To Africa, On Pills

1.
My mom said she's worried that I'll come back from Africa skinny. I asked her why she worries. Because, you don't take care of yourself, she told me. Maybe that's true. I wonder if she also thinks I'll come home with a bloated belly and flies in my eyes.

2.
It was 5 in the morning when when my dad and I pulled up to the curb at San Francisco International. I got out of the car and went around back to take my bag from the trunk. I put it down on the sidewalk and my dad came around and gave me a hug goodbye.
"Call us when you get to New York," he said.
"I will."
He went to get back into the car, and I put my bag on my back and stood there. He looked to me. I said, "I'm still not excited."
I don't know what I expected him to say.
"Wait for your next flight," he told me.

3.
That Jay-Z/Alicia Keyes song about New York. It's true. The lights do inspire me. It all inspires me so much. The cement and noise and trash heaps. And the crazy people. So many crazy people.

4.
I met Homer on a corner somewhere in the city. We were gonna go for dinner but weren't hungry. I told him I wanted to go somewhere cool where I could get an awesome drink, and not to worry about any budget.
We walked halfway down a side street and off the sidewalk down a staircase. There was a black door, no sign. We rang the bell and a guy answered, let us in, took our coats, showed us in. It was a beautiful, quiet place. There were just a few seating areas down the long and narrow room, old, comfortable couches and worn-in chairs, maybe ten people in the place. The waitress came over and gave us a menu and explained that if we needed anything, just to pull the cord. Coming from the wall between our chairs, a cord.
We each had a couple drinks. Great drinks. I wish I'd recorded the contents - honey, sugar, nice Champagne, 20-year-old Scotch, spiced salt, lemon, Tequila, Rum - all this shit that tasted great. The bill came to eighty bucks. It was awesome. Matthew Broderick was there.

5.
I have a 15 hour flight ahead of me. I don't think I'm excited. I have a window seat and a few different sleeping pills, different colors and strengths. I'm seated, watching as the others board, waiting to see who will have the seat beside me. Turns out it's only the biggest guy I've ever had to sit beside on an airplane.
When he sits, his body presses against the arm rest between us and it squeaks. He's held there at the arm rest, but his side-fat seeps beneath it and hangs over the top of it. And he's sickly, too. He covers a portion of his body with the red blanket we all got. He holds it to his face and coughs into it. And his arm is bandaged poorly, wrapped like it's been broken or burned. I try and keep positive. I do have some space. But when I pick up my right leg and put it over my left, coffee-shop style, he expands into that space that has just become available. Any space I give, he takes, and so I take a sleeping pill.

6.
I'm in Africa to make wine. I'm living and working in a place called Paarl, about a forty-five minute drive from Cape Town. The prison where Nelson Mandela spent his last days locked up is in Paarl. I live on the farm in a cottage surrounded by electric fencing, surrounded by vineyard on one side and cow pasture on the other, mountains in the distance. I live with Bertus, who's the assistant winemaker at the winery(and only 23). It's a nice enough house. Bertus seems a nice enough guy. His dog, though, is a fucking asshole.

7.
My second night in South Africa, Bertus takes me to a bar/dance club called Op Skopp. I bet it means "hop-scotch" in Afrikaans. Most everyone there is Afrikaans, of Dutch descent. Bertus explains to me that they have a dance they call "the long arm." Basically, what it is, is this: The guy and girl hold each other in ballroom dance fashion. Then, all the couples on the floor rotate around the room in one big circle, doing simple swing-dancy maneuvers. They do it with a lot of gusto.
Bertus tells me that they do this dance to a certain type of music, Afrikaans music. He describes it as a blend of that Eagle Eye Cherry song and "Summer of '69." And that's exactly what it is; pretty awful stuff.
I have a lot of anxiety about all this. I'm not good at dancing like that, and I don't know any of these girls. I have a few beers and about a hundred cigarettes before someone clues me into the local drink of choice - the double brandy and Coke. They say that brandy has no brakes. They say that brandy is made from tires, panties, and boxing gloves.
A few double-brandy-Cokes later I'm on the dance floor with a girl named Crystal. We're moving in the circle but everyone's passing us by. I don't understand. She tells me to hold her closer and I do. I step on her toes repeatedly. I'm apologetic. I say, "I'm sorry. It's been a while."
She sort of smiles, not a real smile, says it's alright, that it happens.

