Acting Class at the Hostel Someone is dying. Someone is addicted to drugs. Someone else is heartbroken. Enraged at a lover’s betrayal. All poorly acted by students in the hostel courtyard. A brash instructor watches their scenes. Cuts them off if wrong, inadequate, or underwhelming emotion is displayed. The guys can’t cry on stage. When the guys can’t cry, the drama instructor makes them do push-ups. This man is going to get his tears. It is impossible to sleep in the room with all of this going on outside in the courtyard. But this is a beautiful room. Open air window. Here, many buildings are built this way. Without screens. High ceilings. Windows open. There’s a creek outside. You could never ask for better white noise. Still, on with pants and t-shirt. Time to watch the acting class. The courtyard makes a nice place to watch the class. Open air, big birch chairs. It’s a good show. On many levels. I can sleep late tomorrow. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback by clicking here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another.
Don’t Look Left or Right Don’t look left or right, that was the final instruction before we motorbike down this street in Medellin. Seems impossible, but if I understand the explanation correctly, the cocaine trade continues as long as it does so non-violently. This is the unofficial structure of the relative armistice of recent years. So making eye contact with nobody, we creep and crawl, stuck in traffic down the street. In fact, all business is conducted in the field of peripheral vision. Fingers fish folded bills from pockets and swap them for pale bricks in layers of plastic wrap, or brown paper bags. The eyes of all are always outward at the street. Words are few, and clearly eye contact would be a breach of conduct, bad form. Shocking, even. Two neighborhood kids have been paid to sit as sentries at either end of the road, and blow a back pocket airhorn or ring a bell if police officers appear. Forearms flick out of car windows and passenger-side windows ahead of us. Fingertips hold two-inch thick stacks of bills in bands. Dealers who don’t so much as look in the window stare down the street and toss packets and baggies through open windows. All is engine hum, rustle and murmur. No music. A notable absence. Those selling wear brand new clothes, without a single crease, stain or fold. Starch stiff hoodies, tank tops, jeans, and factory-line clean sneakers. Getting down this street is as slow as driving in a flash flood, in a zero visibility snow storm, in deep mud, all because of the intensity of activity in the edges of our vision. Dealers shuffling between roads of cars, double patting the side of a door when a transaction is complete. No visible haggling, simply the small circus of fingers finding back pockets in jeans and the breast pockets of jackets, all executed without error under the pervasive and unsettling inaccuracy of gaze. Activities unexamined first and foremost by the participants involved. Then we’re past the zone, clarity returns, and the drive continues. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback by clicking here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another.
Night Fell Before the Spin Cycle Ended Nodding off in an all-night cafe/laundromat in Medellin. Listening to the deep rumble of fifty washers rolling clothing in sudsy water. Waiting for one fleece blanket to dry. Retracing the steps that brought me here. My Airbnb has a washing machine but no dryer. But night fell before the spin cycle ended, meaning. No sun to dry the blanket for the night. My host, an Italian grandmother living in Colombia, in a fit of nurturing aggression refused to allow me to sleep with no blanket, or even a lightly damp one. It’s fine. No, no! If a dampness touches here. What are these? Above the hips. Like beans. She traces the region on her own back with her thumb tips. Kidneys. Yes, if a dampness from a wet shirt or blanket touches your kidneys, you get ill. So go to the laundromat. You need Pesos? I have Pesos. And she sent me lugging this fleece blanket under street lights one mile through the night to the laundromat. Trying to stay awake as washers roll water in drums, and clothes tumble in sentry lines of dryers. The scent of artificial lavenders and vanillas filling the non-air conditioned air. Waiting, staying awake, considering the many timezones and timings that must be accounted for in order for a given day to go correctly.
