J____ F____ F____ III

Nah, I don't have any kids. I've been married a few times, and one wife had a couple of abortions, but nah,  no kids.

A deep auburn hue, a salt washed seaside shack painted over with the same color again and again, he wore glasses. Or, if you searched your memory, he'd have glasses. Thin wire frames, squarish, disappearing into a basin of sun eroded wrinkles, his iron blue eyes at the center. They always smiled. Hair, tight waves, not quite salt and pepper, but a once perfect picture crowded with static. His manner of speaking lived where North Jersey alleyways meet Florida beaches, sentences round in the middle and wincing at the end.

I was seeing this one girl for three, four years, and I asked her to marry me, but she said no. I'm not the doctor, lawyer, but her family wanted a guy that was ready to go. And so we broke up. And after we broke up, I decided I wasn't going to live for anybody else, you know. Live to any one else's (he held his hand into the air, the high water mark of everyone else's expectations)

Then, a while later, I go on this cruise ship, and I meet this girl. We're drinking, partying, and we talk about how romantic it would be to get married on a cruise ship. So, this is day five, and she says yes. So we go talk to the captain, and he says he can't do it because he doesn't know if we're married to anyone else in the States or there's blood work that has to be done. So, anyway, we get off the ship and she says, "So, what, you don't wanna marry me anymore?"

So we go to the Justice of the Peace. Well, we go see my parents who live in the Tampa area and she has grandparents who live like two minutes away. So we get married, and--we're great friends to this day, she's a great gal--but we were off and on for three years and that's why she had the abortions. But we're still great friends.

Then I was married to this girl for 11 years. She had a tubular pregnancy and they...

"A what kind of pregnancy?"

A tubular pregnancy, it was in the tube instead of the, (he motioned toward his nonexistent womb) so they had to take it out. Her other tube was bad, and so she couldn't have kids. So I broke up with her. I was, you know, being a fucking asshole. I took it to an extreme and I really regret that. I was feeling a lot of pressure, my father was dying of cancer, and my name is J___ F___ F____ III, so I was feeling a lot of pressure to pass on the name, and I broke up with her. Everyone, all my friends were like, "You're crazy! If you think we're not gonna be friends with Tanya anymore, you're crazy." Life long friends! Everyone loved her, she was a great person, and I...I just really regret that one.

Then I met this other girl, we were just seeing each other every other weekend, you know, partying, and she couldn't get pregnant. Then, three months later (he squatted into a shrug), she gets pregnant. So I decide, look,  lets get married, lets have a legal child, a legitimate child, and  I moved up there. She was living in Panama City, and so I move up there, and she's a total alcoholic. Every night, drunk, smoking, and she won't give it up for the baby. After a few months, I'm like, I can't do this. I tell her I'm gonna stay living in the area and help raise the kid and everything, and then she loses the baby. So, that was it.

And that's it. I don't feel anymore pressure to pass on the name, so I'm okay with not having a kid.

"We'll, that's the funny, or interesting thing about being a guy; we're fertile until the day they put us in the ground. As long as (I pointed at my crotch) this guy still works, anyway."

Nah, I'm okay with it. I'm 58, my girlfriend is 55, it's just, I'm not supposed to have a kid. But this girl I'm with now, she's a wonderful person. Drinks a little socially, doesn't smoke, doesn't have any bad habits, works. She contributes. She's a wonderful person.

"I hope you tell her that."

I do. I tell her I love her. She was worried I was taking this trip looking for someone else, but that's not it. At home I was starting to feel a little depressed. I don't know why, I have a wonderful life, but we were, (he stretches space between his hands) we were starting to get distant. But this trip has been really good for my disposition. I tell her I love her. And I miss her. I really miss her. This trip has been good for us. And she's, you know, she's a really good person. Things are gonna be different from now on.

A Night in Lyon with Thee Oh Sees

I let myself get frustrated on the way to the hostel. I'd come in unprepared, not the first or last time this will happen. I got off at the wrong metro stop unaware there was a magnificent hill between the stop and my destination. It was closer on the map, but only as the crow flies, and what I would give to sprout tattered black wings.

I huffed and sweated and labored under my overstuffed bag and castigated myself, mostly internally, but some escaped my mouth.

"You're a fucking piece of garbage, Monte."

"This is your punishment for..."

I forget what. I worked my way down a long, serpentine road, the sort where you stay angled over balls of your feet. I eventually found the river. I could navigate from the river. Faced with a decision, right or left,  I saw a bus stop certain to be equipped with another vague map. I trudged on and as I arrived at the stop, I realized it wasn't a stop at all, but an advertisement kiosk situated just so. As my heart fell, I looked up and saw it. I had stumbled onto the street where my hostel is located. Quai Arloing. Total, unexpected elation.

The hostel was nice. I chatted with a Chinese girl in my room for a while. She recommended a restaurant called La Cuisine. Why am I here? I'm here to see Thee Oh Sees play tonight. Everything else in Lyon would just be a pleasant surprise. 

I showered, shaved, put on clean clothes, and donned  my "going out" shoes, an ego driven supplement to my clunky walking shoes. This was the first night in my travels I was leaving the hostel with nothing but cash in my pocket. Flying blind. I had thoroughly Googled my destinations and committed their spots on the map to my internal camera roll, so I hit the streets.

Lyon is beautiful, if a little cold and grey. It seems one of those towns best cloaked in a cool slate mantle. A couple of brown rivers shuttle the history of industry out to shore.  Rich green trees interrupted by the occasional purple aberration dot the banks. Contrasting houses--shoulder to shoulder--cast in pastel hues partition the water from the woods. Lyon is staid, but her personality would probably surprise you after a couple of bottles of wine.

