Sunday, June 28, 2009

tic

The last thing I wrote about had something to do with a piano teacher and a little girl, the same little girl in Paris who I saw catching sparrows with tiny shoe-lace nooses.

The piano teacher falls in love - sort of - with his little student, mainly because she is a genius on the keys, delicate and sad and inpiring. But also, it should be said, because he is despicable and lonely, and although very handsome, he is aged, widowed and peniless.

The affair begins with a postcard he sends to her ( a post card I really found in a garage sale up in Montmartre). He is always calling her 'his little friend' and with each lesson they have he falls madder and madder in love - wreslting all night with images of her perfect piano playing, her hands on the keys, etc and so on.

One day she kisses him on the cheek just as her mother picks her up from the lesson.

And then I was thinking of pretty much ending the story right there.

(However there's a chance that somethign entriely differnet would happen - ill explain in a second - but it's a little fantastical and I don't much know what kind of stuff I would rather be writing: little empty vignettes, saying nothing really; or obvious little stories saying something, but not much.

He would, after the little kiss, stay up all night feverishly writing a beautiful beautiful piece. He would play mad and marvelously. And since he used to be a prodigy himself, it would be as if he were young again, and life was good again, and all the right music, it just comes to him, and through him, like a sieve of light - no a sieve for light. Playing piano like how he used to - before years and marriage and death and life drained him and his talent of potential or success.

Anyway, he stays up all night and the next day, he keeps on playing the piano. He just can't stop. He goes all through the weekend, day and night. Only pausing to scribble some notes, have a cigarette, or a coffee. Complete mania - but really really genius, extravagant mania.

The little girl comes back the next week for her lesson; and he is no longer - he discovers, with only slight surprise - at all inspired or touched by her presence. In fact, he can't even stand to listen to her play anymore. Before the lesson is over, she is kicked out,, crying and even admiting she adores him, begging for him to not be so cruel, but the piano teacher - unwashed, unshaven, but crazy happy - - sits down to continue with his work.

A few hours later, as the sun is setting, outside on the street two neighbours talk between eachother. They have been out on their front lawns, maybe watering the garden, or washing their cars or something, and they start to chat. They can hear him playing, the sweet and sad and wonderful melodies coming through the windows, and they say just how beautiful it all sounds.

***

This is more the kind of thing I want to be doing here . I cringe that I made a promise to end a stupid wornout travel blog in a four-parter, and I am only halfway done.

I am drinking scotch and recently I thought of an old friend and some older, deader, poet friends (who(m?) I never met).

The next two parts will come soon to the conclusion. But I can tell you right now they are entirely fictional.

There's the two weeks I will spend living in a Paris hotel with a girl I met in a hostel. I can't see that being too interestign or beautiful, however, I just really want to try out a scene or two and see how that goes. (I will probably throw in a few scenes from Buenos Aires too. There was a few things - again that never really happenned - that I've been dying to tell you all about.

And the final part is going to be a gigantic explosion of fireworks and will be limited by words but not by emotion or vision. It's going to mean absolutely nothing to me, except for the fact that it's all over and time to find a new place to get really excited about. By place I mean this website stuff. I've told a few of my friends how important it is to me to write online; otherwise I can't write at all anymore. I think perhaps if I got a typewriter . . .

that's enough for now.

this wasn't anything.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Part Two: how I became a kid pushing his own stroller

. . . and so, there I was, in Helsinki, surrounded by five, maybe six, beautiful, blonde Finnish girls."

At a backyard party in Toronto, with about 30 local hipsters, and fresh off a plane from Paris, I am speaking to an exgirlfriend, telling her this story.

"Uh uh," she says, smoking with arms crossed, one hand extended to her lips, her eyes scanning everywhere, in flits.

"I mean really fucking beautiful," I say, I go on. "Can't really even believe it, you know. Oh! And they are all, like, 18! 18 years old, anyway ..."

"Right... um hmm, figures," she jokes, briefly making eye contact, discerning, scrunchy eyes, understanding and emmitting a sense of history, there.

"And so ... well I was with them because there was no fucking way I was going to spend my last night in Helsinki smoking and drinking gin and tonics, you know, just watching these people in these horrible clubs, so I went up to a few girls and we started talking. Next thing I know there's five of them, and it's one of the girls' birthday's, and before you know it I'm acting like I know this one Finnish MTV host, and since I speak English, I go up to him and we start to talk, and I like become an immediate hero..."

