Scenes from a Café in Athens The coffee machine at this café has been broken for the first hour of the day. A waitress in the place’s uniform of a vest with floral patterning and a tiger face on the back is explaining this nervously to new patrons in Greek. She is wringing her hands, and playing with her frizzy brown hair. The groggy patrons shrug it off and sit down. After all, it’s still nice here. Though I don’t know Greek, I got the same rundown on the situation in heavily-accented English mere moments ago. It’s ok, I have time to wait for the twenty minutes it is estimated repairing the machine will take. Guests smoke without exception while browsing the menu. Cigarettes, small cigars, or vapes. With no coffee to drink, it’s hard not to people watch. Especially given the prevalence of eccentric clothing in this city. One woman passes in a fuzzy zebra-striped ankle-length coat, and black hair pinned in a bob. Another in a fuzzy red coat, loudly patterned silk shirt with a gold cross, baggy white cargos, and heavy boots. Many people wear green slacks, or checkered pants with leather jackets. One girl wore all black and silver jewelry with zebra-striped slacks. 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. An older couple sits two tables away after accepting the reality of the delay for coffee. The woman takes out two packages, one of red Winstons, the other a golden cardboard box. Her hands open it slowly. What could be in such regal packaging? Hand cream, it turns out. Heating coils glow orange inside black metal reflectors that chase away the February chill. The booths are upholstered with a print of tigers and cheetahs among jungle leaves and flowers. No less than five crystal chandeliers shine on the ceiling. The light fixtures are shaped like brass crowns, and stuffed parrots are perched on top of them, staring down into the center of the chandelier like into a watering hole. The chandeliers are set among a canopy of leaves and flowers that hang from brown rafters. Globes of stained glass with bulbs in the center offer colored light, too. The café doors are framed by the white columns of a building built in 1870. With caffeine delayed, we’re clearly onto booze. Clinking trays of brunch brunch cocktails float out amid the loungers, borne on the palms of the stressed waitress. Short, frosted glasses with berry purple, citrus orange, or a lemonade color are served here and there. Down the alley, a street artist is selling handmade jewelry against the backdrop of dark green corrugated sheets that are part of the construction work on the building next to the café. Though the sheets are temporary, street artists have painted them with psychedelic patterns. Incense on the wind. Behind me, a the white marble arches and blue ceiling with gold stars of an Orthodox church. The priest is out at the café, counseling someone in hushed tones at a table far away. What is the subject matter? It’s all in Greek, but they must be talking about how hard life is. What else would you talk to a priest about? Actually, I have seen a meeting of this kind in some public place, a café or bar at least once every day I have been out and about in Athens so far. Only once have I eavesdropped, because the conversation was in English. A woman was saying, ‘people are suffering so much everywhere, father.’ He lifted his hands. Even for a priest, it’s a lot to lay on one guy. Relief to those gathered, the unmistakable sound of coffee beans grinding. The machine is fixed, and a barista puffs on a giant vape and reads the stack of backorders for coffees. The handles of the machine click-clack as he works them at lightening speed. My own coffee freddo arrives, which is espresso on ice with a frothed top. A family of four dressed to the nines takes a corner booth outside. The daughter, in her mid 30s, wears a white top with exposed shoulders, and designer sunglasses hanging from a large gold chain. Her boyfriend sits opposite from her. Her thin mother sports a sailor-like white shirt with billowing sleeves and lacy collar, and similar shades. Her hair is buzzed on the sides, long on top, and one lock is dyed the color of red wine. The dad of the family has opted for jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers. He jokingly snatches the daughter’s designer purse, a leather bag with gold studs. They are all laughing. Is his iPhone stored in there? Is it her turn to pay? Hard to tell. Past the mid-1800s buildings, white balconies and wooden shutters of a pink building open, the cliffs leading up to the Acropolis stand over the city. From this café, you can see the triangular roof and ancient columns through the haze of the day. Thin grids of scaffolding gird parts of the ancient ruins, keeping an icon, history, attraction, and identity of the city alive. People pass between the outdoor tables with shopping bags. Others pass with obvious signs of insanity. Two of them, both men in ripped sweaters and worn out jeans, wander through the tables singing loudly to themselves. They have no cup for coins, they aren’t buskers, just lost in their own music. At one table, a fat guy with tattoos of anchors and Greek characters and a large gold watch, lights cigarettes with matches. Potted plants in ceramic black monkey heads decorate every table. What are the jobs of all these people? Are they all on vacation on a random Tuesday? They are speaking Greek, mostly. So they must be locals. The jewelry maker has sold a necklace to a yoga-style lady with blonde hair, the backlog of coffee orders is cleared through much to the relief of the staff. Brain fog blows away like morning mist off a lake. Smoke rises from all cigarettes, and the day proceeds at its wandering, browsing pace.
