Roma, final post

I've been sitting on this final post that I wrote over several days as my trip to Rome drew to a close because I thought I might create a number of posts out of it. Hasn't happened, so here it is, as is. BTW, starting to mount photos on my Flick site ... many more to come in the next week or so.

April 6: So, it's my birthday. And I am sitting on a train to Florence at 7:15 a.m. per long-standing plan. I keep reminding myself that it is my birthday because it just feels like my last day in Italy. I keep my trips short deliberately because I want to be hungry for more when I leave ... and I have succeeded in that on this trip. Definitely not looking forward to leaving tomorrow.

The train is, as you'd expect, smooth and comfortable. The chairs are firm and contoured with fixed foldout tables at every seat. Lots of leg room. A brown and tan decor. Very tasteful.

Two elderly and refined gentleman sit opposite me in similarly styled tan windbreakers. They moved back and forth several times before taking their seats, evidently trying to ascertain that they indeed had the right place. A quick pleasantry to me which I did not understand, but it was clear that they did not expect a reply so I nodded and smiled.

Across the aisle are what I can only describe as two vulgar young Americans. They have brought along a huge bag full of McDonalds which they are loudly crunching. The entire car is filled with the stench of the food. A young Italian man got up and changed seats without hesitation once they dropped their sorry behinds into their assigned slots next to him. The man is dressed like a slob showing all manner of hairy parts that we do not want to see, including at one point his misshapen stomach when he returned his ticket to his traveler's belt. No wonder Europeans think of us as the fat slobs of the world.

Oh well, they will probably fall asleep shortly ... that is my plan, as it were.

Twelve minutes out of the station and we are in the green countryside. No point in taking photos as the window is streaked and dirty, and the sun is low in the sky and glaring at me.

I love trains, and this quick Roma/Florence/Rome trip is itself a present. The capper will be the Ufizzi, and a quick tour of the sites. I have already stood at the spot where holy mother church burned Giordano Bruno to ashes because of his intelligent reflections that did not coincide with their then-operant theocracy. I shall shortly stand at the spot where holy mother church burned Fra Savonarola to ashes after gruesome torture because his insane fundamentalism came to represent a threat to them. He made quick, once in power, to condemn homosexuals to death ... fundies are that. They just can't stand other people having fun. But his virulent opposition to pleasure was not what got him condemned.

Our vulgar American fellow travelers have now turned their iPad into a gaming device, sound on, so that we all get to listen to various explosions and death chortles in low static-y volume. Italy is a loud place, that is certain, but it is voices and music and, horrors, screaming radio and TV that form the ambient sound. So I resent these little creeps for invading my sound space. The old gentleman across from me is looking down his nose at them as they giggle and play.

Deploy the earplugs!

I am going to turn to the International Herald Tribune for a few moments.

....

Dozed a bit, and so did the vulgars across the aisle per prediction.

The Herald Tribune has a story about French secularism. Western societies must defend secularism at all costs or we slide back into the hell of theocracy. The left likes to pretend that Islam is some kind of religion of peace, as it were. Nonsense. Across the globe, it is Islam that is practicing the ancient art of auto da fe with virulence and abandon. I don't trust holy mother church, but I can live next door because we have them under control. I don't trust Islam, but if we have to live next door to it, we need to control it too. Religion is a private matter, and its apperance in public space is always an immanent threat to freedom.

....

April 7: I am now on the 11-hour flight to San Francisco, and it is the day after my birthday. I thought I might just pretend that I was still on the train, but that makes no sense.

So to continue my thoughts on the secular and the sacred, everywhere we are reminded of the conflict. In most places in the globe, the threat of the religious to freedom is on the ascendant. The only hold-outs are Europe (minus Poland and such parts of the former Soviet Union as we might consider European), the English-speaking countries (minus the United States), and China and Japan. Did I forget anywhere? Perhaps most of South America.

Visiting Europe engages this personal conversation because the memory of religion is everywhere, and the evidence of the victory of the Enlightenment over it surrounds and smothers it. Even the bizarrely phrased message from the Ratzinger Pope on the back cover of the guide to the Vatican Museum notes that even though some of the visitors may not even be believers, they should recognize the value of the church for having preserved so much. Pretty cynical that, considering the vastly greater quantities of lives and relics that the church has systematically destroyed over the centuries.

We face that threat now again paradoxically precisely because the technological advances have lengthened and brought into brighter light the unsupportable distances between the bottom and the top. Religion exploits that and when it is victorious it hardens those social separations and makes them unbreachable. That is the curiosity, or more properly the recognizability, of the current reactionary impulse in America. In the name of all that is holy combined with a illogical populism, a bunch of purple faced morons will drive millions into poverty and ensure the steady separation of the rich from the rest of us.

This is a theme in what I think, and I will return to it. Now I want to think about my recent trip.

....

Random episodes:

As I was leave the Termini train station in Rome on my birthday, an orchestra apparently celebrating the second anniversary of something was giving a free concert in the entryway. I stayed for their Bolero which, in my inexpert opinion, seemed competent and moving if not sublime. It appeared to be mostly a youth orchestra with a few gray beards sprinkled in for what I imagine was mentoring. I listened to several speeches because I love the sound of Italian. It seems like a language that would not take me a lot of trouble to achieve some semblance of competence. I've always said that if I had a second lifetime, I would include Italian in it. Perhaps I should move that project one lifetime forward.

After the free concert, I wandered to the Via Gaeta to have dinner at the Ristorante La Famiglia per my twitter friend @jonvox's suggestion. I sat on the sidewalk and had an excellent vegetable soup and a risotto pescatora that featured two complete unshelled shrimp, heads and all, that I was not white sure how to handle. I squeezed and chewed on them as best I could and got some meat and flavor. I didn't want the staff to see my struggles. Why should I care; they see tourists once and then never again, and they will hardly remember a fortnight hence. But we all have a certain pride in the moment that others will respect us, think that we are something more than the run of the mill.

It's a vain conceit, unsupported by any evidence in life. When I look at tourists in San Francisco, I am not judging their authenticity in any sense. I admit I am looking for the good-looking ones, just because it's nice to look at nice things. And there it is, as a tourist, you let yourself become a thing for a while, a pampered thing, but a forgettable, disposable thing. Travel for me is this see saw between admitting that and hating it. Regardless, I find it hard to embrace my touristy thingness, and so I stumble from confidence to ineptitude by turns.

Traveling alone also mean that there is a lot of silence. Something I seek, again for the reflective character in it. But that too is maddening, and further underwrites this stumbling from ineptitude to confidence. I had hoped on this trip that I would turn that tension into writing, but I was not aggressive enough with myself until the end. That wil be first on my list of pointers I make for further reference. Just slap down the iPad in some cafe and write hello 15 minutes after you hit the ground running.

....

This plane flight itself changes a few patterns. I ended up with an aisle seat, and I admit that it is a real pleasure. I normally conspire to sit by the window so I can gaze out, but the downside, as one well knows, is that getting up involves moving inert humanity.

Also, the reading light in my seat does not work, and this part of the cabin is actually a little too dark for comfortable reading. So I watched a movie. I never do that. The movie was The King's Speech, which has been roundly and repeatedly recommended by all my friends. Certainly an excellent movie that at several points had me welling up. Beautiful colors and fine portrayals.

The movie is about charisma, and it is a flaw of secularism that we have lost touch with the power that charisma has and still exerts. Charisma inheres in authority, not in authenticity, and the modern secular world prefers to focus on authenticity rather than authority. That is why religion feels so pallid and farcical to us ... it may be authentic in some contexts, but it is no longer authentic in ours, so it is a drama, a performance, a spectacle to be turned off, as we douse the television before we go to bed.

I have no complaint with this. It makes for a life that is less ecstatic, where meaning is always contingent and ambivalent. But it makes for a world of discovery and reality, where everything human is part of us, where we do not need to pick one highly articulated truth to the exclusion of any other.

So the charisma in the film inhered in the position of the king, even as he confronted the modern realities of a new kind of performance. George VI certainly understood that his lack of personal charisma was irrelevant to his bearing the charisma of monarchy. The film is about a very personal, banal battle over that contradiction. His daughter, of course, has the royal charisma bug just right. One moment that struck me as very real was when the young Elizabeth gives a refined critique of Dad's big speech, that he has stumbled at first but got better toward the end. Queen Bess understands "the firm."

