The woman at the counter was rude and I felt her terrible day spread over me from the beams of her eyes resting on my silhouette. Tension pulled her skin downwards and tightened her jaw. She fought uncertainty with sternness. She was rooted in this shop and in this town and she wanted nothing more than to escape to some fantastic place that resembled her daydream. I saw it just before her eyes clouded over me and swept me into their bitterness, which I tasted from the air between us.

I was dressed like a street urchin, with dirty shorts unraveling at every seam and smears of oil from my bike shading all the wrong places. My hair was disheveled. I did not mean to offend her with my humid and smokey countenance (the unintentional smudges on my cheeks and my skin singed by the sun's hot hands).

She took one look at me with sweat following the curve of my cheek down to the fabric of my shirt and the suggestion of youth beneath its dampness, all this implying my lack of concern for social tact. The careless beads of water on my neck angered her and she wanted to throw her cup of coffee in my face to wash away the salt. Her social tact prevented this, which made her hate me more.

I smiled and said hello, then leaned over the counter and dripped once, twice, right there on her turf. She laughed as I took the end of my grimy shirt to wipe away my offense. I told her that it was hot outside and I had just seen the most beautiful tree that reminded me of a despondent person. I wanted to see the pictures I had taken of its body. She said, "I will develop those photos for you. You know, if you develop 10 rolls of film, you get the 11th one free."

"Thanks! You know, Florida is actually a great place to both live and die."

She stared after me, speechless, and I wondered if she believed.

When I was 24 I felt a similarly persistent burn. This time, it lasted months and it was not chili peppers. I was desperate for relief, and I felt that a particular tendency of writers, musicians and artists could claim me and leave the remainder of my first book blank, though I had written only a few unreleased poems that I was in love with. I surrendered myself to the emotion that I felt, so that it swept me up and curled its fingers around me and made me very hot and unpredictable.

I was somewhat immortal during these few months and felt that at any moment I could end up anywhere - in the back seat of a Volkswagon on the way to a party in Connecticut or possibly in the cab of a pickup truck to Kentucky. Once I actually found myself in a beat up Chevrolet, born circa 1975, with a strange young man who lived in Brooklyn and for some reason felt pity for me, though I was wearing a fur vest and had red lipstick on.

He must have seen the slump in my shoulders as I sat on the steps of 147 West 4th Street, waiting for nothing more than the past to return. I often made futile pilgrimages to this same spot with the most outlandish belief that by sitting on the third step from the top, I could go back to some sunny Saturday when we all walked around the West Village and crammed crepes into our mouths and then went to the bar to drink beer and laugh a lot and listen to cheesy 80s music.

Carl was his name. He drove that crappy 1970's Chevy but he loved music, so the shiny Ipod that sat in his console and the Bose sound system was in deep contrast to the rust marks on the wheel wells of the car. I don't know why I got in the car with him. I've never been the best decision maker - I once chose Duck a l'Orange over grilled pork at a Vietnamese restaurant. It turned out that the duck was dry and French, not Vietnamese, and though the French occupation of Vietnam should have taught the Vietnamese a thing or two about Duck a l'Orange, here we are almost half a century later and they still can't seem to get it right.

Carl pulled up and rolled his window down. My frame tensed and I looked around for other people, cops or a weapon. I found nothing but my keys, so I held one of them tight between my fingers. I wasn't sure what the effect would be if I jammed them into his stomach, but that was my plan. I certainly didn't want to go for his eye because it made me queasy to think about piercing an eyeball. My father had done it once to a gigantic eyeball of a tuna he had caught in the Gulf of Mexico. I had nightmares about it for weeks afterwards because the sound it made was unearthly and it made the tuna look tortured. It was bad enough that he had been asphyxiated already.

Earlier, I had drank a couple shots of Jack Daniels at the Black Pussy Cat Club and felt warm, but not too friendly. Carl asked me what I was doing there all alone at 4:00 a.m. I wanted to scream at him to mind his own business, but realized that I may have been equally as curious as he was if I had seen a girl sitting alone on a stoop wearing a fur coat and red lipstick at that hour. I was smoking a cigarette and flicked it in his direction.

"Nothing. I'm just sitting here minding my own business. Something you might want to try."

"Do you live there?"

This was a poignant question that made tears well up in my eyes. It's complicated. Where do I begin? I wanted to tell him the whole story. I wanted to tell everyone the whole story and I had already told everyone I knew, probably numerous times. Some of my friends stopped answering my calls. I wasn't the same person that I had been a few months before that. I actually never even wore red lipstick and fur until now. I was confused and needy and no one could stand the tears anymore. I resorted to going out alone or with strangers, sometimes acquaintances who didn't really care that much. I needed someone who didn't care because I cared too much.

"I used to live here. Not anymore though. I actually live in Brooklyn now."

"Do you need a ride?"

"Of course not! I'm not getting in the car with you! Do I look absolutely insane?"

As the words left my lips I realized that I hadn't looked in the mirror in a few hours. Since I had shed a few tears and the red lipstick was probably now being scrubbed off of a shot glass somewhere, I think I was in worse shape than I thought. To compound matters, over the past few months I had developed chronic dark circles under my eyes from lack of sleep and my cheek bones reached for the sky. A lot of people thought I was more beautiful. I looked in the mirror and saw the exposed sharpness of my cheeks and the darkness that had fallen over my face. I did not like what I saw because that face engendered sorrow and loss.

"No, I'm just trying to be nice."

He told me his address and assured me that he was harmless.

"God, this is like a crappy thriller. Of course you say you're harmless. Why would you say anything else? 'Hey, get in the car bitch, I wanna rape you and then slice you up and throw your ravaged body into the East River.' You'd never get anywhere that way, and you'd be the worst serial killer and rapist in history."

He continued to look at me and that's when I noticed pity and a touch of sadness in his eyes. Certain people could feel the inner wretch that emanated from me. I knew it was there, but a lot of people are numb and dull and have no empathy, so they couldn't detect my despair. It was these people who thought my razor sharp cheeks were beautiful. They simply wanted to take photographs of me and then leave me laying alone in the white studio with bright lights exposing my weaknesses. Carl seemed different, and I saw in his eyes something that I wanted.

I told him to get out of the car and walk into the middle of the street. He did. Then I told him to turn around a few times. He spun around three times and looked up at me.