Wheelbarrows of Spanish Rubbish Now I am a farmer in Spain. It happened fast! This change in my way of life. Seems I hit a lurch in my grand lark around the globe. Turns out, when you spend a ton of money, you don’t have it any more, so out of a deep desire to keep seeing the world, I am now working on a farm about a half hour from Sevilla. The gig gets me a room and groceries, and I still have afternoons and weekends free to explore. Fair enough. Sweet deal. 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 first wheelbarrow full of wood for the compost pile is ready to be trundled down the hill. In the upside down U-shaped bowl of the barrow lie tangles of thorns. Enormous plates of palm tree shaped like shell bits from a brown lobster, but made out of wood. Big bundles of palm fronds with sharp dead spines along their stems. Mats of wet, fibrous, woven tissue. Rolling the barrow down to the wood waste pile, through thigh-high greenish weeds. Simple living. A white bell tower stands sharply from the horizon line. What Andalusian character! What rustic Old World charm. Time to hurl the handles of the barrow skyward and send the thorns, fronds and palm plates into the heap of other thorns, brushwood, and chunks of downed trees. The brush pile runs for a hundred curving yards. Barrow number two. This one weighs less, but it’s stacked so high with thorns that the wooden tips rake and scratch my legs whenever I take a step. I could adjust it, but they don’t quite cut through my work pants, so forward down the same hill it is. Oh wow, look at that. The same Andalusian architectural touches, and the same blistering rustic charm. Wait, lemme brew a little presence and gratitude for this scene of beauty – oh whatever, seen it. Get it. Let’s flip the barrow once more. And go get another one. Oh, yeah. Two barrows down, one hundred and forty seven to go. This is the life. This is what it’s all about, farm life, very traditional, very healthy. This is awesome. This is boring. The five fat dogs of the farm are barking all at once now. Probably because the same van they have seen every day of their lives at the exact same time is pulling up the driveway. It shocks them every single day. It blows their dog minds. It is a situation that requires immediate frantic prancing and barking. It is the same van they see every day, and look, look everyone, it’s back. Barrow three: heavy on the crab-leg and gigantic lobster-claw-like plates of palm tree bark. Deep smell of wood spice, rich in the nose, with piquant notes of thorns to draw light red lines of blood from my forearms above the leather gloves. Presented ingeniously on a generous bed of delicately aged palm fronds. Get a load of that same Andalusian bell tower. Drink in those mounds of brown fields striped with plow tracks. Isn’t it bucolic, isn’t bliss? Haven’t I seen it twelve hundred times over the bow of the loaded barrow? How many wheelbarrow-loads are left? Does the bell in that tower ever ring? When is lunch, and what will I eat when lunchtime arrives? Yes, yes, doggies, that van, that van is still back. Get on the case, boys. Bark the ever living heck out of that situation. The van, the van. Something must be done. Charging around must be accomplished. Deep inner feelings must be vented. There is so much to do today. Another barrow, this one loaded deeper than a ship making a voyage for the new continent from the days of whenever we were up to exploration. It’s bringing a precious cargo of palm tree chunks and thorns to the New World. I’m wrestling the one white wheel through the long grass for the rubbish pile. How will I do this repetitive menial job? Better than anyone who ever did it. They will call me the Wheel Barron. When I leave the mortal plane, people will say, ‘we lost a wheel one.’ Lunch is scheduled for sometime next month. I will bomb that cute little bell tower to pile of charming bucolic ashes. I will sow those plow tracks with salt. I will use this very wheelbarrow to bring the Iberian Peninsula to its knees. I will drain the Strait of Gibraltar one wheelbarrow full of water at a time. I will do no such thing. I will heave this wheelbarrow upside down, then go get another one. I’ll barrow a heap of rubbish that is kind of like this one, but really very different. A new salad of palm plates, spiked fronds, thorns, and yard waste. With a good attitude, I will do this chore till sundown. It’s getting me a cot in a finished barn, after all. It’s getting me eggs, tuna cans, oranges, and rice. Haul and heave, haul and heave, working the earth here in Spain. The black plastic pipe carrying water down from the stone pump house gurgles near my feet. Birds sing. White butterflies bob and flutter. Let’s get another barrow.
Jam in Tangier A story about what Moroccans thought of a deeply American tune, and the universal language of music. Functional, I will settle for that description of my guitar prowess. But what does any ability level matter when you’re supposed to meet new friends at a hole-in-the-wall music café buried deep in a bazaar, a maze of shoulder-width white walls and rain-slicked, steep cobblestones, and you can’t find it? Carved wooden shop awnings all draped with scarves, leather bags, lined with handmade pointed yellow shoes, great, reeking piles of black soap, pink and yellow incense, and oils line every triple fork and twist of this labyrinth. Juniper wood carved into boxes and polished till the grain pops like veins in marble in one shop. Parakeets chirping in a cage. Around the corner, five cafes brew coffee and tea all at once. Bakeries the size of closets are tucked into the mess somewhere. Stray dogs and cats charge around feet, as do kids chasing a soccer ball. I’m hauling a guitar over potholes where the stones are broken, up uneven and jagged steps, through a soundscape of sales pitches in first French, then Spanish, then Arabic, then English. Someone in a hoodie lounging on a tiny stoop asks if I need directions. Do you know where Buena Vista is? I ask. He leaps up and promises to walk me there. He chatters about how he himself is a musician, he as well played at Buena Vista. The drums, the bass, he sang, he did everything. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another. He stops a tri-fork in the maze of narrow white alleyways, and vaguely gestures that Buena Vista is down the center one. As I begin to walk, he calls out asking for a little something, but I am mostly out of cash, and apologize. He walks away disappointed. Soon it becomes clear that my destination is nowhere nearby at all. Turning corner after corner, ignoring plea after plea to come explore lamps, rugs, spices, and incense. Have dinner here, drink coffee here, eat pastry here, buy gifts for your loved ones here. A sign! Berber Rugs. Someone mentioned this well-known store was nearby the music café. Up the steep ramp of the cramped alleyway I charge, ducking under swaying handwoven scarves. A round wooden sign: Buena Vista. Tendrils of the stress of being unsure of how to find the place grow long thorns of stage freight. It has been a while since I played in front of an audience. The humid cold of this February night has seeped bone-deep into my fingers. Because of the plaster ceiling that bows down like a full belly over an unlit staircase of blue and white broken tiles, I must take the guitar bought used from a shop in Shoreditch back in London off my back. Its stock would bump the low ceiling otherwise. In the first staircase: vague mildew, and the cigarette smell of the air outside. But the darkness and damp give way to warm light and the aroma of freshly brewed espresso. The first floor is a barista’s station with a gleaming espresso machine, stacks of ceramic coffee cups, piles of mint leaves, and glasses for tea. A few floor cushions are scattered around. It hardly takes a full three steps to cross the entire floor. The second floor is the stage. Rows of wooden benches on an incline surface, and a very small stage with chairs that have stained cushions slip-sliding off of skinny black frames. The musicians: a keyboardist, a drummer, and my new friend on guitar. He nods and indicates I can unpack and set up. Five humming