....

more quick hits:

The angelic beauty of the, I think, Danish boys who ate across from me at La Famiglia. They were evidently part of a much larger group of boys and girls - we are talking 16-ish - as various small mobs of them passed on the sidewalk between us and interlocuted. Again, I have to note how adult and self-possessed European youth seem. Sure they were kids, giggling and gaggling, but without the imposition and indiscipline that we have to put up with. Every time I come to Europe, I am impressed by how our revisionist approach to parenting does not stand up to comparison. Given that I have essentially nothing to do with children, and only encounter them as they misbehave in public, I suppose I am shooting hot air through a hole in my hat. But that's the way I see it.

Twice I was asked what I thought of Berlusconi, first by the driver from the airport, and then by a 20-something waiter in the pizza place on Via dei Guidari on, I think, Monday night. Both of them laughed at my response and said "bunga bunga." I guess that means something like "nooky nooky", and it is commonly used in the Italian papers when referring to the old fascist's dalliances. The phrase in Indonesian, for what it is worth, means flowers, and that has a certain referentiality given the deflowering and all that. The young waiter asked me first if I liked Obama, and I said I did. Then he asked me if I liked Berlusconi, and I shrugged my shoulders. That's when he laughed and said "bunga bunga." We later talked a little about football - he is an Inter fan and they were playing on the TV - and i told him about how my team had won the world series. Either he did not understand or was unimpressed.

On coffee: it is going to be hard to return to the pitiful excuse for espresso that we have to put up with in America after the delights of Italian espresso. I had a cappuccino at the Caffe Farnese across the piazza from the Palaccio Farnese that was a revelation, so smooth and frothy. Even the offbeat places had good coffee. I came to prefer cafe doppio lungo, or a long double espresso. In the States, you just cannot get them to make a long espresso ... they just don't know what it is. This again illustrates a difference between Europe and the States, one that lies, I think, at the core of the special loathing that the right wing has for for Europe. It has to do with greed and apportionment. Everybody always wants more for themselves, but it is possible to balance that with restraint. But restraint in the States seems like it is giving something to somebody else - it is the zero-sum game fear that haunts the American soul. If you are doing well, than that must mean something is going wrong for me. The vast double soy lattes with whipped cream that we order is a way getting more and more. I have long argued with American baristas that cappuccino is a question of proportion not amount when they ask if I want a large, ultra-large, or stinkin' extra effin' huge. So I order a macchiato and tell them to put 2 teaspoons of foam in; I still normally have to scoop out 4 or 5 tablespoons of foam only to find that the espresso is really a cafe au lait.

More, folks, is more. More is only better sometimes. Other times it is worse.

Coffee teaches us this.

Roma, Day 5, evening

Sitting in Voglia di Pizza on Via dei Guibbonari near the hotel ... and writing! Just getting the hang of this place, and then off I go. That is the way with short trips. I promise to make a lot of notes to myself on the airplane to get going faster next time.

The curiosity of this trip is the failure of my laptop which forced me to change the way I photograph. That's been a good thing. I have become so used to three exposures a shot, and then all the endless, crazy-making file management. With limited chip space, I have been more careful, and it will probably mean I get a viewable result more quickly and with less time spent. In the modern world, if not always, time is the irreplaceable piece, especially for a working stiff like me.

I ended up retracing the steps of my first day to some degree. Before that, I stopped in the modern glassy container building that houses the remnants of Augustus' Ara Pacis, his "Altar of Peace" temple to his own conceits, frankly. That said, history, at least in the current age, gives too much credit to Julius Caesar and not enough to Augustus. Just as Napoleon rescued the French Revolution by creating an empire on its grave, so Augustus rescued the Republic by remaking it to his own image. In the sense of being a sporting fan of history, I root for him. As a diehard democrat, I have to formally question the victory of the imperial, but it was that victory that provided the broad middle, such as it was, whereby Roman civilization became the founder not only of the Europe we know, and the Christianity we endure, but also the science and literature and thought that has endured.

All that said, inexpertly I admit, I was bored by the interminable audio tour of the Ara Pacis, and my fatigue caught up with me. Had to get back on the road before I fell asleep while pretending to rest.

I picked my way through this maze of a city to the inimitable Giolitti gelato parlor, per my twitter friend @jonvox - I hope his head does not swell, but he has been a fine interlocutor and guide. Again, per my tweet of some time back, I owe you a dinner and drinks whenever you land in San Francisco! I chose to press my way to the second clerk because he was ... o well, I admit it ... really hot. But I think he thought I had jumped the line which was, as is the manner of these things, more a crush than anything else. So he served 4 or 5 folks in front of me, but then graciously took my order for crema and amoretto. And, @jonvox, you are right, after this there is no other gelato that will ever measure up. I took good care not to splooge any of the ambrosia on my nice pressed shirt.

And then I headed back first to the Pantheon, then to San Luigi de Francese to re-review the Caravaggio's, and then to Piazza Navona. I did not actually go into the Pantheon again, but rather wrote the three postcards that I always send from any trip. This viewing of Caravaggio was much more pleasant than the last in the same locale given heightened attention to the imbecilic flash-photo behavior by the custodians. I lingered long. He is an amazing painter whom I have admired from afar for many decades. That said, given all I have experienced here, I have to say that one may come to Rome to worship Caravaggio, but he's have to stay to worship Bernini! That's another story.

The Piazza Navona this time was in its full splendor. The scaffolding that piqued me in my jet lag was gone, and it was wide open this time, filled with throngs. I tarried among the art-sellers, and ended up buying a few souvenir ink drawings - 8 euros each, clearly touristy ... but, jeez, I gotta get some kind of souvenir. I am such a ludicrously bad shopper - I had dawdled in the entrances to several men's shops, my intention being that I would buy a belt if I found one. Notwithstanding my dapper dress - pressed wool slacks and button-down shirt - they paid no attention to me. The camera is a dead giveaway, I guess. I even went into a tourist shop to try to buy T-shirts, but eventually fled in confusion despite the practiced entreaties of the seller.

But I did manage to buy something after all that in the Piazza Navona ... and then bull-headed back to the Campodoglio to complete an interrupted purchase of the massive Italian language catalog of the Faces of Power exhibit I had seen on day 2. It is quite possible that this massive tome will put me over some weight limit on the way back but I just know that I will never forget the book if I do not get it, so get it I did. My fetishism of the book really knows only the bounds of my purse, and then only just barely.

On the way I ventured into (name to be filled in) ookstore in search of relevant works of theater thinking of my great theater pal back home. But since he reads this blog, I must leave my discoveries a mystery.

Speaking of which, earlier today I ventured into an antique booksstore. A 1912 Arthur Rackham illustrated Shakespreare's Tempest went for 300 euros - it was like velvet in my fingers. I craved it, and I could spend 300 euros if I chose to, but I could not afford it. The tempation was only virtual; I never would have pulled the switch. Later I held in my hands a massive 17th century collection of the works of Plautus. Imagine, I thought, having that as warm comfort after I retire. I did not ask the price. She probably would have laughed, and whatever figure she gave would be only what wandered into her head to humiliate me.

My gorgonzola and zucchini pizza has arrived. Roman pizza is quite fine, not the fat paean to the bottomless pit of consumerism that American pizza is. I will pay it the full attention it deserves, and then return to my digs to post this. Well, one quick promised stop at Bar Farnese to sample their finest bourbon on the rocks, if my exhausted feet, further encumbered by a pair of beers here, will allow it.

Roma: Day 5, in a Bistro

Sitting in a little cafe, Bar Bistro Centurion at the very end of the Via Corso facIng the Piazza del Popolo with a trio of strings playing Italianate popular tunes behind me. They are quite good and I think I will buy the cd if they are still here when I stand up. One problem with travel is that you are bogged down by your stuff and not very nimble at conjunctures like this.

I managed to undermine myself at Santa Maria del Popolo which has a bunch of Caravaggio's, including his St. Peter and the upside down crucifixion. As I passed, a horde of schoolchildren were entering, and I thought, ok, photograph the Piazza first since then light is perfect, and then hit the chiesa after the horde is gone. I see them exiting 30 minutes late and head over. A kindly older priest apologizes, "Chiusa la chiesa ... alle quarto." Pardon the fractured Italian, but that is how I remember it: the church is closed until 4 o'clock.

