This will be the final post I write in Europe. I may write one more while in Toronto, as I have a seventeen (17!) [SEVENTEEN] hour layover there, and I will be desperate to conceive of any means I possibly can to kill the time, before the time kills me.
Currently I sit in the saddest Irish pub I could possibly manage to find in Dublin (which I am quite proud of finding), drinking the worst Irish coffee in the entire world. On the television is the annual budget debate. There is a fight over proposed austerity measures. An Irish Socialist politician is quoting W.B. Yeats. What I wouldn't give to hear an American politician quote Herman Melville!
In any case, I am in a good mood, because I will be headed home in less than twelve hours, and I am very much ready to leave. I have spent 38-odd nights in the top bunk of six different hostels, as well as seven nights on the couch of a beloved friend, as well as four nights in the room of a beautiful Manchester girl. I have made more friends and heard more stories than I am able to count. Every person I have met has proven to be absolutely mad, each in their own way, and without fail it has always taken an hour's time, at most, for them to reveal their maddest selves, that is their best selves, to me. I have said more good-byes than I wish to tally at this moment. The time feels right to head home.
At times I have been pained with thoughts of unworthiness. I am speaking of the opportunity I have had to visit all these places and to experience all these things. Yesterday afternoon I tried to walk to the shore of the Irish Sea, but I was not able to get there because I could not find my way around or past the Dublin port. Instead I found myself wandering through a residential area built within a stone's throw of the big barges and tankers being loaded and fueled in the port.. The houses stood only a foot higher than the top of my head, and there was the black and heavy smell, inescapable, of tanker fuel, which clouded my throat the moment I sensed it, pierced me with a terrible headache, and produced the desire in me to lie down on the grass and stop moving. The people I saw coming out of these little portside houses, were, without fail, mothers with young daughters.
I am aware that I am about to lapse into loathsome sentimentality here, but what did I do to deserve this jaunt around Europe? What more than these women raising their children in the shadow of those behemoths that leak industrial toxins onto their front porches? What might a poor Irish mother have been able to do with the four thousand American dollars I spent to go and play at writing a book while drinking pilsners in Kafka's birthplace (among other things)? I know how sophomoric this all sounds. But it is the thought that plagues me as I prepare to leave here, that I am undeserving of this time, incredible as it has been.
At the time of my departure I have written 30,000 words, averaging out to 600 words per day. I had planned to write 50,000 words, at 1000 words a day, but I was only able to manage just over half that quota. The way I have rationalized this to myself, and the way the many travelers I have encountered on my journey have rationalized it for me as well, is that a person Only Lives Once, that a person must Experience All That One Can, and that there's nothing wrong with work taking a backseat to that prerogative. But that rings hollow to me. What I believe is that anyone who is awarded a two-month writing fellowship is obligated to spend that time writing, damnit, and to do otherwise is to squander an incredible, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime gift. I do not believe that I have squandered this time with a capital S. I am sure there are countless others who wrote nothing, zero, not a word, on their own fellowships, and I must very harshly say that they are very foolish for having done so. But I could have done more.
I want to use this final blog post to admonish those who will be following me on fellowships of their own. Don't be lazy. Don't make excuses. WRITE. This is perhaps the one and only time that life will not conspire to prevent you from doing so. The only conspirator against you will be the most clever and persuasive adversary of all, that is, yourself.
The book I am writing, I should finally mention, is called Thirteen Different Girls. The project currently spans about 55,000 words total. The first draft should be finished before the new year, 2015. I hope it will be published when I am twenty-five years old. I write this here to put my ambitions down for everyone to see, and so I might be shamed if I fail to meet them.
I do think I will write a bit more about my trip before shelving the blog for good. I think I have more to say. But I want to say now, in conclusive fashion, that I believe these last two months have been the most important of my life so far.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Five Days Left
Today I wrote about 1200 words. As expected, my work habits have improved now that I am travelling alone again. But I am extremely melancholic that I have left London and Claire, probably never to see her again. It is possible that I was happy there. Would I rather be happy or be a productive writer? This does not seem to be a very difficult question.
In any case, I am in Dublin now. My plan here is to visit a different depressing pub every afternoon, drink two pints at each, and write as much as I can through the duration of those pints. There are two kinds of pubs in Dublin. There are the cool pubs that tourists and young people visit, and then there are the real pubs, where old people watch horse races and eat cheese sandwiches. Needless to say I prefer the latter.