amplifiers, and the body heat of four musicians boxed onto a small stage with close walls make the venue an oven of heat and sound. Eight bright stage lights, and the most powerful of all radiations: eyeballs, the forty-four staring eyeballs of twenty-two strangers expecting to be entertained. Sweat chases the humid chill from my fingers, which become unhelpfully slick on the silver tuning pegs of my guitar as I twist them into key. Soon, I am balancing on one of these falling-apart chairs, doing my best not to lean back against the wall and send a decorative bass guitar clattering to the ground, and not so far forward as to make the chair fall apart. We’re all supplying the background music for a Moroccan singer. He has a sharp haircut and a puffer jacket, sweatpants and Adidas shoes. I copy the E minor to F major I spot my friend pressing on his fretboard. The singer fills the venue with verse after verse of a long, lonely, wailing lament without a hook or chorus but with an eventual crescendo. It’s met with whooping and applause. A couple of people do more tunes in the same genre. You! You! Lead us in a song. The real musicians mean me. Tightening throat, pulse in temples, and my own breath loud in my ears as the drummer walks the mic to my mouth by rocking its round stand on the floor around cables and wires. The seat starts sliding off the frame of my chair like someone pulling the rug out from under my feet. I launch into the chords of Friend of the Devil, the Grateful Dead song. The drummer finds a shuffle. The other musicians find the chords. I can’t hear my own voice coming out of the speakers facing the crowd. Same is true of my guitar playing. It is like the feeling of screaming in a dream, but somewhere in the ether, Friend of the Devil is being performed, allegedly by me. Sonically speaking, I might as well have unfurled a gigantic banner of the American flag with blazing red and white stripes and a field of blue stars. After Flamenco rhythms and the neither major nor minor open scale of droning desert wailing, the bongity-bongity and logical square shape of the G-chord progression never sounded so American. Also American are the romantic, mystic, drifter lyrics, the hound-chased narrator hiding in the caves of Utah, but meeting the Devil by the levy after a fool’s bid to outrun him. An outlaw crying the nights away as he runs far and fast as he can from a couple ex-wives, a mean sherif, and the Devil himself on the great American highway. You notice always, but especially when you sing it: it’s a great, great song. In one break between verses, I whip out the best bluegrass-style solo I can play, practiced so often in private, and now played out in an unclear and quavering quality, or maybe it is just fine. After all, we are our own harshest critics, and the speaker the audience hears sounds so far away to me, like music around the block. Then what: the last verse must be sung, the chords cycle, and the song ends. Silence for a split second – one long enough for every self-doubt and regret about an off-beat strum, or wrong note to rip through me faster then light before these ghosts are chased away by a generous applause. Next comes a Moroccan girl dressed all in pink fuzzy jacket and matching pants, and flat white skater shoes. She wants to sing Stand By Me, and while I know it in G, she wants it in C. The keyboardist takes on the role of music teacher and shows us how to modulate to C. He gives the instructions in French, so I simply copy his chord change, which is the same in every language. A moment to discuss language. Other than Moroccan Arabic, people are quite likely to ask you for French or Spanish. Many people speak excellent English as well, but it is slightly less common. I am guessed for a Frenchman often here, because they get so many of them and relatively few Americans. Given the language gap, we rely on the music. Showing chords on key and fret boards, mouthing strumming patterns like, “da dana…bom bom, da dana…bom bom.” Things you can understand no matter where you are from or what language you speak. We supply instrumental backing for the girl as she sings, “when the night, has come,” and all of Stand By Me. Her voice is beautiful, and her English is spiced with the mildest of accents. Another hour lost in the flow of instrumentals, and we are all quite friendly by now, we few behind the strings, drums and mic. We trade compliments about instruments, and how so and so sounded on this or that song. “Please,” asks the keyboardist and our music teacher of the moment with a smile. “Friend of the Devil, once more.” Tonight is the first time he ever heard that song, but he says he likes the lyrics. Who could say no to a request like that? On our way out in the cold night, breath misting in the aura of street lamps, back passed the closed doors of the hundreds of shops in the Kasbah, my friend tells me I sounded “good, but extremely western.” It makes me laugh, and it’s probably spot on.
Hungry in Germany MANNHEIM – Three whole days bedridden with a stomach bug, likely from a German sausage that didn’t sit well with me. The last 48 hours on nothing but water with electrolyte tablets dissolved in it. Welcome to Germany. Outside my window, twin white smokestacks belch white steam into gray sky. Flat-fronted, boxy Mercedes trucks back in and out of work lots. German zoning isn’t like American zoning. When I first got off the tram in this district with its manufacturing plants, factories, and construction yards everywhere, I thought I had been given the wrong address. Surely, I thought, nobody lives here. They do, though. Couched between paved lots where cranes haul yellow girders skyward, surrounded by industrial buildings, vehicles, and smokestacks, there is a sturdy German apartment where I’ve got an Airbnb. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another. I came to Mannheim to spend time with a friend from back home. She advised me not to bring up the fact that Germany is still not allowed to have a military. Apparently, her German fiancé reacted quite badly to this topic and spluttered about the small army and further rearmaments going on due to Russia and Ukraine. Don’t know much about it. Not that I have anybody to talk to about current or historical events while lying in bed with a stomach bug. But alone and woozy, I do have time to think about that no military, or small military rule. I mean, surely enough is enough by now, right? So much time has passed. So much cultural evolution has happened. Right? Daylight breaks. It’s just below freezing outside. Lightheaded and extra cold after 48 hours without a bite of solid food, I layer up and begin the half-hour walk to the nearest tram station. I step outside and inhale the fresh air. Scratch that, it’s not fresh at all, it all stinks of rotten eggs. The rows of factories all churn up groundwater and kick hydrogen sulfide stink into the neighborhood’s air every single morning. My stomach flips over. I shiver and try not to breathe too much. As I cross the Alter Rhine, the rotten egg smell blows away, but the temperature drops sharply as I walk over the bridge. The Alter Rhines – leftover bodies of water created when the Germans straightened the Rhine. After all, you can’t have a river running wherever it will, wild and free. That’s just unruly and disorganized. The water-chilled wind rips through my peacoat and two sweaters. It’s so cold I might as well be out here shivering naked. “Nein, nein! Du wirst dir das Bein brechen, wenn du das so machst!” A work crew foreman is barking orders at a crew member who was about to drop down a manhole with a tool bag slung over his shoulder. The workmen all wear rubber suits with reflective cuffs on the legs. Look at the rage on the foreman’s face. Listen to the murder in his voice. The wrongness in the work of his crew stinks like filth in his nose. I shrug my head into my coat and press forward into the wind. The sky is gray. The water is brown. The old brick buildings have broken-out windows, walls with missing chunks, and exposed peeling plaster. Vines grow over bricks. The newer buildings feature the same harsh industrial angles you might see in any other