This too will have to await the next trip.

I figure that, if I apply myself as I want to, I have about 10 European trips before I am 70. I could scatter my interests, or I could focus on two or three countries. If the latter, Italy gets to be one of them.

My tagliatelli con funghi has arrived ... not bad for an obvious tourist place.

This is the first time I have actually written outside the hotel. I meant to do a lot more of that. That is illustrative of the fact that I have not traveled in Europe since 2006, and things, not to mention I, have changed. I've had to re-learn how it is that I want to travel. The key is: Faster start on the first day or two and, as is my wont, I have reduced that to a simple tactic. Bring a damned tab of Ambien and make sure that I get a proper night's sleep at the end of the first day.

My trio has become a quartet with the addition of an accordion. After long tuning up, they finally get back into it. Very La Dolce Vita, at this point.

I photograph all day and into the night but what I cannot photograph is the exquisite natural masculinity of the men here. From the carabinieri who strut around in their razor sharp uniforms seemingly paying attention exclusively to each other, to pairs of like-aged men striding and gesticulating, to the hordes of young men passionately entertaining each other. Romanticizing here, but it is a great show ... and I think Italians like the great show. The women are no slouch either, but they are, frankly, not as elegant as the Parisian women. They are too brusque for that ... and I like them the more for it.

All that said, this is one of the most abidingly heterosexual places I have ever visited. I may find the men achingly sexy, but they give no indication that they find each other sexy, unlike the Germans or Americans whose latent homosexuality seems always the order of the day.

Enough for now. I now confront the single most difficult part of travel ... finding a souvenir. In Berlin it was a glass from a second-hand market, in Paris it was a hairbrush. I buy books all along the way, mostly museum catalogs, but actually coughing up dough for a memento is impossibly difficult. Wish me luck

Roma: Day 4, the Vatican

I am so bombed tired after over 12 hour of tromping about that I have been on my hotel bed for two hours unable to muster the energy to pick up the iPad, as it were, and blog. But best I commit at least my itinerary here for purposes of thinking about it later.

I had a 10:30 appointment with the ticketeers of the Vatican Museum, so I headed off with plenty of time to spare. I stopped at the Caffe Farnese which I believe the to be the same as the Bar Farnese recommended by my Twitter friend @jonvox. I had a cappuccino, my first in Rome, and it is as if I just had my first cappuccino ever. The Cafe Flore in San Francisco used to make a good one before the ownership chagned reduced them to the standards, such as they are, that "guide" every other espresso place in America. But this cappuccino was frothy and composed and at one with the palate. The coffee is Rome is incomparable.

I walked along the Tevere, and descended to its banks where I was the sole denizen. Made me a little nervous since I would be perfectly set jup for a robbery. But I saw not a soul. As I approached the Ponte Sant' Angelo, alas, the first thing I saw was a giant yellow crane in front of Hadrian's tomb, what the faithful call Castel Sant' Angelo. Hadrian is my favorite emperor by a long stretch, and not only be cause he was the most unabashed and exclusive homosexual to hold the post. His travels and the broadness of his vision marked the height of the Pax Romana. I do not have the time to go to his villa, but that will be a good excuse for a second trip to Rome.

On that point, I have loved every city I have visited in Europe. I used to struggle as to whether Berlin or Paris was my favorite. But none have affected me the way Rome has. I love the people, the way of life, the majesty of its past. I feel like I will come here again even if it means crossing some other capital off my list.

I arrived at St. Peter's as the morning light was bathing the cathedral, so I had no choice but to photograph it quickly if I wanted proper photos and also make my appointment with the museum. The square is so filled with crowd control devices, seating, scattered scaffolding, and modern lights and audio equipment, that a lot of the magic is sacrificed. Good enough. My love of history does not permit me to forget what this institution did to human freedom over the centuries. Even so, it is a really cool looking church. And Bernini's colonnade certainly lives up to billing.

I made my way to the entrance to the Vatican Museum, and managed to be a half hour early. No problem, they let me in anyway. The difference between an online reservation and waiting in the line appeared to be over an hour, so gawd noze why anybody would decide to wing it. But plenty did.

I spent seven hours in the museum, and even so managed to miss the Pinacoteca, or painting gallery. So I did not see their Caravaggio's. But the enormous collection of ancient sculpture itself would be more than enough for a full day's work. Predictably it was the numerous Bacchus, Hermes/Mercury, and other athletic visions that drew me. Most significantly, it was several depictions of Antinous, the ill-fated lover of Hadrian who was either drowned in the Nile as a sacrifice for Hadrian's desire for longevity, or did the deed to himself to the same end. He became the center of a substantial cult which, frankly, might have been a damned sight better than the semitic death cult that actually ended up winning the west.

Two things about that: one, jeeeezus keeerist, does Christianity love death or torment or what? And what do they have against penises? Most of them are broken off, some of them with a neat drill hole in place of what was once a modest uncut projection. And most of the rest are covered with tacky plaster fig leaves. We all know about both of these madnesses, but witnessing them in this incredible collection makes it all the more absurd.

New appreciation for Raphael. And then the Sistine Chapel.

First off, the madding hordes. Notwithstanding the strict prohibition on cameras in the chapel, flashes were going off all over the place. Ludicrous. And people yammering away as if they were standing in line at a supermarket. I am an atheist with nothing but contempt for the conceits of religion. But in a sacred space, for crying loud, shut the eff up!! People banging into me as I craned to view the ceiling. It truly is an amazing room, I wish they had special viewings for people who promised to be quiet and respect the rules.

After that, I squeezed St. Peter's into an hour. Again with the bloody flashes at the Pieta!! Nice cathedral, as I've said. But everything about it betokens power more than spirituality. The vast size of everything seemed to call it more than "we can" than that "we see." The Baldocchio, certainly magnificent, seems to get in the way of the altar. I saw only a few people at devotions, and the larger number in front of a truly ghoulish crypt-ic representation of the dead John XXIII. Two young priests with very clean soles kneeling at a side altar. The odd nun. It is a secular age, at least in Europe, and the church has to put up with it.

An aside re children. In every case since I have been here, whenever I see misbehaving children, they turn out to be English speaking, either American or Australian. The very worst today were two Australian boys who should have been beaten on the spot, and I mean that with no irony whatsoever. American parenting, not something that has impressed me very much for some decades, shows is deficiencies in the whining and rudeness and general inability to behave with any kind of respect for others. Nuff said ... for now.

I took a quick tour of the Vatican Museum of treasures, mostly catholic paraphernalia distinguished more by its gaudiness than any subtly of composition. And then I ambled out into the square where I sat for 15 minutes to try to get some of the pain out of my feet. I forced myself to fulfill my vow to head to the Trastevere, and a good thing that was. Ended up at Bar Poeta, per Rick Steves' excellent suggestion and had an excellent salmon and arugula pizza in an ancient alley. Two young gay guys walked past holding hands - the first openly gay behavior I have seen in Rome, other than the waiter at the gay restaurant mentioned yesterday. And from there, via some night photography, i walked home, erringly, finally knowing the alleys around here well enough to walk pretty directly to where I am now abed.

Again, to my proofreading friends, bear with me. Editing to follow when I return home.

Roma: Day 3

Just got back and did all the maintenance. A little tipsy as a rsult of a Negroni and a rather large Maker's Mark in the the pizzeria at the corner. Got out of there for 20 euros including tip, and the two drinks, so that's pretty good.

So this is a blast away itinerary for the day, mostly as a mnemonic when I start looking at photos.

I intended ot start out by hightailing it to the Piazza del Popolo to take in the Caravaggios at santa Maria del Populo, but Rick Steves says that they close at 12:30 on Sunday, Got a deliberate late start that ended up being a little too late. So instead I headed for the Colisseum per original plan. Stumbled across the Theater of Marcus (if I remember correctly, and may yet correct this), and then the main synagogue. The traveled that length of the circus Maximus which is more a hint than a statement at this point. Some locals beating drums at the bottom of a set of steps. Sunday is for drummers the world over.