"Right, amazing, umm, do you want one of these?" Handing me a cigarette; three or four noisy people around us, and just as many conversations.

"And we are all having an amazing time now. And we're walking towards this kareoke club which they all know, and really want to go to, and then all of a sudden a guy comes down the street, racing down this cobble stone-paved hill, and I don't see it, but you hear a big like thump, and then a smack. And there's a crowd of people around him. . . "

She's not really listening.

"... and so when I get closer, we see he's laying there in the pavement, and not moving, and there's this line of blood coming from his head, trickling down through the cobble stone street. And he is fucking dead."

"What! He dies?"

"Yeah he dies... for a while he kind of opened his yes I guess, but then he just fucking faded, and people were freaking out, calling the cops, and everything."

"That is so awful. This is an awful awful story."

"It was horrible. It was horrible but wait," she doesn't seem to want to hear more. "There's somethign so beautiful about to happen . . . it seemed like minutes later, but his girlfriend comes riding up from behind, and she just jumps off her bike and lets it go riding away down the street, and she gets down in the street, getting his blood all over her, and she just weeps and holds his head in her hands."

"That is awful awful, I don't like this story."

"Wait wait wait. It get's better."

***

After we left the crowd, it was about 11 p.m. and the sun was casting a weird grey-blue haze, like cloudy daytime, across the city. We have already forgotten about the dead man, mostly, and we are drinking and shouting and making jokes in the mostly empty streets.

We arrive at the kareoke bar and it is fantastic. I don't remember all the names, but something like Annie, Neah, Kay, sort of simple and pseudo-biblical I guess. A very kind man is pleased to meet me at the bar and we talk about Toronto for a little bit. He's shy and dressed all in black, and sweaty, and going bald already, although I would say he's just only 24. I buy him a beer and shake his hand and wish him a nice night. He's fantasticaly excited and hugs me and buys me a shot before I leave the bar to join my lady friends.

The joy and laughter we experience, I mostly just watching, after we all sit down and the performances start. . . it's like I'm at the centre of that giant spinning thing the poets talk about, a giant spinning wheel or world (or whirl), where people are laughing and the "bolts they coming loose;" it's that phenomenal sense of rebellion in the face of chaos, the little but divine thing it is to be happy in such a world, falling apart for ever.

This foggy vision I have, of the whole room spinning, there's a clown on the stage, barely singing to the Finnish rock song, and his friends are watching and cheering; and the birthday girl (Julia?), she has black hair - the only one - and black eyes, and a truly cherubic but electric glow, like bacchus baby angels, drinking, and all our feet tangled together in some astounding, joyous knot.

On the dance floor there's this one model-looking short-skirt girl. Tall, beautiful, and dancing with her ugly girl friend. I'm not sure exactly, I know I wasn't trying any pick up lines, but all of a sudden she is yelling at me, and telling me to "just fucking go! Just go."

I decide to stick around, since I'm insulted she would think that I was beign some creep, when really I was just trying to have a good time, and dance a bit, to ride this feeling of joy I had. But she's insistent, and obviously getting very upset with me.

"Look, your not that hot," I say to her, trying to imply my non-interest.

"Yes I am, you fuckign asshole. Fuck. Just leave!"

I tell her I plan on using the dancefloor, too, and indicate with a circle motion around me the area I plan on staying, but she doesn't relent, and finally (I was wonderign what was taking so long), her male friend, or boyfriend - a thin, but wiry, finn - comes up to me: look, I better just fucking leave right now, no problems, or else there's going to be fuckign serious problems.

I tell him to fuck him self and he, with one fast, hulk-like swing, punches me in the gut. As I'm stepping back a bit, wondering in some confusion what to do, my little bald friend materializes from behind, like some guardian gargoyle. He has flung him self on my attackers back, biting his neck, I can see the blood drip from his teeth, as he wails and scratches on the guy's kidneys with his fists. The brute falls to the floor, and my balding friend is now kicking his face in, looking up at me and smiling, through a giant, bloody grin.