One thing I didn't know was Lyon is one of the gastronomic capitals of not just France, but the world. Paul Bocuse, legend of French cuisine and Lyon's native son, has raised the food community along with his expansive profile. Quiet brasseries line the streets with discreet menus boasting eye popping, sumptuous cuisine.

I worked my way to La Cuisine, an unassuming red building on a grimy street with an external door, a red curtain, and another door leading inside. I was received by the staff with Bonjour and Bonsoir. I haven't learned how to say, "I'm eating alone," yet in French, so I just motioned to myself and said, "solo," in my phony French accent. I'm not sure if 'solo' is a word in French.

I was seated, brought a menu, which the waitress, in her limited English, explained was only in French. I assured her it was okay. She brought me a small cup of marinated black and green olives. I flipped through the menu. I recognized "calamars" and "canard confit" and they had an "entree + plat" offer for €18.50. 

I ordered and my server poured me a glass of cheap red wine. Between sips the calamari came out of the kitchen. Whole pieces of calamari lightly pan seared with a balsamic reduction, the tendrils cooked down to crunchy withers, and a simple salad on the side. It wasn't the first bite, not entirely. It was as the second bite hit my lips and the first bite committed to my belly told his story. My mind reeled. The rains had returned.

My first plate was cleared. I had a window to meditate on the flavors still coating the back side of my teeth and esophagus. Time lapsed, wine drained from the glass, and the appropriate anticipation surrounded the arrival of my duck confit. Arrogant and enticing, the quarter of drip from the bone meat sat under a banner of beautifully crisped skin. Dusted with red peppercorns and chives, laid on a bed of sautéed squash and mushrooms, fjords of brown and red runoff curling toward the edge of the plate, I was reminded art seldom exists in the galleries and museums where it's sent to decay. No pictures, please.

My pupils dilated. Was my heart a flutter, or was my blood stream just grateful for the work? Good work, honest work. I tried to contain my animal tendencies. Stop, breathe, savor. Their piped in music, a mix of American soul and jazz--Nina Simone, Al Green, The Emotions--eventually cycled through to "You Can Call Me Al," by Paul Simon.

I'm not a man who looks for symbols in his life, but this is one of the three songs designated for this trip. The triumvirate of tracks mirroring highs and lows alike.

"He doesn't speak the language.

 He holds no currency.

He is a foreign man.

He is surrounded by the sound"

...

"He looks around, around

He sees angels in the architecture 

Spinning in infinity

He says Amen! and Hallelujah!"

And for a moment I was full. My heart, my stomach, the overwhelming feeling behind my eyes, for a moment I remembered how fortunate I am to be here, right in this moment. The empty seat across from me, the entire restaurant, filled with the menagerie of those things I carry with me. People I know and memories and imagination, my protecting aura, was made tangible, shimmering above the votive candles placed on each table.

"How are you, glass of wine?" I said aloud. 

I finished my dinner and could never pay the sum owed, but I did pay my bill. I tipped, too. It was about a 40 minute walk to the concert if my internal Google map was correct, which was rather ideal. I needed to stave off the itis, and I wanted to take in a darkening Lyon. 

Streets intersected with other streets in improbable ways, avenues fracturing into veins of asphalt and cobblestone. Trams clicked by brought to life by mechanical arms strung on wires. French girls with their dark overcoats and dark hair and cobalt eyes were walking to places where their presence was eagerly awaited. An occasional bus stop map would reassure my direction. I passed a metro stop, a critical guide post on my journey. A car full of boys with their crooked caps and down stuffed jackets rolled past bumping "Superfreak."

Then, suddenly, I was lost. 

Night had settled in like piles of falling ash, and the world looked different. On the map it was a straight shot down a narrowing peninsula surrounded on either side by two rivers. "If you've gotten to the river, you've gone too far," was the mantra, but what about the huge train station in the way? What about the small inlet harbor? What about the enormous shopping mall, glittering in a way no respectable garage rock venue could be near by?

I re-routed and turned around and doubled back and time crept forward like the rising feeling in my stomach. Finally I crossed some iron tracks laid into the cobblestone. The tram. If I could find the tram, I could navigate from there. I checked the vague tram stop map and followed the line until it came to a stop. It was after the last tram stop, right?

Dim streets beckoned like strangers in overcoats with upturned collars. I looked for any light and color. I passed a prostitute who was a stunning beauty by any standard. I chewed on her circumstances. The chain of events leading up to her sliding into the black stockings turned over and over in my mind. We don't know anyone's story.

Narrower, darker, it's as though the streets knew they were soon to vanish into the black river. I passed more women of the night, they cooed at me in French I didn't understand. A car came to a stop, a woman crawled in, rebuffed by his headlights, I didn't look at their faces. A breaker of colored lights crested and receded in the distance. Dance music rolled out in far off tremors of bass. Dance music, seems weird, but this is Europe. I turned in to the source and it was a pop-up carnival with all semblance of day washed out. The place where seedy waking dreams turn into convulsing nightmares. 

Eerie lights cast their lot with burnt out bulbs and flickering neon. Carnival workers emptied various games of their crooked earnings. A bumper car galley filled with rough young boys collided while they threw a mini souvenir basketball at each others heads. I walked the length and quickly turned out. A police car streaked by with a smear of blue light.

I have no idea where I am. Those feelings, the feelings I hate, began to percolate through my wilting confidence. This concert was the only reason you came to Lyon. You couldn't bring a map you...

I turned down the volume.

I made my way back to the tram, checked the map at the stop, looked at the point pinned in my mind's eye, and went a little further up the line. I turned down one last street, and there are lots of last streets, but I was soon to relegate this misadventure to "good travel story someday." I was walking behind a family with two small children--tow headed girls misplaced in the callow dark of city night--and crossed the street. I craned my neck around a corner, certain it'd be the one, and nothing but shuttered store fronts and lampposts. The end of the line.