And thence to the Colisseum, via the Arch of Constantine, which is nine boggling. His is a career that a constantly investigate. Everybody wants him for hero or villain. He was just a good emperor who picked the wrong religion, and ended up picking the wrong creed, and then only in extremes actually succumbed to its dark magic. And then to the Colosseum which is mammoth. The swarms of tourists try to engulf it in their obliviousness. So I pretend they are not there, or that they are the descendants of those who, alas, were not victims of the horrors. I suppose I should't say that ... but I did think it. I am pretty good at getting pictures without the surrounding loing crowd, and I hope to prove that when I finally can download and view my pix,

I left and went searching for the Metro which is strangely hardly marked at all. I stumbled across one of the gay bars I had marked as possible night eateries or dinrkeries. But I did not tarry because they do not have coffee on the menu. Say what? Get an espresso machine, queens.

The train to Spagna station where I tailed an impossibly sexy and skinny Italian boy and his girlfriend through the long tunnels that end up depositing you in the Borghese gardens. Wonderful urban parkm filled with lovers and families and cranky old dudes and expressionless old women on a fine April Sunday afternoon. Had an espresso and a quick sandwich at an outdoor cafe with a smoking hot but painfully rude young waiter ... I guess he could feel the burn of my eyes on his hindquarters. And then to the Borghese galleries where I had yet another espresso and sandwich. Doing well in the food department.

If you go to Rome, don't miss the Borghese. If you are a culture nut, book two viewings, both at the end of the day. The allotted two hours is not enough to languish. Perhaps four hours is too much. The 30 minute limit in the Pictatura upstairs is ludicrously short, although I went for the second to last slot and they let me stay a full hour.

Thence wended my way via the Via Veneto to the Fontana Tritone, and then to the Trevi Fountain whose majesty is such that it is not belittled by its misfortune of being the default tourist hangout. Played photo and video games there, and was asked by a doll of a young French guy to take his pic ... and he returned the favor.

Night photos as I maneuvered down the Vai Corso and ultimately to the Pizzeria where I started this post. I almost back-tracked to the aforementioned gay bar, but when I did the math, it would have put my back here just a little too late.

Gotta crash - early call at the Vatican.

Roma, Day 2: The Ancients

I have a lot to say here, and perhaps will at some point. But I will restrict myself to the two moments that gave me the most pause.

The bust of Elagabulus, an "attractive and hormonally charged teenager" as the linked article states of this Severan emperor; there's a pic of the bust at the link also. He looked so modern that I kept staring at it and wondering at how absolute was absolutism in the ancient world. He tried to establish a religion but he had neither the luck nor the charisma of the 10 or so men who actually did establish long-lasting religions. The bust was eerie. NOt the best piece by a long shot in a Museum filled with wonders. I stopped long at the Dying Gaul, and was transfixed by the giant head of COnstantine. Somehow I missed the boy picking the thorn from his foot. I loved all the nude divine youth. But it was Elagabulus who made me pause to consider the transcendence of being human.

The second moment was occasioned by the extant frescoes in Augustus' house on the Palatine. It brought home the notion that he ate dinner there, he mused, he paced, he ordered and he cajoled. The colors were alive, and so like ghosts of a past where people lived and breathed. I tarried so long that the young female guard dogged me a bit. Not the most spectacular place in an area filled with glories. But, again, it gave me pause. And that is what we are looking for.

The seagulls are starting to buzz me ... I suppose wondering why I am here so long with no food. That means it is time to go. I probably will not set foot back here until 10 tonight.

Roma, Day 2: Travel Notes, Observing

The Musei Capitolini atop Capitloline Hill is now one of my favorite places in the world. It lacks the universality of the Louvre, but Italy has not been imperial for about 1700 years. To have a Louvre, a country needs the means to thieve, and that means empire. Wht this museum has is as much pride of place as any I have ever been in.

The place was generally less crowded than I expected except for the three or four traveling bands of visiting youth. I arrived in the midst of one and the guards asked me to step aside for a moment ... then they gave up and pushed the students aside so I could get in.They scanned my bag without looking at the monitor. This particular band of youth dogged me throughout ... they were a gallery ahead or a gallery behind most of the time.

Italisn youth, and this seems broadly true of continental European youth in general, are so much more adult in their behavior than American youth. They are certainly skinnier, and I mean that in a healthy sense. They look after themselves, they do not seem to need constant adult supervision. But even so, in a group like this, they marched along and stuck to the program. The tour guide lectured in a strong voice, uninterrupted by queries or complaints. It was always a dense patter, and I noticed this again and again in numerous languages all day long.

I get the sense that Europe has not invested in the culture of parenting as indulgence and service. Children are expected to be and do and to take some responsibility for themselves. Youth swarm all over the place here. On the Piazza de' Fiore by night, on the Piazza Navona by day, in gender separated clumps of 3 to 20, they cackle and gaggle and move about. But hey do not interfere or litter or demand. They are, as I said, rather adult about it all. I'd rather be alone, but that option is not available. So I would much rather be surrounded by a bunch of European youth than American ones.

Suddenly in the Forum there is a young boy and girl running and screaming and getting underfoot. They speak ... ah, yes, they are American. I saw an Italian mother smack her son on the rump. He looked up with a smirk. She said something, his eyes widened and he shrugged. Whatever it was, he was in the wrong, he knew it, he took the hint, and life moved on. In America, it would be a Judge Judy episode that might end up with the child being taken by Child Protective Services.

This is all very general, and informed by a day's observation. But it is the same impression I have had in Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Prague, and largely in London.

The other note on Italians I might make is that they all seem rather mannish ... that is something shy of masculine but certainly not feminine. The men are unabashedly masculine in their demeanor, and so are the boys. But the women are distinctly mannish in the sense of blunt and forward and self-possessed. I like it. I can see why it would be difficult to be gay here. But I like the forward and unadorned character of being. I will try to write more about that anon.

Aside: two Americans with Southern accents have arrived on the rooftop garden where I write ... the woman staopped to talk to me and told me the story of her Italian grandparents and how they made their way by growing and selling vegetables from the back of a truck in Florida. Very friendly. That said, despite being from FLorida, she was unable to identify a seagull and wondered what kind of big bird it was.

A note on eating: I did a lot better than yesterday. I suppose my ranting about it in yesterday's post may have inspired some "adult" approaches. I picked a restaurant for dinner in the morning as I left. I had lunch in the Musei Capitolini cafeteria, eating on the rooftop patio. When I arrived at my dinner place, Ristorante Santa Ana, I believe, the place was still empty since it was a little shy of 7 p.m. The waiter replied to my "per uno" with a big questioning "adesso?" Sure enough, he gestured to a good table with a bemused shrug. Big personality, again, unadorned by a false meekness or submission. I had a sublime linguini with porcini mushrooms ... and they know exactly what al dente means ... and a grilled fish that they described as sea bass but looked an awful lot like trout to me, and a giant salata mista, mixed salad. with a beer. Again, 40 euros, but this time worth it. The fish was sublime.

I picked out a spot for dinner tonight that is close by in case I do not find anything on my "La Dolce Vita" night walk home, thanks be to Rick Steves. It is an inexpensive spaghetti pizza place. 40 euros a night is a little sleep for the likes of me.

Roma, Day 2: Travel Notes, the Mundane

We'll get to the ancients in a bit. They can wait ... to paraphrase a well known Roman quote, then were what we are and we will become what they are, but in the meanwhile we still have this business of living to get after.

I am sitting in the rooftop garden of the Hotel Smeraldo. After yesterday's grueling pace, the prior's night's inadequate sleep, and a last minute nasty surprise, I did manage 8 full hours of deep sleep. Notwithstanding that the mattress is so hard that a Prussian soldier would find it challenging, and that my rib cage aches as a result, I am filled with the optimism of feeling rested. So I have decided to tarry a bit this morning, and reflect on travel, the ancients, and, of course, myself. Because traveling alone is really designed to foreground the dialectic of introspection and reflection. In other words, no matter how vast the experience, you can't quite stop wondering what it all means in terms of the life that you live.

