"Yawp," In The Literature Of The Northern English Diaspora, Uses, and Misuses, Of

I write a very relevant academic article.
While smoking a cigarette
while sitting on my hands (which is hard, and impressive)
while the fiery barber tries to
carve his name into the back of my head
without me noticing.
But now, now I have to go
to a conference about Africa
in Chicago. "Achebe, yes, yes
and....yes, yes" we agree.
But then my confidence is shattered
as the tenured snicker and sneer
"Heeeere's Johnny!" behind me.
But underneath the scalp named
"Johnny is the MAN!"
the overfed brain hoos and hums and
grapples violently with
itself, like a crazed mime,
dressed all in black, chalktone facepaint
muddled, dirty.

Roma, Pt. 1

I have spent one night in Roma, with two more to go.
I am already thinking of what I want to do when I get back.
Thus far, my time here has been simply awesome. Although my parents get on my nerves now and again, traveling with them has been really nice (and, you know, its always nice to have someone else say "Oh yeah sure, we should take that guided tour! Ill pay!"). Our first day, we arrived at 8:30 AM and, without having slept, I somehow stayed up until 2AM. We didnt really do much of the obligatory sightseeing that day, just taking care of logistics. Checked into the hotel, found the closest ATM (scusi, Bancomat, gotta get used to that again), and I got an Italian mobile phone! Then we had dinner at a wonderful Pizzeria called Dar Poeta on a recommendation from a friend. It was a bit of a walk (4 km maybe?), but well worth it. The house wine was pretty good...and €4 per half liter. The pizza was delicious, and equally affordable....I hate to say it, but Il Calesse, the wonderful pizzeria I went to in Venezia with Josh and Matt, might come in second after Dar Poeta; sorry Veneto, Lazio FTW.
After about 2/3 of a bottle of wine at dinner, I was feeling pretty good. But it was the night that was to follow dinner that I really will never forget. I called someone I had messaged from Couchsurfing and we agreed to go out for a drink after he finished eating, around 10:30. He came to pick me up on his motorbike and we rode aruond the city for a bit. It was both thrilling and enthralling, like a bikeride I didnt have to bike! He pointed out some of his favorite spots and we got off to walk around and chat for a bit. Finally, he took me down to one of his favorite areas on the banks of the Tiber and we had a beer.....yeah, I had an Affligem Rouge, again, if anyone but me cares what kind ^__^ I truly enjoyed having a drink with Roberto, we talked about everything from Italian hitory, to medical school, to (naturally following medical school) health carei in Italy vs. America, to the future of the European Union. Afterwards, when he was bringing me back to the hotel on his motorbike, he paused at an intersection and said "I have an idea." He showed me how to jump the fence around the Basilica of Maxentius (well, or Constantine, since he killed Maxentius at Milvian Bridge and finished the job himself), then we climbed the scaffolding, and finally we ascended the 1700 year old spiral staircase up to the roof. Looking out at Rome at 1:30 in the morning, on top of the massive temple that Constantine finished after he ascended to the throne of the Roman Emperor was something that I will never forget. We chatted for a little while longer while admiring the view (or rather views, as every direction offered a different, but equally stunning visage, though the view of the Roman Colosseum was probably my favorite) before finally climbing down.
Today my parents and I did a lot of the obligatory sightseeing which, despite its obligatory "if you go you have to see____" nature, was still astounding. We saw the Colosseum up close, the ruins of the Roman Forum, The Pantheon, St. Peters Basilica at the Vatican, and the Trevi Fountain. Though they were certainly breathtaking structures (ha, while looking up at the Roman Colosseum, my dad remarked, "it certainly illustrates the aesthetic notion of 'the sublime' perfectly," and my mom just scoffed at him ^_^), and there are tons of more beautiful buildings to see, the few minutes I spent atop Maxentius/Constantine's Basilica was doubtless the most remarkable moment of the trip, and one which I think bodes well for my future couchsurfing experiences in Europe.
Now, I'm going next door to shop for wine.

Couch Surfing....Sweet? Sweet! Sweet...Sweet?

Well, I'm ALMOST done planning my travels in Europe....almost. I have found hosts on couchsurfing.org for 12 out of the 17 nights I'll be traveling on my own. I'm actually really thrilled to meet all of the people who are hosting me!....and almost equally terrified that some of them will fall through. Still, I think the risk/reward analysis for me levels pretty heavily on the reward side, so I'm more excited than I am scared, and most cities seem to have pretty good SOS message boards to couch-ify those in desperate need. I'd just, ya know, prefer not to find myself in desperate need.
In other news, I went cycling today for a while on the CE trail, my old favorite bike path before I came to Mac and discovered the Glorious Greenway. Still, I like the CE trail.
In other news, I've spent the past 3 hours trying to network with couch surfers (with some success) and I'm exhausted.
In other news, bed.