Aside from that, I am reading Joyce and trying my best to imagine the Dublin that he wrote about, although I am fairly certain that it no longer exists in any capacity. The Liffey is still here, though, and I can imagine the Irish Vishnu of Finnegans Wake drifting down it, contemplating everything all at once. Incidentally, when a breeze passes over the river, there is the unmistakable smell of sewage.
It is important for me to add that Guinness in Ireland is exactly the same as Guinness everywhere else. I can not voice this to any Irishman, because I will surely be beaten up, but it has to be said.
In any case, I am in Dublin now. My plan here is to visit a different depressing pub every afternoon, drink two pints at each, and write as much as I can through the duration of those pints. There are two kinds of pubs in Dublin. There are the cool pubs that tourists and young people visit, and then there are the real pubs, where old people watch horse races and eat cheese sandwiches. Needless to say I prefer the latter.
Aside from that, I am reading Joyce and trying my best to imagine the Dublin that he wrote about, although I am fairly certain that it no longer exists in any capacity. The Liffey is still here, though, and I can imagine the Irish Vishnu of Finnegans Wake drifting down it, contemplating everything all at once. Incidentally, when a breeze passes over the river, there is the unmistakable smell of sewage.
It is important for me to add that Guinness in Ireland is exactly the same as Guinness everywhere else. I can not voice this to any Irishman, because I will surely be beaten up, but it has to be said.
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Penultimate Week
Since my last post, I have written nothing. What happened? I believe this dramatic loss of discipline is because I have been in the company of others, whereas before, in Spain, I was primarily alone. It was at that time that I worked the hardest, my mind was clearest, and this fellowship felt the most like an adventure.
In other words, and this is on the incredible off-chance that a BU writing student reads this blog, I want to stress that the most important element of a successful Global Fellowship, and perhaps any sort of journey to a foreign place, is solitude.
I am in London now to see the girl who I have named previously, Claire, and to be in her company is a wonderful thing. But it has softened me. It has ruined the edge of my discontent, and so I do not feel compelled to write. I do not even feel much impetus to write this blog, truthfully.
Is it possible that unhappiness is a necessity for the successful artist? Or if not unhappiness, then at least the sense that something is missing? I believe it is for me.
This is all very trite stuff. What I'd like to do is write about what I saw in Prague and in London. But somehow I can not find the will. Maybe I will try to write another post soon.
For the last five days of my time abroad I will be in Dublin. I will be alone there. If all goes well I can at the very least make it to 30,000 words over the course of fifty days. Perhaps I have failed. But I do not feel like a failure. And that, ultimately, is the problem.
In other words, and this is on the incredible off-chance that a BU writing student reads this blog, I want to stress that the most important element of a successful Global Fellowship, and perhaps any sort of journey to a foreign place, is solitude.
I am in London now to see the girl who I have named previously, Claire, and to be in her company is a wonderful thing. But it has softened me. It has ruined the edge of my discontent, and so I do not feel compelled to write. I do not even feel much impetus to write this blog, truthfully.
Is it possible that unhappiness is a necessity for the successful artist? Or if not unhappiness, then at least the sense that something is missing? I believe it is for me.
This is all very trite stuff. What I'd like to do is write about what I saw in Prague and in London. But somehow I can not find the will. Maybe I will try to write another post soon.
For the last five days of my time abroad I will be in Dublin. I will be alone there. If all goes well I can at the very least make it to 30,000 words over the course of fifty days. Perhaps I have failed. But I do not feel like a failure. And that, ultimately, is the problem.
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Days 32,33
It might do to say some more about Prague. Last night I went to a bar that kept two pumas up on the roof, and where the waitress came out onto the patio and started smoking a joint with the customers. The pumas, as I understand it, are brought down to impress customers on busy nights. It's totally legal to parade pumas through a bar in Prague, or perhaps more pointedly, it is not illegal. In Ben's words, there are no laws here. There is a culture of permissiveness that is totally fantastical to a visiting American, in other words, one who grew up in a country that embraced pseudofascism back in the 1980's.
Two nights ago I observed a tiny old woman berate a prostrate begging homeless man. When the homeless man did not answer her, she grabbed him by his collar and forcefully tried to wrench him to his feet, which caused him to roar an incomprehensible syllable (as I do not speak Czech) and return to his original position. Then she began smacking him on the shoulders with a rolled up newspaper, which caused him to roar again, and then finally the woman gave up and continued walking down the street.