The little disaster is that my laptop's power cable suddenly stopped working. I am pretty sure that it is just a broken wire inside the cable because there was the tiniest little sound at the moment it occurred. But there is also the possibility that the internal power supply to the laptop is gone. In any event, it means I have 91% of a battery that drains like a cracked sink. I do not want to download photos onto a machine that might die; it is four year's old and it would be a challenge to find someone else with a similar laptop in order to power up my battery for future work. I'll just have to wait until I get home to determine if I am suddenly, after the "big trip" in the market for a new laptop. In the meanwhile, than gawd for the iPad, and photographs wil have to stay on their chips until I return.

This forces another accommodation. I normally burst shoot three exposures of anything, with an auto brackete of plus and minus a third of a stop. Mostly the minus 1/3 tends to work out, even for low light shots, partly for the saturation value, and partly because the second exposure tends to have less camera shake. Yesterday I shot over 1600 exposures!! But even on an 8 gig card, that will be too many for 4 days shooting. I have three cameras with me ... o the joys of 21st century middle-class consumerism ... so I am going to retire the middle camera, and hope to get by with 2 8-gig chips for the rest of the ride. I'll make a call on Tuesday as to whether or not I can get through the Wednesday trip to Florence with merely 7,000 exposures!!

So, notes to self ... remember the polarizing filter next time. The time for a new laptop may not coincide with my carefully arranging spending plans. Splurge on extra ships. You didn't need the middle camera anyway.

A little not to my fellow editor friends: given that I writing this on an iPad and that the interface is challenging and that I am sitting in the last little bit of shade before mean mother sun makes it impossible to see the screen, I am not going to do a lot of copy editing. I will re-read and correct in the safety and langour of home.

No photos, per above!

Roma, Day 1. Notes, and Eating

A guy could easily fall in love with Rome, and this guy pretty much has.

This first day on the ground was dedicated to the area near the Hotel Smeraldo where I am staying. Nice little place, recommended by a good friend, and ten minutes from the Piazza Navona and the Pantheon, and under five if I hurried from the Piazza de' Fiore where holy mother church infamously burned Giordano Bruno alive and nude in 1600.


The highlight of the day was gazing at Caravaggio's David with the Head of Goliath, normally in the Borghese, but relocated to the _____ as part of a show of contemporary records that touched on the painter's life. The painting is so raw and unromantic; this is no hallowed figure, but a mean boy who has risen to a challenge. The same show also had his portrait of Paul VI, the Borghese pope, who looked like some kind of modern gay leather guy duded up in fancy red and lace robes for a drag show that he didn't really want to do.


It was hard to enjoy the Caravaggio's in the San Luigi dei Francesi becasue of the incessant, albeit banned, flashing of cameras in aid of what must certainly end up as bad photography. Buy the postcards, you morons, and just shut up while you look at the art.

Ooops, cranky.

While we're at it, though, it still drives me nuts that people don't know that flash reflects off glass.


So as my wanderings began, I curiously could not find the Piazza Navona. That's a bit like missing the ocean at the beach because you are turned facing inland. But the good side of that was that the first site I saw ended up being the Pantheon. Christianity is all around in the Pantheon, but I kept looking at the stones, and the marble, and imagining how long it has been there. Swept up in reverence for time and ancientness.

Frankly, the Piazza Navona was tacky - not the fault of the architecture, but a vast amount of scaffolding in aid of what appears to be an upcoming concert. It was hard to see the majesty except up close. It was there that I decided that I would confine my video efforts to running water. I think I am a creditable photographer, but I do not have the patience for video, at least yet. SO if I get a bunch of footage maybe I can play around. There was a bit of a farce when I tried to shoot the Fontana el Moro. Every time I turned on the camera, a jackhammer started up behind me, and would only stop when I walked away. I did manage to get about 20 seconds in the end.

I watched the swarming youth in the Piazza Navona, but I think I will defer my notes on that to a later post.

When I travel, I am a terrible eater. As I write this, it is 6:30 in the morning, and I have been awake since 4. I am starving hungry in one of the world's capitals of cuisine. When I look for a place to eat, I am like an insect in a spider's web, strung up between mutually exclusive options, the stickiness of my situation entirely internal to my psyche. I fear that I will be stuck in a place with lousy food, and I don't want to go to a place that is oriented to tourists. But I deeply feel that most better places probably don't really want a single diner, and besides there is the language problem ... although that did not stop me from the same behavior in London or Paris where I speak the relevant language. I do not want to spend too much money, but I am afraid of seeming cheap. I loathe being approached by shills or friendly maitre d's so I never tarry long perusing a menu lest I have to say no or even just maybe. I feel as if I am required to go in if they say hello to me.

So when I look for food, I circle, and circle, and stop for photos, and circle back. I pick failsafes and then get lost and can't find my way back. I don't want to go into crowded places both because of the racket and because I, again, figure they don't want to waste a table on lone eater. But I don't want to go into empty places because I figure they can't be good. I don't want to go into popular places because I might feel cheap. But I don't want to go into intimate places because I feel like a voyeur.

All this is nonsense, of course. But it makes eating a nightmare. It took me about half an hour to find a place to buy a slice of pizza mid-day. The guy was actually really rude, but the pizza was sublime ... salmon and herbs, I would call it. That said, it was 6 euros and I was still hungry. I forced myself into some place for an espresso just for practice. They were nice, but I was so shy that they actually had a chat about who should rescue me. Later, filled with overconfidence, I went into another espresso place and stood by the counter. Three clerks studiously ignored me until one finally pointed to the cashier ... o, thought I, pay first. I watched others put their tickets down on the counter, and so did I. But still they ignored me. Finally, the middle-aged and haughty waiter picked up my ticket and said long and languidly, "Shuuugaaar?" ... i.e., sugar. "no" quoth I and I think that got me a little cred. The espresso was sublime.

So when I set out at 8 to find a place to eat dinner ... this is Rome, mind you, where food is everywhere ... it took me 90 minutes and I finally ended up in an outdoor place in the Piazza de' Fiore. when I said "uno", the lady nodded and disappeared. A party of six crowded in front of me, so I retreated, and came bloody close to leaving. But I was starving at this point. So I stuck it out and finally the lady re-appeared, seeming annoyed that I was still there. She wanted to stick me in a back table, but I pointed to one up front, so she shrugged and nodded. The waiter was a fine older man who sensed my discomfort and warmed to me. I had gnocchi with black mushrooms and a Roman salad with anchovy dressing. And some wine. Delicious, not filling, and 40 euros. At that rate, I could be bankrupt on Sunday ... but it wouldn't matter because I would be passed out from hunger in some piazza no more than 60 metres from a feast.

So travel for me is a combination of fabulous days of seeing and walking and experiencing, and nightmarish nights of searching, searching, searching for something to eat.

Enough for now.

All photos by arod, taken today. More on my Flick site once I figure out how to upload stuff - for some reason it is being cranky and refusing!

Heading Home from the Gold Coast

I'm starting this post in the Auckland airport, this time at dusk ... six in the evening ... finishing it as we take off over the dark South Pacific heading home to San Francisco. The bright modern architecture of Auckland's new international area is suffused with low sunlight. There are four big goofy teenage boys in some kind of all black uniform at the next table, giggling and glancing at me as I have obviously noticed them, as hard as I try to pretend I have not. New Zealander youth, from my brief experience, seem to wear a lot of black. These black T-shirts are emblazoned with "Oceania Penrith 2009" on the back and New Zealand Canoe Polo on one sleeve, and i-4 on the other. The good life.

Sad moments as we said our several goodbye's earlier in the Brisbane airport. Not just the departure from family half a world away from everyday life. But the underlying tragedy that struck us a month ago; see my post xxx for those details.

But life moves on. Mother's 80th birthday is tomorrow, and that was the proximate cause of this trip. My sister brought mother here as a birthday present, and I decided it was the ideal time to make my first pilgrimage to the country my sister adopted as her own three decades ago. Life has always been too packed with immediacy to spur me to make the trip before and, besides, I saw her every couple of years in Ontario. I feel bad about that, the more so because of how much I enjoyed Australia.

Except for the one day in Brisbane, I spent the entire time on the Gold Coast and its immediate hinterland in the Great Barrier Range. Again, not the plan, but the great dust storm had its way. I spent all of every day except one with sister, brother-in-law, and nephew, and also visiting mother.