But, as these stories go, as they must unfold, I turned on my heels, and there it was. A dimly lit two-story building with a few young go hards standing out front. It was my destination, Marche Gare. 

I crossed the street. There was no victory, too many variables still out there. Are they sold out? Is it too late? I don't think they'd sell out this venue in the states. Is this the right place?

A security guard greeted me at the door and said something in French. I pointed at the poster hung in the window, like welcoming hobo code, at knee level. "Thee Oh Sees?" The poster was of Greek Woman, supine, with a greyhound's neck and face.

"Do you have a ticket?"

"No."

He motioned to a table where a young man with a mop of curly hair sat next to a small lock box and a stack of Vice magazines. This must be the place.

"Bonsoir," he said.

"Bonjour," I replied.

He said something else, conversational or informational, I have no idea. I held up a finger and meted out a mangled, "Un ticket, si'l vous plait."

He chuckled, "One ticket, please."

"Has the first band played?" I asked.

"There is only one band and they are playing right now."

I was a little crestfallen, but we'd come too far. I laid down my €16 and charged up the stairs. In the stairwell all I could hear was the snap of the snare over and over again. I turned into the concert hall, a small black room packed full with a small stage up front, and it was Thee Oh Sees. I've never been so moved by a soundcheck before. I pushed my way into the thick, and as I cut out my post, the front man looked up and said, "Thank you, sound guy. Are we ready?"

The crowd cheered, and he said, "We're Thee Oh Sees from San Francisco," in French.

The first two tracks the crowd was noncommittal. Even when track two was, "Toe Cutter/Thumb Buster," a cavernous, fuzzy saunter from the new album the crowd remained still. I was already squirming and hopping and shaking out my hair like the black and white images of my psychedelic forebears. A little surprised I thought to myself, "I don't know who taught you pussies how to rock and roll, but it wasn't the US of A."

Then, song three. "Block Of Ice." A two minute burner on the album, they opened up the valve and dropped a seven minute payload of grinding rapture. Immediately heads were bobbing and bodies were crashing and one young kid there with his mom was spinning the tendrils out from under his stocking cap. 

I have to believe--in some typically French way--the crowd wanted to make sure this band was worth their emotional energy. Once earned, it was full bore. 

The pit expanded. More people left their feet. The room got sweaty.

The Oh Sees ignited. The front man's mop of hair he pushed either direction dripped from underneath. The six string bass player--with his high water jeans and tucked in shirt and skinny leather suspenders and blue ink tattoos and bald head and perfect drop of sweat hanging, never falling, catching the light, on the tip of his nose--began to pace back and forth with his lines. They both wear their guitars strapped under their necks like Herman's Hermits. The drummer, front and center hammered the anvil. The keyboard player conjured glowing lines inches from her keys. The venue was a glass elevator and the stratosphere was far below us.

It's all so simple: a riff, a chorus, maybe a bridge, maybe not, tom, tom, snare, cymbal crash, definable lyrics, but they are more like chants. Songs can be as tight as a coil, or expand to the width and density of Jupiter's eye, all the colors intact. The structure vanishes and ripples into horizonless seas of inward falling echoes. Melodic lines and slashes of feedback rattle through the turbulence. Churning, frothing, desperate to fly apart into sonic shrapnel, persistent rhythm keeps the infernal machine intact. Everything rises, tension consumes oxygen, and in a booming flourish the maelstrom disappears back into the discreet magic box of verse-chorus-verse

The front man, John Dwyer, is one of those almost extinct rock and rollers cut from my purest idealism. His clear Gibson SG with no vibrato tail piece and custom headstock is his only tool. He tunes down or up between tracks. Busted string, which there were two, he just restrings on stage--one while the band stayed in the pocket and then seamlessly picked up at the chorus. Back up guitars are not how this band operates. 

He kept saying, "Merci beaucop," in an increasingly growly and strange array of voices. His tongue hangs out of his face. He fingers out texture and staid embellishments with a tedious, almost frantic diligence. The way the keyboard player watches him and anticipates his cues is something far more important than love.

As all concerts do, they eventually delivered us from the seance. The crowd went ape shit. They cheered and whooped and whistled--loud, sharp whistles--with no loss of momentum until the house lights went down and the band came back on stage. They played a two song encore, and when Thee Oh Sees finished they waived and smiled and seemed genuinely moved by the outpouring.

The crowd kept going. Insatiable, people kept yelling and clapping their hands above their heads. The venue had to turn on all the lights and filter in music before the crowd even showed a fleck of dispersal. 

In the chilly, wet Lyon night air, a girl on her way to the tram mimicked the bass lines and short bursts of "WOO," Thee Oh Sees have somehow made their own. Sweat cooled on my neck. I cinched my scarf tight and pulled my hood over my head. 

Now to find my way back.

Name of the Gods

"And why ye take thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and to morrow cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" Matthew 6: 28-30

"My client is not in a hurry." - Gaudi

There are as many ways to delineate the experience of visiting La Sagrada Familia as there are spires on the famed Barcelona basilica. As my mind was making itself up in advance, I was ready to dissect the incongruent nature of this edifice with the teachings of Christ, and it's hard to overlook. 

The church booms from the humble, bone colored horizon in a way only an egg shaped monolith my Catalonian friend Xavi calls, "the suppository," manages. Given its own metro stop, when you emerge from the underground, La Sagrada pounces on you with it's skyward helixes of stone and glass as well as the scaffolding, netting, and cranes propping up this troubled, heart rending beauty. 