***

I can't remember her name. She was one of the five Finns and she walked me nearly all the way home. The sun by this time was out in full, but it was four a.m., and we were both very drunk. I left her when we got to the dock yard, deciding not to kiss her goodnight, and walked away without looking back.

I looked with affection at all the tall ships, quietly rocking, and all the rusted old ice breakers, as I walked along the catwalk of the old city marina, headed back to spend my last night on the sail boat.

This sail boat was supposed to take me through the Baltic - we know. But I am walking and wondering and wondering. And the ships are so slowly rocking and it is all so peaceful and wonderful wonderful. In my pocket is a ferry ticket and the next day I was supposed to board a ship and head to Tallinn, and then to Riga.

Suddenly it strikes me I have no interest in going to either of these places. It strikes me like a church bell breaking the quiet of an early morning.

All of a sudden I am sure that there's one place I should go to. It is like a million tiny bells now, ringing inside of me, I am so excited, for this is the place I have meant to go to all along, and isn't so wonderful that I didn't even really plan on going there, that it was all some huge accident, all some quiet drunk walk home from a Helsinki kareoke bar? And the man who died. . . Isn't Paris, well, isn't that the best way to go ... not planning it ... and so in the rapture and laughter of a death and a kareoke bar, I called the airport and made a reservation for the next flight.

I stayed up for the next few hours, and hung around the dock yards to watch my ferry leave for Tallinn. I lifted my hat, since I was wearing an old beaten up traveler's hat, and saluted my ferry as it left me behind at the dock. And after some coffee and some jam pastries near the fish markets, I stumbled onto a plane, and left.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

...

...

leaving the kareoke bar with four finnish girls, we heard a loud crack

Monday, June 15, 2009

Helsinki night club

Throughout this four-part conclusion to the Cuenta, I will be telling you a few nice little vignettes, little gem stories that are very shiny and heartbreaking. But I want you all to know, that I will really be writing about something else entirely, something that has nothing to do with Helsinki, or a boat, or leather jackets, or France.


And while I could let you all guess what that something else is, I would rather just come right out and say it: I will be writing about how I became a chaser of metaphysical butterflies, little creatures fluttering always out of reach, playing keep-away with their own heavenly, euphoric bodies. (I hear eating moths is poisonous, but it seems justifiable to assume eating butterflies is magic, like encountering and eating god … if only we could eat metaphysical butterflies!)


Chasing these beautiful creatures is always romantic and risky, and leaves one, inevitably, exhausted. There are butterfly catchers and chasers, and so far, I am just a chaser.


It might help, too, to let you know that I am writing you about this romantic sport, tacitly, from the third-floor balcony of the Hotel Caulaincourt in Paris, which is a block away from where thousands of drunks, tourists and lovers (all of whom are, I think, butterfly watchers), gather at night on weekends to see the city twinkle and the Eiffel tower effervesce – which it does every so often. I have a little round wooden table, which faces the window, and on the table I have propped up a small canvas oil painting by Gauguin, called “femmes aux mangues”, and it is Sunday. I have also three cans of Heineken, and just met my new roommate, who says he comes from Istanbul but is a student in Portugal. When I want to smoke I lean out the window and I can see the lovers walking up and down the steep and long series of stone steps, hugging Montmartre.


I also want you careful readers, and especially the very careful readers – the ones who love me – to know, that while most of what I am about to tell you is true, there are some lies – rather big lies – that I am about to effect. Sometimes I will make it clear that I am lying – inventing – and sometimes I will not, and will allow the deceit to live and grow inside your heads with dignity.


The thing is, however, the lies are essential. It is impossible to catch butterflies with a net built by Descartes. Metaphysical butterfly nets are not woven in square-like predictable patterns, with horizontal and vertical axes of cotton thread; they are dances of the loom. Drunken ladies of shalott, from their medieval towers, they weave these nets, from the blossoming, shrieking nature they wantonly ingest, from those shiny, legendary mirrors.


There was a precedent I wanted to set before ending this blog, and I lusted for a defiant, greedy success with the papillions. But I have only just started using my mazy net, and am now headed back “home.” Home, home, home.