The Gold Coast where my sister's family has lived for nearly two decades is decidedly new. Explosively new. Not just the skyscrapers of Surfers' Paradise, but the sprawling suburbs that wrap around the canals and manmade lakes. That said, it really does feel like the good life ... the sun, the g-day mates, the broad visible happy middle class, the lack of any discernible poverty or misery. A tiny slice of the land down under, mind you, and the failed trip to Sydney is the more unsettling because the slice is broader and bigger and more troubling there, I am quite sure.

But this thing slice of the good life kept me thinking about my own good life. The pros and the cons. I'm not going to go through a laundry list, and indeed I have not been going through a laundry list. I've just been thinking that this is the time in life when I need to husband the pros and nudge the cons out of view. As those immediacies become less inistent, the broad generals need more attention.

Early in the week, we visited Tamborine Mountain, and I have been humming Hey Mr. Tambourine man, sing a song for me ever since. The Bob Dylan version is a song from my youth, when there was a lot of immediacy to everything, where every tiny slight or setback felt like an avalanche in my face. Notwithstanding that, and notwithstanding that I was a decided hothead politically and intellectually, I thought of myself as on some level cool, and music was the locus of the cool. So it was ironic to be humming Mr. Tambourine Man as an old guy who cannot help but be a lot cooler than he ever was if only by reason of how much energy it takes to get worked up. Not that I don't get worked up; I just don't like it any more.

The trip was very Mr. Tambourine Man, laidback, contemplative, sing-a-song-for-me, in the warm embrace of famly that endures and hugs.

I always want to learn something when I travel, and that's what I learned ... sing a song for me. I thought of it as tearful mother disappeared up the ramp in Brisbane ... a day shy of 80, hardly a gray hair on her head, remarkably spry and sharp. I thought of it as I hugged my sister and brother-in-law goodbye, feeling the pain of their loss, and vowing that our ancient connection needs all the attention it deserves, vowing to sing a song for each other, warm and laidback.

What else to make of Australia? I watched a couple of "footie" games, a Rugby League semi-final and the Grand Final of Australian Rules Football. In both cases the team that we were rooting for lost. In neither case do I remember the name of a single player. Both were excellent games, but the AFL Grand Final was gripping. It's a great sport ... wide-open, fast, athletic, spectacular men, both speed and pure force. A lot like hockey in that the game just keeps going, although the coaches have even less direct control over the actual game than hockey. I love AFL, and I wish we could see more of it in the States

But isn't it curious that the Australians have invented two complete games pretty much just for themselves, their own version of rugby and AFL? They call them, as well as Rugby Union which is rugby played by the universal rules, "footie." I'm a footie fan! And footie, it seems to me, expresses something about Australia ... old games made new.

Australia is a new land built on the most ancient continent facing the new challenges for which the known answers will not be enough. Even so, they enjoy the surf and sun, they dig the footie, they groove to their own language.

So, not to put too fine a point on it, what I learned from travel in Australia is that my own life is a new life, insofar as I have marched to my own drummer, but yet it is still built on those ancient dynamics of surviving and finessing the challenges for which no known answer can be ultimately enough as time drones on. I kept thinking about how isolated Australia seems when one is not there, and yet it is fully "here" and not at all isolated when you are there. Just like one's own life. Just like wherever you happen to be. So as I ruminated on the good life ... and that in the context of the personal pain we felt at our family tragedy ... the easy life amid the universal dross, I vowed to redouble my own commitment to those parts of my life that are good.

One more point, and then I'll put this computer away and lean back into the enjoyment of a 12-hour flight ... no sarcasm there at all ... and my current re-re-read of the Persian Wars. My nephew just came back to Australia after a half-year trip around the world, including to family in Canada. Aussies travel. But when they come back home, they settle into where they belong, back to the good life of the special secret Aussie joke on the rst of the world ... the one we all know about but don't quite grok.

Again ... we all have a little secret conspiracy, and the world doesn't quite get it. We smirk back at the world, knowingly, laughing, hoping that in some way our personal conspiracy is funny enough to carry us on in some kind of comfort and personal joy.

How odd. From this trip, from my communing with the Aussies, I found again a new urging to the quiet joys that are available to me, that are there for simply basking in them, sunning myself. Not what I expected; not what was on the agenda. But that was good.



Photos by Arod.

Getting All Short

Saturday morning ... only today and tomorrow left in Australia before the long trip home. Work on Tuesday.

As with most vacations, I have read and sent email pretty much daily. That's the way work is. It is also the way that vacations are ... no matter how far away you go, you are still there. Nothing remarkable in my thoughts on this. There's a piece on Salon today, Is the Internet melting our brains?, that again and once again tells everybody to chill out and recognize that change happens and the species does not disappear. On the other hand, a nice piece by San Francisco's Mark Morford about the impossibility of communicating with dedicated morons.

So yesterday was a trip to the sylvan mysteries of Springbrook including a sweet long waterfall. Today is garage sales with Gordon and Diane, old friends of the Australian family, both Americans who have been resident here for many decades. They live in a little house right on Palm Beach, retired and enjoying it ... truly the good life!

We had a couple of beers on the patio at the Palm Beach Surf Club last night. Cool scene. A fetching young waiter was mightily impressed that I lived in San Francisco ... he was almost tongue tied, wanted to know about baseball. One of the nice things remaining about our fair city, notwithstanding that it is getting rather dowdy and unexceptional in so many ways, is that it is still view as a fable elsewhere. I shouldn't be too cranky about San Francisco's new-found inner frump, though, as I am looking forward to being home. Like everyone, I hate when vacations come to an end. But this has been a rather long one for me, and there is an itchiness to reconnect with my life. I still feel a little let down by the Sydney mishap ... I'll probably be within shouting distance of 60 when I do finally see the city. But there it is ... I will return to my fabled city with my eyes still innocent of Australia's fabled city.

After our beers by the beach, we went to the little casino in the Surf Club. I bet a dollar and won a dollar. My nephew bet 10 and ended up with 165!

Let's call that a metaphor.

Photos by Arod: Purlingbrook Falls, the family on Palm Beach, north of Byron Bay from the lighthouse.

The Good Life

I just realized that I have been posting these Australia travel notes with San Francisco times ... I will have to go back and adjust the previous ones, and this note will disappear when I have done that.

When one travels, it is hard not to imagine that things are inherently better or worse somewhere else. Certainly things are different, but I would like to operate from the notion that notwithstanding vast differences in practice and expectation, not to mention material well being and circumstance, that most groups of people average the same amount of laughter and sorrow. I would like to operate that way, but not sure if it is right.

The most "exotic" places I have traveled ... and that probably means the place the furthest from my life experience ... are Haiti and Papua New Guinea. In the latter, people laughed a lot and life seemed good notwithstanding the rather restricted range of foodstuffs available to the highlanders. There is a good life in Papua New Guinea that would not seem very bloody good to me if I were compelled to live it. In this sense, Australia is probably the least "exotic" place I have ever traveled because the foodstuff range is pretty comparable to here I come from, the people speak English, and the expectations seem broadly similar.

Even so, the good life in Australia has a different timbre than the good life in San Francisco.

It's quite chilly this morning ... I even have a "jumper" on. A few days back it was warm in the morning, and the TV news was reporting that the weather was nice. The morning heat filled me with a certain foreboding because I fear the insufferably hot days for which this place is famous. The real foreboding should have been that the heat was a predictor for the dust storm of the century.

My point here, as attenuated as it apparently may be, is that the good life here is bloody hot. Most people go about their lives, working and doing, but the tiny strip where sand meets surf is where the good life abounds. The famous swagger of the semi-clad Australian youth points to and derives from that strip, and from the blazing heat and the quenching waves.

Some years ago on the island of Nias, Ian and I were walking through Gunungsitoli to a boat that would carry us back to Sumatra. Blazing hot. A bunch of Aussie surfer guys loudly declaiming as they strutted along, their accompanying women trailing behind, pouting, clearly not having quite the time of it that their males were having. We were cranky about them because they had interfered with our idyll at Teluk Dalam, on the south coast. The Aussie's claimed the western point of the bay on which we were staying because the surf was good there. As we sought inner peace and solitudinous reflection in the evening, they drunkenly whooped it up and made asses of themselves.