One of the largest tourist industries in Prague is the sex trade. There are endless strip clubs (called cabarets, or, by the men trying to persuade you to enter them, titty bars) and brothels, where the prostitutes stand on the curb and attempt to physically pull you inside if you show the slightest hint of desire (or if you happen to get too close). As interesting as whores are to me, I have no stomach for this sort of thing, and so I doubt that I will find the impetus to tour a brothel while I am in the Czech Republic.
A major tourist item that is sold in Prague is absinthe. However, they do not sell real absinthe in Prague, in that it has no anise or herbs that I can detect (and perhaps not even wormwood), but the product they do sell is infused with massive quantities of the psychoactive drug thujone, enough that it would be illegal in any country that is not the Czech Republic (which has no laws). As a result, the intoxication one feels from this bum absinthe is very interesting. It makes one feel surprisingly alert and aware, and it is possible to understand why artists were drawn to the beverage in the 19th and 20th centuries.
I have reached 25,000 words at the time of this blog posting. If I write every day from this point on, I will reach the goal of 40,000.
Two nights ago I observed a tiny old woman berate a prostrate begging homeless man. When the homeless man did not answer her, she grabbed him by his collar and forcefully tried to wrench him to his feet, which caused him to roar an incomprehensible syllable (as I do not speak Czech) and return to his original position. Then she began smacking him on the shoulders with a rolled up newspaper, which caused him to roar again, and then finally the woman gave up and continued walking down the street.
One of the largest tourist industries in Prague is the sex trade. There are endless strip clubs (called cabarets, or, by the men trying to persuade you to enter them, titty bars) and brothels, where the prostitutes stand on the curb and attempt to physically pull you inside if you show the slightest hint of desire (or if you happen to get too close). As interesting as whores are to me, I have no stomach for this sort of thing, and so I doubt that I will find the impetus to tour a brothel while I am in the Czech Republic.
A major tourist item that is sold in Prague is absinthe. However, they do not sell real absinthe in Prague, in that it has no anise or herbs that I can detect (and perhaps not even wormwood), but the product they do sell is infused with massive quantities of the psychoactive drug thujone, enough that it would be illegal in any country that is not the Czech Republic (which has no laws). As a result, the intoxication one feels from this bum absinthe is very interesting. It makes one feel surprisingly alert and aware, and it is possible to understand why artists were drawn to the beverage in the 19th and 20th centuries.
I have reached 25,000 words at the time of this blog posting. If I write every day from this point on, I will reach the goal of 40,000.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Days 30,31
In Prague my pace of writing has sharply improved. I believe this is because I am sharing living space with not one, but two other writers, and I feel compelled to outproduce them. It is hard to understate how petty and competitive writers are, especially young ones. However, my pace of drinking has also greatly increased, because that's all that anybody does here, and because the friend I am visiting, Ben Zuerlein (a fellow graduate of the Boston University program), is the Lance Armstrong of drinking (in his words), and I can't help but try to keep up with him.
Prague is very beautiful, although it also feels like the sort of place where a person might spiral into horrible despair. All everybody does is drink (I can not overstate this) and there is a kind of cheery nihilism that goes through the culture, to the point that it even infects their civic institutions. But if one is not cheery, it can quickly become maddening. For example, the tallest building in Prague, the television tower, has giant sculptures of babies crawling up and down it, and from a distance they look "like ants crawling up and down a penis", according to the artist responsible for them. It is important always to keep in mind that this is the home of Franz Kafka. Prague clearly shaped him -- or perhaps he shaped Prague. In any case, so far I have been cheery.
One of Ben's roommates is a Bulgarian girl named Tanya. She has an extremely deep voice, cold blue eyes, and she chain-smokes repentantly. She plays at being constantly bored with whatever is going on around her, but it is only an affectation, if not something like a comic routine. She is a writer too, and between her, myself, and Ben, we have a very nice dynamic, in which Ben and I babble nonsense and she breaks in occasionally to inform us that we are babbling nonsense. I think I will have a very good time here.