Home: written under erasure. Home. (In a recent entry in my journal, I lost all connection to the meaning of the word. As I wrote in a frenzy from the steps of the Sacre Coeur Basilica, as the stars of the city fluttered around my head, I referred several times, by accident, to Buenos Aires and Argentina as my “home”, which, taken as Freud would have, is an incredible, joy-tweaking thing to watch happen . . . It’s strange how I wrote that, just now, “watch happen”, watch me, myself, write, as I watched myself write about home, about my home, me. )


As I was saying, I am headed back to Canada. My flight is tomorrow, and I have only just begun . . . and well, we will get to this part again, a little closer to the finish line, but for now let’s move on with the program.


I wanted to start by telling you about Helsinki … however, I have just come from a little stroll down Caullaincours and the simplest things were beautiful. Some shiny green gems, to be polished, like the two men with lapdogs, eating at the cafĂ© terrace in the court yard. Or the two other middle aged men, well dressed, outside a very busy bistro, laughing as one of the men fished a lighter out of his glass, laughing as he sucks the wine off the orange plastic lighter. Or the little child, with blonde hair in pony tails, a little girl in an orange and purple flower dress, skipping along the grassy part of the boulevard, lassoing sparrows with a shoe lace noose, as an old clochard watches in amazement from his pile of newspapers. The little girl hopping along, with three or four black sparrows like kites on the end of short white strings, and the drunk smoking, and drinking, and disbelieving, smiling toothlessly.


But no. I wanted to tell you about Helsinki, there was a good reason for it. So I will and I should start now, as the sun dips and the tides, somewhere, spring.


(to be continued)













Friday, June 12, 2009

child in the street pushing his own stroller

I feel like a kid in the street pushing his OWN stroller

I am a sieve of light; no I am a sieve FOR light;

as I told my closest friend, ANC2 = I was waiting to tell you all where I was in a very well though out way (I must say I am hurt, or bruised; that no one has asked in a week) I have made a video where there i am with a clean shaved face about 2 feet from the camera, obscuring the land mark behind me)

i was supposed to write the prologue to the end = i should tell you all right now that this is the end of la cuenta grande, but its a four parter

heres what the last four stories are going to be, they will all be written very soon; then thats it for this blog;

1) Helsinki kareoke bar and cigarettes in Chile

2) the Jacket part 2: a fantastic adventure and broken love story

3) the million twinkling lights of a certain pyramid shaped tower and children on the street pushing their own strollers

4) how it is that I became a sieve of light; a conclusion with photos and a wedding

stay tuned

Friday, June 5, 2009

FROM THE ARCHIVES: City lights


"When you come right down to it," Gregorovius said, "Paris is one big metaphor."









Martini Bar

I'll start simply enough. With the date and the time. It is early May in Buenos Aires, and the autumn air is strange and satisfactorily alien. I am in a filthy, neon-lit alley in the Once, and here it looks to me, momentarily, like Paris — only a suffocating Paris where the stone buildings collapse and gasp for air as the black iron street lamps tilt and screech; the whizzing, puffing cars vanish in clouds of dust, the cobble stone alley ways keel over like sinking Titantics. You are struck, paralyzed, as you perceive some invisible god tightening a massive belt around the entire stone built city, which any second now is going to give. But the well dressed people, smelling like perfume, seem to breath amid all this shrinking, and head to the theatre, or are leaving, and going to drink coffee in crowded, midnight cafes. All these druplets, all the city, materialize through brown-grey oil slashes of some mad painter's sure hand, perhaps.

I'm heading to see a friend's play, and I have one hour until the curtains are drawn. As I cross busy streets, I'm in a mad search for the right place to get tight. With only a few days left in this city, I should squeeze out all the glory-filled moments, real story-worthy stuff, that fills the books of all the men who have made cities dissapear, replacing them in twinkling lights and — now I see it — mystic shadows.

There's a green-lit neon sign which says Martini bar, in curvy '50s font, and reading the menu posted on the glass and bronze door, it seems just cheap enough to sit in. I sit down and take a seat facing the window, waving the menu away as the waiter approaches, "un martini, por favor, con hielo," I say. He walks off and shouts out to the bar man the drink order. I get up and head to the back of the house and use the toilet. By the time I get back, the drink is there, and the waiter is plopping two ice cubes into the tall glass they made it in. He sets down a bottle of seltzer next to the glass and steps back as I take my seat.