8.
Bertus takes me for a weekend at a friend's beach house. There are ten of us staying there. Everyone's very nice, but conversation feels strained, on my part.
It's the same with everyone, which is understandable. "Where are you from?" "What are you doing here?" "How do you like it so far?" "Will you travel when you finish working?" "For how long?" "Why are you still in Iraq?" It's exhausting, doing this over and over again.
So I do this with everyone. I get through it. But after that there's nothing. It's seems I'm the shy guy. I wonder what's wrong with me, why I don't have anything to say. Am I a shy guy?
I'm not a shy guy. Really, there's hardly a chance to get in on the talking. The conversation tends to be about one of their friends who isn't present, about something he did this one time, about how funny or dumb he is. It's hard to comment on someone you don't know, and really hard to care. And when it's not like that, all these guys do is quote movies. Just on and on, the quoting of movies. They run through entire scenes of Anchor Man. "Jazz flute," the one guy says, and everybody laughs hysterically.
I can see myself becoming negative, cursing these people in my mind. Some more people arrive and I find that I'm happy to answer all those questions from before. "America." "Wine." "It's interesting." "Yes." "A couple weeks." "For the oil, idiot."

We go down to the beach. There is an ambulance and fire truck and a helicopter in the sky and boats searching the waters. They pull a body from the water and take it to shore. A dead little boy. They continue to search, for the boy's father. They'd been swept from the rocks while fishing. People take pictures of it all. It's awful. We go body surfing. The water is almost perfect.

In the evening we start drinking heavily. Conversation gets a little better, but surprisingly, only a little better. We have a lot of wine, and we talk about the wine. I have a hard time articulating what it is I taste, but I'm working on it. We open a bottle of Pinotage. This is a red wine unique to South Africa. I'm smoking a cigarette and drinking the wine. Somebody asks what I think, and I say I like it. Bertus asks, because I'm smoking, "Can you even taste anything?"
I say, "Yeah, I can taste just fine." Then I take a sip and say, "And speaking of, this is the best fucking Chardonnay I've ever had!" Nobody seems to get the joke.

In the morning I wake up on the top bunk of the bunk bed, hot and sweaty with a dry mouth, bladder full, the ceiling a foot from my face. I climb down, go to the bathroom, put on my shorts and walk out the door. I'm happy to be alone. I walk barefooted down the road and to the beach. I spot a rare bird. I take some photographs. It's a beautiful morning. Rugged mountains are pressed right up against the sea shore. I go body surfing. I run back and forth down the beach. I do ten push-ups. It's six in the morning. I'm still very drunk.

9.
I read an article in Men's Health about cigarette smoking. It says that something like 80% of smokers don't want to smoke, that they wish they wouldn't, but do anyways. I can't remember the science, but it went something like this. When you smoke, all that stuff in the cigarette, you crave it because it releases something in your brain, dopamine, I think. Because you're always releasing the dopamine, your brain grows more and more of these, let's call them, dopamine-receptors. Like, thousands and thousands of them. And the more dopamine-receptors you have, the more you want the dopamine.
I imagine my brain, like a Ren & Stimpy closeup, covered in thousands of these unnecessary things. It's gross. My brain is over-populated with this junk. I picture my brain covered in zits, zits that control my desires. And this image is exactly what I need to quit smoking.
I tell Bertus that it's actually easy to quit smoking, that I've done it ten times already.