Blockades of tourists surround the structure. Cameras of every variety shutter and click like swarms of crickets. Vendors edge the perimeter like sinners turned away from the effulgence of God's light. Tour guides holding antennas with numbered paddles on top shepherd the herds around the square. There is an entrance for groups. There is an entrance for individuals. Above all else, the price board listing tickets ranging from €13.50 for only the basilica to €18.00 for the basilica and Tower of Passion. It's a little more for the audio guide.

Immediately I jotted down, "...growing up in a deeply religious household, this brings my total monies spent going into churches to €13.50." There is a gift shop taking over an entire wing, and no matter the realizations waiting to reveal themselves, it's disgusting. 

All the money poured into this building. The untold sums--as La Sagrada is built entirely on private donations--spent to have a family name on a dinner plate sized piece of stained glass. The same money, if devoted to the acts of Christ--feeding the hungry, healing the sick, clothing the poor--how many would be brought unto to The Lord? Would the Catholic Church be suffering the same crisis of confidence? Construction began in 1882 and is scheduled to be finished in 2026. How many incalculable hundreds of millions could have gone to doing instead of showing? 

It makes for very predictable criticism. The simplistic "money changers in the temple" phenomenon you could truncheon over the head of any major religion, regardless of deity. Even the church I grew up in, members were required to give 10% of their earnings in order to be worthy of the most sacred honors. With this glaring 10%, there were as many stories about families who paid their tithes even when the money was gone, and God would provide. 

It's the act of devotion. It's the capacity to make our gods and miracles real. This is where the much quieter power of tithing or penance or a tower looming 172.5 meters over Barcelona is held. The faithful give their God a name. The devoted give gods a name because--if they exist--without a creation to cry toward the heavens, how do they know they're godly at all? If the believers aren't down here, well, salvation goes both ways.

La Sagrada Familia is a piece of art. Art in the sense where an attempt to describe it is only a nearsighted effort to contain it, to try and make it like us. The color and movement. The light and the shapes. The solemnity contained within, a feeling which might be the only true adjective to describe the basilica. The outside is impressive, but at the behest of my friends--and a lady in the sandwich shop--I waited in line and went inside. As I entered the building, like an absence of gravity, my neck involuntarily craned upward, I levitated out of my shoes, and--in as close as I might get to a Hail Mary--"Holy shit," fell out of my slack jaw. Emphasis on the, "holy," of course.

Built around the concepts of nature, the columns open at the top like the branches of trees. A canopy, so many stone limbs intertwined, fans out across the ceiling. Stained glass windows saturated with color, primary and secondary colors blended in gentle gradient, pour the vivid pigments of flora and fauna into the building. Christ, on the cross, hangs under a broad shade lined with delicate bulbs above the altar. Above him, a narrowing ventricle reaches toward heaven. Sunlight fills the porthole between building and firmament. If you look closely, you can see a crane stretching across the skylight.

As I settled into one of the pews, I was trying to manufacture a moment where I said a prayer and felt something, or felt nothing, but this is not my God to name. Every stern column down to each precious, carved edge, radiated with the faith of so many. Visitors, laborers, architects, devoted--this God already has a name. It's a beautiful and powerful name, enough to at least be heard by this heathen. A two way mirror of earnest dedication to the belief, the burning spirit as tangible as a creator sitting on high, and the majesty of His creation. A creation who, with their vision and force of will, have named their God with opulence along side whispered prayers. Being right, being wrong, real, not real, these matters will carry  on, but as a testament to man's capacity to aspire beyond his mortal limitations, it is the greatest God of them all.

Sacromonte

Saad's hair, compact black ringlets pulled back to a full bouquet, bounced up the hill as the six or so of us followed. Saad, with his burnished Moroccan complexion and gaunt frame, made the ascent in flip-flops without even a heavy breath. So lean, it's not hard to believe less than a month ago his guts twisted inside him and he had to have twenty four stitches--nine internal--to save him. Where was the room for a digestive tract?

The  rest of us, in our walking shoes with bags full of things, wheezed and poured sweat and tried to hide our over exertion from everyone else. One German guy made the climb with ease, but he was chaining cigarettes the whole way like a smokestack from the coal engine pushing him up the hill. 

After collecting ourselves for a moment, Saad led us onward to a winding path. "So these caves have been here for all time. There are many Senegalese people and some hippies living here. But it's safe."

We turned a bend concealed by a mound and there, on this dirt walking trail nestled in the hills above Granada, was a handful of Senegalese men lounging as men do. Saad went up to one of the men and a hand slap curled into a fist and pulled into a hug. They chatted a bit in Spanish.

"Okay, he said we can go into his house."

We all shared a glance. It was a cave. We shuffled nervously past Saad as he held open the curtain acting as the front door. In the area best described as the front yard, but in no conventional sense of the term, there were a couple of sprouting marijuana plants. The American kid wearing toe gloves pointed and laughed. 

The cave was white on the inside, its age impossible to gauge. There were no hard edges, all smoothed pebbles, worn white from years, centuries, millennia, of human hands perching and rubbing and passing by. Five Senegalese men sat on makeshift furniture watching TV. A cooking fire smoked in a small fireplace and they shifted and made room and squeezed in so we could sit. Our uneasy mouths were sutured shut.

They were beautiful, their hair, eyes, flesh, all cut from deep onyx. Some had thick, short dreads. Others wore their hair close to the scalp. One man in a brightly colored and patterned outfit sat rolling a spliff. 

Senegalese wrestling played on TV. Men in short leather breeches decorated with studs would grapple until one got the leverage and threw his opponent to the ground. Red and black wires ran from the TV across the ceiling through little bolted turnbuckles and out the window to some unknown destination. 

After we settled in, small talk erupted from our hosts, but they only really spoke Spanish and French. Saad ran down the list pointing to each of us. "Germany, Germany, Canada, Germany, United States, Canada, United States." All in Spanish though. A regular model UN.