Lost on Horseback Horses hip-check each other and stamp the dust on the dirt trail threading through the green mountains. Let me see if I can predict this one. Nick, they’ll give you that blondeone. It’s the most heroic looking. A blonde horse for a blonde dude, that’sthe logic they’ll follow. Rachel will probably get that smaller horse, seemsright for a girl. And Joel’s big, they’ll give him the big horse. See that one wandering off, munching flowers, and bothering the locals? That’s mine. Because I engage in similar behavior. Nick laughs at my line of reasoning. A brown water creek has been dug out into a large, shallow pond. Two kidsform a sopping wet, wobbly, two-man human tower, the base of which wears dripping, squelching Crocs. (Anxiety) cracked skulls and snapped necks when they topple. Splash – flailing limbs submerge under rippling water rings. They resurface spluttering water from lips and gulping air. Dogs lounge in the sun inside a chain-link pen. In a generator-powered restaurant built of particle board and corrugated tin, women boil rice, press guava, soursop, and mangos into juice, and grill fish for lunch. The grill sizzles. Reggaeton beats play. It’s lively here, but at least one of these lush green hills was the sightof a mass grave some years ago. Victims of Pablo Escobar, drug wars, andguerilla warfare. Hard to say where or which hilltop, it’s explained only invague gestures and vague terms. On the hilltops, near the shade of the tree line, crews of friends or families of four sit on blankets and grill hotdogs. The stable hand sets the length of stirrups, and fits bridles between bighorse teeth. Happy to drop a shoulder to shove a horse out of the way. Bullying them into good behavior. He wears a Guatemalan gaucho hat, a soccer jersey, and black mucking boots. But the story I had in my head was wrong. Nick gets the flower munching horse, Joel and Rachel’s horses are also reversed for reasons I can not understand to look at their respective sizes, and I get the blonde heroic looking horse. La Mona is her name. Memories return. I have seen the view of a horse’s mane and the back of itsflicking ears before. Felt this lurch and rock of its gait. Weekends withfriends off the clock at a summer camp job, taking the horses out for a ride. The bizarre way a horse can feel great precision in the urging of your intentions through the reigns. Lean and focus a sharp gaze at a place, and a smart horse will go there. Tug back, and she slows down. It seems so easy, yet. Experience counts for something. Rachel is beingwalked in circles. She is asking the horse to stop. English doesn’t work, so she tries Spanish. Nick is being brought into low-hanging branches by a horse that knows to account for its own height, but not that of an added rider. He laughs and bends them back from his face. They whip behind him as the horse nibbles shaded patches of grass. With a hissing whistle by the guide, and a flick of his switch, we’re off. LaMona is a competitor, and so I get to take the lead. Mountains so vast andgreen, on a scale too big for any picture. A view of the city’s pale buildingsin the valley. I am comfortable on the horse, so leaving the guide behind does not worry me. It does not worry the guide because he says the horses all know the trail anyway. We amble along, and I watch the green mountains and valleys flow by slowly in the sunshine. Nothing to worry about. But then La Mona trots up a green hillside following a needle-thin trail. I trust her. Why not? I can’t see the others. The trail gets thinner and thinner until I’m riding over grass. Ah, I was too proud of myself too soon. Clearly, this was a long, wrong turn. We arrive at a barb wired fence that reads, ‘Private Property, No Trespassing’ in Spanish. “I know you can’t read,” I say to La Mona. “But that sign says, No Trespassing. So how about it? Where are we?” Not so much as a snort in reply. I look back down the hill. My friends are nowhere in sight. “OK, we’re going back.” I tug the reigns, but La Mona shakes her head. I pull again and she doesthe same. She agrees to do an about face. But as soon as she gazes downhill, her legs start buckling. Knees inward, almost knocking. Horse fear. She turns her head back. Her eyes bulge. She must be thinking she will fall if she tries to go down that (admittedly) very steep hillside. Though she is the one who brought us up here. “You’re like a cat that gets up a tree and doesn’t know how to getdown,” I tell her. She doesn’t understand accountability, this horse. She snuffles and pleads for a different way down. Anything but the very steep, very scary hill. I can see the trail we’re supposed to be on below. I just need a way to get there that is not a straight line down. Searching, I see a shallow incline in the green hill. A needle of a trail buried in tufts of overgrown grass. But it is not steep, and La Mona likes this path far more. There are logs and branches all over this route. The horse can step over some, but if the debris is big enough, I need to hop off her and clear the path. I kneel to pull logs out of the way. She steps forward into where the logs arelying. One of them rolls up over her hoof. She steps again to escape it andbats herself across her opposite legs. The muscles in her torso shudder. Shewhines a little. She is stressed out, getting clumsy, clip-clopping, unhappy at the branches scraping her legs. I shush her and pull the branches away from between her feet. Finally, after what seems like an hour of riding and working, clearing brush, shushing and reassuring, petting, cooing, coaxing, and finally riding again, and sometimes a tightrope balance of riding on a steep hill, I am back on that main trail. But where are my friends? I can’t see them anywhere. But it’s OK. We are back on the right path, now. La Mona knows the way from here. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback by clicking here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another.