He pulled out his pockets and held his hands up and I noticed that he looked and dressed like a friend of mine that had died in a car accident a few years before. I decided at that moment to get in the car.

I knew it was stupid, but somehow I also knew that I was going to get home safe that night. Carl drove me to Williamsburg and we talked about music. He loved the Stones and Ray Charles, but also had a particular fascination with Manu Chao, The Smashing Pumpkins and Radiohead. Every once in a while he would listen to old Rumba songs from Cuba. And then there was his profound and lengthy love affair with Del the Phunky Homosapien, and the equally intense dance he did with Thievery Corporation and Les Claypool. I scrolled through his Ipod and wished that we could be friends so that we could share music.

He had really good taste, eclectic but also meticulous. It was clear that his music library contained absolutely nothing that was not chosen with care and mulled over, possibly for hours or even days. My music was similarly critical and nothing made me more uncomfortable than to have someone download their garbage onto my computer to pollute my library. A tasteless friend once downloaded a Brittney Spears song onto my hard drive and I almost reformatted the entire drive out of sheer disgust.

However, despite our shared enthusiasm for music and our general comradery, we both knew that this encounter was a tiny tear in our lives and that it would end when I closed the gate behind me at Ten Eyck Street.

I laid in bed that night, listening to the soundtrack from "Magnolia," and felt as if I had sunk back to where I was before. The brevity of that peace with Carl was frustrating.

I will continue to cut chili peppers because I love them, they are worth the pain. And I know that the yogurt will always be there to soothe me, if only for a moment.

I have a week to consider their offer, and then they need an answer.  After accepting, I'll have about a month before I have to report for duty.

This is a big decision for us, so if you wouldn't mind, we'd appreciate your prayers over the coming days as we figure things out.  Once more info comes, I'll pass it along.

Podpisy pod zdjęciami to dla mnie czarna magia (póki co) i otwarcie przyznaję, że zgapiłem je od osobnika zwanego DeFU ;)

]]> http://wejherowo.wordpress.com/?p=91 Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:47:14 +0000 Marek Barański http://wejherowo.wordpress.com/?p=91 Życzeń nie będzie - tych którzy na nie liczyli odsyłam na wszystkie inne blogi ;) Przy okazji dziękuję tym, którzy do mnie wysyłali życzenia (w prawdzie trzy osoby wysłały mi tego samego SMSa z rymowanką, ale...). Był też jeden MMS od Jacko, który mnie rozłożył na łopatki :D

Święta w zasadzie już się skończyły... Jeszcze tylko ciasto wpałaszuję i jutro do pracy... Nawiasem mówiąc - moja matka upiekła na święta trzy ciasta i każde nie dość, że smakowało inaczej, to jeszcze zgadzały się z nazwami (co zazwyczaj się nie zdarza). Normalnie git!

Dobra - idę na sernik i jabłecznik ;)

Ciekawostka - powyższe zdjęcia na mapę zostały naniesione automatycznie (Picasa Web Album jak znajdzie w EXIFie dane GPS sam proponuje rozmieszczenie zdjęć na mapie). Dane pochodzą z odbiornika GPS (o którym tu ostatnio pisałem) skojarzonego z programem TrekBuddy w mojej komórce, a do pliku zostały one wrzucone przy użyciu GPScorrelate (który na podstawie zapisanej trasy potrafi dopasować zdjęcia).

Przypominam/podpowiadam - aby zobaczyć zdjęcia na mapie należy albo kliknąć w ikonę Picasa w danym wpisie (wówczas nad miniaturkami można włączyć widok mapy), albo (jeżeli masz zainstalowany program GoogleEarth) w niebieską ikonkę obok...

I began to only hear the mass of cars in voluntary waves, so I no longer needed headphones. I had perfected my daydreaming ability as a fine art. The moment I emerged from the bowels of my brownstone the great rush of city waters dried up and I was laying on a blanket next to the sea. Occasionally I would allow a taxi horn to penetrate, and sometimes I even eavesdropped on the run-of-the-mill melodramatic suited fool. Most of the time, though, I was content to fall into a fable.

I once fell in love with this particular part of the sidewalk that had fingerprints, an identity.

When I wasn't opening and closing doors in my mind, I was walking with someone, usually seeking an adventure or food (which can certainly be its own kind of adventure in New York). On this particular occasion I was walking with Magdalena and I tripped over a crack in the sidewalk that had forged a tiny cliff. As I fell, I saw a pair of red stilettos, some shiny black oxfords and a pair of Converse, then a few hands that tried to stop me and a cottony Pomeranian that dodged my sharp heels as they plunged towards the earth in a flailing of hands and feet, some of which were not my own. Magdalena accidentally grabbed my left breast and the man with the Oxfords brushed my ass with his right hand. All of this happened in about 3 seconds. None of the women tried to help me, perhaps because they would rather have chuckled at my demise. I think it is more likely that they did not want to "inadvertently" touch my assets.

I had just lived an eternity there in the middle of Greenwich Village! I wanted never to return to society; instead I wanted to feel the rush of life in a mosaic of frames that I thought might be the secret to eternal youth. If every second lived could be so full of clarity, then I felt I could live forever. Magdalena cried for me, because he was very sensitive and thought I was hurt. He took one look at the red lines traveling over my shins and wept like his namesake. I simply laughed and gave him the tissue that I would have used for my bloody shins. The next day I woke up and did not remember much about my love affair with that sidewalk. I had already lived a lifetime with that concrete, and the dried blood on my shins did not agree with the white of my sheets.

A few days later I was walking by that sidewalk and someone had fixed it. They had just taken my lover and crushed out the last remaining breaths, then replaced my tiny cliff with another newer and shinier one. I felt the injustice of it all. I wanted to cry but there were no shoulders so I went into the bagel store and ordered a salt bagel, then took the salt off. I wanted something to blend with my tears but too much salt makes me shrivel.

This is New York and nothing ever stays the same. Some people think it's hostile, but you just have to open your arms to renewal, then hope that you can keep up, shedding a layer of skin at least once a year. For me it was easiest in fall, but I think a lot of people preferred spring. For them, it was like taking off the winter jacket to welcome spring was symbolic and thus marked the entrance into a new era. I, on the other hand, like putting my winter jacket on. Sometimes I'm backwards anyway.