One of the Canadians spoke to one of the men in French. A Canadian woman spoke a wisp of Spanish. I sat next to a guy with dreads like ginger roots sprouting from his head. He kept asking me questions in Spanish and flashing me his wide bridge of gums and small pearls of teeth. I don't speak Spanish and filtered through his West African enunciation, it was even harder to grasp.

He'd ask me a question two or three times and then the Canadian woman would call out from the across the small room, "He wants to know your name." I told him. We slapped hands and curled them into a fist. He poked at my bag and chattered off a few lines and opened his wide smile. I realized I was clinging to my shoulder bag like a life raft. I took it off and set it on the ground. He posed another question over and over again. I thought I responded correctly with, "catorse dias." I'd been in Spain for fourteen days. He wrinkled his brow and punched out his bottom lip. "He wants to know where you're from," the Canadian woman called across the room. The USA. Estados Unidos. "Senegal," he motioned to himself and said the word, each syllable meted out with the pride, the middle one cresting to the top of his speaking register. He smiled and I smiled and we slapped hands again and curled them into a single fist.

Saad who had been chatting with the guy he knew spoke up. "He said we can try some of his food."

The man in the brightly colored and patterned outfit darted out of the cave and returned with three wide platters raised at the edge. The owner of the cave, Saad's friend, ducked into the fire place and scooped heaping, steaming piles of rice and chicken onto the platters. Savory aromas pollinated with rich West African spice enveloped the small interior. Two plates went outside and one was placed on the floor in the middle of the circle. The man in the bright colors returned again, this time with some stewed cauliflower he set on top of the pile. The owner, the cook, our host, squatted down by the tray and drew in all of our eyes. Like an instructor, moving his glance from vacant face to vacant face, he put his right hand into the pile, took a handful of rice, squeezed until it was a compact mound, and popped it into his mouth. No mess, no fuss, no stray grains tumbling to the floor down the edge of his mouth.

We all looked at each other. I'm in no position to project anyone else's feelings, but I recognize a sorry, overly First-Worlded face cycling through thoughts like, "Is it safe?" and "Am I taking food out of their mouths ?" and "Is this one of those scams Rick Steves talks about?"

"Eat! Eat!" Saad chided.

Toe gloves looked around. He looked to Saad, "So is this like a..." he made a scooping motion with his hand. Saad nodded. He took a tiny portion and forked it into his mouth disregarding the squeeze into a mound lesson our host gave us. Most went into his mouth, some tumbled to the ground. "It's really good."

We dug in. Small portions at first. I made a point to squeeze but I still lost some in transit. The host leaned in again to improve our technique. It's all in angled fist and wrist pop to really pack it down. After we all took a token handful, we sat back. Our host looked around. "Eat!"

The Canadian a seat over from me leaned in and muttered, "I guarantee you we're not leaving until it's all gone." 

One by one we let go. We dug in, we packed our rice pods to mouth sized portions. We began to laugh and filled our bellies. The cauliflower was one of those things I may never taste again, perfect on the tooth and imbued with flavor to the center stem. The host beamed with pride and scraped the pot doling chard bits onto the platter. Without question, the best part.

"This is very typical African," Saad keyed in, "you cook for four and then you feed eight." He spoke to the owner and pulled some coins from his pocket. The owner tried to shake his head, but Saad insisted. The owner found a small dish and Saad dropped in his coins. "Come on guys, this is not cheap. This never happens. I lead this tour every night, this never happens." I'm a proud cynic, but I believed him. We all put in.

The man in brightly colored clothes returned with a small tub filled with soapy water. He washed his hands in the makeshift basin and we all followed suit. He then produced a dustpan and broom, but Saad cleaned up after his guests who left the floor littered with grains of rice. Afterward Saad produced a pouch of tobacco and rolled a smoke wider at the tip and said, "You guys ready to go?"

We followed him out as we had followed him in. The other men were gathered outside planting a pole in the ground. I wanted to believe it was to fly the Senegalese flag, but maybe it was a laundry line. I don't know. As we walked away and turned down the snaking dirt trail back to the bottom of the hill I turned to the the toe gloved American. "So that was surreal, right?"

Without breaking stride he replied, "Incredible."

Mirador San Miguel Alto

"I'll buy one for a dollar." His American South drawl tripped and chuckled all over itself.

"A dollar?!" she replied, her accent, the vision, the perfect conception of an English speaking French woman. Star patterns punched in her leather shoes--scuffed at the toes--bounced against the wall overlooking Granada. She pulled a pouch of rolling tobacco out of her pocket. "I'll give you one."

"That was a very American thing for me to do." He stroked his wispy rat beard and slumped into his gut. His T-shirt, obscured by his fleece zip up, read only "ALKING." Walking Dead? Talking Heads? I was set adrift on furious internal debate.

She knocked excess tobacco off her thumb and forefinger onto her skinny red denim. As she handed him the rollie, she shifted inside her jacket, "It's a gift."

"It was actually my birthday just two days ago."

"Congratulations!" she replied with the warm enthusiasm young men love to break their hearts against.

"Congratulations? Okay. I didn't have much to do with..."

She immediately shot in, "Is that not what you say, 'congratulations'?"

"No, in America we just say 'Happy Birthday'," his tone flatlined with sarcasm.

"In my translations, it translates from my language to 'Very big congratulations on your birthday.'"

"I guess it's for still being alive."

They both laughed a little. 

"How old are you?" she asked sipping beer from a tumbler she brought from home. There was a woman in dreadlocks prowling the scenic overlook and selling Alhambra beers for one Euro a piece. If you took her up on her offer, she'd take your money, disappear to a stash bag hidden in a bush, and return with a cold beer. The tumblers were a sophisticated  touch, an elegant extension of her brown, short cropped curls and slender cigarette holding fingers.