Wafting

I evaporate—
diffuse into open air
spread wider than the sun.

I love the vapors.
Steam, lapping the rim of my coffee mug,
caught transparent in the bright hope of morning.

Smoke trailing from the tip of a cigarette at night,
slender and smooth as the beautiful fingers that hold it,
soft and sensual, smoke from burgundy lips.

I watch billows of cigar-smoke slowly escape my mouth,
and feel that I am a cauldron,

and bathe in the smoke of breath from
all my sisters and brothers,
day in, day out.

All the sages and all the prophets,
false and true,
bathed in and drank of this same breath
I find here at my bedside.

But I will not talk of the end
with pride of secret knowledge,
as though forecasting horses or stocks.

We drink the sky by moments,
and leave plenty after us.

The Time Everything Went Wrong Or At Least We Thought It Did

For one thing, this Canadian whiskey is
way too fucking sweet.
But for me, he was out of Bourbon
and time. And for another thing,
the expressions on the faces of
all the ancient Gods
that are packed away in boxes in the truck
seem sad and full of pity. Didn't they used to be
noble and unstoppable? Like immutable doves?
Like Godward mountains?
But then, to be fair,
the movers took the mountains last week,
"just the bare necessities" they said.
So I find myself with a coffeepot, an automobile muffler,
three pairs of woolen socks
and a gun
and Canadian whiskey,
in a box next to me, when I'm
sitting cross-legged on hardwood floor
with ten feet of free in each direction
before bright white walls.
The painters were here last week.
I asked for "Eggshell,"
"Eggshell !" I shouted, but
they just painted "void."

Michigan (Part 1) or A True Story, Seriously, This IS A Blog Post! or The Giant Robot vs. The Über-Mosquito (Part 1!?)

Out somewhere on a trail in the West-Central Michiganian woods
I couldn't hear another human being. My cell phone was off, not that it would have mattered. I sat on a log where the sun broke through the canopy. Across the path, I noticed a Monster Energy Drink can left upside down on a tree branch
and frowned. I walked over to remove the can, and when I did, there were two fuzzy caterpillars inside. I actually felt bad, because
c'mon, if you're a caterpillar, you're not gonna find a better bird defense than
MONSTER ENERGY DRINK.
Who would have thought?
Not me.
I sat back on my log (it is my log now, finders keepers) and watched a spider bump into an ant; they frightened one another and scurried in opposite directions. Then the spider spun a web, and I wished that somehow we could collaborate to
kill all these damn mosquitos.
Then I saw the Über-Mosquito, and we had a showdown.
It was a draw. He left, so I spent a while pretending that I was a giant robot and the mosquitos were fighter planes trying hopelessly to defend their beloved Earth from rapacious alien might.
Then I wondered when the last time was that I couldn't hear or see human life.
Then I heard a plane and frowned.
Then I wondered if my tone wasn't conversational enough, too monologuesque (monologuey?), then wondered why or if it mattered, then wondered if this counts as poetry, but decided that it was, perhaps, not exacting, pithy, or polished enough to be poetry, and thus probably prose.
He is back! The Über-Mosquito! (A technical term)
He is large and very fast, so fast it is hard to tell that he is even a mosquito at all.
I leap to my feet and we have a battle so intense it requires
a shift to the present tense. After darting, feinting, bobbing and weaving, I finally land a solid swipe of my small, black-leather notebook to his backside (well, at least I think it was his backside) and the Über-Mosquito goes careening off into the distance--but I'm sure he isn't finished.
There will probably be a sequel.
BUT THEN! A WASP! He landed on my leg and in an instant I'd stamped him into the crisp brown leaves below. False ending; I guess the Über-Mosquito was just the second in command. But now, the dastardly plot of Wasp and Über-Mosquito has been crushed. The Giant Robot is the hero.
There'll be no sequel.
(Cut to shot of Über-Mosquito looking menacing, ominous music, fade to black).

The Ether is Real

Last night I dreamt that I could fly
like in the old days,
when gravity didn't tether me quite so tight
and the tips of my toes would barely brush the blacktop
and the feeling of being alive would
shoot through me like so many arrows,
and the mortar that held my soul
to my body was as solid and sound
as that which holds my hearth.
And as real.
When I felt as light and as brave
as the city finch that hops to my feet.