Cookie Smuggler Four shots of ouzo makes early morning strategizing a woozy challenge. Lesson of the road. Final night in Greece. Flight out in a few hours. Trying to figure out how to get pistachio cookies I bought on an island to survive reckless baggage handlers. Pistachio farmers on Aegina render their crop into every incarnation imaginable. Liqueur, soap, butter, bread, cookies, gelato, and of course bags of nuts. Well, they let me try this cookie they call a pistachio cigar. A chocolate crunchy tube filled with green pistachio butter. Think peanut butter, but made out of pistachios. It gets eaten, not smoked, in case the cigar name causes any confusion. Anyway, bought four cans, but they are not crush proof. Wrapping the cans in jeans really doesn’t help much. The only crush-proof part of my gear is…the hollow body of my acoustic guitar. Well, the strings are overdue for a change. They are not going to survive more altitude and humidity fluctuations in playable shape. They’ll sound like garbage, so they might as well be sacrificed to a worthy cause. Twisting metal tuning pegs. Prying up black bridge pins. Twang. Ping. Accidental notes get deeper, wobbly and unnatural before the string gives way and whips and snakes on its own. Each of the four cans fits snugly into the guitar’s sound hole. No wait. Two in, t-shirt, two more in, another t-shirt. Final t-shirt to secure them. Yes. Cigars in a guitar. Multiple people have told me this travel story. Except they were traveling from Cuba. Maybe it is from a movie, or it is one of those real-life tropes. Now I’ve got this story, too. Except mine are cigar cookies from Greece. But consider that these cookies are in plastic tubes with metal soda can tops. Some security agent scanning my guitar will see it loaded with four metal-capped cylinders with an unclear manner of tubing inside. Will they know it’s chocolate and pistachio not bomb casings and explosive putty? Will I ever bring home the flavor I tried to carry off that island? Time alone will tell. Goodbye to this room with its hard mattress, its unseeable biting insects, and balcony view of the Acropolis. On to what’s next. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback by clicking here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another.
One More Might as well do another beach day. Another hike. One more nice meal. Why not? And a chocolate after. Or a pastry. Or gelato cup. One more museum, artifact, helmet, compass, or carving. One more country, one more cocktail, one more castle, one more conversation. One more night out. Don’t you think? Then it will be enough. Nice coffee, nice day, a snack, a drink, a trip, rent a paddle board, roll a smoke and then I’ll be good. Next, I’ll go home and be responsible, but after. Just one more. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback by clicking here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another.