"25," he said with the weight of double the years. "I'm almost 30." The case was terminal.

"30! I haven't even begun to think what it's like to be 30. I can't even feel what it's like to be 30."

"What should 30 feel like?" He could feel the three and the zero staring over his shoulder.

"Feelings of wanting to start a family and have career." Her friend next to her interjected, adding something in French to the woeful list. They both laughed. "Oui, oui. But there is no rule book to live your life," she quipped and threw back her head with full throated laughter.

It's a comfort to know token phrases have a place in all cultures, or maybe English is only taught in idioms and weightless slogans.

They chatted and found out they were both part of the exchange program at the University of Granada. She highly recommended the orientation. He wouldn't want to come hang at their apartment, though. As she pointed out, it was a one bedroom with the two of them and an Italian girl. Talk of school became talk of being in Spain. How long. How many stops. Barcelona. Sevilla. Bull fights.

"I just don't...I don't think I'd be in to that," he offered, rubbing his hand down the seams of his bluejeans as though he had to clean the idea from his hands.

"Will it make you cry?" she shot back.

"No, I just think it's mean." It was hard to tell if he meant it. 25 is a good age to still tell the women you want what you think they might want to hear. 

"You won't cry."

"I'm not saying..."

"If we go and you cry, you buy me a frozen ice cream treat and you buy her a..." she turned to her friend who just smiled through her cigarette hand. "You buy her a cake."

"You want to make a bet?"

"A what?"

"Make a bet, like..."

"Yes! Make a bet," she chirped.

As dusk light refracted through the belt of haze hanging fat above the rooftops of Granada, the quieting world filled their mouths. Clouds rolled over the hills edging the city, a cannon boomed on a hilltop, night birds bent their voices on the tangerines and rose water pinks and lavenders spilled over the fiery cup descending behind the Sierra Nevadas.

"Do you have siblings?" he asked trying to wedge the silence open.

"Yes, I have two brothers," she replied into the twilight.

"I have two brothers and one sister. I'm gonna have to get my sister something. What should I get her?"

"Shoes?" She shared a look with her friend and they laughed.

"I was thinking about getting her a flamenco dress."

"Oh no, those are very expensive. Maybe more than €100."

"Dang, maybe shoes? Well, I'm going to need your help."

Oblivion, Iron Man 3, and Visual Storytelling

Movies are like comfort food to me, and since I refuse to eat American fast food the whole time I'm abroad, I'm subbing in moving pictures. In Madrid, after an effort  much more involved than I care to admit, I found a movie theater. I sauntered up to the counter, mousy and nervous, and said "Oblìvìoñ" with all the phony Spanish affectation I could muster. 

"It's in Spanish," she replied. 

"Okay," I returned. I figured as much, but no English subtitles or anything? And how many prints in how many different languages are struck? How many Tom Cruises are out there speaking French and German and Japanese? And all of those voice actors for every character? What a logistical and financial nightmare. There has to be some Swedish dude walking around Hollywood with racks in his pocket because be can vocally emote in a culturally pleasing way. "Who me, baby? I'm the Scandinavian Morgan Freeman."

Oblivion is pretty good. Alex Jones has already seen it twice and says it's an, "anti-Globalist tour de force." If that blurb was on the movie poster, well, I think the box office returns would speak for themselves. Visually, the film is decadent. Like ocular candy, where it tickles the senses, it's about as substantive as a belly full of Jolly Ranchers. The most revealing aspect of the film was how digestible it was even in a foreign language. Good guys with their jaws and teeth drawn out with a T-square. Pretty assistants/live in girlfriends who push years of theatrical training out through their wet, doe eyes. "Bad Guys" in their always chic post-apocalyptic black complete with form fitted breast plates and helmets festooned with bird feathers (on a ruined earth? Whatever, who gives a shit). It was all so familiar, you even began to telegraph the plot points. When Tom Cruise's character, Jack, begins to piece together his memories--shot in black and white, get it?--you have equation enough to write in the sum on the other side of equals sign. Oblivion is a film I'm sure prides itself on its late second act pinch and some SciFi wrinkles to really challenge the viewer, but alas, there was nothing left in the stew pot to chew on the next day.

A couple of nights later in San Sebastián, trying to keep from wasting my money (well, ALL of my money) on pintxos and beer, I went to Iron Man 3. Again, it was the same experience. Tony Stark, more like Tony Snark! And by they way, Spaniards DO NOT think he's funny. I've committed Robert Downey Jr's facial ticks to memory, and when he was quipping at defcon panty drop, the crowd didn't even change their breathing patterns. But the film is Pepper Potts, whiz kid helpers, Don Cheadle, plus a whole cadre of enemies and the sortie of Iron Man suits to fight them. There is a snub at the beginning that sits on screen like Chekov's gun. There are grainy, jump cut videos sent in from The Mandarin--a terrorist and foil to Tony whose storyline is wonderfully satisfying--where the anti-American bombast practically writes itself.

Is the measure of these films the overall quality? Well, it's summer fare you purchase at the concession stand as much as you do the ticket window. Instead, are the greater merits of these pictures the production of something at the heart of cinema? In film school they call it visual storytelling. In screenwriting 101 they tell young writers, "Don't put anything in text you can't put directly on screen." These films contain a complete, engaging narrative someone could walk into the theater and enjoy without even speaking the language.

 It's hard for me to pull apart how much of my enculturation is enmeshed with my understanding of these films. Iron Man 3 is part of a franchise, and Oblivion is built on a number of well tread tropes, but I think it goes to when you take a toddler--the tabla not completely rasa--to the movies and they can recall the broad strokes of an animated film. Especially when it's something a'la Pixar and there is as much content for adults as children. 