Prague is very beautiful, although it also feels like the sort of place where a person might spiral into horrible despair. All everybody does is drink (I can not overstate this) and there is a kind of cheery nihilism that goes through the culture, to the point that it even infects their civic institutions. But if one is not cheery, it can quickly become maddening. For example, the tallest building in Prague, the television tower, has giant sculptures of babies crawling up and down it, and from a distance they look "like ants crawling up and down a penis", according to the artist responsible for them. It is important always to keep in mind that this is the home of Franz Kafka. Prague clearly shaped him -- or perhaps he shaped Prague. In any case, so far I have been cheery.
One of Ben's roommates is a Bulgarian girl named Tanya. She has an extremely deep voice, cold blue eyes, and she chain-smokes repentantly. She plays at being constantly bored with whatever is going on around her, but it is only an affectation, if not something like a comic routine. She is a writer too, and between her, myself, and Ben, we have a very nice dynamic, in which Ben and I babble nonsense and she breaks in occasionally to inform us that we are babbling nonsense. I think I will have a very good time here.
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Days 28,29
The previous two days were my last in Spain, possibly for the rest of my life, and I unfortunately spent them in alternating states of melancholy and horrible indigestion. The first ailment lingered from the leaving of Kelsey. The second was from eating an entire pizza by myself, which I'd drenched beforehand with pepper-infused olive oil. As far as my actions and their consequences go, I regret nothing. In any case, in these last two days I wrote less than two thousand words. My pace has totally been wrecked, and I can only hope that fleeing Spain will correct it. It's still quite certain that I will reach 30,000 words before I leave, but that is not enough. I hope to get to 40,000, even though 50,000 was the original aspiration.
For my last day here I ate the aforementioned pizza and went to the Sagrada Familia again. This was the third time that I'd been there, and I can say without shame that it is my favorite marvel that I have seen in all of Spain.
One of my very favorite parts about it is watching people try to photograph it, typically with themselves standing in front of it, which inevitably turns out to be a comically useless endeavor. The Sagrada Familia is perhaps the most unphotographable structure ever built by human beings. This is partly because it's so stupidly large that it can't possibly fit within the length and width of a camera's lens. But it's also because of a different kind of bigness, or muchness, which comes from the sheer quantity of intricate detail that is general all over the building, as well as the multitudes of dominating fixtures (the crucified Christ, the scene with the Wise Men, those eight terrifying towers, etc. even the damn crane that hangs over it, reminding you, in case you can't believe it, that the church isn't even finished yet), none of which act as a singular focal point of the work, which is why I think it's so damn alarming to come across it no matter how many times a person sees it. There is the sense that it was intended for eyes of greater vision than the eyes of human beings, and of their cameras too, of course.
What a mighty trick to play, to build a tourist trap that's impossible to photograph! I still don't see God when I look at the thing. I don't think anyone does, really. I think all that people see, and this includes myself, too, is a quantity of space that they desperately desire to squeeze into one small, manageable, frame.
Because of the aforementioned melancholy, indigestion, etc. I find myself leaving Spain on something of a sour note. But I think I will look back on this period as one of the most important of my life. I doubt that I have come anywhere close to conveying that sense, that muchness of experience, within this blog. But how could I ever?
I go to Prague next.
For my last day here I ate the aforementioned pizza and went to the Sagrada Familia again. This was the third time that I'd been there, and I can say without shame that it is my favorite marvel that I have seen in all of Spain.
One of my very favorite parts about it is watching people try to photograph it, typically with themselves standing in front of it, which inevitably turns out to be a comically useless endeavor. The Sagrada Familia is perhaps the most unphotographable structure ever built by human beings. This is partly because it's so stupidly large that it can't possibly fit within the length and width of a camera's lens. But it's also because of a different kind of bigness, or muchness, which comes from the sheer quantity of intricate detail that is general all over the building, as well as the multitudes of dominating fixtures (the crucified Christ, the scene with the Wise Men, those eight terrifying towers, etc. even the damn crane that hangs over it, reminding you, in case you can't believe it, that the church isn't even finished yet), none of which act as a singular focal point of the work, which is why I think it's so damn alarming to come across it no matter how many times a person sees it. There is the sense that it was intended for eyes of greater vision than the eyes of human beings, and of their cameras too, of course.
What a mighty trick to play, to build a tourist trap that's impossible to photograph! I still don't see God when I look at the thing. I don't think anyone does, really. I think all that people see, and this includes myself, too, is a quantity of space that they desperately desire to squeeze into one small, manageable, frame.
Because of the aforementioned melancholy, indigestion, etc. I find myself leaving Spain on something of a sour note. But I think I will look back on this period as one of the most important of my life. I doubt that I have come anywhere close to conveying that sense, that muchness of experience, within this blog. But how could I ever?