city. This part of Mannheim is either old and abandoned or indistinct and unremarkable. There is an underground tunnel leading to the train station across the street. The walls are covered in graffiti. Puddles and creeks of piss run down into the sewer grates. You have to pay to use the scattered public bathrooms around here. Men, women, and children alike all find hidden corners and go in the streets rather than cough up a half Euro for the pay toilets. I hold my breath and focus on making it to the other end of the tunnel to catch the train. Train Ride To be honest, I don’t have a plan. I just ride the train until the area out the window looks promising. The buildings don’t have signs. There’s no indication of restaurants around. The train pulls to a stop with a cafe. Maybe they have soup on the menu. I hop off the train and walk over to read the menu posted outside. I study it and work to remember my survival-level German vocabulary or decode what I’m reading. Through the streaky brown glass, I see people inside smoking like it’s 1959. The woman behind the counter throws her hands up at me in impatient rage. I check to see if I’m blocking anybody’s way, but I’m not, I’m alone out here. Come on lady, can’t I read the menu in peace? Nobody else has ever done this? I lift a hand to thank and appease her and walk away. What hospitality! What warm hearts. I should just go back to the Airbnb and sleep. I can make it one more day without eating. More than halfway there already. Though the hunger seems to double or even triple the cold weather. Wonder if the cleaning lady is still there. She’s another figure who projected an air of silent, clenched rage. Her eyebrows tweezed to pitch-black perfection. Hair disciplined in a gelled black bun. A snarl in her mouth. The hard angles of her shoulders as she whipped dust out of the corners of the room. More disgusted than the foreman of that work crew. OK, what is with this place? My friend can’t hang out with me, I’m all alone. Can’t stomach the food, see a ray of sunshine, or even a smile for that matter. Yeah, I’ve changed my mind. No military for you sausage-fueled, shivering, snarling, barking little martinets. Who straightens a river? Leave it alone. Germany, your coldness, harshness, and anger are seeping into my blood like the windchill. Back Home The cleaners leave all the windows open, so even though I step inside I can’t really warm up yet. I leave my coat on. What’s this outside my door? There’s a chocolate Saint Nikolaus standing there. Wrapped in red tinfoil with gold crosses on his red hat and shoulders. I pick it up and stare at it. It unbolts my brain for a moment. How many years since a Christmas at home? How many years more since a Christmas with magic? This little chocolate saint. Taking an auger to mood and memory. I’m too old to think about stuff like that anymore! I’ve got to put this guy down. He’s dredging my spirit too much. I can’t be in a foreign country so woozy, witless, and starving that a chocolate saint can strip the years and makes me a kid again. I’ve got to get inside my room fast where I’m not exposed. I text the Airbnb host, “thank you for the chocolate!” She writes back, “It was left by Saint Nikolaus, of course!” She adds a winking emoji. Ah, you guys aren’t so bad. You’re the sweetest people ever. Sorry for what I thought earlier – the sausage-munching rage machine thing. I didn’t mean it. This chocolate is rich and delicious, and it’s the one thing I’ve had to eat all day. I eat it sitting near the radiator.
If ChatGPT Takes All My Jobs… Things are mostly perfect. Mostly. Chilling on a balcony, watching wooden fishing boats with tall prows on the North Atlantic from a surfing hostel in warm, sunny, breezy Taghazout. The host gave me a speaker, and said he liked my music. I have this shaded seaside patio all to myself. But you see…I’m reading about this ChatGPT thing. Watching some videos on it. A year ago, AI could only write non-sequiturs that demonstrated there was no real mind buried in all the algorithms. “Batman throws Alfred at the clue.” Moronic sentences based on frequency of word use. But now…now it’s good. Kids are making it write college essays for them. It can crank out an advertisement, an SEO article, a web page, anything I ever got paid money to write. Non-sequiturs and headaches aside, it’s only a matter of time before employers figure out you don’t have to pay for ChatGPT’s health insurance. Plus, the technology will only get better going forward. For now at least, Odd Jobs & After Hours isn’t bringing in enough to replace my “real” jobs. And now they’re building a robot to replace those. Time to become something else. But what? Plenty of people did during the Industrial Revolution, right? Fair is fair. But maybe…there isn’t a “something else” to become, and this ChatGPT thing signals the long, slow slide towards homelessness. Sleeping in bus stops in the rain, wondering what happened to the guy with the laptop job surfing and partying across Europe, South America, and Africa, I mean, it’s not impossible, right? It’s not historically unheard of, it’s not – “Tom! Tom! We must go to Agadir for a couple of hours. We leave you in charge of the hostel?” I sit up and take off my sunglasses. Samad, the host of the hostel is peering around the corner, desperation in his eyes. “Samad. I’m on vacation.” “Yes, yes, of course, but for one hour, two hour, you answer the door if it rings, give new person towel from behind the desk, ask their room number and bring them there? We bring you anything you want from Agadir, anything to eat, drink, smoke, tell me and it’s yours.” “Thanks, but I’m stocked up. I don’t need anything from Agadir.” “Please, we are out of staff, and if you must leave, of course this is OK, but if you will be here with your music anyway…please?” Seagulls crow and dive for fish. “Ok, you got it.” Samad clasps his hands in gratitude, and off he goes on his motorbike to Agadir. Mostly, I hang out and do exactly what I was already doing. One guest arrives in half an hour, and I bring him a towel and show him to room four. Easy. Now as an American, you spend a ton of time around well-run businesses. You just do. And looking around at the surf hostel I now run, I consider everything that went wrong when I arrived. The vision becomes clear: hire some of local women to do the towel and linen washing, get that running like a clock. Spice and punch up the online description to sell the place on its ambiance a little better. Convince the building owner to spend a little more and therefore earn a little more, and not over-extend his two-man staff so much they have to ask some guest for help. I mean, from what I’ve seen Samad never sleeps. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another. Get it in hardcover, paperback, or audio at the link. Replace the hasty iPhone photos with something more cinematic. Get a staff schedule in ship-shape. Pay nice local ladies on the block for couscous dinners for the guests every night. Easy upsell. Heck, get a live music night organized right here on this patio. There’s enough banjo and oud guys playing the streets for pennies. Let’s get those guys earning a little more too. I’ll upsell guests on beginner surfing lessons. I am good enough to teach those now. Let them build a robot that can do all those things at once. And oh yeah, I’ll ferry to Spain often enough to dodge customs officials, because when you work abroad, tons of jobs will give you anything but a visa. As for a retirement plan, I simply won’t have one. As for the dentist, I simply won’t go. As for emergency funds, I will simply not have emergencies. That works, right? Three hours pass, and Samad returns with potato chips, Kinder bars, and beer as a thank you. Who knows? Maybe there’s a future in this surf hostel thing. No more wandering, just pick a nice place and stay there. Give up my hard-earned freedom and return to long hours stuck in one place. Clean up after 4AM parties and surf whenever I carve out time and gather energy for it. No matter how many times I tell the guest I let in and showed around I don’t really work there, they ask me for things all week long. Guess I’m hired.