And I awoke and filtered these things
through the years and through myself,
and found each to be as true today,
with as much empirical reality
as the dirty dishes in my kitchen sink.

Happy Fourth of July

So I spent my Fourth of July alone and didn't see any fireworks at all;
it was awesome. My grandparents both went to my grandfather's opera. He composed and conducted it and my grandmother wrote the libretto for it and gave a short introduction, contextualizing the opera (it's based on the Hebrew Bible story of Ruth). I went to see it last night, and had previously seen it when it first premiered when I was in high school (2003?), so I stayed at the lakehouse. After a day of biking, reading and writing in the woods, I spent my Fourth of July evening alone on the shore of Lake Michigan with a glass of red wine (a 2006 Washington State Cabernet Sauvignon, if anyone else cares ^_^), cheese, crackers, and chocolate. I split my time between watching the sunset over the lake and reading a book--one which I actually just started today--about the need to contextualize the all too often self-contained American historical narrative within a broader view of international history. At one point, I think it was after reading the line "The raw materials of history rarely stop at borders. The nation cannot be its own context. No less than the neutron or the cell, it must be studied in a framework larger than itself." I exclaimed aloud "Yes." Then, I looked up to see the sky awash in pink and red, to which I responded aloud with an equally visceral, "Yes."
Happy Fourth of July? Yes.

Twenty-Seven Tips for Better Living

Yeah man, see, that's the thing about traveling right after heart-wrenching-stomach-dropping goodbyes, too much time to think when you least expect-most need it.
Existential angst doesn't sit well with honey roasted nuts and crying babies, plus the stewardess looks at you funny
when you ask for horse tranquilizers with your complimentary Sprite, but you shouldn't be having that stuff when you're in this state anyways (the state of travel I mean), that stuff screws with your homeostasis, or so I read/heard/thought. I mean, cheap $9 airplane Chardonnay; fine. But with Sprite, the carbonation sends that corn syrup straight to your brain and you start thinking too fast, and you realize how the geological time scale weighs on your every move and crunches your whispered hopes of immortality
like a carpenter ant under a paper towel under your thumb.
And then you get depressed. I mean real bad man, real bad. Not like "oh shit, I suddenly see the crossroads I've just passed and recognize all at once my impotence in the face of regrets and sudden death" depressed. I mean real bad. I mean "third drivers test failure in as many weeks, spilled punch on your new dress at homecoming, C- in Algebra II" depressed, "LA Clippers fan for life" depressed, "the CD playing in the restaurant stuck on repeat and you're the only person who seems to notice the 79 solid minutes of a purely instrumental rendition of "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" depressed.
No, you don't want that kind of depressed, but don't worry, just follow these simple instructions:
First and foremost, don't drink the Sprite. Don't drink the water, filter the water, then drink the water (it doesn't matter whether or not you know what you're filtering out, just do it), take deep breaths, chew with your mouth closed, don't mix alcohol with
horse tranquilizers, have another Chardonnay, pretend to care about the vintage, but be nice to the stewardess, she's had a long day, call your mother, don't litter, make cute faces at the babies even though they are crying so much it makes you almost like the Clippers, don't overdo it, stop making that face, don't talk to strangers, fight the power, but pay your bills on time, sit still while we're talking to you, wear your seatbelt, wear sunscreen, don't wear flipflops, they're unbecoming, smile in the face of adversity, don't put your elbows on the table, sing in the shower, take the blue pill (but make sure it isn't a horse tranquilizer first, you've had a lot of Chardonnay you know), laugh at yourself, laugh at everything.*


*Should you find yourself in a tough spot in which these instructions are not at the moment readily accessible, please disregard the first 25 instructions.

America.

There is a heinous superabundance of coffee mugs.
Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, I'd Rather Be Golfing,
My _____ went to _____ and all I got was this stupid mug.
And they are discarded.
At Goodwill, there is a special shelf for all of them.
It runs 20 ft. long and 2 ft. deep, and
it is full. The #1 Dads rub elbows with the obscene, bachelor parties,
and everyone shuns the once personalized mugs
as callous shells, all their singular meaning bled away.
And somewhere northwest of Piendamó, Colombia,
a young woman with slender, auburn arms and cinnamon hair
harvests small beans with her harshly callused hands,
just as she has done for the past fifteen years,
just as she will do
for fifty more.
And they are airlifted to a central roasting facility in  Enon, Ohio,
then ground, vacuum packed and trucked out to
A Super America Convenience Store Near You.
24 oz. $1.29. "100% Colombian."
Styrofoam.