10.
I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not on vacation. I'm here to work, and the vacation part won't come until afterwards. For now it's more like a home stay. I'm immersed in someone else's way of living, and that someone is Bertus.
Without a car I am very much in the hands of Bertus. And because I live in the middle of a farm, within walking distance of nothing, I am even more in the hands of Bertus. Luckily, Bertus is happy to show me around. We keep very busy. But this is quite challenging for me, for it leaves me with hardly anytime to just relax, to sit and do nothing, and absolutely no time to myself, to be away from Bertus. I'm having a hard time with this.
But I tell myself that it's good for me. I tell myself that it's Zen. Anything that challenges me, that bothers me, that I have to put up with, is Zen. I decide that I'll hold my breath, figuratively, that "this too shall pass." I know that I'll come out of this alive, that I'll be all the more grateful for my freedom, and my independence, and that maybe because of it all I'll be able to handle people for longer periods of time, which would be good. I decide I'll be a "Yes-Man," that I'll say yes to anything. I'll do it all. I might go a little crazy in the process, but I'll do it all. I go to the mall, to the movies, the parents house, to the cricket, to the rugby, the car show, the horse races. It's good. I see a lot this way. Maybe not the things I would choose to seek out, but it's interesting. I do, however, worry that in trying to be a "Yes-Man," all I'm really doing is being a push-over.

11.
I buy a pair of neon orange Nikes and I start jogging. I run a two-mile loop in the evenings, on a dirt road around the farm. This is my time to myself. I return home elated. I am proud of myself. I'm proud that I'm not smoking, and that I'm jogging. I feel like the guy who makes going to prison a good thing. He goes to prison and does push-ups all day and reads philosophy all night and when he gets out he's the Count of Monte Cristo. And I want blood.

i like my women how i like my shirts

double breasted and transparent

at home

filmed last winter by trot.

nederland, co

happy holidays

my turf

wow, this is my 100th blog post! but in dork-years i'm still only 6 months old, so that's good news.

i thought for a second about saving the 100th post and coming up with something really great, but i lack both self-control and something really great. so, i just got this film back and thought i'd put it up. these are from the winery's crushpad, where i spent all my october.

this post also works to mark the end of my time working at Starmont, as yesterday was my last day. looks like i might be headed to Argentina pretty soon here.

the southern crossing

under a bridge in napa, 5:45am

installment 2.5

When I read things, my writing especially, I read in my coolest voice. Now you read in yours.

CHAPTER 3

I arrive at a building with a sign in front that reads Zoologisches. I go up the steps and through two sets of glass doors and standing there in the foyer is a Polar Bear, arms up overhead, his mouth wide open. I look up, thumbs at my chest tucked beneath the straps of my backpack, my mouth open too, just a little. He’s at least twelve feet tall. I approach for a closer look. Really just a skin stretched over a foam mannequin, glass eyes glued in place, he poses no threat to me. But I imagine otherwise. Of course, in the wild, it would be different.

The polar bear, I discover, is the most carnivorous of all bears, and the largest carnivore on land. They feed mostly on seals. I learn that despite spending months of the year in the open waters, polar bears make the majority of their kills elsewhere – where water, ice, and air converge. Scientists call it still-hunting. The white bear keeps motionless beside a black hole in the ice. He waits patiently. He knows that eventually a seal will come up for air, and after a little while one does. The bear bites it by the head, flips it onto land. He drags the seal, its gleaming flesh against ice crust - drags it away from the water’s edge to where nothing else can get at it, and with his massive jaws he crushes its skull and feeds.

I slow-walk loops around all the rooms of the museum, across the animal kingdom, through varying levels of complexity, and past points in evolution. The bones of a woolly mammoth, a creature now long extinct, have been put back together again, and it stands alone roped off in a room’s center. There are birds arranged in glass boxes on branches, with pink heads and black wings and green backs and blue bellies. A fox looks alert against a wall painted to resemble the sky, and tufts of grass come up from the floor. Dozens of butterflies are pinned to a board and still absolutely brilliant in their symmetry and coloration.

After an hour I’ve had my fill and leave.

Outside the museum I see a staircase that climbs the building’s exterior clear to the roof. I take the stairs up and at the top I find all grass, a well-manicured lawn for a roof. I walk to its edge and from there I look out over Zurich, the city no longer all gray, down upon the park with people roaming, and out across the lake back toward Italy. I feel energized in a way. It’s a beautiful collection they have in there. Maybe, “a concentrated expression of life on earth.” But I can’t get over this feeling that, despite being as comprehensive as it is, it lacks something. I don’t know what exactly. But a vague sadness lingers there.

idiotz

wow, scott cooper made this little video and it made my little day

chapter deux

Where do I go now? Without even a hint of any plan, I walk in the direction I’m already pointed. Out the bottom of the staircase I connect with another street, and I walk a stone path, and a few blocks down there’s a canal, the Limmat River. Inside the city it comes to me as a great relief. It’s something to which I can direct my attention. I can hold onto the Limmat. Surely it will take me somewhere.