I saw "A Time for Drunken Horses" in a small indie theater in Pittsburgh. The love in that movie gave me hope when New York became ugly and desolate. The city sometimes had that empty feeling late at night, when the drinkers were on the verge of dreams and the coffee thugs were opening their eyes to taste the light. Even though it can be ugly and barren, I have found beauty in deserts before and I searched for it there too.

I liked to walk the streets and feel the dichotomy of that hour. It was haunting. It made me feel as if I were sneaking a peek at Purgatory. I pretended that I was observing this hour for a special study that I was conducting to determine the exact moment in which New York blooms into day. Unfortunately, my research could not be accurately completed, as I myself, after a certain hour, started hallucinating and feeling as if the data collected was nonsense and slightly jittery. I returned to my bed to lay on the pillow and smiled at the thought that I was safe, and on the other side of the morning I felt no guilt because I loved that city and all her dirty tricks.

For my cold and beautiful woman. 

Textbook was my favorite horse. He was a beautiful chestnut - tall, lean and strong like a racehorse. He was shy and stubborn and liked to get high, just like me. Don't get me wrong, we didn't smoke pot or eat pills together or anything. Horses get high by doing something called "cribbing." They hold their front teeth against a fence post, and then they open their jaws wide and inhale a huge breath of air. It's comforting to them, just like popping a Xanny bar or smoking a big fatty while watching the Simpsons.

Me and "Chester," as I liked to call him - we were pals. Sometimes while I was riding him he would get really angry with me and throw me off his back onto the ground. It was usually because I was doing something stupid and deserved it, so I always forgave him. This is why my riding coach also liked Chester. Chester would always tell me when I was messing up, so my riding coach could just watch and laugh as I got tossed into the dirt.

I think of Chester every time I see mud. I ended up in a great deal of mud with Chester. He liked to catch me off guard and challenge my attention span. He also liked to challenge my muscles. Sometimes, when it was raining, the two of us would be riding completely straight and suddenly he would decide to take a sharp right. Attention skills aside, if my thigh muscles weren't rock hard I'd be laying in the mud on his left-hand side no matter how much attention I paid. He always came back over and put his nose down in my face to make sure I was okay. I would brush his face away and yell a little bit, but I wasn't really mad. He was just playing a game with me.

We love you MC.

It may seem hard to understand why I loved Chester so much due to the fact that the above description seems to convey more pain than pleasure. However, I understood Chester, and he seemed to understand me. He never really hurt me, and if I walked away from riding him with a few bruises, it was really because I deserved them. After all, no one should do the things I was doing if they weren't fully prepared for the consequences. That's what being a rider is all about, and in the end he turned me into a good rider.

There finally came a point when the two of us were so connected that we couldn't help but win every event we entered. We had just fallen into place, just like an old married couple that actually love each other. The last summer we spent together was a dream. We had photographs of the two of us featured quite a few times in some horse-people newspapers. We were famous.

The truth is, our fame was the beginning of the end. As more and more little rich kids saw Chester's beauty and grace, they started offering me loads of money for him. People like this pay more money for horses than most people pay for cars. You see, they were the type of people who purchase talent. They didn't understand the concept of nurturing talent.

Chester's story is an interesting one. I was actually leasing him from his owner, just like leasing a car. At one time in his career he was a very valuable animal, worth over $50,000 because of his beauty and grace. However, one fateful day, a fat, stupid and talentless person was riding him and completely ruined him. The idiot didn't know what she was doing, and while Chester was going over a jump she plopped her fat ass down on his back and completely threw him off balance, sending poor Chester barrelling down into the fence. A long jagged piece of the broken fence went straight through his chest and pierced his left lung. It was devastating, but he made a full recovery, at least physically.

Emotionally, Chester was pretty much destroyed. He became unpredictable and constantly frightened. He refused to jump fences and sent his riders sailing over them every time. The idiot-woman could no longer ride him, and so they left him sit idly in a tiny pasture. That's when we got him.

They told us he was useless and that we could take him off their hands for $30 a month. In the horse world, this is pocket change. Compare it to leasing a brand new Mercedes or a BMW, fully loaded with all the cool gadgets, for $30 a month. That's just unheard of.

We took him in and I started riding him. I discovered every single one of his fears very quickly. Slowly, yet surely, with each day I eased him back into confidence. When I wasn't riding him, I would groom him and talk to him and we would go on walks. He started running to greet me every time he heard my voice.

One time, when I went away for a week and came back to see him, he was so excited that he nearly knocked me over and trampled me (after all, he weighed about 10 times as much as I did - he was a big horse). He was like a gigantic puppy. So once he gained his confidence and we started winning our classes, the rich kids wanted a piece of the action.

If a rider was winning blue ribbons and gold cups at every show, they wanted that horse. Towards the end of the summer of '94, the fat idiots who owned Chester decided to take him back. Now that he was worth money again (they had caught wind of all of these people offering me money for him), they wanted to sell him and finally get him off their hands for good. They took him away and I cried for days, and that was the last summer that I rode horses for a long time.

The people who bought him eventually discovered that he was not the kind of horse that you can just jump on his back and he'll win blue ribbons for you. He was the kind of horse who had to fall in love with you first. I think that he probably never fell in love with anyone again because most horse people are assholes. I don't really want to know what actually happened to him, because, as I mentioned, horse people are assholes. I would like to believe that he retired in a gigantic field with a bunch of his buddies and just got real fat off too much grass and grain.

When I see footprints in the mud or dirt, I reflect on the smell of his coat and his soft muzzle nudging me, his smooth gait that left perfect horseshoe prints behind us in the mire, and his huge, watery black eyes with long lashes that would grow heavy every time I rubbed the white blaze on his forehead.

På tisdagen for vi in till storstaden. Dagen spenderades med shopping och vi lyckades dra upp Evelina ur sängen så hon kom in och fikade med oss. Vi sammanfattade det senaste halvåret och tillsammans vandrade vi sedan upp till Vasa och genom Haga och gluttade i spännande butiker (precis som Evelina beskrev det).

Onsdagen skulle vi vara kulturella! Vi gick på Röhsska museet, Göteborgs konstmuseum och Göteborgs konsthall. Sen blev vi hungriga och det blev en stabil lunch på Jensens Bøfhus med mjukglassbuffé till efterrätt. Efter det kunde vi knappt röra oss men konstaterade att vi hade varit kulturella så det räckte. På kvällen åkte vi in till Vasa Stan och drack helt för mkt billig öl, eller vin för min del. 25:- är helt okej pris! Lagom lullig somnade jag i Tonys soffa med lite för mycket kläder på mig.