Riptide & Camel Ride Paddling, paddling like crazy in the foamy water and big waves off the shore of an African surf and fishing village called Taghazout in Morocco. There’s no ATM in town, so you have to bike to the next village over to get cash. It’s just that kind of place. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I am convinced I can rip on a short board, so I have rented one along with a wetsuit, and I am getting churned, tumbled and plunged under waves like you would not believe. This is session two for the day. Did one in the morning, and the sun is going down now. In a calm moment on the water, when I turn to face shore, the village is…gone. Only tan desert hills with dark green splotches of short juniper trees cover the landscape. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another. Get it in hardcover, paperback, or audio at the link. One mansion with a high wall and big tinted windows stands alone. North-ish of me, deep in the distant hills, there is a tiny stripe of white cubes. Buildings veiled by haze. Those cubes are the hostels, restaurants, cafes, and surf shops of Taghazout, where I am staying. Miles and miles away. How did it get so far away so fast? Those riptides are sneaky, treacherous entities, huh? Nothing to do but start the long, slogging trek back in wet sand. But wait, what’s this? A man in a blue robe and straw hat is napping between two camels in the shade of a dune. One camel is tan and one camel is white. The logical choice, the correct decision becomes clear. What’s more, on impulse, I stuck 100 Dirham in the back pocket of my board shorts. That’s ten dollars in American money, and it is the key to unlocking this whole situation. The guy with camels is named Hassan. The tan camel is Bolo, and the white camel is Carlos. “Can we ride back to Taghazout?” Hassan nods and grins. “Even if I got this?” I show him the surfboard. He looks at the cameIs and nods. “Be careful,” Hassan says. “They spit.” “Can’t be worse than my last wipeout. Imagine doing 20,000 ice cold neti pots at once.” Hassan laughs. “Clears the sinuses, though.” I will be riding Carlos the white camel. Hassan shows me the stirrup, a metal bar, and how to get up on the dark red, hand-woven, rug-like saddle. Then Carlos stands up. Back legs first, and I’m pitched forward at a steep angle, gripping the surfboard under my armpit, lurching and staring at the back of Carlos’s long, hairy neck with its patches of knotted, dust-filled fur. Up go the front legs, and here we are. What an elevated view of the ocean and shore. Hassan mounts Bolo, and we start towards Taghazout carried by the forward rock and roll motion of the indolent, dour lipped, heavily-lidded camels. “I take your surfboard,” Hassan says. I press the yellow board deeper into my armpit. “No, I got it.” “Please, I carry for you.” “You wouldn’t ask a knight to let someone else carry his sword, would you?” This, Hassan understands. He laughs and does not offer again. The waves that plunged me under and rolled me all evening long are roaring to the left. The desert hills with their tent camps and RVs stand to the right. On a camel, wearing a wetsuit and surfboard, plodding back to where I’m staying. It does make me wonder, if ever a term such as camel hypnosis was coined. How can it not exist? Drying out under desert sun, gently rolling along without so much as a car stereo to distract you. “These guys must get great miles to the gallon.” Hassan stares at me. “Of water!” Now Hassan stares at me while I laugh at my own joke. Nice, cool, we’re having a good time. Eventually, when we arrive at the eroded, worn out, stone rocks that lead up to Taghazout, the camels kneel once more, again with their steep pitch forward. “Thank you Hassan, and thank you Carlos.” I unzip my wetsuit, find the soaked, but honestly still very crisp 100 Dirham note, and give it to Hassan. It might be too much, it might be too little, but it’s all I have, if you know what I mean.
