Snow Falling on Geezers

The first Moleskine entry for my second day in London is this: "Visited Charles Dickens' house (also a museum), which is a wonderful place for any writer." Yet another example of terrible note-taking: What in the hell happened before that visit?

I should have started like this:

I awoke early, showered, and walked out of my room and into the B&B's small and simple lobby where a couple of small tables were set up for breakfast, looked out the window and saw that it was snowing. Breakfast consisted of hard-boiled eggs, toast, coffee. I ate as much as I could since my plan was to spend as little money on food as possible. then, with my daypack slung over my shoulder, I stepped outside, took the snow as a good sign, and walked several blocks to Paddington Station where I would catch the Underground.

Or maybe this:

I have stayed in hotel rooms in my life that were filthy, ugly, unsafe--pick an adjective. In Olongapo, Philippines, during martial law, I once spent a night in a room I could not leave between midnight and sunrise. All night a music-loop of about 20 songs played through a speaker in the ceiling, which was bad enough but made worse because one of the songs was Abba's "Dancing Queen." You listen to an Abba song all night long and see how you turn out in later years.... The room in which I slept last night is more of a cell than a bedroom, and while I can endure it, I would not bring my wife here: The bed is concave; the bathroom is the Yugo of bathrooms; the window faces an alley filled with trash and the brick wall of the building next door.

But I didn't start either of those ways, so let's jump back to Dickens and his house, which looks like this:



The Dickens Museum is full of his personal relics: a drinking glass; a snuff box; a cribbage board; some of his clothing (he must have been a small man). There are photos of his children. Another item not in the Moleskine is that the museum was full of French schoolchildren who enjoyed running up and down the stairs or standing in front of the doorways so that I had to pass from one room to another with difficulty. One of their adult teachers was frustrated that the museum shop did not accept Euros; he then spent a good 10 minutes trying to get his credit cards accepted.

After leaving the museum, I wandered the neighborhood imagining Dickens doing the same, enjoying the the light drizzle the snow had become. I also took a picture of this pigeon:



Then, more by chance than intent, I found the British Library, where there are originals of the Magna Carta, works by Shakespeare and Mozart, hand-written lyrics by the Beatles.

Somehow, then, I ended up at Covent Market, where I visited St. Paul's Church and had a pasty for lunch. The last entry is this: "Then, later, I walk around near the Tower of London but refuse the entry fee. The place is impressive, as are the remnants of the Roman wall nearby." Here are pictures of the wall (left foreground) and the Tower (across the street).



That's it--incredibly incomplete, as if I had noticed no details of importance. What else is in the British Library? What's the significance of St. Paul's Church? WHAT WAS IN THE DAMNED PASTY?

Reviewing the Reviewer: Part Two

Rather than Dan. Stronger than Stan. And Van the Man.

While ruminating deeply over the exquisite consistency of Santa Cristina Sangiovese and making friends with my radical sign [which is Capricorn/Pisces for you ladies] the deja vus of The Cold Room where I sit draw me here once again. I've also had lunch with my Colleague of Sorts who is doing fine pre-arranging the candy plot twists and sweet characters in his next confection and novel resurrection.

With new Moleskins in hand and a new favorite band, we lunched at the North Beach Coppola Cafe Zeotrope where you can still buy a copy of One From the Heart and consume Carbonara for late Saturday breakfast. He departed on the train that evening headed for The Big Valley reading a killer Germanic book of despair. You can review his long journey into blight on the literary location mashups soon to be provided with Google's Where You At, Ishmael? program on Facebook if you like.

Meanwhile staggering over to the point, let's get our theme on here because it's totally sick, dude. With grand aplomb, my researchers burst in with big chests heaving and thongs snapping this afternoon so excited about their find and rightly so. Bidding them a seat together on my ample beanbag chair at the foot of my desk, I asked them to explain rather than writhing together in bliss.

"POETRY COLLECTION! ECCO! Bukowski! The Pleasures of the Damned: Poems, 1951-1993! 576 pages! 1.8 lbs! New York Times! Written by Harrison!"

Throw in a dinner with Jack Nicholson and Orson Welles as background material reading from The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand. Now watch the Legends of the Fall guy try to tackle the Dirty Old Man on his own turf in his own house. Though Jim's need to conveniently consult a seemingly serendipitous fictional Frenchman to explain his Celine shock and awe filled me with surprise making me surmise that his head's going bad perhaps worse than his eyes, I totally buy Jim's overall take and love his Milosz quote because these are my guys. It's mostly a question of style and baby they've got it.

The girls got bored, said they were thirsty, and immediately needed to watch America's Top Model, leaving me with the parting words: "Shut up, Daddio! Read it you creep! Analyze in your sleep!" So follow their advice my friends. And call me if you're up late at night in mourning.