Torsdagen var en mycket fin dag med strålande sol och blå himmel. En långpromenad vid vattnet var den perfekta aktiviteten.

Klockan 1500 satt jag åter på bussen, men denna gången tog den mig till Malmö. För övrigt så älskar jag Göteborg. Det är ju inte helt otänkbart att jag hamnar upp där tillslut.

On Saturday morning Paul, Kara and I awoke with a start. We had each fallen deeply into our mattresses the night before, diving down to the depths of sleep and hovering there from traveler's exhaustion. Traveler's exhaustion is a singular thing, poignant in its ability to overcome almost any person. It is born out of a combination of dirt, sweat, music, bus-rides, large, cumbersome back-packs, the efforts of speaking a foreign tongue and reading. Reading maps, books, signs, expressions, attitudes and beautiful landscapes. Reading religion and reading subtitles and reading poetry. Reading everything with your eyes both open and closed, appreciating the wholeness of this world that is so strange and familiar all at once.

We hardly knew where we were until our eyes met. At that moment our confusion grew to grins as we realized that our premeditated goal on this rather grayish, pouting morning was to buy a horse at the Otavalo animal market. Through the stupor of our travel and bar-worn minds we had devised the plan the night before, just as we were on the precipice of dreaming. We all got out of bed and dressed through misty eyes, then escaped the closeness of the small room to fulfill our adventure.

Halfway down the road we realized that we were starving, but it was too late to turn back to the town. We marched on, up the gentle slope that formed the bottom of a large, yet gradual hill. In the distance we saw the dusty animal market, grayed by the rising earth and cloudy sky. It did not look appealing, but we were on a mission. We finally arrived to the din of squealing pigs, clucking chickens and barking dogs. Horses were wheeling around cows and sheep ran with legs like little staccato notes jerking forward and backward. We were still hungry and none of these animals was yet edible. We lost interest but spotted a smoking tent at the top of a tiny plateau.

Food! We practically ran, all three of us taller and whiter than everyone else and gathering handfuls of curious Otavalian stares. Once we reached the flat ground at the top of the plateau we stopped and reveled at the sight of the tiny woman with big black eyes greeting us with a nod and knowing that we were about to embark on the most incredible breakfast we had ever consumed. Into a bowl she shoveled fried eggs, potatoes, smashed and fried platanos, and fatty slices of pork, all of which stewed in the same pot. It was a glorious mixture with the perfect amount of seasoning - most notably cumin I think. In the end it was indescribable and inimitable.

We sat with our feet dangling over the side of the mini-cliff that the plateau formed - it was only 4 feet to the lower ground, but we still felt like we were on top of the world. Dogs crowded around us with large, hungry eyes, but still kept a polite enough distance. They were accustomed to being kicked at and having stones thrown at them, so they wearily watched for scraps or crumbs.

Once we finished eating, we strolled down to the animals and spotted the horses. Most of them already had riders, but we saw a chestnut mare and white foal alone in the corner. We walked up to the owner and asked him how much he wanted for the mare. He would only sell the pair together, as the foal was too young to part with its mother, and he wanted $250 for them. That's it? Just $250 for two entire horses? We couldn't believe what we were hearing, but stepped aside to discuss amongst ourselves.

It was too much. We had only planned on spending about $40 or $50 each, and even that was too much on a traveler's budget. We agreed that our dream would have to perish in the dusty bowl, and we sulked away, feeling defeated for the moment. As we were walking through the crowd of women leading pigs and piglets and sheep around on gnarled ropes, Paul had an epiphany. We should buy a pig!

There were hundreds of them, and the little pink ones were our targets. We walked up to a brown lady who was wearing a crisp peasant shirt, a black felt hat and a beautiful silk skirt with gold flecks scattered about. Her hair was parted down the middle and blossoming from underneath her hat. It fell, thick and luxurious, down her back and proceeded to cascade over her voluptuous rump. She smiled grandly when she saw us eying her little pink pets. We asked how much she wanted. She said $15. We said no. Paul, feeling the spirit of trade deep within him, low-balled and offered $8. Absolutely not! We ended up paying $12.

We decided to be unoriginal and named the pig "Pinky." He was a horrible, screaming little monster and offered us no consolation for our failed attempt at purchasing a horse. We dragged him, screaming, down the road, stopping every once in a while to try to quiet him by offering him crackers that I had stashed in my back-pack. Nothing soothed his tiny soul. He was desperate and psychotic and had fear seeping out of every pore. He planted his feet and resisted the leash every time we tried to coax him forward. We picked him up. He squealed. We talked to him and whispered in his ear. He squealed. Finally, after 20 minutes of slowly walking down the hill, we stopped in front of a house to take a break. We sat on a ledge and pondered our situation.

Suddenly, from behind the gate to our left, we heard stifled giggles and turned just as two tiny boys pulled their heads back behind the wall. We turned back around to pretend that we hadn't seen them, and just as the giggles started again we quickly jerked our heads back to the left. The boys screeched and pulled back again, this time slowly peering out from behind their hiding spot a second time. We smiled and waved and said, "Hola, chicos! Que tal?" And they giggled and slowly emerged. It turns out there were 3 of them, perfectly spread out in height - 2 feet, 2.5 feet, 3 feet tall. They had black hair and bright black eyes that shone with vibrant life. The tiniest one held a black and brown puppy and offered it to us as he slowly approached. We in turn offered the leash of the pig (anything to get rid of the little bastard), and suddenly we had friends.

The little boys loved Pinky and squealed right along with him as they petted him and rubbed his funny nose. We watched as they played with him and couldn't understand a single word they uttered. When we spoke to them in Spanish and they looked at us like we were crazy, we realized that they only spoke Quichua. So instead of talking we just laughed and smiled a lot and played with the puppy and piggy. Finally, we decided it was time to part ways, and said farewell to the tiny boys. They forlornly waved goodbye and watched for a long time as we walked down to the Otavalo flea market with our screaming treasure.