I follow the river and observe swans swimming in circles, and I stop to take pictures. After that I find a smoke shop and go in for a look. But really, what I want is to find out is whether marijuana is legal, but I chicken out and don’t ask. Instead I look at all the pipes, don’t say a word, make eye contact with the shop-owner and then suddenly break it, and then leave. He probably thought I was planning on robbing him.

A few blocks down I meet the river’s source where it opens wide to Lake Zurich. The lake is massive and calm. Along its shore there runs an arboretum, what any normal person would call a park. There are a few vendors there. I have a beer and a hot dog and go to the end of a pier and let my feet hang out over the water. As I sit there the day thaws. The clouds break. I go for another beer, and then onto the grass where I take my shoes and shirt off and from my backpack I take my hacky-sack and I kick it around for a while. The air warms up. After a while I sit and pull at the grass. From the middle of that field I look around.

I need a place to sleep tonight, and this park must have something to offer. I take a look around. Small dirt paths meander like game trails through bushes and trees along the lakeshore. I find areas where I can spread out on the ground, recesses behind sculpted hedges and hideouts beneath low-lying branches. And then I see it, tucked back behind tall and wispy trees, hardly visible at all, a small concrete structure. I approach it for a closer look. It’s seven or eight feet tall, with a flat roof, probably storage space for parks maintenance. I go through the trees and stand beside the building. I pull myself on top of it, and immediately I can tell that this is where I will spend tonight. It’s hidden from sight and elevated, up and away from critters. And it isn’t far from the lake, from the sound of the water lapping at the shore.

I stow my sleeping bag in a nearby bush and set off to wander aimlessly.

For a few hours I zig-zag my way through tall buildings downtown, through an area of cafes and fancy shoe stores. There are vintage clothing shops and new-agey knick knacks for sale. I walk through the red light district. On the side of one building there are large legs crossed in fishnet stockings and stilettos, and everywhere, “X-X-X” across marquees. For lunch I have a mediocre sandwich in a ritzy part of town, and later I stop for a cup of ice cream. In the time I eat my ice cream I watch a kid in big pants and a cockeyed hat covertly sell dime bags of weed. I finish my dessert and approach him and ask if he’s got any for me. He’s just sold his last, he tells me, but I can go around the corner and buy some at the store.

Inside the store it’s dark, all brown and saffron colored. The walls are covered in Buddhist things, hanging medallions and beads. Incense burns and the smoke fills the air. There are shelves of jars filled with various roots and powders and herbs. I ask the girl at the counter, “Can I buy some weed?”

She puts a finger to her lips and goes “Shhhhhhh!!!” She whispers, “Call it tea.”

“Sorry,” I whisper back. “Can I buy some tea?”

From there I go into the hills in search of a place to smoke. I find a set of benches behind a church and roll a joint. I get super high. My mind drifts from one place to the next, to Italy, to Massachusetts, to California, and back to Switzerland.

I take to the streets again, almost always choosing to walk uphill, up and away from the city below.

i worrry

..jesus christ.

I have some stories that I've been poking at for the last few years. I think that if I use this blog as a tool - a source for pressure, like keeping everyone tuned in - I can chip away at stories one "chapter" at a time, thus not allowing myself to revise, thus... finishing something.
And it's like what a lot of authors have done in the past, releasing pieces one section at a time, a one-part-per-publication sort of thing.

This story goes back furthest. If you've ever been around a campfire with me you've probably heard it. I've written it on five or six occasions, all of which have been really terrible. I want to finish it, and put it behind me.

My writing makes me think of two things:

1) How self-involved I am,

and,

2) This article from the Onion, headline: "Commas, Turning Up, Everywhere."

So goes...

CHAPTER 1

I think Zurich, but really, I have no idea where I am headed. I just haven’t realized this yet.