This is the favored fable of Aussie surfers. Life has moved on, of course, and Aussie women are as liberated as women anywhere else. But the actual swagger I witness here is not loud and aggressive, but sleek and self-assured. Notwithstanding that there is something cloying and annoying about people who are beautiful, athletic, unemployed and fancy free, yet evidently still with sufficient means to enjoy the good stuff ... the beach bums are the proximate definition of the good life here. They don't seem to need to rub it in or lord it over. They just strut along the street secure on the corner of the good life that has accrued to them. Of course, this notion would be considerably disabused were I to venture to the notorious nocturnal drinking binges where alcohol and youth conspire to turn the good into its opposite ... but I am not looking at the dialectic of sublime and crass here. Rather, I am trying to put my finger on what passes as the middle middle Australian sublime.

Yesterday Shane and I toured Byron Bay, surely one of the most exquisite places anywhere in the world. Natural beauty, beautiful people, leisure ... alas, artless architecture obscuring the few traces of an older more genteel world, crappy souvenirs, cars everywhere. Exquisite these days is not what it once was.

And there's a point ... worldwide, exquisite used to be reserved for the rich, and now there is increasingly an exquisite that crassly goes well down the social ladder. Australia is a particularly pointed argument for this, because it is a place founded broadly on a principle of elevating the working class. There is a leveling force here that brings the very broad middle up. The good life here is for everyone if they make the right choices ... work hard all year and go to the beach on your holidays; that's the meme.

Shane complains about the louts who live on the dole, clog up the streets, do nothing, get drunk and stoned, and view the good life as entitling them to a lifetime of free stuff and fun. Cranky, me too. When you work for a living, you resent those who game your taxes for leisure and indolence. Of course, long-term those who ply this thin trade find diminishing returns; we saw a few of those, skinny, leathered skin, shoeless, ambling. I think most of the beautiful surfer types do it until they marry up and family down.

This is just not a society which believes that the ordinary life is a trap or a failure ... this is not a society that sees Michael Jordan as success and everything else as not good enough. This is not a society that runs by the moronic motto that "you can be anything you want to be if you just try hard enough." The American mythology of excess is tempered here. They have three "footie" leagues that are very successful and barely known off the continent. No athlete in Australian society is making 20 million a year. But they are successful nonetheless.

The night of my dust-induced discomfiture, I asked of the family that we do something out there, something other than the warm embrace of togetherness and familiarity. I was disappointed that my excursion to Sydney was drowned in that now infamous red dawn. Let me wax a little personal on that ... this has been one of those middle-aged voyages of self-discovery in which settling in with my intimates provides an inner warmth and recovery that I probably could not have managed so freely when I was younger. That said, I did want to have my indefatigable wild streak massaged as well. The 24 hours in Sydney was my chance to be a fag, that is a self-actualized, self-defined individual, unknown in the big city, observing, being observed, haunting and strutting in such a strut as I still manage. It was my mid-50s version of the good life, formed up and pared down to a single day and night of forced-march tourism, as I like to call it. It's really all I needed. And the fact that it was stolen by nature's sudden descent did not reduce the humbling that it induced. I am over the humbling now, and back to smirking about how little our little conceits matter in the larger frame. The memory of what I missed is not part of my inner self-mockery, and that will be my mental souvenir. That, and the vow that the next time I come to Australia (in three years for my nephew's promised graduation) I fly into Sydney and do it first.

So back to the family's night out. We went to the Currumbin Surf Club ... an Australian style institution which supports the good life by plowing the profits back to supporting the surf patrol. Leslie and Shane are members; Scott, my nephew, came along as well. Mother was enjoying a Happy Hour with my sister's mother-in-law at the seniors' development. And, to set the scene, Currumbin is surely the coolest town on the coast here, seemingly least developed, most like it ought to be, low rise, long beach, laidback.

We didn't get a table right away, but drank our beers on the balcony ... the air was still filled with dust, though we could see the moon and one start. The In The Bin Film Festival "Board Shorts" were showing on the flat panels when we got our table which was right next to where a bunch of dreadlocked musicians were setting up for what promised to be a bloody loud set of music. Hmmm, we nervously, middle-agedly, fretted. Can we thrust these burgers down fast enough to get out of here before the racket interrupts. Mother was waiting to be picked up at 8, we got our table after 7 ... so this was the big night out on a foreshortened schedule.

And then the band started. They were incredible ... called a FRENCH BUTLER called SMITH. They say of themselves that they are a world music band that plays "high energy Latin, funk, instrumental fusion" ... a little Chick Corea, a little didgereedoo, lots of funk, jumping and jiving. The guitarist, Scott French, was a wave, and the bassist, Jake Martin, was a babe and a force of nature. There was a sax and a trumpet. Wow.

So that was my little sight of the good life on that dusty evening. The Surf Club, the world funk jive grooves, the crowd mixed of middle aged and youth. A skinny kid in a German hunting hat, as I call it, tapping his foot and watching to see who watched him. Huge burgers. And the roiling sky outside, still plugged with the dust that is the harbinger of the ultimate end of it all.

I did buy the CD, and had a sweet chat and a tap of the arm with the sexy bassist pictured below. Ah, the good life.



Photos by Arod. 1. The Lighthouse at the easternmost point in Australia. 2 and 3. Byron Bay. 4 and 5. a French Butler called Smith in performance at the Currumbin Surf Club.

Global Warming Bites: No Way to Sydney

Somehow, nature hit me in the bulls eye yesterday. If I had chosen a flight 3 hours earlier or 3 hours later, I would probably be in Sydney right now and I would not be writing this post. I would be emerging from the Wattle Hotel on Oxford Street, heading to a long purposeful march through a city I have hankered to visit for decades.

But no! The dust storm of the century hit me ... and pretty much the entire East Coast of Australia ... between the eyes. Sydney was the land of the red horror. Meanwhile, I was trapped in the Gold Coast airport figuring that luck would not abandon me, and I'd still make it out. After four hours, they canceled my flight. I'm probably out about 200 bucks, but I might end up getting some of that back if I pursue it diligently.

But that, of course, is not the story.

The not so big secret of Australia is that it is the driest continent. It also is sustaining one of the most rapid population growth rates in the world. And, speaking of bulls eyes, it is feeling the earliest and most devastating effects of global warming. The causes of this unusual dust storm are drought, warm spring, and denuded farmland. The red dawn in Sydney was the sight of people waving goodbye to the topsoil that has fed them for a century.

Even so, there we were stuffing fast food garbage into the bins at the airport which serves this explosively expanding tourist spot with nary a care other than our shattered plans to photograph Sydney Harbor from the Manley ferry, or whatever equivalent mattered by person. I actually grabbed a water bottle from a girl's tray as she dumped it into the garbage and told her that was recyclable ... the recycling bin was 6 inches away, so perhaps it was too much trouble for her. She gave me a pissy look.

I sat for a while across from a large happy Chinese family ... speaking Chinese, but I thought they were Australians. The older boy, obviously the family's apple-eye, pouted and pushed away the boxed individual pizza that Auntie brought him; the pizza went straight into the garbage. The boy later stretched and yawned in front of daddy who took a moment from his interminable cell phoning to rub his scion's fat belly. Meanwhile, the considerably skinnier and younger girl was left to her own devices.

On the upside of the people watching in the terminal where no one left, a surfer dude unconsciously pushed his T-shirt up and picked at his navel.

In the course of my slow resignation to the aborted Sydney trip, I ordered two coffees from the same place ... we established that the correct order is double-shot, short pull espresso, half full in a small cup ... and was charged a different amount for each order. They botched the second one, but I downed it anyway while looking out the window (photo above), peering into the gloom in hope of catching a few rays of hope from above. I tried to read my book ... a fevered popularization of the Greek/Persian Wars of the fifth century B.C.E. called Persian Fire. But even the cavortings of Darius could not distract me from my disappointment.

Later, I had a nice night out with the family instead of cruising The Oxford. I will report on that shortly. But right now, I want to feel sorry for myself ... which, as the Republicans will point out, is so much more important than doing something about the headlong dive into disaster into which our accumulated selfishnesses is pitching our planet.


Photos by Arod. Top one of the runways at the Gold Coast airport, bottom one of mannequins inside the airport ... one of a long series of mannequin photos.