All My Friends Are Going to be Strangers

The title for this entry is not original, but is the title of a novel by Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show, and so on). The title's implications, however, have, as of late, been leaving traces of fairy dust in the title-quadrant of my brain. Many titles--the names of stillborn novels and poems--have died there, undusted.

McMurtry's title bounced to the forefront several weeks ago when I attended a social function co-hosted by a woman I have been friends with for nearly 20 years. I was seated at a table watching and listening to celebratory commotion when I realized I had been nudged to a circle a bit outside of "close friends." Around the room like so many orbiting planets were new people, ones I did not know and will never meet.

Not long after that function, I was having lunch with someone I've known for nearly as long, and somewhere in our conversation he spoke of doing things that would take him to places I would never see. I again thought of McMurtry's title and how much truth there is in it, how people who seem so close might not be for long. I also remembered a photograph of my son and one of his friends in elementary school. The two boys smile into the camera, their hands clasping a large sign on which is painted "Best Friends Forever." But their paths diverged not long after. And, because for various reasons I am prone to sadness for this son, I found myself wishing for him a lifetime of friendships.

This all sounds, perhaps, more desultory and dramatic than I intend. Mostly, I wanted to write something about the title, and look where I ended up.

Book of Sighs

My friend Tom gave me my first Moleskine notebook in 2004. In it, I have chronicled three years' worth of various travels, excursions, and minor expeditions to the following, some more than once:

• St. Louis, MO
• Chicago, IL
• Portland, OR
• Kansas City, MO
• Martha's Vineyard, MA
• Boston, MA
• Providence, RI
• Phoenix, AZ
• Mendocino, CA
• Gualala, CA
• South Lake Tahoe, NV
• Hartford, CT
• Ely, MN
• San Francisco, CA
• Edinburgh, Scotland
• London, England
• York, England
• Canterbury, England
• Ouray, CO
• Woodstock, IL
• Elko, NV
• Tillamook, OR

I also have recorded certain quotations, such as these:

• From Pascal: "The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first."
• From Kierkegaard: "I can't bother to write what I have just written, and I can't bother to blot it out."
• From Chatwin: "To lose a passport was the least of one's worries: to lose a notebook was a catastrophe."
  

My Moleskine is about two-thirds full now, and I am using it to compose various and occasional descriptions of my trip to Europe. What I am finding, however, is a certain lack of detail. For instance, my first day in London I wrote that I had "navigated the underground to the area near the British Museum." I wrote of spending 15 minutes figuring out how to navigate through the subway tunnels, but I have not one note about what I saw in the museum itself.

Have you heard of the Rosetta Stone, for example?

Leafing through the notebook now, however, I see the same pattern for three years: overviews and highlights, nothing in-depth. Another example: I did not note that, on my second day in London, I awoke to a light snowfall. I have remembered, however, that most of my note-taking involved an even smaller, more portable notebook, and from that one I would transcribe my notes into the one now on the sofa cushion beside me.

So, before describing more about Europe, I need to find the original notes, to un-censor myself. Chatwin was correct: losing a notebook is a catastrophe for a writer. What's worse, though, is to have an incomplete notebook. (We will return to the idea of notebooks when I describe Edinburgh; you'll have to wait for that.)

Dead Man Talking

Kominiski beat me to the punch--or the post, anyway, about Mailer, someone who wrote plenty of books, none of which I've read.

I was in Border's yesterday afternoon thinking about that: yet another dead author whose books I've not opened. The most I knew about him was that he'd stabbed one of his wives. (William S. Burroughs shot one of his wives, though I'd like to think that both Mailer and Burroughs truly did love women when all was said and... well, "done" might not fit. Hemingway, an author many feminists apparently dislike because, I think, of how he portrayed and treated women, was at least polite enough to shoot himself. Does that mean he loved women more than the other guys?)

Like I said, I was in Border's, where I wandered around a bit thinking I'd like to buy a Mailer book, but how cliche' would that be, buying a book written by some guy who'd just died? Even the young clerks at the cash register would see through that ruse. Besides, I don't have room on my bookshelves for more books, and I've still got over 200 pages of A Tale of Two Cities to plow (or, for Dickens, plough?) through.

Mailer will have to wait. I've considered using the library every now and then, so perhaps I'll find him waiting for me there. Slate has an article of interest, if you've got the time. Of course, there will be articles everywhere, at least for awhile. That's how literature tends to work: Some guy spends a lifetime writing, then when he dies, people write about him, dissect what he said and wrote, place him in his appropriate place in the Canon.

And people like me, people who are old enough to know better, should've jumped the gun, been pro-active, been ahead of the curve, anticipated the value-added bring before it was even brought.