Perhaps this quality should be a total insult to the Shane Black and Joseph Kosinski. Maybe their films are like a flip-book, asinine pictures set in motion to make dummies guffaw. I could be the living emblem of the perpetual dumbing down of summer blockbusters. Or, there is a compelling argument, this is a very pure kind of cinema.

I ran a list of films I might not understand with the sound off, or in a foreign language. Big movies, not your 2001's and quiet dramas and Terrence Malik films, and I couldn't come up with a clear cut winner. Maybe a Nolan film? Prometheus? Crank 2? And even if it is the case, is it really a higher form of film making? We've come along way, but the men from long ago who set a camera on a tripod knowing the images had to speak for them have rightfully etched their code on cinema's DNA.

Crash Landing/Fever Dreams/Holla' Madrid

Madrid Not Pictured

When I got off the plane, I already understood what this was. I was sick. Bad sick. Like, "I haven't been this sick in years," sick. The density and color of what was coming out of me was only slightly more convincing than the millipedes of pressure bubbles worming their way through my eustachian tubes. All of my big ideas from an afternoon in NYC had been incinerated by bouts of uneasy sleep and high temperature. Something about the fashion of politics? It was the May Day protest in Union Square and I saw a 50+ woman wearing faux-alligator Naturalizer slip-ons and poly-blend pants gleefully holding an "Occupy Queens!" banner while having her picture taken. Protest tourism? Was that it? Anyway, you get it--it wasn't going to be a very good essay.

Once my feet were on the ground, I knew what had to be done. I found the airport's pay as you go Internet terminal, went to Orbitz, and booked a daily-budget-decimating hotel. I had already booked a hostel, but I knew I couldn't get well in a room with three other people. A couple of little girls went to the computer terminal next to me to scavenge the remaining minutes from the last user. They went to YouTube. I finished my booking and found a nice looking hotel away from the city center. I copied the information provided me, and found a taxi cab. Here you go girls, fifteen minutes left.

What do you mean you don't speak English? I thought that's why we went to Europe, so we didn't have to learn another language. The address? Avda Pio XII, Madrid, 28016. 

Pio Dose is the street, what is the number?

This was all the information I had. "It's a hotel," I wheezed through the saturation hearing the words thump in my head like I had my fingers in my ears. 

He seemed concerned--in what little pidgin we could piece together--about my hotel selection. It was a nice hotel, but it was far from everything. "You take a bus, you take a taxi," he puffed a little breath as he motioned toward the city drifting past us. And what a city Madrid is from the view of a taxi cab window, snow capped mountains, and lush foliage, deciduous and evergreen. Sunlight dripped off the cones of spring blossoms heavy in the branches.

Like a pro, he found the Hotel. Not on his "first try," that belittles a man and his craft, it was all instinct. He knew where this beleaguered American tourist well beyond his depth belonged. 

The Confortel Pio XII was nice and clean and quiet. This was all I required. I went to my room, dropped my bags like a thoughtless child home from elementary school, and guzzled two of the four free bottles of water in the mini-fridge. I have to let someone know where I am. I have to get medicine. I have to shower. In a fortuitous bounce, there was a pharmacy, a corner store, and a sandwich shop a short walk away.

The pharmacist talked me into the sublingual homeopathic remedy because, "It take one, two days. No chemical. Other one take...five, seven day." And if the looks I'd been getting since NYC were any indicator, I was already edging into 'he might be making bathroom meth' territory, so no sudafed for this guy. I wanted to make jokes about needing a bunch of matchsticks, but pharmacies in Spain don't really appear to work in the--I'm gonna go get Maw-Maw's scrip, sun tan lotion, and four packs of after season Peeps--kind of way.

I bought my meds, the most precious little grilled bread sammie stuffed with 'Jamon Y Brie,' and a bottle of Spanish Gatorade. The only indicator was the Olympic Rings on the side, and it wasn't soda. I bathed my awful stench, ate my delicious, darling sandwich, and vanished into a cragged fault of fevered sleep.

Floating high above Madrid, my clapboard coffin was four walls of full color projections. Images shot through the heat of my mind manifested in distorted images with no continuity. As I turned myself over in bed I was in an all brick apartment, one with distinguished modern features. There was a woman there I once knew. She was the best friend of an ex-girlfriend. I thought we understood each other. I was young and mixed up. I saw her in line at the movies once, but this was not that time.

 My mouth so dry, she looked at me with something beneath contempt, I wasn't worthy of even her disdain. It was pity. It was the well of indifference where you drown the things not worth hating. "But you never answered my friend request," I croaked out, sweat beading on my forehead. "Then your FB page was gone."

"Yeah."

I could charm this thing another direction. "What, did you purge me from your memory?"

Her glance slid all the way down her famously aquiline nose. "Not purged."

"Deleted?" As the words came out of me, they echoed with how much of my fear her answer carried. Her smile was dense with satisfaction.

I descended down a miles long tunnel of sheets. I heard the back wall roll away and in the distance, a dog barked. Immediately, I snapped to. I jumped out of bed and in the dark scrambled for my dog. He was horrified as I collected him in my arms. If he had heard the other dog, he would have run away. A woman crossed through the dark with her dog. She remotely locked a luxury sedan and had on a gaudy silk scarf, all paisley and anchors and bright colors draped over a dark overcoat.

"He would just run away like that? He's not a very good dog, but there are no bad dogs..."

Just bad owners. I sat up in bed. Still in Madrid. Still in this hotel. It's dark out. I need to drink more water. 

When I was a child there was an incident where I was sick and didn't hydrate. My parents woke in the middle of the night to find me ranting and raving. My bed was a battleship and a fire truck and they had to keep moving me between beds as I would sweat through sheets in about half an hour. I have no memory of this. If my parents hadn't been there, I would have died. This is my biggest fear. I didn't want my first memory of Spain to be waking up in a prison hospital because I walked naked across the Pio XII Confortel lobby. I filled my water bottle in the sink, drank the whole thing, and laid back down.