Already, I am feeling a hell of a lot better. A kind of wonder washes over me. With a displaced nostalgia for golden days, I watch my waiter as he walks about to another table taking an order. The most striking thing about him — and the two other waiters in the place — is what they are wearing. They wear black bow ties over these perfect old tuxedo shirts, faded and yellow, impossible to call white, yet still, undeniably white, somehow. Advertizements aged in storefront windows — or, wait— the exact colour of sun bleached newspaper.

With great, inexplicably deep enjoyment I observe my man wipe counters with a dirty, navy blue rag. When he's not busy he stands next to me, straight up glowing with pride, about one metre away, hapilly looking towards the front of the house. He whistles, maybe, a little tiny bit. I scan his clothes. As I play with the seltzer bottle and stir the ice, the night begins to glow and I see hundreds of beautiful twinkling lights forming in my mind.

I order one more, this time with olives. I slam it down and enter the air again, wide open this time and full of warmth. I stroll to the theatre and I am 20 minutes early, damn. I order a beer and sit on the patio, smoke and speak to the theatre owner's wife.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Bailor, call me.

It is not supposed to be this way; it is supposed to be this way. This is the way it is.

My close friend Anais Nin II C discovered last night a little pin - I imagine red or blue or something primary and childish - plugged into a giant map somewhere in her parents house, it marks Helsinki.

She placed this pushpin there 9 years ago, knowing this is where I'd be the night she was back at her mom and dads rummaging through whatever it was, or doing whatever it was. The details, except for the one, are unimportant.

She sent me a telegram this morning, it arrived over the teletype on the ship: "Found you," so I am supposed to be here. This is where I am right now.

But this week I am leaving. I am all but 100 percent sure that my life is in danger here, on this ship, if I stay on this boat. I nearly died today. . . I will get to that part, a little later.

Or hell, might as well start right now: We have been sailing for two days straight. To be accurate we have sailed for about 7 hours total - perhaps less, probably less - and the rest of the time - due to weather, poor winds, or general apathy - we used the diesel motor to chop our way through the icy, still icy cold Baltic.

We truly left off after spending a night at a little resortish sort of island outside Stockholm. We had two friends with us, and so Pete made chicken fried rice as the beers were cooling in the dock waters.

This was a beautiful, very power-boat vacationy feeling. With the sun on our backs, a beautiful city scratched from our lists ( lists ... that sounds awful and red-faced touristy.... and any way, I would have stayed much longer ... really it was only a sort of flirt with the city - she kissed us and then left in a taxi, taking only our email address - jesus, what's wrong with me ... future writers - never use email in a sentence, it kills it - although teletype seems to work . . . )

Here is what I am trying to do. I will let you in on my formula for this post. I was hoping to shape the arc of narrative like the sun sets in the Baltic. A high beautiful sun will shine over Stockholm well into the afternoon, and will gradually sink, of course, reaching its nadir just above the horizon and it never truly sets... it remains above the surface, its glow does, and then starts up again.

I have drawn little pictures of this to outline little stories I am working on while here - they look like a bunch of overlapping small circles, drawn in messy pencil, flowing in one of those math patterns, whats that name again - like a U or the skull of a bull. So that's what I was going to do.

The apex obviously, the best times, were that day leaving Stockholm. With all the city's tease, the salty breeze and wide-open seas (oh god...). And the down, the putzer, well, that was nearly dying today only 100 metres from port in Helsinki.

Oh, yes, by the way: nearly died today in Helsinki.

Where to begin (clearly this deserves one of those traditional narrative arcs - it deserves a cup of tea, some cigarettes and two comfy seats. But as we are all here on blog world I am keeping it brief - I still need to sleep, talk to embassies of Soviet and Teutonic powers and then consume some Finnish art, food, people. (Consume people. Yes, OK for now).

The day after we left Sandhamn, that little gem resort place, the seas started up on us, but at first it looked like a good time to start sailing. We put on our life coats, and latched our selves to the ship and in a few minutes, Pete's got me lifting the sails. We are making good speed, about 5 knots, and I am feeling only slightly sick. Wow, the open sea, the dark grey mass and weight of cold, long, who knows - there's something there that your mind comes up against and can't help but be satisfied with: How simple everything looks, yet there's a real and figurative hidden power. As we know the sea is a tough enemy and I'd rather not fight it much, if I could avoit it.