Stuff Left Behind A nylon backpack and headset from a company I no longer work for gifted to a friend in London. Outlet adapters in Edinburgh gifted to another traveling American. Had two. Now I’ve got one. A lowball gifted to me at a hostel in Edinburgh, then gifted to someone else. Knew the bumps on the road ahead would shatter it if it stayed with me. A bulky blue jacket left in Heathrow because my bag was too heavy for even the cheapest flight. A white sweater from Galway in a UPS office in Mannheim, sent back to Germany by USA customs. A copy of Shantaram left on a book swap shelf in Germany. An empty suitcase given away in Mannheim no longer needed after pairing down a few things. Hush Puppy boots in Taghazout, likely walking onward on someone else’s feet. Beaded bracelets from a felt bag left as a thank you for a kind host in Tangier. A sweater on a farm in Spain, likely warming a new volunteer even now. A waterproof notebook given to an Italian on the same farm. He wanted to write in that partially finished barn without WiFi where we stayed. Still have plenty of my own. Paperback copies of my book sold in towns all over the world. Traveling lighter, the warmer the months get – the longer the journey lasts. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback by clicking here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another.
Blues Under Athens Lugged my guitar on a crowded tram during rush hour. It’s killing me inside that I can’t…move! Fingers getting stiff and cold and I know, I just know they are going to play tricks on me when an audience is watching. I want to shake some blood into them, but that would mean smacking strangers, which of course I’m not going to do, so I shove them in my pockets. Twang! A passenger bangs the guitar and it strums in its case. Wincing at the thought of damage, but she’s been fine on every airplane and bus, so she’ll be fine one more time. Right? Right? Some bartender told me I could play an open mic tonight. Sounded fun. Problem: no idea where the venue he mentioned is. Hoping to find out by returning to the same bar, asking the same guy. But it’s getting under my skin! The thought of playing in front of people. Stomach jumping in anticipation. Some things don’t get better the more you do them, huh? Last time I performed was in Morocco. Squeezed and popped out of the tram. Fresh air and a little personal space. Sun sinks. Shadows pool out vast, dark and cold between buildings. Ah, I can shake my fingers now. OK. Let’s find this place. Hope that same bartender is working so I can ask again. Nope. New faces. This shot of mine is getting longer and longer, isn’t it? Ordered the same drink I had last time. Can’t remember its name. Gin, lick-lipping fresh blended berry juice, and tons of shaved ginger for heat. Salt on only half of the rim for a counter melody. A murky pond to drown a little stage fright in, no? Ah, why not drink two. People party late here, so I might be early yet. Where is that music place someone mentioned? Where you can play an open mic? The other guys said next door, but it’s all dark windows, rolled-down shutters, graffiti. There is no “next door.” No idea, tonight’s bartender says while scooping ice out of the bin. Did I drag the guitar all this way for nothing? Is it dead weight for the night out? Any idea what the place is called? He said it was basement, something. Basement. The place is called Basement? That or it’s in a basement. Details are hazy on this one, my guy. Rumor and hearsay. Urban legends. Local folklore. He laughs, and asks his buddy in Greek. The buddy tells me go to the wooden door on the corner. That sounds like what you’re looking for. Drain drink, pay up, and head to that wooden door in the empty alley. But this is just the door to somebody’s apartment. Greek names written on paper tags next to the buzz-in buttons. I still try it, just in case. It’s locked. No signs for a bar, a venue, a club, or anything. But next to it is a small door. Black door on a black wall. And scrawled in white chalk today’s rain has half washed away, ‘the party is here.’ I test this knob, and it does open. Bright red lighting on dark carpeted steps. A letter U in white backlight. This must be it! Down saggy steps to an empty basement with a few couches here and there. A stage the same height as the rest of the room. You with the band? Someone asks. Nope. Heard there was open mic. Later, maybe. A band plays first. Ah, I might drink for a while then. Ha! Hm. Yes, listen. You guys use the place as a bar, but I’ve been trying to get you all to understand what the fuck is really going on here because there is. He stretches out his fingers, grasping for concepts. More to it. But have a drink, maybe today, you listen, next time, maybe play. Maybe play tonight if you’re ready. But it’s becoming a members only listening club soon. Sure. No problem. Got a place I can leave my guitar? He smiles, and nods. Puts it in the sound room. Walking lighter now – nice. Two Euro beers. No wonder the bar part outshines the other concepts. Signs scrawled in marker. The bar itself is a salvaged bookshelf or something. It’s not meant to be a bar. The place is furnished with scavenged, repurposed, improvised objects. The place fills up with twenty and thirty-something Greeks. Nose rings, choppy hair, tattoos, black skinny jeans, dark shirts, angular, Goth jackets, punky boots, silver rings, cross earrings, and so on. Maybe everybody wants to hear Punk tonight. But no, not Punk, Funk begins. Well above my skillset. This is the band. When the open mic starts, it’s the twelve bar blues of all things. Blues. One of the first things you learn how to do on guitar. The blues really gets the crowd going. Sweet Home Chicago and Miss the Mississippi have the Greeks swaying and nodding. Why do punk scene kids in Athens care about Chicago and Mississippi? I ask someone. I was there in another life, he says longingly. Hmm. Lot of people in those places say that about Greece, you know. The islands. He laughs and shrugs. Must have been a recent past life, I tell him. 1930s, maybe. A girl tells me there is a whole blues conservatory in Athens as well. Fingertips itch and I can feel those same five notes you learn to play for Blues soloing under them – it makes my fingers wiggle to hear guitar playing I like. The Blues. It grooves addictively. It cycles like the seasons, or a woman’s period. It’s sad like life. It howls like a wildcat and it bitches like a bad day. You can do it in a jam session and you get to tell your story or play your guitar solo on it, but then the shape of it stays the same and it’s someone else’s turn. Didn’t get to play that night. Maybe next week, if they play the Blues again. But I did think I began to understand something, like I began to get it. Either that or I was drunk. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback by clicking here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another.
The Island of Weird Sounds An ocean of crashing waves where the sky should be. Salt waves surging and crashing, ebbing and flowing overhead. I open my eyes. The real ocean is lying down in front of me, where it belongs, but its sounds emit from above. Aural illusion. Because there is an immense tan cliff with thousands of round pores and a long arced top standing behind me. The sound of the waves bounces right off the cliff top and reflects down from above. Disorienting. No sand on this beach. Just water-polished, smooth white pebbles. Mostly just under ping-pong ball size. Some bead-sized. Worn flattish and round. The clear water is the color of cloudless blue Jell-O. The pebble bed is perfectly visible for about a hundred yards into the water, morphing under the soft, foamless, rounded tops of harmless waves. This weird place is on Agistri. Not many people on this island this time of year. The tide rolls out and it sounds like a rainstick. Shik-a-tak-a-shok-a-taka shika shika. Hundreds of white pebbles rolling over each other downhill. Water sloshes around them as they sink below the tide. Other sound effects. When I walk in shoes, the smooth, golfball-sized pebbles squeak and grind against each other under each step. Somehow, this sounds like ice cubes being dropped on a taut basketball. This crunchy bounce-like noise ricochets off the cliff wall same as the waves. Funny little piece of the world. It only has two aspects: blue water, and polished white stones. Sounds coming from the wrong direction. The smooth, sun-warmed stones are almost like a massage bed if you have a towel to drop over them. The smell of wildflowers appears and vanishes with each swoon of wind. Hard to say whether you’re awake or dreaming. Easy to say, actually. I’m awake in the regular old real world. Because here come three other people. A girl braving the freezing water for bikini pictures. A fat boyfriend who is regulated to photographer duties. A long-haired third-wheeler seeking the comfort of a joint. No more private island. “Ok, get one of me candid. Lower angle, lower.” Oh, weird. Her voice is coming down from the top of the cliff, too. Flopping back down on the towel, I see there are coin-sized pebbles on top of coffee-bean sized pebbles. Shades of white on white. Now, I know you’re no expert on fluid dynamics, but the coin-size pebbles can be submerged under the bed of bean-size pebbles with a simple press of a fingertip. I submerge about twelve pebbles, just pressing them down. Bam! Bright