No TV. Don't check the time. These things will defeat you. Get through the night. This was my mantra,  like a healing spell over and over again. But, they're not mine.

"They're not mine! They're Houston's."

She held the pack of Marlboro lights in her hand. Forbidden, unspeakable contraband he'd forgotten to properly conceal in his backpack.

"You lie, you lie!" his stepmother charged. "Don't lie to me."

Heat rising in their faces, both trying not cry, they could barely choke out words.

"You know the rules. If you wanna live like that, it's not gonna be in this house."

A car horn honked out front, his ride to school. He grabbed his backpack and turned to storm out.

"This isn't over. When we get back to San Angelo were going to talk about this."

He'd already decided another outcome. He was moving out. That way he could smoke all the cigarettes he wanted. He got into his friend Houston's car, Houston not knowing he'd tried to sell him out moments before. He was flushed and tears finally broke the dam of his ducts.

"Woah, dude. What's wrong?" Houston asked.

"I just got kicked out of my house."

"What? No way."

"Just take me to buy a pack of cigarettes."

"We're late. Can't you just take one of mine ?"

"Take me to buy a pack of fucking cigarettes! Please..."

The fever pressed its crooked fingers across my brain into nooks where forgotten fears and self consciousness lived. I kept drinking more water. My gold water bottle like an illuminated cistern with all of life inside. 

I had to put my mind another place. I started talking through the many houses and mottos and alliances in my head at a screaming pace. House Stark, House Lannister, House Bolton, House Baratheon, House Targaryen, House Tyrell, House Greyjoy. I started naming other houses I hadn't heard of before, but I knew they had to be in there. I was the grand maester. I was in a tower in my tunic recording this great record. Wedged between my bed and this world of fantasy, I could feel the ramparts of the many kingdoms emerging from the white cotton threads. My brain howled down the King's Road until it could go no further. The alliances, the names, none of it made sense anymore. I was afraid to shift in bed as I could feel the gears all around me. The many pieces of this complex puzzle where all of my answers could be found were laid out in perfect order at all sides. I cracked my eyes open. It was light out. My bed was just sheets and pillows.

I staggered out of bed. I sat in a chair. I filled my gleaming gold water bottle. The rest of the day I listened to Radiolab podcasts. 

By Sunday I'd been in my hotel room for so many hours straight I was afraid to leave, but wanted to do nothing more. I showered, shaved my face, put on some clothes, and charged out the door like I was going to have to break through it.

I walked around the neighborhood until I found a metro stop. I descended into the belly, bought my ticket, and passed it though. The gate swung open, a major victory. I walked down the stairs, and immediately a Madrid cop shouted after me. No, not this. No on my first day. I turned back, he scowled, and handed me my ticket. After you insert the ticket, it shoots through the machine and you collect it. Why? Do I need it to get out of the subway? I thanked him in my best "Gracias," a word I still haven't gotten right by Spain's standards. In Spain it's said with a lisp. Gra-th-ias.

I'm not a man who looks for symbols in his life, but the subway floor was decorated with chess pieces. Could I get to the heart of town and back with out losing myself? Icy, still sick sweat poured down my back. Your move Madrid.

The subway let out and my only goal was to make it to the main city park. I followed the iron filings in my blood like a compass. I saw it and almost wept. But I was hungry. I'd had perhaps one meal in the last 36 hours. I walked until I found a Burger King. I know, what a sad American with his disgusting burgers in the heart of all this delicious Spanish food. Flame broiled and French fried, I made my way back to the park. 

It was a beautiful day. The sun hung around the trees and reclined in the grass and ran its fingertips through the water spilling from fountains. As we are its children, we did the same.

Fathers nervously calling after daughters who scurried a little too far into the bushes while he wasn't watching. 

Crowds gathered around a street performer whose overgrown goatee must have been forced from his chin by his outsized charm. He even had a bit where he used one of those plastic grabber hands to flip off the crowd. Middle fingers are funny in every language, in case you'd forgotten.

Long lines of people waited to play in little blue and white boats crowded onto a huge man made pond. 

Statuary and nature, man and woman, dogs and runners, it was a park on planet earth.

I did stumble across a manicured promenade with shrubbery groomed into an impressive spectacle. They stood tall and in oddly fitted bulbous shapes, almost in contempt of nature. A statue stood between them hoisting a tragedy mask toward the heavens. 

Huh, there is the Prado. It was closed, in case you were wondering. 

I walked the the length of the the park, and as I got near the exit I saw some Spanish kids all wearing matching soccer uniforms save one friend sporting a NY Knicks shirt featuring Carmelo Anthony. The only thing worse than rooting for the Lakers (Go Lakeshow!) is rooting for the Knicks, and not even a throwback Ewing jersey or...ugh, there really is no good option. But this young Spaniard, in that gaudy orange and blue, I loved him. He defied what was expected of him. I wanted to give him an Ultimate Jordan DVD and my copy of Buffalo Gals Back to Skool and whisper, "keep it secret. Keep it safe."

I sat on a bench. Humanity whirled past me. Rollerblading is huge in Madrid right now. And it finally hit me, I'm in Spain. I'm here. This is my life. This is really happening.

When I arrived back at my metro station later, I tromped heel-toe over the tile chess pieces laid into the floor, and where I'm not hack enough to grant myself a, "Check and Mate," moment, I felt pretty damned good. I helped some Chinese girls carry their luggage up the stairs. I went back to the hotel, packed my bags, and watched Blood: The Last Vampire in Spanish. Really, impressively so, not good. Not at all. As I settled into bed I thought for the first time, "I think I'm going to make it. I can do this."