes back, their eyes vacant yet relaxed, spelling no notion of time.

[–transcending time and space myself I think of Alec in Morocco, of the Arabesque smoke rooms he occupies, of the Oud and Tabla in the streets and the Call to Prayer coloring marmalade morning hues, all deep and exotic in my mind–]

Back here now, the streets of Munich and the Arabic bar, a dichotomy of academic proportions. A Noisy pavement jive reverberates into the smokey-den doldrum, only but the nargila gurgle bubbling inside as an ember soundscape. Surrounding me are foreign locals lounging about the Oriental throw pillows:::whole families perched between pillars. I’m a traveller foreign to both the land beneath the tapestries and the land outside of- – –

 

 A reflection of a reflection, of yet another:::

            Green maples in the downpour, ululating in nargila peach soups of their own–

//want my attention. A mirror allows my gaze to slide from one corner to the other without so much as a muscle moved, a hair flicked- – shifty Siamese cat eyes, yellow and moving cooly throughout the den.

From glass to surface now glass–looking for that image of the maples, appearing: but in reality not where they are.

//Green movement, rhythmic wet dance on the stone//

 

Ibram knows all the folk in the room- – basically family, yes you know? And I ask him about Germany, about immigrating from Northern Iraq. He loves Munich- – a rich city, you know the fashion and the art — and it seems the sizeable Arabic population is welcome in the country. We keep to our streets, but the people they are nice, never do we feel not welcomed.

Still thinking about the dichotomy, I look through cumulus exhale floating in space and time above Ibram’s friend—through peach, apple and mint saturated tapestries lining the shop’s windows—through the den’s white weather patterns into gray German streets—through now even the dichotomy itself and into The Peach Nimbus as Ibram and I perch cross-legged around the hookah, maps in either hand spilling stories over the Arabic teas at our shins.

I wonder in the limbo that my nationality warrants- – do the German’s know of the world living within their stoic facades? The families between the dripping yellow pillars are welcome yes, but their existence, their microcosm: who really understands it but the red and green tiles, the gargling nargila and the lingering clouds swimming above their own heads.

An exhaust of foreign oration carried on Sandalwood and shisha drifts out from the Bavarian stone shopfront. Within however murmurs a quiet Oud, the shifty rustlings of carpet, pillow and water pipes, the dainty clatter of teacups on plates and now—now, the subtle patter of jaded yellow cat eyes pulling away from the looking glass and refocusing on the Middle Eastern drama within.

Pilsner Puddles and White Knuckle Steins

The beers are big in this neck of the woods and some of us need two hands on the stem. I’ve got a leg propped and the pilsner hoisted at the hip, thirsty because today we’re all German. Deep in our mugs we discover jubilee as a philosophy while an affinity for pretzel churns viscerally in already starch-filled stomachs. A rowdy pack from Down Under at our backs and four oddballs from The Netherlands spill into our ears about years past, beers drunk and München farce/German lore.

I’ve got kaleidoscope eyes now with two heavy glasses at the pupil. Through prismatic mugs my group’s looking good- – fine really! and digging the scene because how not?

Tweedledee, hailing from Belgium has had a full tank AND some—five liters over the past two hours and he’s inquiring hard about sexual relations of the group;

“Nope, we’re all just friends man…except for those two down there”

–Yes of course, but any of you fuckbuddies?

Minutes later, Logan saw Tweedledee-now-dumb shooting beer out of his left nostril at terminal velocity, his round belly now a tapped keg of its own.

Next time we’ll do it right, lederhosen and all—in the German tent too, the six of us- – A failed experiment but a fun experience. Agreeing I look up, yet with a different notion coursing through my mind—here we are:

 

…Button downs, buttoned up

Two piece liquidation party

Euro house-American guests

White-knuckle beer steins

 and Pilsner puddle sunshine…

 

:::The mugs were microphones all along and after a mad fix we all knew the words…older than our fathers and theirs, quintessential folk, with hands as mallets and tables as drums-now-dance floors. Percussive stomps work all the same [when in Rome, or so the adage goes].