I Read the News Today...See Ya Norman

By Lazlo Kominski

Norman Mailer is dead.

Bukowski. Vonnegut. Milosz. All epic men. All now dead.

VHOPE must think I have barged in here like a drunk uncle with a flat tire looking for a beer and needing to use the phone then the bathroom two nights in a row. "Mind if I spend the night your couch looks empty thanks gotta beer?"

I will try to act like a guest. From the looks of things, we are all guests here. And as Jack Nicholson's character said in The Departed, "Act accordingly!"

Norman has checked out. We were on a first name basis though he never returned the favor since we never met.

This evening I picked up TOUGH GUYS DON'T DANCE.

"He might wash his hands after making love, but, no, I would not call him a swish."

Then ANCIENT EVENINGS.

"With or without a face, a dead and naked Egyptian does not look like a dead Asiatic. We have less hair on our bodies."

And then PICASSO.

"To the contrary, he was always reminded, and would remind others, of his extraordinary powers."

These books were opened randomly to a page. Quick scan and finger point. Boom.

Raise a glass. Sing a song. Drink it loud.

"Well some people try to pick up girls
And get called assholes
This never happened to Pablo Picasso
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist his stare and
So Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole"

--Words and Music by Jonathan Richman as sung by John Cale

Notes and Thoughts on a Really Long Harper's Review of Tree of Smoke - D. Johnson - Hardcover: 624 pages. 2.2 lbs. (2007)

By Lazlo Kominski

Long review. Long book. Right up there with the big boys but not quite Against the Day at 1085 and 3.4. Anything longer than a Houllebeque novella is bound to tax an evening reading working man. Or even a fella.

Signed up for Harper's when the high school daughter came home with MAGAZINE FUNDRAISER materials. SO MONTHS LATER the first one hits my mailbox to the coffee table. I pick it up as a lifevest here in the living room's ESTROGEN POOL. Waterwings in the teen premenstrual and postmenopausal waves.

There are the Harper's articles, index, bits. So I read the Castro beard piece out loud to the soon to be ex-wife. She finds it surprising that Fidel could be so intelligent. This imploding dissolution comes as no surprise, I tell myself again for the tenth time.

I look in the back of the magazine finding there is an 8-PAGE ESSAY couched as review of Denis (Angels) Johnson's new book about Vietnam and so much more called Tree of Smoke. The reviewer says it starts with an idiot killing a monkey so I may actually BUY and READ this book. Just having finished P.K. Dick's Humpty Dumpty in Oakland with 250 pages, I am ready for a stretch book but my trainer says, "Stay closer to your weight class. Go 350 and let's see."

When you've looked back to think after four or five drinks that Dispatches and Waiting for Cacciato might be the two best books you've read and Apocalypse Now is the best movie, others unschooled in those works may surmise maybe you have some issues.

BOO-YAH! The Others don't listen to The Doors anymore. They probably think Tom Brokaw has equal footing with Dan Rather and the late great Peter Jennings when that ratty little starched preppie flunkie bastard spouted only establishment rhetoric in place of the news. He may write books of disguised propaganda in retirement, but he's no Walter Cronkite. He's barely a Katie Couric. Not that there's anything wrong with that. You know what they say.

They say this writer is a smoking whoring wino listening to loud music who is a drunk which is now a VERY BAD THING. But the 60s were more than sex, drugs, and rock and roll. There was a war to stop. I hear there is a war going on right now. On poverty, drugs, terrorism, oil, and democracy. New fronts are breaking out every day someone dissents or raises a red flag. War on coffee. War on tea. War on me.

So COUNT OFF! Sing the song. 1-2-3 what are we fighting for?

May your best country win. Ready, BREAK!

Bread and Water

On March 21, 2007, I walked out of London's Victoria Station and found that I was lost. Not in a bad way, just in a way.

I had landed at London's Gatwick airport a few hours earlier, made my way through customs, took a tram to to a train, and finally--and eagerly--disembarked in Victoria Station. This meant that the easy part was over, as I knew would be the case. Disoriented, I asked for help at the information booth where I was greeted by a tall black man who had hair to the middle of his back. Giving him the name of the hotel I was heading to, he helped me find the location on a map. I had looked at many maps before arriving, and I thought that I could probably walk from Victoria Station to the hotel; all I had to do was navigate to and then across Hyde Park.

"Can I walk there?" I asked.

He looked at me. He looked at my backpack. "You want to walk?"

I told him that, since leaving home, I'd been in one car, in an airport, on a plane, in another airport where I had to ride a tram to a different terminal so I could sit around and wait for another plane to a different airport, where I rode another tram to the train that had brought me to him--and I thought I should walk.