I head in after I start getting too cold, and figure Ill learn more a little later. But being inside the boat, and with the waves picking up, the pressure dropping, the sickness starts to get me. Now, when I fist was leaving for this trip, I figured I'd be able to out mind-control this seasickness shit. But it is impossible, or at least , it was for me... I lay down for a bit, and every time we keel over to starboard, the side my bed's on, I see the ocean coming right for me through the window, a huge jump, a gigantic splash, water coming through an unsealed porthole in the roof, I am trying to sleep, and forget about this dizzy feeling, wearing all my rain gear and boots in bed... shivering. Pete comes in and tells me plans have changed. Gravely. I take the news.

The UHF and SATNAV is warning of ultra fast Gale Force winds where we had planned on docking for the night (about half way to Helsinki), so instead of risk it with the water hazards in a storm, the skip says we are gonna sail straight through the night. I tell him I don't think its a good idea, I won't be able to help watch, which I'll need to if we pull an all nighter. . . I just want the whole world to stop spinning, nauseous and desperate (the two are practicaly identical feelings) but Pete tells me in his Liverpudlian-Ringo accent "That's fine Tobin.. I happen to disagree..." He is the captain.

I get up in a while and vomit for a little bit, feel fine for a while and puke again. Sleep again. Around this point I do a night watch, and things are a bit blurry. I do remember one part before or after my watch, getting up and walking towards the upper deck where Pete was, standing there with his arms spread out. A stern grimace, very seaman like grimace, across his old grey and white face. His giant falses sticking out past his blueish lips like the bare bones of an old wreck through the sea.

"I noticed we were headed right for her, so I took some evasive actions, there," he says to me, without even looking my way, arm outstretched gesturing towards a ghost like, humungous cruize ship, towering above,lit up like a Titanic draped in Christmas lights. The image is startling and sublime, robotic and terrifying.

Another part of the spell-bound eve, of which I was surely not going to make it through, I remember vividly thinking of my notebook being destroyed in the wreck, and the words, the all-important words, would all evaporate into the cold black water like tiny swirls of blue smoke.

There was another point where I came back into the cabin after swalling four or five gravols, and I found a french woman sitting on the bed opposite mine, smoking long cigarettes... She was beautiful, of course, black hair, a white round brimmed hat, pale skin and red lipstick ... and I remember not being too shocked to see her, I just said "You know you arent supposed to smoke down here," and he she smiled, exhaling, extinguished one cigarette in an invisble ashtray and lit a new one. I went back to sleep.

*** There's one part I am leaving out. I'll get to it now.

Nearly dying might have been an over statement. But, what a pathetic way to perish, you'll see, after all that high danger and seamanship. Upon entering the city marina of Helsinki, Finland today, Peter was top side in the cockpit, away from the GPS stuff, and I was also on deck, preparing the lines for docking.

He must have missed, or dismissed the cardinal buoy to our west, which indicated the huge hazard lying only 1 metre beneath the surface. He yells Woah, and slows the ship, Whats the problem, I ask, and he tells me: "The depth boy, it went up for a second..."

I presume everything is OK, I guess he does too for he keeps going... SMASH, one giant bump, a few rolls, we have hit something, and hit it hard. We are immobile. We can see the port, the docks, only about 100 feet away - even closer is a bay of giant concrete dividers, which I imagine I could swim to, hopefully before catching hypothermia.

Last thing I want to do is jump in the water, but Pete is tellng me to prepare the life ratf. She's rocking back and forth, and I am running from Port to Starboard and back trying to level her out;

"Jesus christ motherfucker" Pete slams his fist, those sharkish teeth coming out.

We finally get it freed, and enter port, for some reason with our mison sail still flying, which docking difficult, and us look very very stupid. He tells me it feels like a wire is wound around his heart, squeezing it. I am very worried about this situation... before getting back on hard land, he tells me

"Well thats it, then, you be wanting to get out now, take care of you."

This is no good. A damaged ship and captain. No place to go and no will to go back home.

There is hope, that unhuman feeling, hope. And happiness, that boring, human feeling. Hapiness.

The sun has nearly sunk, and it rises.