red in the field of white. Sea glass. Frosty red glass polished smooth. Looking extra special with all the contrast. And wow! Here’s a green one. Specialties. Rarities. Ok, time to start stacking. Sea glass sandwich is what I’m thinking. Coin-sized smooth white pebble. Red cloudy glass. Another white. Green frosty glass. Final white pebble. Done. Nice. We’re getting somewhere. Accomplishing things. “Now a video. Me like, pushing my hair back.” Ha. She’s still floating up there. Whoosh. Shik-a-tak-a-shok-a-taka shika taka tika. Look at this particular pebble. Exactly the size, shape, and color of a mint Mento. Matte, not glossy, though. Looks lick-able. Well, why not? Lightly salted, not minty. Of course. The tide touches the cliff wall when it’s flooded full. A lightly salted place, on top of everything else. Now look at this white pebble. It has three divots exactly like bowling ball holes. A distinguishing little feature. A way for it to feel unique in a world of conformity, no doubt. I toss it behind me and it clinks somewhere. I bring a flattish stone to the shoreside, wet, bright pebbles squeaking and grinding under each step. Fling the stone sidearm. It skips about three or four times before sinking in a splash. “Not bad,” faces from the two guys. The girl does not react in any way. Yeah, I am a pretty good skipper. Actually.Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback by clicking here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another.
Greek Pastry & Clouds Dreams do come true, specifically, ones about packing up a backpack and taking a trip around the world. But they are not without missed trains, nights in hostels with leaky roofs, and overcast days that make you want to hide in a hole. What is it about today’s twelve thousand tons of grey haze hovering overhead that makes me realize quite clearly: I don’t know a soul in Athens – or more largely, in Greece? Really haven’t cared about that fact till this exact second. Whatever. You could be lounging in the clouds and you’d soon discover they have bedbugs. You can’t stare into this haze anymore than you can stare into the sun. It’s a blinding blanket over a blue you can’t see. Makes you keep your head down. It’s supposed to stick around for days, per the forecast. Though of course, nobody is owed anything, it’s hard not to feel owed a little sunshine if you’ve made it as far away as Greece. Anyway. It’s times like these you gotta do a couple pastries, man. A mug of joe. That’s the big plan for the day. Athens bakeries have two cases, one for the narrow bricks of layer cake with angular white and brown chocolate triangles and lace-like icing patterns that you can find anywhere in Europe or the USA. The other case is for traditional Greek recipes, which are really worth going for. Geological layers of crunchy filo dough and raw honey. Jade chunky bits of crushed pistachios. Twisted cookies with golden glazed exteriors that release an aroma of baked butter when you snap them in half. Folded cookies with a filling of chopped ruby cherries and sticky sweet walnut paste. Fried donut balls to dip in honey and chocolate sauce. This is not a sit down place, but I do hide from the beginnings of rain in the awning of the shop. Cardboard box of pastries with a golden foil interior. They might as well serve them in tiny treasure chests. It’s nice here. The espresso machine grinds coffee beans louder than my thoughts. The roar of the convection oven and the bustling of nice people pulling fresh treats from the heat. The coming and going of regulars. Jagged, crispy filo dough flakes apart on my tongue. Wildflower honey melts away. Crushing pistachios with molars. Nothing else tastes like pistachio, that’s a one of a kind flavor. Speaking of flavor, have I even had real pastry before now? Or was it all various wax moldings of whipped canola oil and dyed corn syrup? Someone should investigate. Closing my eyes to the sun glare diffusing through the frankly sad and ugly sky. What am I doing here? What is at the end of this trek? Breathe in and out. Rose water. This one had an aftertaste of rosewater. Gently, though. A notch above imagination. As close to a magic spell as it gets. A sip of the coffee. Rich espresso and buzzy caffeine rocket right to the brain. Makes you stand up straighter and blink. I’ll take a ferry to some island. They’re ghost towns this time of year, but what difference does that make? There’s nobody to hang out with here, either. Funny thing, though. No matter what you do, or where you go, at some point, you sweep up the crumbs and think. Now what? Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback by clicking here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another.