I go to Prague next.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Days 22-27
For the last five or so days I discontinued the blog and took a break from writing, save for one late-night incident in which I wrote around two thousand words. This was because an old friend of mine, Kelsey, came to visit me in Barcelona during this period.
Kelsey's appearance meant that for the first time in three weeks I was not alone in a foreign country. Naturally I have had interactions, nights out, acquaintanceships, etc. with countless people over the course of that time, but in all of those cases there was an overriding sense of novelty and also of transience, and as a result any social bond I'd created over those three weeks was not enough to cut to the fundamental root of the aloneness that I'd been cultivating. Of course Kelsey cut right through the root.
When a person is alone in an unfamiliar place, it is an adventure. But when a person is with familiar company, it becomes a vacation. Everything becomes easier. With just one other familiar person it's possible to create a shared cultural bubble, a zone of safety, that I think has the effect of impeding or at least dulling the intensity of one's experience. And as a result there is little to note of these last five days. For the most part I brought Kelsey to places that I had already seen. We also went to a bar that looked a lot like the Rainforest Cafe. I was incredibly glad to have her here with me, but it was also of the utmost importance to my time abroad that at some point she be gone, which now she is.
The force of being together in this foreign place may have had one significant effect on us (i.e. myself and Kelsey), which was that there was a sudden clarification of the relationship between myself and this girl I'd known for the last seven or so years, for better or for worse, and as a result I will probably never see or speak to her again, although it is not possible for me to go any further on that subject. All I have written in this post has been hideously abstract. In truth, I can not go to the heart of what has transpired in these last few days, and so I can only write these limp little platitudes.
On the last night Kelsey was here I took her to the Plaza de Espanya, where we found that the road had been closed off and that there was a massive number of people waiting in front of the palace and fountain. We went and waited with them, although we had absolutely no idea what was happening, and we wound up waiting there for over an hour and a half, not knowing what was to come and having no ability to find out, in a really truly hilarious Waiting for Godot type situation. It turned out we were at some kind of Catalonian national rally. A massive projector played a film that we couldn't understand a word of, there was a massive fireworks display, and everybody in the crowd lit sparklers and held them in the air. And then there were two people in the middle of it all, two stupid Americans, who did nothing but turn to look at each other and laugh.
Kelsey's appearance meant that for the first time in three weeks I was not alone in a foreign country. Naturally I have had interactions, nights out, acquaintanceships, etc. with countless people over the course of that time, but in all of those cases there was an overriding sense of novelty and also of transience, and as a result any social bond I'd created over those three weeks was not enough to cut to the fundamental root of the aloneness that I'd been cultivating. Of course Kelsey cut right through the root.
When a person is alone in an unfamiliar place, it is an adventure. But when a person is with familiar company, it becomes a vacation. Everything becomes easier. With just one other familiar person it's possible to create a shared cultural bubble, a zone of safety, that I think has the effect of impeding or at least dulling the intensity of one's experience. And as a result there is little to note of these last five days. For the most part I brought Kelsey to places that I had already seen. We also went to a bar that looked a lot like the Rainforest Cafe. I was incredibly glad to have her here with me, but it was also of the utmost importance to my time abroad that at some point she be gone, which now she is.
The force of being together in this foreign place may have had one significant effect on us (i.e. myself and Kelsey), which was that there was a sudden clarification of the relationship between myself and this girl I'd known for the last seven or so years, for better or for worse, and as a result I will probably never see or speak to her again, although it is not possible for me to go any further on that subject. All I have written in this post has been hideously abstract. In truth, I can not go to the heart of what has transpired in these last few days, and so I can only write these limp little platitudes.
On the last night Kelsey was here I took her to the Plaza de Espanya, where we found that the road had been closed off and that there was a massive number of people waiting in front of the palace and fountain. We went and waited with them, although we had absolutely no idea what was happening, and we wound up waiting there for over an hour and a half, not knowing what was to come and having no ability to find out, in a really truly hilarious Waiting for Godot type situation. It turned out we were at some kind of Catalonian national rally. A massive projector played a film that we couldn't understand a word of, there was a massive fireworks display, and everybody in the crowd lit sparklers and held them in the air. And then there were two people in the middle of it all, two stupid Americans, who did nothing but turn to look at each other and laugh.
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