Upon reaching the flea market with all of its colorful people and garments and fruits and jewelry, we realized that we could not drag our little Pinky all around squealing like this. We thought of trading him for pork sandwiches, a tiny irony that we all found disturbingly appropriate. Instead, just before our mirth reached its pinnacle, another tiny woman approached us and asked us what in the world we were doing with this pig? We told her that we were going to roast him for dinner, and she gasped with her face lit up in surprise and hilarity. Three back-packers were going to roast a baby pig? She didn't believe it, so we told her that she could buy it from us. This time, we were the ones who were low-balled, but we were willing to do anything at this point to get rid of Pinky.

She gave us $5 and gathered Pinky in her arms. For the first time in 45 minutes a hush fell over him, and as she walked off down the street we realized we had just sold Pinky to the Pig Whisperer. It was a beautiful sight, to see her telling him secrets in Quichua and rubbing his belly to calm his terror. That was about a year and a half ago. I bet that Pinky grew up to be a nice big juicy porker and the tiny lady, right about now, is eating his bacon for breakfast and thanking the 3 weirdo back-packers for her delicious fortune.

Special note to Paul and Kara: Thank-you for one of the most interesting weekends of my entire life!

Paul is a fireman in New Castle, England. He is currently devising a plan to escape monotony once again. Kara is a world traveler and currently an expert tour guide in Alaska. I imagine she won't be there for long. Like Paul and myself, she is currently devising a plan. I think.

Again, sorry guys, this story is to be continued. The weekend is not yet over...

Just like old times!

As we sat sipping a cheap Cab and reveling in the beauty of a room turned rosy by wine and simplicity, Adrienne suddenly sat up from her computer and said something like, "Hey you wanna go to Atlanta?" I was reading the Times and half paying attention to whatever else was going on around me. To her question I replied something like, "yes," and we both went on quietly with our evening activities, she continuing to look at hotel room prices and tourist attractions and I continuing to half pay attention to whatever was going on around me while reading the Times.

Every once in a while Adrienne would interrupt the silence to notify me of the cheapest rates at the cheapest hotels in downtown Atlanta. The moment I heard $35 for the Super 8 Motel, I looked up and said, "That's the one. You've found us a winner. Book it dahling, we're going to Atlanta."

The next morning sobriety did not discourage us. We woke up, packed, filled up the gas tank and we were off. It felt as if it was the most natural thing in the world, to wake up suddenly on a Friday morning and drive due north for nearly 8 hours. We were equipped with as much Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock and Dane Cook as we could muster, so the first 5 hours of the trip drifted by with laughter, at times verging on tears.

When we started growing weary of the road we realized that there were far too many shopping outlets flying by as we hit 90 mph on 75 North, my least favorite road in Florida. Finally, the one with the Coach store snagged us, and we took the plunge. We had almost forgotten that it was Black Friday, the day everyone pines for Jesus' demise by spending as much money as they can in 12 hours (Black Friday gives a special poignance to the term "theraputic spending").

We made it through two stores and practically ran away screaming. It was as if someone had summoned every being within 50 miles of this shopping center to come rummage through piles of cheap crap. After drinking 3 cups of coffee, it was impossible for my already impatient soul to tolerate hoards of Floridians rushing about with sweaters, scarves and knitted hats, despite the fact that the lowest temperature we have reached thus far this year is about 57 degrees.

About 30 minutes outside the city, we stopped at McDonald's to change. You see, neither of us excel in the art of ETA, so we realized that we did not have time to go to a hotel (or other place of lodging, as you will soon discover), but the 8 hour car ride had taken its toll on our hair and general appearance. We were meeting my cousin, Shane, at his restaurant, the Pleasant Peasant, and were already 30 minutes late. It was necessary to take drastic measures to ensure that we were no later than necessary, but also no smellier or uglier than necessary.

Shane is the head chef at the Pleasant Peasant, along with a new restaurant, the Peasant Bistro, opening on December 10. Despite the fact that Friday was his day off, he donned his chef coat and by the time we arrived at the Pleasant Peasant, he had planned an entire 5 course meal, which he personally presented.

The Salmon.

After dinner, we were exhausted from the long drive, the bottle of wine and our many excited, yet subdued (to match the soft-lit ambiance of the restaurant) murmurs about the artfully prepared dinner Shane served. It was time to go to our new home. Did I mention that we never ended up booking that hotel on Thursday night? We couldn't decide if we were just too soft and backboneless to survive downtown Atlanta, so we decided to wait and see what it was like. In the end it turns out that we did not need to test our ghetto survival skills, because during our drive we received a phone call with the offer of a place to stay with a friend-of-a-friend, aka a complete stranger (two in this case).

We showed up at their doorstep in Kennesaw, about 20 minutes outside of Atlanta, with a bottle of champagne. Josh answered the door. Josh is a quiet, reserved type with a pleasant demeanor. His other roommate, Colt (yes, his name is really Colt, like a young stallion), was not yet home, although we met him the next day in a rather interesting encounter. Colt is the antithesis of Josh in every way.

The next morning, on our way to the Georgia Aquarium, we realized that Atlanta is not a beautiful city. It has more roads than it does buildings and trees. In spite of its plentiful roads, Atlanta is known for its terrible traffic jams. We passed by one shopping mall and a gigantic church. This reminded me immediately of Florida, the land of shopping malls and churches. However, in Florida the churches look like boxes with crosses on top and people sit in metal fold-out chairs. This church that we passed was gorgeous. It was built in that gothic style that characterizes old churches and pleases the eye. My eye was certainly gushing with admiration as I stared at the church with my nose smashed up against the window.

The aquarium: Do not go there if you are agoraphobic. It is a place of winding lines and corralling, herding and pushing and pulling. At times I felt as if I were crowd surfing because my legs seemed not to be moving at all, almost like the crowd of people was one mass that moved us all along regardless of our will. We spent 5 hours meandering in the midst of this one long massive caterpillar of humanity, and we saw a hell of a lot of fish. Colorful fish, ugly fish, toothy fish, funny fish, mean fish, sad fish and boring fish. It was a fish fest.

This is Natasha, one of the female whales.

And then of course the beluga whales were incredible and we spent the better part of an hour just staring at them swimming gracefully around in a tank that seemed far too small for 3 animals that weighed over 1,500 pounds each. I did a great deal of smashing my face on clear materials on this particular day, from the smashing up against the window on the car ride into the city to smashing against aquarium acrylic. By the time we left the aquarium, I was so dizzy from staring at sea life through 2 feet of acrylic and smashing my face against clear materials that I felt like returning my breakfast to its rightful owner at the deli.