Caught Between Curfew & Culture | Colombia I am doing the tightrope walk of organizing a date while sitting here under a plant that’s sprouting from a stone patio, with a view of the mild, mid-afternoon bustle of a middle-classish, family-friendly neighborhood, my back to the door of a $7 per night Airbnb in Colombia. (In a cave with my book, Odd Jobs & After Hours. Get your copy on Amazon here.) Food delivery guys on motorcycles with insulated red backpacks putter at slow speeds down the block. The U.S. Marine veteran in the room next to mine is also out on the porch. He is cursing the snot out of a video pundit on his iPhone, and chain-smoking. And I am tapping, backspacing, Google translating, and double-checking my way through a Whatsapp conversation with a Colombian girl named Carla. We matched on Tinder. Through clumsy, ham-fisted, beginner Spanish, I am laboring to achieve that detached yet interested, breezy yet clear, kind of gamesmanship that Whatsapp flirting requires. (What? You’re above it? You’re telling respond when you see a message and not when an appropriately coy period of time has passed? You get to the point and you don’t waste anybody’s time? I doubt that, friend. I doubt that very much.) Ah, but Colombia! Colombia is a nation still capped by the cosmic dome of Catholicism. A people still cupped in the hands of God. Not like the bloated, broken, chimp children of the USA, desperate to suck all the money, food, and flesh they can into their faces while their little rock plummets through the void. For this fundamental fork in our cultural backgrounds, when I asked for her address so I could send her a cab to pick her up, she snapped back, “A cab? To my address? I’m not a prostitute!” Now, I thought I understood that in Spanish but I used Google translate to be sure. I put the phone in my pocket, a take a walk around the block. When I get back to my Airbnb, there is another message from Carla. “In the USA, the man can go over to a woman’s house for a first date, but it is different here.” “I understand. I was only trying to offer you a ride to the restaurant.” “Yes, I don’t have a bike or car, I need a ride.” I set the phone down again. What’s caused by the language barrier here, and what’s her? Is it even worth the trouble of explaining to this…woman, that cabbie’s need, and actually outright demand, addresses? You can’t coo gently to them like homing pigeons, and let instinct guide them. Go where you feel, cabbie. She’s out there, somewhere. A new message banner appears. “Can u send it here?” She drops a pin at a cafe that logically must be within walking distance of her house. “Yes. Does 6 work?” “Can we do 8?” “See you then!” Time to whittle, time to pace, time to kick cans, and kill time. But time does move on, and 8pm does arrive, and here I am in collared shirt and slacks, leather shoes, standing on a corner outsides a parrilla place. Parrilla. It means grill. That seems kind of general. I read the Spanish menu posted outside the joint slowly, guessing my way through words I don’t know. A cab pulls up to the curb, and out steps Carla, looking more or less like her pictures. Black hair, and good looking, like many Colombianas. Skittish steps. Darting eyes. (Is this neighborhood scary? Am I?) We meet and do a quick cheek kiss. She laughs at my clunky Spanish. We get an outdoor table. I can pick out what she does: nurse, and share what I do: writer. I manage to ask her what’s best on the menu, and she points to a mix of grilled meats over a bed of french fries. It has chicharrón, sausages, a grilled steak, some kind of sauce drizzled all over it. Peppers and onions in there, too. We get one of those and two mai tais. Soon that becomes two mai tais for me, and one for her, because the bartender is quite talented, and all communication is a taxing effort. She says something fast, something that ends in a rising, questioning tone. “No sabo,” I say, and shrug. She bursts out laughing. I sip my mai tai, analyzing this. Smiling. Clearly, I am funny. And this is good. Right? She types at blistering speed into Google translate on my phone. She shows me her English message. “I can’t believe you said that!” it reads. “When someone speaks bad Spanish we call them no sabos. If you want to say I don’t know, say no sé. I laugh and say no sé, no sé etching a deep, dark mental note. The mixed grill over fries arrives. It’s a banger. Hot, fresh, and tasty. We eat and chat about music, and movies, and work, and life, and English, and Spanish, and the USA, and Colombia. The mixed grill disappears, and the check appears. Blue-raspberry and red raspberry lights blast through the windows of the restaurant. Sirens wail. The heroic Colombian police department is doing a slow, loud roll down the street. Restaurants and bars up and down the block give their lights the double blink. “Curfew!” she says. “For COVID?” I ask. She nods. Spanish roars out of a police megaphone. I check my watch. 10pm. A whole city on high school curfew hours. I pay the check, and we’re out the door. There are just so many cops! And that megaphone message, which is definitely enforcing curfew runs on a loop. People are vanishing left and right. She tells me she needs a ride home, and I tell her I know. As I tap on my phone for a ride, she taps me frantically on the shoulder. Two cars, two cars! You’re an honest woman, Carla, I got it, I know, we’re cool. The Uber I call for her arrives. And look at me, Captain Charming, I open the door for her. She sits in the cab, steps out suddenly, then gives me a quick kiss on the lips. “Hide while your cab comes!” she says. It’s interesting advice, probably wise. I nod. Then I’m alone. It’s me, the law, and the great specter of COVID-19, making its deadly post 10pm rounds. Giant potted plants line the outside of a hotel on a corner. I dart over, and crouch behind one plant before the police pass again. Red and blue lights wash around the round, matte ceramics of the plant pots, and shine through their spiky fronds. There’s that same megaphone message again. The Uber driver sends me a message. “Sorry! No rides after 10pm for COVID.” No, that can’t be right. I try three more Ubers, but all decline. I try two yellow cabs. Same deal, no rides after 10pm. I peek out from behind the potted plants at the empty street. So here we are. It was 15 minutes to get here by car, which is (maps tells me) an hour fifteen by foot. Hmm. Cops are out, I saw them tapping people on the shoulder to get them going on their way. Right now, the streets are empty. What’s the move, here? Stick near buildings and start speed walking the hour fifteen back to the Airbnb? It’s the only option, and I had better get going. Maybe I can periodically check to see if there’s a rogue driver looking for a final fair of the night. I get going. Tap, tap, tap. Leather dress shoes, not too grippy, pretty hard-bottomed, on the empty street. Battery life dying fast. I take a notebook out of my pocket and copy down the street turns down in case the battery dies mid-journey. Ten minutes into the walk. No signs of cabs or Ubers. Compliance all around. Fifteen