Just a couple of weeks ago I arrived in Italy to live for three months, to attend an art school of almost all Americans, to have some experiences, to see the world, find some direction, put college off.

Not long ago – only four months ago – I was at an east coast prep school. It was a good school out in the cuts of Massachusetts, where the winters were long, the hills piled high with snow and the trees tall and thin and sad looking. My friends and I, we frequently hid in those trees, knee-deep in the snow, and we smoked joints and cigarettes, and the tree limbs were encased in a flawless ice covering. Back at the dorm I applied Visine and in bed slogged through Kerouac, enamored.

I am on a train to Switzerland. I just woke up after an all-night ride. It’s dark in the room. It’s quiet enough that I think the strange silent lady I share the cabin with is still asleep. On my back, from my bunk, I lift an arm up over my head to the window and pull the shade back. The cabin is lit up. I perk up, roll over to my stomach, and see that the train is moving fast through a steep green canyon, and then there are blue waterfalls falls cascading down one after another, and then the walls fall backwards into rolling hills that stretch far, far off into the distance. I have arrived, I think.

Two days ago I decided I wanted to go to Switzerland. I don’t know much of anything about Switzerland. I’ve always imagined blonde-haired, fair-skinned women, lush green hills, and deep blue waterfalls. That’s enough. So I got on the internet, pulled up a map of Switzerland, and it couldn’t have been anymore rudimentary. It was marked with the names of only four, maybe five places. I saw Zurich, had heard of it, and decided that was where I’d go. I’d go alone. I’d travel light, like a beatnik, a vagabond with a rucksack. I went and got the ticket.

The night of my departure I showed up to the train station drunk. I looked to the rotary schedule up high on a wall and couldn’t figure the thing out. I didn’t see Zurich anywhere on it. Wafting over the crowd, over all the muddled noise, I heard women singing “California Dreamin’.” I went to watch and listen. There were about fifteen of them, all with blonde hair and milky-white skin and absolutely beautiful, and they sang the song in rounds, very well, and when they finished the crowd applauded and dispersed, and I approached and explained that I was from California. They seemed only mildly interested in this. But I told them that I was looking for a train to Zurich, and asked if they knew where it was. They told me that they were going to Zurich too, back home, and that it was time to go.

But the train doesn’t stop. It keeps galloping through the countryside, and it hits me, that Zurich, as one of four places on that map, is sure to be a city, and a large one at that. For a moment I consider deboarding at a small nameless village in the hills, but it’s raining and it all looks so inhospitable, and in the end I decide against it. We roll through wooded hills, and not long after, arrive.

As one of the world’s largest centers for offshore banking, and as home to the Swiss Stock Exchange, Zurich is Switzerland’s commercial center. Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland. Zurich is the wealthiest city in Europe. Zurich is a far cry from the hippy-dippy wilderness retreat I’d just barely aimed for.

I step off the train in a t-shirt and shorts and it is cold. Like, really cold. Should have packed a sweater. I exchange currency and exit the station, and the sky is a mat of gray. It seems that everything in this city is gray. I cross the gray street and there is a gray staircase and I go down it for a place to put some pants on. Halfway down I stop and scramble to get the pants out from my backpack and onto my body. For a moment I am naked from the waist down in the elbow of a twisted cement stairwell in Switzerland. I am in Zurich, but really – and this is when I realize – I have no idea where I am.

to be continued...

ricky raccoon

and so it goes. harvest continues. i'm tired.

but we've had rain, and this means that the season is winding down. the grape influx begins to peter out.

in the past i've compared the wine job to sailing - instead of ropes and sails and pulleys we have cords, hoses, and clamps. we have pumps and buckets and fans. we have to be fast and efficient and keep from becoming entangled.

in the rain it's like deadliest catch. it's pretty fun.

this morning, in the vines in the rain

and yesterday i bought a collection of poems by pablo neruda. one poem that got me excited, as it coincides with this stage in my life, is Ode to Wine. here's the part i like, the very end:

I love to have on the table,

while people are talking,

the light of a bottle

of intelligent wine,

and let the simple man learn,

in the rituals of his trade,

to remember the earth and his duties,

to propagate the canticle of the fruit.