Instead, Adrienne was able to distract me by running over to Santa and begging me to sit on his lap. In fact, I did not want to sit on Santa's lap with Adrienne. The reasons are multiple but here are the two most important:

1) Santa is, after all, a man, and we wouldn't want Santa to embarrass himself and scare the little children away by getting too excited after having two young women give him a Stage One lap dance.

2) I am 27 years old. Enough said.

So I was able to convince Adrienne that Santa was not going to have the pleasure of my ass on his lap, but I would most certainly stand there and laugh at her if she wanted to do it. She declined, and we started walking back to the car. Just past the Santa stand we encountered a ballot-looking box with a bunch of blank Santa letters. The deal here was that if you wrote a letter to Santa, Coke would donate $1 to Toys for Tots. Now, I don't believe in Santa (and never did by the way - I was the kid in class who made all the other kids cry because I told them Santa wasn't real). I do, however, believe in charity, so I wrote Santa a letter.

Later on we went to the top of the Westin Hotel, where there is a restaurant called the Sundial, that turns around in circles - like a Sundial, go figure - and has a huge wall of windows so that you can see a gorgeous view of the city. By the time we left both of us had turned quite a few lovely shades of green, as we had already been dizzied by the 2 feet of acrylic and thousands of gallons of water that we had been staring at all day. All we needed was to be spun in little involuntary circles around a gigantic hotel building that served fairly crappy wine out of clunky stemware. Nevertheless the view was wonderful.

The Tabernacle was our last stop before going back to the complete strangers' house to crash in their incredibly comfy spare bed (he even left us a key underneath his doormat).

Mark Broussard was playing, with the Sons of William and Will Hoge opening. In all the concert lasted 6 hours. This is a long time for a concert, and after the first 5.5 hours my body gave up.

Me just before falling asleep at the Tabernacle.

I started falling asleep standing up. Here's how that works:

1) Close your eyes and listen intently to Mark Broussard's deep, sexy New Orleans voice singing the blues.

2) Make sure you're really worn out after taking an 8 hour car ride, drinking a lot of wine and champagne, walking around an aquarium for 5 hours, eating lots of rich French food, and dancing until you sweat for 5 hours.

3) Be surrounded by really nice hippie-types that don't mind if you lean your head on their shoulder just a tiny bit when you suddenly find yourself dreaming and becoming very leaden.

I woke up a couple times and finally decided that it was time to allow myself to sit for a while. We walked up to the balcony and I passed out for the last 30 minutes of the show in a plush red velvet covered seat under starry chandeliers. Heaven.

Oh my starry night.

Georgia, Georgia,
The whole day through
Just an old sweet song
Keeps Georgia on my mind

I'm say Georgia
Georgia
A song of you
Comes as sweet and clear
As moonlight through the pines

Other arms reach out to me
Other eyes smile tenderly
Still in peaceful dreams I see
The road leads back to you

I said Georgia,
Ooh Georgia, no peace I find
Just an old sweet song
Keeps Georgia on my mind

Other arms reach out to me
Other eyes smile tenderly
Still in peaceful dreams I see
The road leads back to you

Georgia,
Georgia,
No peace, no peace I find
Just this old, sweet song
Keeps Georgia on my mind

I said just an old sweet song,
Keeps Georgia on my mind

My grandmother married my grandfather, an American soldier, and he adopted 2 of her 3 children (my father, the eldest and my uncle Phillip, the youngest). When they arrived in Coatesville, PA, they escaped the Vietnam War, hunger and poverty, but discovered another trial - trying to find their place in American society. They did not speak English, but were forbidden to speak Vietnamese. My father, just 14 years old, was half-French, half-Vietnamese, all skinny, all eyes and hair, and very rebellious. Rebellion was his natural response to being forced to perform hard labor by large men who neither spoke his languages nor allowed him to speak them. He couldn't even speak Vietnamese with his mother. These days, he doesn't have much to say about those times. They are like a distant historical account of another person entirely unrelated to John Devereux. That other person's name was Son Nguyen.

Mom-mom and daddy, aka Son Nguyen, a long time ago in Vietnam.

You can imagine that these tiny people were not only alienated by language; they also seemed slightly out of place in a land of veritable giants. Pennsylvania is a state full of farmers. They like to eat corn and beef (and I imagine corned beef as well, although while I was growing up we didn't partake in much corned beef), and they grow big and strong with hands and arms like the Iron Men. Being of mostly German descent, it makes sense that Pennsylvanians are like Iron Men. I think Germans and Pennsylvanians must win a lot of Iron Man competitions, but I am almost certain that the Polish and Wisconsonites (Wisconsonians?) trump us all for producing the most Iron Men. So while all of the Pennsylvania Iron Men were downing pounds and pounds of potatoes, my tiny father and his tiny family were dreaming of tiny bowls of jasmine rice.

So my tiny father and his tiny brother worked the land and went to school with a bunch of gigantic Germans who took great pleasure in pointing out their differences. I don't think that my father ever once wished that he had blonde hair and blue eyes though. When I was little, he always used to make fun of my mother for dying her hair blonde. "Baby, you look so beautiful with blonde hair. Blonde hair is my favorite. You should always have blonde hair. I looove blondes." I knew he was making fun of her because he always got this little speck of light in his eyes and he would smile real big and look at her out of the corner of his eye, mostly because he was lying and couldn't look at her straight on. "Oh, shut up John," she would say with half-feigned frustration. I think it was only half feigned because she really did like her hair blonde, so it probably annoyed her that her own husband was poking fun at her hair. If he wasn't impressed, then who would be?In fact, all of the rest of the Germans in Pennsylvania really did like mommy's blonde hair. I did not. I preferred mommy with dark hair just like mine and daddy's.

Me and Daddy showing off our dark hair.

Mommy's dark hair (in my memory), happened once about 15 years ago, when she bought this dye that was apparently a dud. Her hair, rather than being “Golden Blondish-Brown,” turned out Cool Darkish-Dark Brown. I thought she looked beautiful. She almost cried, but in the end decided she could tolerate it. After that, however, I rarely saw her with dark hair again. I’m not actually sure what her real hair color is - I think it’s light brown, and I’m going to stick with that.

Mommy with light brown hair, presumably her true color.