Really, all I said was, yes, I thought I might like to walk.

So, I walked, relying on my small map as I learned that while sometimes signs showing street names are on the sides of buildings, sometimes they are not but are lower, perhaps on a fence. Nevertheless, I finally reached Hyde Park, which is much larger than it appears on a map displayed on a computer screen.

Then I got lost in Hyde Park. I thought I had myself oriented; I thought I was smart enough to figure things out.

A digression: When I was four years old, my younger cousin and I walked out of my family's apartment in Harvard, Illinois, and wandered up and down the railroad tracks. I remember an old man carrying a lantern telling us we should go home. I remember riding home in the back of a police car. I remember the two of us being fed lunch (bologna sandwiches) when we got back to the apartment and then being sent to different bedrooms. I do not remember being found--standing in front of a bar, crying.

Another digression: The person I generally go backpacking with knows how to read maps. He knows north and south with his eyes closed. He has navigated a sail boat in the dark. When I go backpacking alone, I never leave the trail. I have never navigated a sail boat.

Remember the man at the information booth? I should have taken his advice: "Take a cab."

But, like most children, I at least do know what to do if I am lost in the woods: hug a tree. That way, someone will find you, and you will be rescued. There are many trees in Hyde Park, but I did not hug one. Instead, I sat on a bench near The Serpentine, which is an artificial lake. I watched a couple of men clean some rental boats. Some joggers jogged by, and I watched them.

I was already tired of my backpack. I was also cold, weary, and hungry. But, I did not cry as I had when I was four. Instead, I pulled from my pack a small container of water and a breadroll--leftovers from the dinner served somewhere between Dallas and London.

Ha! Isn't that pathetic! A fat old man sitting on a bench in London's Hyde Park, washing stale bread down his gullet with warm water. Who did I think I was--Oliver Twist? What rights did I have to such misery?

Okay. It wasn't miserable. It was, instead, a way to relax, to look closely at my map without walking, of letting myself enjoy the fact that I was not only not in a cubicle dealing with the bizarre nature of the corporate world, I was in London. Eventually, I continued walking, only to have some difficulty finding my way out of Hyde Park. Then, when I finally did escape, I spent another hour looking for my hotel, which must have been moving around somehow.

And the hotel? It was a pit. A dive. A dump. A firetrap. But, at least for a couple of nights, it would be home--and I had more in mind than spending much time in bed.

Dots, Connecting the

A reader of this blog-thing pointed out a thematic connection that I hadn't caught: the poem "Wanderlust" from August 8 and the idea of 'restlessness' from "Light Travels" on November 3. Funny how things connect without our knowing. Perhaps Lazlo's Muse ("Musings," Oct. 27), or at least her homely second-cousin, is at work....

Shawn Pittard's comment on the Nov. 3 entry reminded me of a line from "Walking," an essay by Thoreau: "...you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking." Thoreau also differentiates between "exercise" and "walking," though you'll have to find the essay itself if you want to read what he says.

As I ponder how to begin describing my fairly recent journey to England and Scotland, the first thing I think of is walking--that's what I did. Miles. Many miles, starting with the moment I found my way out of Victoria Station in London. My shoes came home lopsided, I walked so many miles.

So, I think that when I start writing about that journey, I'll start with something like this: "On March 21, 2007, I walked out of London's Victoria Station and found that I was lost."

Light Travels

I am not sure of when I acquired a sense of restlessness. Perhaps it is a characteristic driven by DNA, though perhaps it is simply habit. A long time ago I spent over two years on an aircraft carrier in Japan, and the ship was rarely in port for more than two weeks at a stretch, so I got used to coming and going. Sometimes we would simply float around the ocean; sometimes we would visit other ports. If I wasn't working when we were tied to the pier, I spent my free time wandering, on the base and off. And, more often than not, I wandered alone, something that being the only boy in a family of seven made me quite used to. If I had been able to speak Japanese, I would have wandered farther than I did, but I have never admitted to being especially brave. I was comfortable walking around Yokosuka; I was always comforted visiting Kamakura.

Then I came home and got a job delivering furniture before starting college, and I found that I was happier being in motion than not. Maybe, in that sense, college was good--I was always busy, since I also worked at night. I got married just a couple of years after the navy, and our first son was born not long afterward. Then I was busy for years after three more sons were born, after I returned to college for graduate school, after I started teaching part-time at night.

And still--restlessness, wanting to be moving, visiting, traveling, experiencing. Backpacking is good. Soccer was good. Riding my bike remains good. Occasional business travel has been good. Six months ago there was something very good: 13 days of solo traveling in England and Scotland. It was also a purely selfish act, and I'm now working on ways to describe the journey. Stay tuned.