minutes into the walk, with the longest steps I can manage. Red and blue lights shine around the corner, so I step into an alleyway. The cops drive past while I’m crouched behind a dumpster. Then it’s back to hoofing it, to pitter-pattering along, making the big long trek home. Twenty-five minutes into the walk, and 10 percent battery life left. Ding! It’s a Whatsapp from Carla. “Home safe! Smiley emoji. Thank you for lovely time. I’m going to bed now.” And I look up at two stars, shining in the night between the buildings, and I take a deep, sweet, fresh, breath, and write back, “Happy for you! Sleep well.” Then it’s back to the hike. Police sirens again. They’re getting louder faster which means that they’re not after me, they’re after a real crime. Right? I crouch next to a set of steps under an awning, and a squad car barrels down the street, sirens screaming. Half an hour left to walk, and that’s easy, that’s doable, that’s practically recreational, but these dress shoes are hard as marble slates on the bottom, and they feel like they are too small now. It’s around then I start turning over in my mind, “two cabs, you can’t ride with me then tell the driver where to go after, I’m home safe, I’m sleeping, that’s all that matters. I’m good! That’s all that matters!” Not because I really mean it, but because it makes me laugh, and a little angry, and that keeps you going, going, going. Phone is dead. Going off my paper directions. City zombies appear. There are maybe twelve homeless people in this next stretch of road. Swaying back and forth. Screaming into the night. I should take a right turn and try to get around them. But can I course-correct after the detour? Should I walk between them instead? They’re skinny, they’re not too dangerous. Right? Or maybe…Or maybe they’re fueled by bitterness, hunger, and crack fumes, maybe they’re armed with shards of broken window wrapped in rags, and garden hoses with nails driven through the end to make spiky whips. Maybe they’ll smell Gringo on me, and descend like drooling junkyard dogs. I take the detour, and trust I can still find my next turn. My collared shirt is soaked with sweat. Feet still mad at me for wearing dress shoes for this unplanned hike. Wait a minute. Who is this? One moped rider is going down the street. I step out and wave at him to come over. He’s a delivery driver going home. I can tell from the insulated red bag behind him. I hold up some peso notes and point at the address on my paper. He gets it. I climb aboard behind him, and he zooms through the final stretch of my walk-in about 7 minutes, even with a detour to avoid a police curfew checkpoint. I thank him and hand him the pesos. I reach into my pocket for more to give him, but he refuses and drives home. The veteran is still on the porch, still watching videos, still chain-smoking. “Date go well?” he asks. I do a quick recap of the date, the curfew, the trip back, and he finds the scenario hysterical. “Put that story in your book!” he says. Let myself into the room. Turn on the shower. Kick off the dress shoes. I step into the cramped, narrow shower. Didn’t get mugged! Didn’t get fined for violating curfew! Didn’t get lost. But wait. Did the date go well? Did I do OK? Was I weird? Ah, forget it. No sé.
Epiphany in Medellin *** Enjoy this story, and for stories you won’t find online, grab my book here. Here I am, sitting on the stone tiles of a gated front porch on a block in Colombia, waiting on hold for a hospital back in the USA to send me written proof of a negative COVID test. Not sure how often cops ask for proof of negative, but the Airbnb host told me to have something ready. And she told me to practice saying, “I have proof I’m COVID negative,” in Spanish. Tengo prueba de COVID negativa. Or something. I set the phone’s on hold jazz music to a quiet speaker setting, and watch the block wake up. People aren’t going to work today. It’s Epiphany, and that’s a national holiday here. That’s when the Three Wise Men brought gold, Frankincense & Myrhh to baby Jesus. There’s something about watching a day start in a foreign country that’s like seeing a play begin. Queue the woman shaking a washed blue shirt over her balcony and hanging it on a white line. Queue the couple opening the front door of the apartment and assembling a ramp over the steps for the man’s moped to drive down. This morning, everybody is out on their apartment balcony doing chores or eating breakfast. Each of the four balconies visible is like its own world. One with a grandmother-age woman and her daughter, one with a couple, one with a family of four, and one family of three, are all having a day-off kind of morning. Instant coffee and a cigarette while leaning off the rail for one dad, pancakes and orange juice for the kids, and moms bustling around on mom business. Colombia has barred travel again, but I got here just before the gates closed. Now, I must stay in my Airbnb unless I can get proof of a negative COVID test. But the hospital’s hold music will not end. No cabs run, and many restaurants are closed. I start to realize I may not be able to get a bite to eat today. But no wait, look across the street. A few apartment doors to the left. A woman is pushing an industrial grill out the door. She and a man walk a big striped restaurant sign out of their front door. The sign reads Donde Toby. (Where is Toby? That’s what that means, right? The street food place is asking me where Toby is? For its name?) I can’t get over how different the apartments are here. You never think about building codes until you see what happens when they’re not there. Each building is slightly different creating a patchwork of odd angles and different colors. Motorcyclists and moped buzz down the block. A skin and bone man in a baggy polo and ripped jeans has two trash bags on his arms. He rifles through bags of trash left on the ground. Around the corner, on a second story balcony, somebody is reading what must be the gospel through a megaphone. I can hash out enough Spanish to know it’s the gospel, and based on the day it must be the story of the Three Kings. Black haired mothers in pandemic masks walk their children down the block. And underneath it all that hospital hold music won’t end. And it’s times like these, hungry in a foreign country that’s closed most of its restaurants, unable to leave and delivery service on holiday, yes, it’s times like these that make you ask the big questions. Such as, where is Toby? My patio is four feet above sidewalk level, made of brick-colored stones standing behind a painted white iron gate. If I walk to the end of the patio, I can see down the street where the man is preaching. There are lush green mountains rising behind him. They are covered in mist, but in the morning you can see their looming, rolling shapes. A voice crackles through the hold music. It thanks me for waiting and asks how it can help. I explain my situation. Sizzling grill, Spanish megaphone sermon, the rising buzz of a motorcycle’s engine. Dogs yap. A little bit of rain comes and goes. It’s all a symphony nobody could ever write.