Unfortunately, I inherited my mother’s obsession with hair-dying, although mine is seemingly more for the ritual of dying my hair than it is for the actual results. I always dye my hair dark brown, but I have dark brown hair already, so the purpose is entirely defeated. After I dye my hair I am the only one who notices it, but most of my friends, when asked if they “notice anything different about me,” will pause and study every part of me for a few minutes and then decide that it is safe to assume that I dyed my hair again. They will then politely acknowledge that, “Oh yes, now I see it! Yes, it is darker, of course, how could I miss it, looks great, just great…” and so on and so forth until I am sufficiently satisfied with their praise of my new hair color. In fact, I just might dye my hair today - it’s been a while. I discovered that I really like the semi-permanent dye because then I don’t have to commit to the color. God forbid I hate my new dark brown hair and have to wait months for it to fade away, just like my mother did 15 years ago with the dud.

Me and mommy when she had dark hair, long before I could remember her dark hair.

Little mom-mom, on the other hand, has never had the need to dye her hair. She has that beautiful coarse black Asian hair, except hers has always somehow been wavy. My father also has the coarse Asian hair, but his, like most Asians' hair, is straight. His hair is so black that it's almost blue. Since I am exactly 1/2 of my mother and 1/2 of my father in all respects, I have dark brown hair, of medium thickness and slightly wavy. This is the product of my mother's baby fine, very wavy brown locks and my father's very coarse, very black, very straight hair.

Me, mom-mom and my brother.

A lot of my memories as a child are of eating. My family really loves to eat and since mom-mom and nanny (my grandmother on my mother's side) love to cook, we all got along great. I would have to say that the one constant in my life has always been rice. Even while everything around me has changed drastically, rice has always been there like a security blanket. Growing up, my house always smelled like rice. We ate rice with everything, even BBQ chicken from the grill. Potatoes were rare, though my mother grew up in mid-western Pennsylvania, a place where rice is only served in Chinese buffets and potatoes are dinnertime superstars. I know for a fact that my mother missed potatoes, because when she made them she did it with such great care and precision that I could tell she was dreaming of the days when potatoes were prolific. Those were some great potatoes. Nanny's potatoes are even better.

In contrast, when mom-mom tries to make mashed potatoes, we always sneak into the kitchen to add butter while she's not looking. She doesn't understand the concept of using butter in cooking. Vietnamese cooking just doesn't allow for it. So if we didn't add it, her potatoes would end up like watery potato soup, and you just can't have watery potato soup on Thanksgiving or Christmas. It's against the laws of the Holidays (please note that this is the only time mom-mom messes with potatoes).To sum up mom-mom's relationship with potatoes: I've often seen her eating mashed potatoes out of one of those tiny Asian-style bowls - with chopsticks. However, on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day Proper, she puts the chopsticks away and uses her 2 forks and spoon and knife (while thinking to herself how much easier it is to just use one utensil, the chopsticks!!). I'm not sure if proper utensil use is one of the laws of Thanksgiving and Christmas, but she does it out of respect for the Thanksgiving and Christmas tradition that Hallmark and television have done such a wonderful job of portraying and preserving.

What mom-mom lacks in butter usage, she makes up for in wok usage. I've never tasted the likes of her egg rolls. She makes this pork shish kebob (in her words shikabah) that is incredible. She can take a bundle of weeds and turn it into a dish that you would think came from a five-star restaurant. When the entire family was present, like we used to be when I was young and everyone was still in one state, she would make a seven course meal that never ended. I cannot begin to describe the grandiose nature of these dinners, but I will tell you that you can only imagine half of their magnificence if you've ever entered a restaurant claiming to be Vietnamese. Sorry.

If you are my friend, and you aren't vegetarian, you are in luck. Mom-mom loves to cook for just about anybody, although over the years I've had quite a few unfortunate vegetarian friends who would derive funny stares from my little mom-mom and her Vietnamese friends, for they do not understand the notion of depriving oneself of anything, but especially not meat and fish, the most delectable and expensive foods available. If you found yourself at one of our family dinners and you actually liked meat and fish, you would be amazed at the incredible variety of food placed on the table.

Even if you were a vegetarian you would inevitably find something to eat, although you would naturally wonder if there might be just some little bit of animal product in this delicious morsel, because all the little Vietnamese people are staring at you and laughing amongst themselves while you take a big bite of this plant that looks completely lifeless and as if it never contained a single bone in its entire existence. But you still had to wonder. You've never tasted a plant like this one before, so you are slightly suspicious to begin with. The stares from the tiny people playing Chinese poker in the corner only confirm your suspicion.

Don't worry, they do the same thing to me all the time.

The Saturday morning flea market in Otavalo.

We jumped on the 6:00pm bus and arrived just after dusk. The city was almost completely empty. We were a little disconcerted because we departed the bus in a rather seedy area that looked much like the Port Authority in New York City. In essence, there were a lot of people who did not actually live there and were just hanging around. There were no places to eat, no hotels and only one shop that was closed. Concrete and benches were the primary adornments of the area, and there were maybe two trees and some street lights that revealed the filth. It was pick-pocket city. However, because there were 3 of us and because 2 of us (Kara and Paul) towered over most of humanity (and especially Otavalians, who are mainly of Incan descent and thus very tiny) and 2 of us (me and Kara) spoke decent Spanish, we were fairly safe. Sometimes it's great to be tall and well-spoken in a Latin American country. Other times you will find it very much to your detriment, for you are much more conspicuously foreign when you're tall and even more so when you're blonde. The Danish have it rough in Latin America.

Kara and Paul in Otavalo with our two Ecuadorian friends, a lawyer from Quito and an Otavalian farmer who looked more like a gangster to me. He was super tall for an Ecuadorian.

We hopped off the bus after Paul slowly woke the woman who was drooling on his shoulder. We had only been on the bus for 2.5 hours but apparently that was plenty of time for her to fall into a deep enough sleep to start slobbering. Plus Paul has a wonderfully calm and welcoming presence, so I can see how one would feel at ease laying one's head on his shoulder to rest for a while and drifting off into a comatose state. Once we got off the bus and gathered our bearings, we started walking in what we thought was the right direction for our hostel, Valle del Amanecer (Valley of the Dawn). After walking in circles for a while we finally asked someone where to find this place, and he pointed to the door right next to us. We sheepishly laughed and told him that we knew that but just wanted confirmation. He smiled knowingly and walked away. The hostel was a beautiful place with cobblestone sidewalks throughout and an open lobby that consisted of two gigantic mango trees, hammocks, a fire place, little cast iron benches dispersed throughout, a seat carved out of the trunk of a tree and of course beautiful flowers and other tropical plants dispersed throughout. The fire pit in the middle was the crowning glory of this natural foyer (please pronounce foy-ay). We fell in love at first sight, and before we left we would spend a great deal of time marvelling at the dewey vegetation and the weightlessness of laying in those excellent hammocks. However, at the present moment it was time for some fun. We checked in, unpacked our bags and set off on an adventure.