First Day of Spring

Yesterday was blazing hot in Brisbane. We walked around downtown ... sister, brother-in-law, mother, and me; nephew went off with his cousin. This is a very family trip, and I have been the happy recipient of all-in travel planning. Everyone has been very patient with my shutterbug-itis. I have been less patient with my own inability to keep up with the photo processing.

The second to last stop in Brisbane was a wonderful bookshop called Archives that advertises itself as having over a million books; it inhabits the building pictured above. Almost worth moving to Brisbane for. They claim to have a web site, but it is broken right now. It did seem a little pricey, and one of the online reviews had the same opinion. Not sure how much used books cost in Australia. I ended up buying two souvenir tomes, one a 1925 geography of the world with an old school library checkout form pasted in the front page, the other a small 1941 book of reminiscences on Australia intended for servicemen on duty. The title is Australia: My Country, and the author is Charles Barrett. A very sentimental volume. I was fretting over whether to buy it until I saw that one of its short pieces is an essay on climbing Mount Tamborine before the road was put in.

It turns out that I am a day ahead of myself in this report. Because two days ago we went up to Mount Tamborine which looks out over the Gold Coast as it shelters a national park and a little tourist town of artsy shops. Just before the town, though, we were witness to three young men who through themselves off the mountain, albeit attached to gliding devices that lofted them high. The guy with the sail device ... alas, I do not know the terms ... was ghoulishly wrapped head-to-toe; I assume that it must get cold at the heights which he quickly attained. The fixed wings guys drifted downward until they found a thermal over which they spiraled back upwards. I do not have the risk/thrill personality type, but even so I could not help but fantasize at how exhilarating the ride of the first fellow must be. It seemed like he was in airliner country up there. How peaceful how serene, how utterly terrifying.

After that we settled into the little town of Tamborine with its crafts and tourist gee-gaws. I bought a bar of convict soap that said "Gentle after 50 lashes". Now it is stinking up my bag. I also bought a couple of non-local pieces of colorful glass that will go in the garden. And we settled in for some chocolates and coffee at a nice little place where the espresso machine was out of doors. The young woman confessed that she never guessed where people were from because they would invariably be offended if she guessed wrong. People are such twits.

From Tamborine to the Knoll, a part of Tamborine National Park. My sister is a high muckamuck in the Queensland government land use administration. She has moved through the ranks, and knows so much about land use, climate change, endangered and invasive species. Always a delight to tour with an expert. We had lunch in the Knoll, and the Brush Turkeys and Magpies harassed us. Speaking of birds, Ibis are as common as muck ... they flocked in great numbers in the cooling pools of water surrounding the power plant next to Swanbank where we took the steam train yesterday.

Leslie and I took a brief jaunt down a trail to see the rainforest ... some unidentifiable brown birds about the size of robin were mucking into the mulch, actually burying themselves, and paying little attention to our approach. We left them to what we presumed was their worming. We would have taken a much longer stroll ... rainforest is unendingly repetitive, and thereby meditative ... but my game and hearty near 80-year-old mother does not hike with quite the vigor of years gone by. She is game, and interested. But the body does place a limit.

On the way down the mountain, we were witness to some ancient car, overfilled with humanity, that was blowing smoke and bout to collapse, its last mission cut short by overly optimistic modern drivers who decline to admit that there is, in fact, a limit to everything.

So back to Brisbane. Quite a city, and one, by my sister's report, that has exploded from sleepy town to urban giant in the space of a couple of decades. The ancient buildings were nestled into the mushrooming modernity. Leslie is moving from a middle-aged skyscraper to one of the latest shortly ... I want a photo of her new office from where she will reign over Queensland's exceptionally rich land resources.

Mother struck up a conversation with another old lady in the food court. She was a bushwhacker, one of 10 children, raised and resident in the outback. In Brisbane on some errand. I did not hear the conversation, alas, but Mother was fascinated and the two hit it off like old friends while I dug into a massive Japanese rice bowl.

We did a little public transit in Brisbane ... a catamaran ferry down the river, and later a bus back from downtown to the car park in South Bank, a beautifully developed park and play land. Public transit is the best cheap way to know a place.

My only regret in our five hours of rapid deployment is that I did not get much of a chance to photograph the fabulous bridges of the Brisbane River. I'll look for post cards instead.



Heading to Sydney today despite its being in the middle of a red dust storm. Domestic flights seem to be still on track. If for any reason I get bumped, there are no refunds, so I am going to hang on until they chase me out of the airport if it comes to that. I have about 26 hours on the ground in Sydney, and I want to make use of every second.

Photos by Arod. Falling behind on Flickr, but will keep after it. Not likely to upload anything until after I return from Sydney.

Rain and Steam

Not necessarily in any order.


Before I get to our trip to Swanbank ... It rained briefly last night. Tropical rains are so sensual. The big drops, the loud patter, the sweet odor. It reminds me of the best tropical rain I ever felt. On the Trobriand Islands in 1983 with my friend Ian. We had just arrived and set out for a walk. The rain arrived suddenly, heavy, warm, inundating. We just kept walking as children laughed an pointed from under banana leaves. We ended up in the closest thing to a town ... Losuia, I think ... drenched to the skin. But by the time we were back at the hotel, we were only damp ... as damp as you might be in the tropics if there hadn't been a rain.

That hotel in the Trobriands was owned by an Aussie ex-pat who had his ear glued most of the time to a short-wave radio with the footy on. Footy would be football, and my nephew Scott informed me today that it is spelled with a 'y' not an 'ie' as I had assumed. I enjoy Australian English ands train to hear its varieties as we wander about.

Wandering included a trip to Swanbank where we boarded a classic, restored steam train on Sunday, the Queensland Pioneer Steam Railway. A total hoot! The billowing black steam was the most 19th century part of the deal, but the cramped cabins, the beautiful wood, the unannounced stoppages ... it all made it so easy to imagine rail travel in another time when distance meant so much more than now. We waited in the torpid heat in our car, the Bonnie Dundee, on a siding as the crew prepared to offload one car and connect up to another ... reasons were not provided. This was in the middle of a bit of a railway graveyard, and all the slow decaying metal made me shutter-happy.

At some point we got talking about how much further away Australia was in the mid-70s when my sister first moved here. For good or ill, the world is contracting. That said, I still send three postcards wherever I go, and those are ready for the post some time today.

Gonna take a break and make some coffee ... no matter that I am half a world away from home, I am still bolt awake at 5!

As I say, we sat in the Bonnie Dundee, and we were the only group without wee children. One said children was a messy looking little girl who was not squirm-free for more than a flash the entire journey. She particularly liked hanging out of the window, and her father, a hale-fellow-well-met lad of a man, only occasionally saw fit to haul her back in. Mother and I, sitting together right behind, cringed in unison. I mentally timed my leap across the seat in front of me to see if I could retrieve her from disaster. Her accompanying young brother, in the care of what appeared to be the grandfather was more the muttering type whose excursions were limited to purposeful trips up and down the aisle. Even so, he was more than once perilously close to tumbling off the balcony. What a grump I am ... I wish there were options for child-free outings ... or at least outings where the children where sworn to the seen-not-heard standard of yesteryear for which I loudly hanker.

So after the train ride, we went into Ipswitch, an old mountain working class town that is feeling the pressure of gentrification. It is a straight-shot train ride to downtown Brisbane, but it still has that old small-city charm. I can see why people would want to live here, notwithstanding that the lack of ocean breezes makes it hotter by day and colder by night than the coast.

We went to the Ipswitch RSL ... Returned Servicemen's League, I think ... for lunch. It seemed such a characteristically Australian place. A club, with membership and special rules for non-member entrance. A bar, a buffet, food to order, entertainment, and slots. The club funnels its profits to assorted community ventures. There was an enormous old guy propped up on a stool at the bar, and it was obvious that here was his spot which he guards with dull alacrity day in and day out. The underlying socialism of this decidedly capitalist country is part of that secret conspiracy of which I spoke a day or two ago. All the Aussies get it, and you have to admire it ... but I'm not quite in on the punchline. Back to the prosaic ... enormous feed, hearty food. I erred in having a bourbon on the rocks as I was ready for bed for the rest of the day.

Photos by Arod. I am uploading a whole lot of them to Flickr as I write this, and will add the link here when the upload is done.