Bullhorn Morning | Colombia *** Enjoy this story, and for stories you won’t find online, grab my book here. A harsh voice amped up through the funnel of an electrical bullhorn wakes me up. Hard Spanish syllables rattle the windows of every apartment on the block. The fog of the night clears. Oh, yeah. I’m waking up in Colombia today. And there’s a lockdown in effect till Tuesday. Is that what the bullhorn is about? Is that how they enforce it here? If so, this room feels as big as a milk carton. The wall that faces the street is mostly a glass sliding door with a metal gate behind it, and a full-length curtain behind that. One gust of wind with the glass door open, and the curtain would blow back and pedestrians could see you snoozing. It makes you want to hunch to the corners of the room. But I had the glass door shut all night, so that’s more of a theoretical concern then a pratical one. There’s no AC in here, just a fan, a mini-fridge, a hot water kettle, and miraculously, a bathroom and shower crammed in there as well. The size of an airplane’s bathroom. All immaculately clean and well organized. And the host put those beachy, barfy, housewarmers up on the walls, the wooden boards with golden letters reading, “Dream on, Wild Child” and “Home is Where I Hang my Hat”. And speaking of messages, that bullhorn is back again. What is it saying? I don’t have the Spanish to understand it. I pull the white curtain with blue flowers on it just an inch, expecting to see a police car with a clove of bullhorns jabbering away on top of it. It’s funny, no two apartment buildings on the street match. Far from uniform, utilitarian living complexes, it’s a series of brick or concrete or wooden sided buildings all with different shapes and designs. No two second story balconies are at the same height. A glance down the block and how it’s built is enough to tell you, the rules aren’t the same here. Christmas lights and bows are on some of the balconies. A small black dog wanders through the street. The bullhorner is out of sight, but his voice echoes around some corner. Tone-wise, the bullhorn voice seems sharp and official. What on earth could that be about? Stay in your rooms till Tuesday? That would make sense. Stay off the street? The street is empty, now. (Or are they saying ‘we’re looking for that guy, the American who got here last night. Somebody knows where he is. No harm will come to you if you hand him over.) The things movies will do to your head! The bullhorn voice is getting closer. This time, I’m going to see the police car, or whoever he is, pass. It’s not a police car. It’s not even a car at all. It’s a two-wheeled wooden fruit cart with a PA system mounted on it. There’s a suntanned, wrinkly, cranky dude pushing the cart through the streets, and finally, I pick words out of the garbled bullhorn noise. Papaya, guayaba, aquacate. Banana, mango. Ha! Police. Lockdown. Silly me. Now to find a cup of world famous Colombian coffee. To be continued
A Weird Thanksgiving Dinner from a Couple Years Back Enjoy this story, and for stories you won’t find online, grab my book here. *** Yeah, some year in my early twenties when I couldn’t scrape together airfare to fly home for Turkey Day, I had been hanging out with a crew of maybe four people, evenly split between guys and girls, because we all did Brazilian Jiu Jitsu together. None of us had plans for Thanksgiving morning, being neither football watchers, Turkey Trotters, or Thanksgiving day chefs. We had all kind of drifted in shouting distance of each other on the different lifeboats of our young adult lives. One guy slept on the mat of the gym, to give you an idea of our rootless and fleeting circumstances at that time. Personally, I was renting some dim, roach-eaten Craigslist room in walking distance of the dojo. We agreed to meet for a Thanksgiving morning roll, which is a sparring or grappling session. The temperature had dropped to what counts as very cold in South Florida. The dojo was this dim, really beat down kind of place. I was new to the sport with all the tapping out and choking that comes with being a beginner. Still, it was something to do, and we did it almost religiously. The guy teaching us spent two hours creating different grappling matchups and we all rolled ourselves to exhaustion. Then came a small social poker game in which nobody wanted to show is or her cards. “What are you doing for Thanksgiving dinner?” “Me? Chilling. Eating. Probably going to call home. You?” “Chilling. Eating.” “You buy a turkey?” “No,” I said. “To roast in what kitchen?” I didn’t have one back then. “So what are you going to eat?” “Um. Not sure yet. How about you, did you get a turkey?” “A whole big turkey? For one person? Nah.” Sensing the circumstances, I decided to tip my hand of cards first. “Yeah, I don’t have any plans if you guys want to get something to eat after this.” And the other three, in their drenched and dripping BJJ gis, kind of glanced up, then around at each other. “You guys can come too, if you’re free, I know you probably have family plans.” “No. We don’t,” said one, speaking for all. “What place serves turkey dinner?” “Nah, nowhere does. Let’s get Chinese” But somebody was allergic to MSG, and she suggested Italian, which was met with major enthusiasm and agreement. That’s how, two hours later, showered, Tiger Balmed, and thickly sweatered we all met up again in the outdoor garden of an Italian restaurant that I have never quite been able to find again. We chat about BJJ. “When you’re being choked, you got to look towards the guy. Your natural instinct is to turn away, but that just deepens his grip.” “Don’t let that knee sit on your stomach. Buck sideways, sharp as you can, early as you can. You’re just losing oxygen and energy if you don’t.” Calamari arrived soon after red wines and winter cocktails. “Just like the pilgrims had,” I said. Small laughter. “And don’t push the other guy too far when you’ve got the arm bar, it’s just a rolling session, you’re not trying to break bones here. Expect that tap to come really soon.” “At the end of the day, it’s about consistency. People think they’re good or going to be good, or supposed to be good at it right on day one, but no. Nobody is.” Think I ordered the chicken parm at entree time. “Just like the pilgrims had!” and the second time around, the line got a bigger laugh. Even from the waitress. And then, came a second social poker game. See, we all probably wanted desert, but who wants to be the first so-called “warrior” to admit yeah, they wouldn’t mind wrapping up with a little cannoli or lava cake. “Are we thinking about desert,” asked the waitress. We look around. Who gave out first? Someone said yeah, and relief spread around the table. Yeah, we’ve been training hard. “Could I please get the tiramisu?” I asked. “Just like the pilgrims ate.” And the third time around, the line got the biggest laugh of all. “It’s that special kind of joke,” I said. “The more you make it, the funnier it gets.” “Yeah, I’m not sure about part,” said one girl. But her girlfriend recently dumped her, so you have to factor that into her point of view. My tiramisu arrived. Phenomenal stuff. They went heavy on the rum. House made mascarpone. We all ordered coffees, too. I wonder where those people all wound up, I wonder where they all went. We didn’t stay in touch. I wonder if anybody but me ever thinks about our weird Italian food Thanksgiving dinner at that mostly empty restaurant after a long morning of trying to choke each other out. Hope they’re all doing well.