Otavalo is a small city, so it lacks the nightlife and restaurants that we enjoyed in Quito. One of the other things that prevents it from having an especially active nightlife is the fact that it is an agricultural city - everyone goes to bed at 8:00pm and wakes up at sunrise. We didn't even arrive until 8:30pm, and it turns out that the 3 of us share the bad habit of getting so wrapped up in our night-time activities that we often do not go to bed until sunrise, so we immediately felt slightly out of place being the only people in the city that wanted a beer at 8:30pm. We were, in essence, on the polar opposite biological schedule of nearly the entire city of Otavalo.

We walked in the direction with the most lights and finally stumbled across a wonderful little restaurant called Cafe Sol y Luna, owned by two Belgian ex-patriots, husband and wife. The menu was simple and they made the food in a tiny room just off the main dining room, which was not much larger than my living room. The chairs were heavy and wooden and the whole room was painted a warm red color and lit with candles and other indirect lighting, with tapestries hanging throughout. In a word, this place was straight up Bohemian. The outdoor area was a pleasant courtyard, also cobblestone, with some potted flowers and a lattice from which ivy cascaded. A band was setting up to play in the corner of the dining room (in what little space was left after the 3 small dining tables took their share), and in general there was an air of tranquility all around.

As we walked in Kara spotted someone who looked like a traveler and immediately walked right up to his table, introduced herself and asked him how the food was. Paul and I stood dumb-founded and wondered if we should have brought one of those neon-colored child leashes so we could keep her away from strangers, but how were we supposed to know that she was the type to just strut right up to a complete stranger who was peacefully dining solo? It turns out that Kara did us the wonderful favor of helping us to meet an incredibly interesting man in his mid-50s who had traveled all over the world and spoke 5 languages. He was from Texas. His first travel experience was when he went to Kenya with the Peace Corps. He took a 7 week intensive language course and when he emerged he spoke fluent Swahili. Wow.

We ate dinner and decided to stay for the band. They played Salsa music and I was dying to dance. I had learned how to Salsa a bit from my Mexican friend Genaro, who is from Oaxaca, and also from some of the volunteer coordinators at the Congal Reserve on the coast where I had just spent a month as a volunteer.

Here's the Congal volunteer crew on the beach doing sea turtle research and cleaning up some garbage, decidedly not Salsa dancing.

Basically, I had it bad for Salsa, and every time it was playing I just couldn't entertain a single notion other than dancing. We had had a couple beers and a shot of rum already that night, so any reservations that I may have had were dashed against the floor as I walked up to the first man I saw and asked him if he would dance with me. He answered me in the most perfect English, "but of course my lady" and I almost melted as I caught a better look into his very black, very profound eyes.

It turns out he was from Israel and spoke 4 languages. Perfect Spanish and English, less than perfect German and of course Hebrew. How do they do it? Darren was his name. He was a decent dancer, clearly taught in a class somewhere in Ecuador. Every man in Ecuador who takes Salsa lessons dances exactly the same. Slightly stiff with a bit of feigned hip action that isn't quite natural but is nonetheless an honest and endearing attempt to imitate those smooth moves of Oscar de Leon (though they probably have no idea who Oscar de Leon is). After we all danced for a while and talked a bit we decided to leave. Instead of going home we somehow found ourselves playing futbol in the street with a bunch of street urchins who were for some reason awake and roaming around at that ungodly hour. They were way better than us and of course sober, so we got tired of getting our asses kicked and just decided to give up. At least we didn't put money on the game. That's the first thing the little crooks asked us - how much are you going to bet? I learned my lesson about that - beware of children in Latin America. They are very cute, very crafty, slightly devious in an innocent kind of way and very, very good at soccer.

We got back to the hostel and crashed. The funny thing about traveling with people is that you develop a kind of symbiosis. Even though I had only known these 2 backpackers for about 3 days, we did everything together, even brush our teeth. I wish I had a picture of the 3 of us that night standing in front of the mirror brushing our teeth in our pajamas and laughing through sudsy lips about those kids and the way the Israeli scolded them when they kicked him in the shins because he scored the one goal that our team had all night. Little brats. As we were drifting off to sleep I had a brilliant idea.

"Hey guys, we should buy a horse tomorrow at the animal market."

Paul: "Zip it up Nikki we're trying to sleep."

Kara: "You're drunk."

Me: "No way, I'm serious. Do you realize how cheap a horse is here? We could each pitch in like $50 and have a real horse!"

Paul: "And what do you plan on doing with this horse once you've purchased it my dear? Ride it back to the United States? I always knew you crazy Americans had a cowboy buried deep down inside."

Me: "No, Paaauuul. We'll ride it around for a while and then sell it back to some Ecuadorians or trade it for something."

Paul and Kara, literally in unison: "Yeah, sure, sounds great."

Paul: "Oh why the hell not, let's give 'er a whirl."

Kara: "Whatever you say guys. I guess it really couldn't hurt to try it."

And so the plan was born to buy a horse at the animal market.

...to be continued...(sorry guys, it was just getting too long - I'm not going for the Great American Novel just yet)

Ikväll blir det mys och film, imorgon har vi redan planerad för en 2-3 timmars långsam löprunda! Det blir fint!

The rouge on my cheeks darkens with the climb. A bottle of wine, Sauternes et Bausac, makes my acquaintance at the peak of the spiral case. I fall in silence into a blue satin chaise. I fall. I fall effortlessly into my engendered place amongst the vines and poetry and rings of smoke of the chateau.

The rouge on my cheeks darkens with the climb. A bottle of wine, Sauternes et Bausac, makes my acquaintance at the peak of the spiral case. I fall in silence into a blue satin chaise. I fall. I fall effortlessly into my engendered place amongst the vines and poetry and rings of smoke of the chateau.